Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me.
Sorry that it's been so long since I last updated. It took way longer than I thought to update, but I promise that I'll try to get the next chapter out sooner. I should have it in the next few days, or a week at the most.
Hope you enjoy the chapter.
Caleb gently tried to coax Sam out of the shell that he had gone into, tried to bring life back into the hazel orbs. Sam hadn't moved on his own, hadn't said a word or even protested when Caleb had looked over the head injury again. Not a word, not a sound. "Come on, man. Don't do this." He said quietly to his young friend. Sam, it seemed, had gone into his own world, where he wouldn't be damaged by his own flesh and blood anymore.
He had sat there, holding the boy and making sure that he was safe, for five minutes when he finally heard the sound of Bobby returning. "What's wrong with him?" Bobby asked the second he came back.
"I don't know. It's like he's not here anymore. Dean didn't do too much damage. He has a concussion. You can tell that just by looking in his eyes when I shine the light on them, but it doesn't seem like it should be that bad. There's no bones broken in his face. His hands suffered the worst of the bone damage when he tried to defend himself, but his skull is fine. This is just...scary. He's just checked out. I don't understand it. It could be post-traumatic stress, but he's been hurt worse than this; they both have." Caleb explained, at a loss of words as to what was really going on.
"Not by his own blood, he ain't. First, his daddy dies and then his big brother up and pulls this. He's gonna be damaged. Let me look at him." Bobby moved in next to John's boy and tried to touch his shoulder. It was the first movement that he had made in a long time, when he pulled away from the hands, jerkily, as if in fear that they would hurt him, too. "Sammy, it's just me. It's just Bobby. You're safe."
His eyes were still blank and devoid of life and it didn't appear that he had heard a word that either of the men had just spoken. His legs were still drawn up in defense of the tender organs in his mid-section. The two men were at a loss as to what to do for him, and he was out of resources from his family.
"Do you think we should take him to the hospital?" Caleb asked, raspy voice shaky, uncertain. He had watched Sam grow up, watched him through his inquisitive childhood when he had gotten into everything, watched him fight with his old man when he was a teenager and rebel against all the things that had encompassed his life, seen him grow into a well-rounded young man who took life by the horns, and yet he had never seen him like this. No injury had caused the kind of destruction that he was suffering right now.
"Well, yeah." Bobby said, indignantly, as if he had just been asked the most mundane question in the world. This was not something they could handle on their own. Caleb moved so that Bobby could come closer in front of Sammy. "You know you're safe. No one's gonna hurt you anymore, son." Bobby said, keeping his voice gentler than he had ever spoken before to the boy. He wasn't dealing with a fully functional adult right now, but a scared and wounded animal, and he needed to be treated as such. They just needed to get him to a professional before they could cause any more harm than had already been done.
Caleb crowded in on the side of the boy, and his eyes were wide, fearful of the men. "It's okay, Sam. We're not gonna hurt you," Caleb reassured him. He held one hand on Sam's knee for a moment, showing him that even though they were touching him, they were doing no harm. It took a moment to get him comfortable, get him to relax to the touch, and then Caleb picked him up. Placing one hand behind his knees, and the other around his back, Caleb lifted him up. He carried him, cradled against his chest, head resting against his shoulder, as they went to Caleb's car. The man yelled at Bobby to get into the backseat, and the older hunter ran around the car and got in. Caleb gently moved Sammy into the car, being careful with him, and sat him next to Bobby. Then, he ran to the trunk and got a blanket out, going back to drape it around his young friend. He owed John Winchester the very air he was breathing, and he would be damned if he let the man's sons down now. Getting into the driver's seat, he shot a glance back to the boy leaning heavily against Bobby, shivering. He started the car and gunned the engine, trying to get to help as quickly as possible.
They sat now, waiting to hear anything on Sammy. When they brought him here, he wasn't responding to anything around him, and he was limp in Bobby's arms, head lulled slightly to the side. The doctors had taken one look at the fragile bundle in his arms, and whisked him away, commanding the two men to stay away, to wait in the waiting room with all of the other worried families. Bobby had gone to the coffee machine twice in the hour wait, trying to work off his energy and tension with the trips. Caleb sat hunched over in his chair, hands folded and up against his mouth, fear making him almost frozen. When Sammy was little, they'd all brought him to the hospital, and he had the same fear then as he did now. The baby's life was in danger then, but now it was his soul.
"You all right?" Bobby said quietly, discreetly from all the other people around the younger hunter and sat down in the seat next to Caleb.
"Their dad saved my life, Bobby. If he hadn't have called 911 when he did, I would be dead." Absently, he rubbed at the scar tissue that was forming on his throat. A couple weeks ago, it had been ugly, broken open and he could barely speak. That bitch had damaged his vocal chords, and he would speak with a rasp for the rest of his life, but he was alive because of John Winchester. And now, he couldn't even return the favor by making sure that his son's were all right. Glancing at Bobby, he asked flatly, "Did you call Dean, tell him what's going on?"
"Yeah, that boy wanted to come here, like that would do anyone any good right now, but he's not going to be able to...the Impala isn't going to take him anywhere, and they left the only other running vehicle I had somewhere out in the bushes in Wisconsin." Bobby said, a scoff in his voice as he remembered getting the call that he needed to go pick up the van from Wisconsin. "That only leaves my truck, and he ain't gonna touch that."
"Dean will find a way." Caleb said, voice ominous. While he needed to make sure they were both safe, there was no way Sammy would be able to handle seeing him right now. He needed a couple of days, and even then, Dean would need to take it slow, earn back the trust that he had lost.
"That's what I'm afraid of." Bobby confided, a gentle nod of his head as he brought the coffee cup up to his mouth. "He just better not touch my truck."
Caleb snorted, and shook his head. "Was he still angry?"
"No. He sounded frantic. He saw us bring Sammy to your car." Bobby informed him, and Caleb once again nodded. This was going to be bad.
Sam was half aware of what was going on around him, but was numb. He had a CT and an MRI and he knew they were going to do x-rays of his skull, but he didn't feel any of it. He was detached and his vision was hazy enough for him not to pick up on much. He just couldn't move, and he felt like he was trapped inside of his body. He heard them say words like catatonia and head injury. He heard them say temporary blindness as they shined the light into his eyes. He just didn't have the energy to respond to it. They didn't mean anything, and the only other thing that really did was sitting back at Bobby's house, and obviously hadn't followed them to the hospital. He didn't remember what had happened out in the junkyard, past when Dean had started laying punches. There's a murky memory of his brother being calmed, Bobby holding him back, and then he tried to come back toward him, and he felt himself move back. Sometime in the next few seconds, he had lost consciousness, lost himself. It was the head injury, had to be. He had woken up in the emergency room, and no one said anything to him, because other than having his eyes open, he wasn't awake or aware too much. There was only the wish that Dean was here.
Dean was pacing the floor for over an hour, when he started pulling the drawers open in Bobby's office, looking for keys. The house was located on a junkyard, after all, so it couldn't be too hard to find a car that at least ran half-way. He had watched Caleb carry Sam's body, clutched up against his chest, and felt a pang in his heart. His brother was laying so still against their friend's chest, and it reminded him of when they were little kids, when his father would rock a sick Sammy to get him to be calm. It broke his heart, but he didn't feel like having either of the older men threaten him for coming near the only person he had left. Remorse and guilt had taken over him only minutes after he had first hit Sam, and god, he wanted to take it back. More than anything; more than even their father's death. Sam had lost his dad, too, and this was too much. Why was Sammy so still? Why was Sammy refusing to move when he was placed in the car, laid down in the backseat?
Bobby had called a while ago, to tell him that the doctors had taken him into triage, and they didn't know anything yet. Dean was teary, and apologized to the man.
"It's not me you need to be apologizing to, Dean. Look, I know you got angry, but you need to reign that in a little. He's the only one you've got left, and making him fear you ain't the way to vent your anger." Bobby had said to him.
"I know," was the only thing that he could come back with, and boy did he ever know.
Fervently, Dean started throwing the drawers out, looking for the key box. He knew Bobby kept them somewhere, and he would rip apart the whole room in order to find transportation to the hospital. When they were outside, he hadn't been looking at anything. 'Oh, god, what if he's blind?' All it takes is one wrong punch, and he wasn't exactly being careful not to hurt him.
The thought made him desperate, made him think about Bobby's truck that the man had left there. He had left his keys sitting on the top of the desk, and it would be so easy to borrow them. Grabbing them off the desk, he ran out to the truck. He was going to see his baby brother, and try to make things right.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Please feel free to comment any way that you would like, whether it be constructive criticism, praise, or a question.
Happy hunting!
