Chapter Two
Now
At Dean's bedside, Sam had no clue why he suddenly flashed on the conversation he and Dean had shared the night he left for Stanford. He thought perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his older brother, rather than being angry and bitter over Sam's upcoming 'defection' with all his emotions exposed, currently lay unmoving in the motel room bed staring empty-eyed at the ceiling.
Always the eyes, with Dean. Bright and big and full, either darkened by dilated pupil or green in the light of day, fixed upon infinities in those spaces between one moment and the next, those instants Sam couldn't grasp, couldn't understand, because Dean simply went inside himself, leaving no doors for anyone to open, no windows to look through.
No lockpick would ever open the door Dean kept warded against anything he might view as an invasion of his soul, a breeching of his walls.
Sam, who loved history, thought even Richard the Lionheart might not be able to sap Dean's fortress at Acre, nor would Alexander take Tyre.
He looked upon his brother, tried to find hope. "Be my superhero again, Dean. Come back from this."
But Dean had gone inside himself.
# # #
2006
He was blank. Was empty, as Sam walked away from him in Bobby's yard.
And then all the rage and grief and shock and pain and utter desolation was a white-hot blaze in his head and heart, and he gave into it, welcomed it, embraced it. He clasped the tire iron in trembling hands and let loose with it. Smashed window glass in one car, then turned, lunged, and brought down iron upon steel, blow after blow after blow, so hard he grunted with it. Beating on Baby.
When what he wanted was to cry. To shout. To scream at the world that it wasn't fair.
Christ. His father was dead.
What he wanted was to howl.
Sammy had nearly done him in. So much pain in those simple sentences.
"I miss him, man. And I feel guilty as hell. And I'm not all right. Not at all." And then the shot to the heart. "But neither are you. That much I know."
Not John Winchester.
Not.
No.
This time, Dean howled.
# # #
NOW
Sam, pacing from wall to wall at the foot of the beds, heard the sound. It was low, choked off, then rose to a thin, throttled keening.
The sound was so abnormal, so wrong, that it shocked Sam to his soul. It sounded nothing like Dean. Nothing like a human.
But it was sound. It was something.
In two long strides he reached the bedside, dropped to one knee. He reached out, caught his brother's arm. Gripped it, as if to tether Dean to the world.
"Hey. Hey! Wake up. Wake up."
But the eyes, the open eyes, were nonetheless empty. A conscious, breathing body lay upon the bed, but Dean wasn't present.
Silence. The parted lips didn't move. The sound was not repeated.
"Hey." Sam squeezed the arm. "Dammit, Dean. Don't do this. Stop with this crap. Come back. Come back to me. Wake up."
But he was awake, Sam knew. In some awful, terrible way, Dean was awake. He just wasn't here.
Sam found himself back on his feet, hands fisted in Dean's tee and flannel shirts. He bent Dean in half and yanked his brother's torso up from the bed.
And shook him. Hard. Giving in to the fear. "Wake the hell up!"
But the head flopped. Lolled. No expression crossed Dean's face. No sound was made, no acknowledgment that half his body hung from his brother's hands.
Swallowing tightly, Sam gently lowered Dean's torso back to the bed, rearranged limbs. Then he sat down on the edge of his bed and stared blindly at the floor, wondering what in the hell he could do to save his brother.
# # #
Sam awoke when he heard the toilet flush and the sink faucet running. He sat bolt upright in bed, cast a sharp glance at his brother's empty bed, then fastened his startled gaze on the closed bathroom door.
"Dean?" He got up, took several strides to the bathroom, closed his hand upon the knob and swung open the door.
His brother, in the midst of brushing his teeth, glared at him via his reflection in the mirror. Dean spat toothpaste, then said, with smears still upon his lip, "Dude. You'll get your turn. In the meantime—personal space!"
"Dean?"
And Dean shut the door on him.
Sam took a step away, saving his nose. Still totally confused, he turned, looked at the clock radio on the table between the two beds, noted that it was not turned on, was not playing Asia's "Heat of the Moment," and that the world seemed normal in all ways.
He smacked the door with the heel of his fist. "Dean!"
After a moment his brother yanked open the door. "What? Am I not allowed to brush my teeth by myself?"
"Dean, you've been unconscious for two days! Or something. As in, lying in bed without moving, without talking, barely blinking. Just lying there, okay? Staring. So excuse me if I'm a little anxious to find out what the hell's going on—and no, you are not allowed to brush your teeth by yourself until I get an explanation. Okay? And meanwhile . . . you have toothpaste on your shirt."
Dean pulled his chin close and attempted to peer down at his chest. "Okay. Well, maybe because you startled me when you used your Gigantor fist on the door." He brushed fleetingly at the toothpaste-and-spit stain, then gave his full attention to Sam. "Unconscious? Me?"
"Yes. You. I hauled your sunburned ass out of the desert, poured electrolytes and water into you, and the whole time you just lay there staring. "
Dean frowned back at him. "The desert?"
"Yes. The desert. We're in Arizona, dude. East of Phoenix. Don't you remember?"
Dean ran a hand down his face. "No. You sure?"
"It's like 280 degrees outside. Yes, I'm sure. Chupacabra."
"We gank it?"
Sam narrowed his eyes, assessed his brother more closely. "We never even saw it. Something attacked us. You shot whatever it was, but while I was diving for the dirt, you disappeared."
Dean shook his head. "Got no memory of that."
Sam supposed that made sense. Whatever it was that had grabbed his brother, he'd spent three days in the desert, two days in bed. Nothing about this smelled like normal. But Dean was back now, physically and mentally. "You okay? Hungry, maybe? You've only had soup for a couple of days, and not much at that."
Dean ran a hand down his belly. "Yeah, I could go for a burger. Or three."
"Start with one, or you may end up puking all over the table." Sam stepped back. "And if you're not gonna take a shower, I want the room. Hot water's got my name all over it." Though maybe, he reflected, tepid was better. In the desert. In the summer.
"Okay." Dean still seemed a little baffled. "Arizona?"
Sam unbuttoned and peeled off his long-sleeved shirt, now wearing just a tee, jeans. He'd removed his slip-on boots two days before. "We were in Utah, got wind of a chupacabra outside of Phoenix. In the Superstition Mountains."
"Superstition Mountains? What is this . . . like, Hollywood?"
Sam smiled. "Colorful name, huh? Yeah, we're in Apache Junction. You said you were inclined to hunt for the Lost Dutchman's gold mine, but, you know: chupacabra."
Frowning, Dean padded out of the bathroom. "Go ahead. Shower's yours. Man, I got no clue about any chupacabra or dutchman."
Sam shrugged. "Heat exhaustion scrambled your brains. More than usual, I mean." He pulled fresh boxer-briefs, jeans, and tee out of his duffel. "Wouldn't hurt for you to drink some more fluids." He was just closing the bathroom door behind him when he heard Dean's raised voice.
"Sammy?"
"Yeah?"
"What time is Dad meeting us?"
Stunned, Sam yanked open the door. "What?"
"What time is Dad meeting us?"
He could not begin to describe all the emotions pouring through him. He stared at his brother.
Dean shrugged. "He'll be pissed we didn't take out the chupacabra."
Sam opened his mouth. Then closed it.
How the hell do you tell your clearly confused brother that his father has been dead for five years?
# # #
He couldn't do it. He just couldn't do it. Say it. Not now. Not yet. He would. He had to. But—not quite yet. He needed to process, to figure out how best to explain.
Dean would lose their father again. And Sam couldn't do that to his brother.
Across the table from Dean, who was, in opposition to his normal habit, actually completely chewing every bite of his burger before swallowing—possibly to make sure he didn't puke—Sam shifted against the booth.
"So—you don't remember anything?"
Dean shook his head. "Not a thing. I don't even remember coming to Arizona."
"Do you remember being in Utah?"
"When was that?"
"Last week."
Dean considered it. His brows twitched down. "Man. I've lost time. Did I hit my head, or something?"
"Not lately. And I checked you over in the room when we first got back, in case you got whacked while you were missing. No lumps or cuts." He paused. "What's the last thing you do remember?"
Dean washed down the last bite of his burger with a swig of soft drink. "Me and Dad ganking a poltergeist in Montana." He eyed Sam. "So, what—is it spring break, or did you give up on school after the first semester? Mr. College Boy himself?"
Sam felt the breath leave his chest on a rush. Holy crap. Dean had lost years. "Uhhh, I . . . " He cleared his throat. "We've been hunting, Dean."
"I got that. Utah, you said. Now here." His brows rose. "When you going back to Stanford?"
Sam drew in a breath, embarked upon what he feared might be a difficult journey. "Dean . . . we've been hunting for years."
Dean was very still. "What?"
"Years."
"You and me and Dad?" Dean smiled a little. "The family business. Heh. How'd he talk you into it, Sam? Because you wouldn't have come back on your own." Dean's mouth curled into a crooked smirk. "Or else maybe you figured out the Winchester blood ran in your veins after all."
Not the time and place. And he was suddenly vastly uncomfortable. "Let's go," Sam said, sliding out of the booth and standing. "I want to go back to the room. You need to rest. Maybe get some sleep. It didn't look to me like you were sleeping before. Come on. Let's go."
"Wait, Sam—I was going to order pie."
"You can do pie another time." Sam reached down, clamped a hand around his brother's bicep. "Come on."
"Jesus, Sammy—what's got your panties in a wad? Let go of me!" Dean twisted his arm from Sam's grip, levered himself out of the booth and rose.
His brother was not a small man. People didn't realize it, tended to judge Dean by Sam's significant height. In his big boots Dean was close to 6'3" and weighed a solid 190. But Sam was not only taller yet, he also had thirty pounds on Dean. And he knew how to use them.
Sam set his hand behind Dean's back and literally shoved his brother toward the door with a massive push. "Go, Dean. Just—go. You look tired. You are tired." And I really don't want to talk about school and Dad and Jess in the middle of a diner.
# # #
At the room, Dean would not let it go. "Jesus, Sam, when did you get so hands-on. You know I don't like the merchandise touched. It's valuable. I've spent twenty-six years refining this whole look, and you want to shove me all over a diner and ruin the effect? Sam—"
"Thirty-one." Sam closed the door, latched it. The moment was coming. He felt it.
"Thirty-one what?"
"Years. Dean—you're thirty-one."
Dean stopped dead in the middle of the room and stared at his brother. "I'm thirty-one?"
"Yes."
"When the hell did I turn thirty-one? I was twenty-six only yesterday." He paused. "Wasn't I?"
Sam didn't answer.
"What—you mean this merchandise is five years older than it was yesterday? And I missed it?" He scowled. "That was a helluva birthday. Or five. Hope I enjoyed it. Or them."
But Sam knew his brother. Dean was reaching, was trying to find something he knew, to cling to it without freaking. He had learned to control the intricacies of his body long before adulthood, had refined it since, and he looked relaxed, unconcerned. But the eyes gave it away.
Always the eyes, with Dean.
Dean dropped the act. He sat down on the side of his bed, placing himself close to the twin lights screwed into the wall over the nightstand separating the beds. "Look again, Sammy." He ran a hand over cropped hair. "Okay?"
Sam could recite from memory practically every scar on Dean's body. They knew one another's bodies more intimately than other brothers because of what they did, and what they could not afford to risk, which was overlooking anything that might otherwise appear innocuous when it decidedly was not. They patched up one another on a regular basis, and triaged after every difficult hunt. Dean could be difficult sometimes, and close-mouthed about pain, but he wasn't stupid, and if he couldn't properly assess injuries for himself, he didn't hesitate to have Sam take a good look. Usually they danced the dance of the "I'm fines," and the "It's nothings," and the "Too far from my heart to kill mes;" though the latter was Dean's assertion, not Sam's. But when in doubt, they looked, and looked hard.
Two days before, with Dean somehow mentally elsewhere while physically present, Sam had peeled apart his hair looking for any signs of injury, be it something minor like a thin, healing cut; a scab; a lump large or small. He had found bruises on Dean's legs and arms, a few scratches and scrapes gained in the desert, but nothing serious. And nothing at all anywhere on his skull.
But this was . . . hell, this was missing time. Dean believed Sam had only recently left for Stanford, that he was twenty-six . . . and that John Winchester was still alive.
"Yeah," Sam said. And he stripped the lights of their shades so the bulbs were unshielded, turned them on, proceeded to carefully work his way through Dean's hair, searching again for anything, anything at all, that might be an indicator. Dean sat very quietly and allowed it without protest. Tension poured off him.
Sam felt behind and beneath his ears, walked the pads of his fingers throughout Dean's scalp, peeled back and peered through the short-cropped bronze-gold hair. "I feel like a chimp looking for lice," he murmured.
"Thanks for that image. If I'm anything, I'm a gorilla. Big ol' silverback male, with a pride of females."
"Gorillas don't have prides. Lions have prides."
"I've got a lot of pride. I'm king of the freakin' jungle."
"Yeah, Dean, you're a big old lion napping in the sun for twenty hours a day."
"You're quoting 'The Hollywood Squares?'" Dean asked incredulously. "A game show?"
"Reruns. You had on some kind of a retrospective a while back."
"But that's, like, old. Besides, the sleeping part of the answer wasn't funny. It was lying around twenty hours a day humming 'Born Free.' That was funny."
Sometimes it wasn't even worth listening to his brother. Sam continued inspecting. "Nothing so far."
Dean rolled a shoulder. "I must have gotten clocked by something. You don't just lose time unless you've got amnesia. And I know exactly who I am, and that you're my emo-driven sasquatch of a baby sister."
"I don't see any signs of you being whacked," Sam said finally, straightening . "Yeah, it's possible something got you—I mean, something did get you, because you disappeared from right in front of me and showed up three days later—but there's nothing I can see suggesting you got hit in the head."
Dean's tone was aggressive, but Sam heard an echo of hollowness. "Five years, Sam."
Sam nodded, drawing in a careful breath as he prepared for the coming battle. "Maybe we need to look at something else, Dean. Go to the hospital."
"Hospital! Why? I'm fine!"
"You're not fine, Dean. Something happened. And maybe what we need to do is have a doctor look at you before we consider anything else. Because sometimes . . . " Sam shook his head, spread hands. "You know, shit does happen, Dean. Medical shit. To people who don't even hunt, just get up one day and keel over, or have seizures, or stroke out, or—"
"Sam, I got it! Jesus!" Dean lunged to his feet, strode away from his brother. Swung back. "That stuff doesn't happen to us, Sam. Not really. Medical shit. Not to hunters. Nothing normal happens, even when it's a medical abnormality."
Sam lifted his brows. "Are you suggesting a 'medical abnormality' is normal? Did you forget what 'abnormal' means?"
Dean scowled at him, tension obvious in the stiffness of his shoulders.
"Alright. Okay. Sorry." Sam lifted a placatory hand. "I agree it's unlikely, in view of what we do; and in view, too, of what we were doing a few days back, and what happened in the midst of it. But look what happened with Dad. I mean, the docs all said it was an aneurysm, but—"
And then he stopped abruptly, realizing in horror what he'd just said. There was no easing into it, no careful lead-in, no preparing Dean for the worst.
Shit. Shit.
For Sam, five years removed. The pain and grief remained, but there was distance. A buffering.
Dean stared at him, eyes stretched wide. No distance, for him. No buffering.
Nothing, nothing Sam could say would make it better. So he held his tongue. Just locked eyes with his brother and prayed that what Dean saw there was enough.
Knowing it wouldn't be.
Dean stood very still. He drew in a long breath. "Dad."
Sam said, "Dad."
And as his brother turned stiffly and walked out of the room, Sam closed his eyes.
