PART TWO

After a violent swirling sensation (a goldfish flushed down the toilet), Sam wakes up painfully lucid, present in the world in a way he hasn't been for days. His head is almost too clear. He opens his eyes, sees a ceiling, and slams them shut once again.

"Hey," Dean says, shaking him. "Sammy. Hey."

He can feel Dean sitting close, the bed dipping near his hip.

"Time is it?"

"Around nine," Dean says. "In the morning."

"How long I been asleep?"

"'bout twenty-four hours."

"Where are we?"

"Motel."

Sam opens his eyes. Definitely a motel. The hum of the highway outside means they're back in a rural area. Curtains drawn, must be overcast outside because it's still mostly dark and Dean is little more than a shadow. Sam reaches over and flips on the light.

His brother squints at him, smiling a feeble smile. He's gone back to whitish-blue, is curled in on himself, breathing in shallow sips to keep from coughing, eyes telling Sam everything he won't say out loud, Sammy I don't feel well. Sammy I'm in pain. Sammy I can't breathe. Sammy take care of me.

Sam closes his eyes, breathes deep.

"You look like you're having a rough day," he says.

"I'm glad you're finally awake," Dean says, and damn does he look like shit.

Maybe (hopefully) Em and her magical healing powers were just a figment of Sam's fevered imagination. He opens his mouth to demand to know more about the woman, where the hell they are, where they hell they were, where the hell they're going, what hell they're doing.

His mouth closes. First things first.

"Have you done your chest?"

Dean looks pained. "Tried. But I don't have anything left but albuterol."

Sam nods, swallowing back the urge to fly into a rage. Because it's his fault, isn't it? If he hadn't spent the last week slowly dying of supernatural CF (God, how ridiculous that sounds), maybe Dean would still have something left.

He thinks back to the sad makeshift arsenal of medications in Dean's trunk. How sad it was then. How sad and empty it must look now.

"Are you absolutely sure you don't have anything?"

Dean nods wearily, and shifts himself so that his back is to Sam.

Sam cups his hands and begins to pound, harder than usual. His brother can still cough up the shit without medicine. It'll just be a pain in the ass.

Dean relaxes instantly beneath his hands, even lets out a near-inaudible sigh. Sam feels himself relaxing, too.

"So," Sam says as calmly as he can manage. "You wanna tell me about your little friend?"

"No."

"Tell me anyway."

"She's," Dean says. "She's, well. She's just a little… she's a free spirit."

"A free spirit," Sam repeats incredulously. "Not the word I would use."

He keeps his pound strong and steady, his mouth shut, hoping Dean will continue on his own. But the cough comes instead, first just a low crackle in his chest, then rasping hairball sound. Dean reaches over the side of the bed for the trashcan and hangs his head in. Sam can't really tell if he's hacking up mucus or vomiting or both but whatever it is, it sounds painful. And all he can do is keep pounding.

He waits until Dean surfaces again, giving him a minute or two to catch his breath.

"You let her doing something to me. To us."

"She's harmless."

"Harmless."

"Yeah. You deal with what she deals with, it practically makes you mentally ill."

"Meaning what?"

Dean shrugs under Sam's hands. "You didn't notice her finishing your sentences for you?"

"So she's psychic."

"She's. Well, sorta. She only senses the bad stuff, I guess—emotions, intentions, thoughts. And she only foresees disaster. But I don't buy her whole future-telling deal anyway. I think that's where her crazy comes in."

"I see," Sam says.

Something in his gut sinks. He probably doesn't want to know the answer to his next question, in fact something tells him that everything will turn out infinitely better if he just shuts his damn mouth right here, right now.

But of course he can't stop himself. "She put me to sleep. More than once. You ate bacon without enzymes."

If Dean looked tired before, these questions make him look nearly comatose. "Sam, please. Feels like I got rubber cement in my lungs, okay?"

"Just tell me."

Dean sighs long sufferingly, and bends back over the garbage can. But it's okay, Sam can outlast him. He always does.

After a minute he repeats: "Tell me."

"It's just a mind trick, okay? Like psychic aspirin or a—a—psychic sleeping pill. Nothing stronger than that, though, believe me."

Sam snorts. "So no psychic morphine drip?"

"No psychic morphine drip. In fact her goddamn psychic enzymes barely work. Spend most of the morning puking my guts out."

So it doesn't sound unreasonable. Or dangerous. Or harmful. It even sounds like Dean is telling the truth.

But maybe not.

Sam slows his pound, and slides his hands up to knead at Dean's shoulders. The more relaxed Dean is, the more likely he is to tell the truth.

"And what's the catch?"

Dean leans in, wincing a little as Sam drives his thumb into a stubborn knot in his neck. "Nothing, Sam. Really. I feel extra shitty a day or two, that's all. Snot comes back, the undigested shit gets thrown up, and it sucks. The end. No big deal."

Sam hears Em in his head, sometimes relief hurts just as badly .

Dean bends over the trash can, huffing fiercely, coughing until the back of his neck turns bright red. Nothing else is going to come up, Sam can tell. Not without a fight that Dean doesn't have the energy for.

"You've gotta have something," Sam says. "I'll go look."

"It's fine. Don't stop."

"Nope," Sam says. "Be right back."

He leaves Dean choking over the trashcan and steps into the dull morning. It's muggy; he breaks into a sweat mere seconds after he steps outside. There's the Impala, right in front of their door, dust-caked and waiting. She almost looks disappointed to be parked. Not too different from Dean.

He was never going to see either of them ever again. And now here he is.

What the hell was he was thinking, when Dean asked "what's next" and Sam responded "anything"?

The novelty of throwing away his old life to do the right thing has worn off quick.

The idea of hunting makes his skin crawl, though investigating the ghost at Stanford—breaking into buildings, visiting the morgue—was almost comforting in it's familiarity, like slipping back into an old skin, a snugness both serene and suffocating.

He's already wondering whether the feeling is ever, ever going to go away. It sends a very real, very conspicuous pain shooting through his head, right between his eyes.

Or maybe he's just getting a headache.

Yeah, it's a headache.

He squints against the pain as he opens the trunk and rummages through rest of the bottles for anything that will thin mucus, open airways, digest food-anything Dean might have missed.

Many of the bottles are empty, as well as all of the boxes containing single doses of breathing medications and antibiotics (many of which are supposed to be kept in a refrigerator anyway—they're going to have to figure something out about that). There's really, really hardly anything left, except a few pain meds and half a dozen bottles of long expired enzymes.

The night he left Jess, he was in a scramble. He'd forgotten a slew of Dean's medications in the refrigerator after he'd so painstakingly arranged and sorted them. And then… and then Dean had used most of the rest of it trying to keep Sam alive.

But no point in thinking of that right now. He digs through the trunk until he's elbow deep. There aren't any inhalers left either, all the canisters are empty. He knows Dean keeps them everywhere—in his jacket pockets, in his duffels, in the glove box—he hopes those aren't empty as well, but he can't bring himself to look.

What isleft is the oxygen concentrator, which thank god someone—Bobby maybe—thought to get for Dean. It doesn't run out, it pulls oxygen right out of the air. It's not going to help him clear his chest, but it's something.

They have to get to Bobby's.

But then what?

His head is really starting to hurt.

Clutching the concentrator to his chest, he stumbles toward the motel door. The pain spikes, so sharp his eyes squeeze shut and won't open again. The feeble rays of the sun become blades that slice cleanly through his skull. He stumbles on the one step, falling against the door. With the heel of his hand he digs into his forehead, sliding in cold sweat. It hurts, it hurt so fucking bad he's sure his sinuses will explode right out of his face, his teeth with crumble, he's going to sit right here on the stoop of the motel and piss in his pants because it hurts.

And then he feels something else entirely.

The heat of bright bright sun, so bright that for a moment he can't see anything at all. Gradually the light fades away and there's grass, blue sky, an enormous sprawling building that can't be anything else but a hospital.

There's a sign at his elbow, and he knows instinctively that he's supposed to look at it. St. Luke's Boise Medical Center. It seems like it should sound familiar to him, but it doesn't.

The light comes again, blinding him. When it fades away he's inside, his nose no more than two inches from a sign on the wall: Room 808. He moves into the doorway; all he can see is a bed curtain and a pair of socked feet.

He's not going to like what he finds inside. He knows this instinctively. He slips in the room anyway, tip toeing toward the curtain with needlessly quiet precision while he works up the strength to actually look at what's behind it.

It's Dean, of course, lying in a hospital bed. He's free of many of the expected wires and machines, nothing more than an oxygen mask and an IV. He's uncovered, wearing only a hospital gown. The bed is inclined so that he's nearly sitting up. There's a fan blowing in his face. His eyes are open but rolled halfway into his head, his mouth totally slack beneath the mask.

Sam stands there in horror for what might as well be a lifetime. The seconds are so long between each of Dean's breaths that Sam is positive that each and every one of them will be his last.

A woman sits at Dean's bed, a nursing assistant, most likely, a forty-ish nondescript woman with dark hair.

"…thinking about getting a dog," she's saying, "Which I don't know about because their apartment is so tiny, but gosh, if it stops her from having kids so young than I'm all for it, I guess."

She smoothes her hand down Dean's arm. "Anyway, your Dad'll be around again soon, I'm sure. We've been calling him every day, telling him how well you've hanging on, waiting for him. He'll show, honey. Don't worry."

She pets at Dean's forehead. Dean's eyes roll slowly, slowly downward, until they're mostly focused, mostly gazing at the nurse.

"Try to stay awake a little longer," she says. "I'm sure your dad will be back soon. Just a little longer."

"Dying?" Dean heaves.

"You're very ill, honey."

"Dying," he heaves again, as if it's already been decided.

And Sam guesses it has.

The nurse continues to pet Dean's hair. It's too long, Sam bets so long it would probably hang in his eyes if she weren't plowing it back.

"It's okay, honey, if you can't wait. Your dad will understand. It's okay."

"Sammy?" Dean says, so softly that a stranger probably wouldn't be able to make it out.

But Sam does. Maybe Dean doesn't even know he said it, because his eyes are rolled up in his face again, his mouth slack, his chest rising and falling irregularly as if it might stop at any moment.

Someone knocks softly on the doorjamb behind him.

Sam turns, and nearly jumps out of his skin.

It's Em.

He flinches automatically, fully expecting some kind of hideous verbal assault. But she doesn't seem to see him, and then she walks right through his shoulder.

The female nurse looks up, looking nearly as surprised. "Hello there. I'm Heidi, I've been taking care of your, uh…?"

"Nephew. Hello," Em says, briefly shaking Heidi's hand. She rests her hand on Dean's forehead, then his cheek, then his chest. "He's leaving his body. Tonight, probably."

"Yes."

Em stares at her for a moment, wrinkling her nose. "And where is his father?"

Heidi shakes her head.

Em nods, as if that were precisely the response she was expecting. "Disappeared. The moment he thought he was free, of course. I need a moment with Dean. Alone."

"Certainly."

One Heidi is gone Em pulls up a chair and sits. For long minutes she pets Dean's forehead just as the nurse did. Sam moves closer to the bed, careful to keep his distance. Every so often, Dean's chest sharply collapses, expands again. He's breathing on autopilot, fruitlessly sucking down air like some kind of broken machinery that's been left plugged in.

Sam realizes that his brother is literally minutes from death, that this is fucking it .

But at the same time his brain is screaming this is not real this is not real this is not real.

Because it's not, it really isn't. He barely feels his feet on the floor. When he turns his head the world blurs. He can feel the pavement in the real world scraping against his palms, his forehead against the cold motel door. Just a dream. Just a dream.

"I've told you and told you, my place in hell is long reserved," Em says suddenly. "It all ends the same. But I promised you, didn't I? I promised you. And why not? There is no keeping a fool from her destiny."

She stands, the chair squealing across the floor, never taking her hand off Dean's chest.

"You can breathe, Dean. Listen to me. You can breathe."

Dean's chest collapses, expands again. After a shorter time, it collapses and expands once more. And then again, a little faster. And then he's still struggling but it's more steady, expand collapse, expand collapse, expand collapse.

Em presses a kiss to Dean's forehead and turns away from his bed. There are tears in her eyes.

She looks directly at Sam. "My mistake," she says. "Our mistake." And then she keeps walking, right through Sam's body.

In that moment the light returns, the pain in his head, both so blinding that he can hear himself begin to whimper. Now all he feels is the sidewalk beneath him, the explosive pain in his head, the muggy morning and the faintly moldy smell of old shitty motel.

Then fingers tight around his biceps, and Dean screaming his name.

"Jesus Christ, Sammy? Jesus Christ."

"You were dying, Dean. I'm telling you, you were lying in a hospital bed fucking dying and that woman—Em—Em, she came in and she healed you, Dean. She fucking healed you."

"Sammy. Calm down," Dean says. He's dragging Sam inside, they're both collapsing on the bed, panting hard. "You're freaking me out."

Sam takes a moment to catch his breath. His head is still total agony, but nowhere near as bad as moments ago. He wills himself to calm, or at least to prevent his next words from coming out as a shriek.

"It wasn't a dream, Dean. It was some kind of… I don't know. She showed me—after Dad ditched you at the hospital. You were dying. In Boise. In fucking Boise, Dean, and she stopped you from dying."

"Sam, listen to me. No she didn't."

"Did you know? Did you know she came?"

Dean shakes his head, nothing but sincerity on his face. "I had no idea."

"She could heal you if she wanted, couldn't she? Why hasn't she healed you completely?"

"She can't heal me."

There's a deliberate pause, rush of air from Dean's inhaler, and Sam thanks god his brother still has that, at least. He buries his face in the pillow. The pain is quickly easing off, but it's like he can't get his muscles to relax. All he can see is Dean dying, Dean dying, Dean on his death bed.

"Why can't she? Why can't she fucking heal you?"

"It's a mind trick, Sam. I told you. She kept me breathing long enough to recover, that's it."

"What's the fucking difference?" Sam disentangles himself from his brother, and sits up, looking Dean in the eye. Inside he feels absolutely hysterical; he can't believe Dean never thought to mention this before, someone who could save him from death.

"Sam. Listen to me, okay? She can't heal me. She can't take the CF away. No one can. You need to stop this."

"She got into my head."

"She gave you a bad dream. That's all, okay? A bad dream." Dean smiles. "I promise you Sam, she's harmless."

"Why would she do that?" Sam disentangles his arm and rubs at his temple. "Why in the fuck?"

"It's stupid, Sam. It's really stupid. She's crazy, okay? She's nuts."

"Spit it out." Sam keeps his face in the pillow but he knows anyway that Dean is rolling his eyes.

"She thinks that you're going to find me a healer," he says. "Like a real healer. And then after I'm healed, she says things are gonna change. She had a vision of me losing my soul, burning in hell. And she thinks it's going to be all your fault. She pretty much thinks you're going to destroy the world."

Sam snorts. "That is pretty goddamn insane."

Dean smiles. "Yeah. I do that to the ladies."

For a moment they share a tired laugh. The pain in Sam's head eases away until it's nearly gone, leaving nothing behind but bone-deep exhaustion.

"We have a long drive," Dean says. "I should get a nap in."

Sam runs his fingers through his sweaty hair. "If she's so nuts then why… why bother with her?"

"Well. Sometimes on hunting trips when Dad… and when you were at Stanford…" Dean shakes his head. "Doesn't matter, Sam. Can I go to sleep now?"

Sam hears the message loud and clear, she was there when you weren't.

And he doesn't particularly feel like talking about that either.

"Yeah. Yeah okay."

Dean doesn't move though. He has something else to say.

Sam waits.

"I… I never wanted you to see me like that. I'm gonna get her for that one, believe me."

"I'll have to see you like that someday."

Dean shrugs. "Not necessarily. And definitely not today."

Bullshit, not necessarily. Now there isn't anything but Dean, here, a warm hand on his back, the bed dipping at his hip, and what the hell is he going to do when Dean really is dying? Sit around and wait? Watch TV? Read the paper?

He was ready, just a few days ago, to let Dean go when the time came. To enjoy what they had when they had it, to stop mourning the future, to start collecting memories instead of scars.

But now he's seen it. The image of his brother's deathbed isn't going to leave him, and the thought of seeing it again, when it happens, sends a load of bile to the back of his throat.

He just can't let it happen, that's all.

Not any time soon.

:::

To be continued.