Chapter 4
Dean Winchester has a gun in one hand, a machete in the other and a fraternal rage tornadoing within.
He no longer cares if his mother discovers the unleashed killing machine decades of hunter and a stint in hell has created. He's getting his brother back or will die trying.
"Stay in the car," he barks to Mary as he closes the trunk.
But Mary's already armed and outside, stowing extra magazines in her pockets and throwing knives in her belt with iron determination. "I'm still your mother, Dean. And I'm Sam's too. Let's go get our boy."
The locator spell led them to a foreclosed corn farm in rural North Iowa, an isolating 20 miles from its neighbors. From the distance, Dean and Mary can see that it has been transformed into a compound. The small ranch home has been cleared of the climbing ivy that was overwhelming the house in Google Earth views. Broken windows have been covered with plywood; smoke curls pleasantly from the chimney. However, Dean sees stirrings of life on the west side of the centuries-old barn beyond broken down tractors and eroded fencing.
An ear-piercing scream splits the air, an octave too high to be Sam's, Dean hopes.
"We gotta go. Stay close, all right?"
"You kill civilians?" Mary asks with a bluntness that suggests she actually would.
"Only if they get in the way."
Mary nods firmly, and follows Dean through the darknesss.
They creep forward through the shadows and skirt the edge of the flood lights. By the time they reach the barn, it's obvious that something has gone awry. A compound of this size should have at least a a few guards, and yet they weave through the tight corridors of stables and make-shift rooms of the barn unobstructed. Dean, who's intent on cracking heads, is perversely disappointed.
Mary abruptly shoves him into a darkened stable. A beat later, a man wielding an axe bolts through the corridor they had just occupied. Dean darts to the other side of the stall, and clothes-lining him with an out-stretched arm. He falls spectacularly, feet in the air, head slamming against the concrete floor, axe swinging wildly through the air. Dean knocks him and a few of his teeth out with a merciless kick to the face. Mary snags the axe and heaves it under rusted-out heavy machinery so it's no longer a threat. Together, they make a pretty kick-ass team.
They discover the bodies around the next corner piled around a destroyed door. The first, a white man with shorn brown hair is lying face down in a stomach-turning pool blood, slackened hand pressed over a gruesome hole in his throat. The other, a woman with a tattooed hand, is alive, but bleeding so profusely from a chest wound that she won't be for much longer. Dean steps over her scrabbling legs.
She is not their concern.
Mary gasps as the woman falls still, lips darkening to a slate blue. "Did Sammy..."
"Hope so," his tone is clipped with an edge of meanness. Whatever Sam has to do to survive, Dean will applaud it.
The ravaged door barely budges when he throws his weight against it. He cautiously peers inside the hole, and sees a chair is wedged beneath it just beyond it is an unconscious woman. Dean manages to slip an arm through the hole without skewering himself, and he slides the chair free. He slowly opens it with Mary covering whatever comes out in her sights.
"Sammy?"
They both stop short, recoiling at the foul odor of burnt hair and human neglect. Mary lingers at the threshold, hand on her stomach. Dean morbidly wonders if the smell reminds her of her own fiery demise.
His gaze flickers about the freakin' dungeon where Sam has spent the past seventy-three hours. The scattered syringes, broken cattle prod, bloody coils of chains are all evidence of how his little brother spent his time as a captive. He nudges the woman with his foot. She's unresponsive, hair half-frizzed and half-soaked in dirty water, and after finding the ice-pick sticking out of her mauled ankle, that's probably the best thing that will happen to her today.
If Sam had done this, Dean's glad to see he's still strong enough to fight but the violence of it speaks to Sam's desperation. Sam doesn't kill lightly, and it perversely makes him even more scared.
"This was supposed to be a rescue mission. You're kinda killin' my hero complex! Sammy! Where you at?" Water sloshes on the floor as he walks. He stares at it with confusion. "Sammy! Sam!" He barks in John's tone of voice. "Oly Oly oxen free, dude!"
The room is an irregular rectangle, maybe eight-by-ten and empty save for the worktable and wrecked chair. There's nowhere in here for Sam to hide.
"We need to widen the search," Mary suggests.
They bind the guards, both living and dead, to a post in one of the stalls with the very chains they had used on Sam.
"If Sam's hurt, he'll go to ground until he can escape. He's around here somewhere; I feel it. We just have to find him. You stay here as a look-out, stay out of sight. I'll go check the perimeter." He produces a cell phone. He's spent the better part of an hour showing Mary how it worked. He opens the message app and hands it to her. "Text me if anything happens, okay? Don't forget to press send after you type the message."
"I got it, Dean. Just go."
Weapon drawn, Dean rounds the perimeter of the barn. The flood lights are trained to the front of the compound, and behind the buildings, it's utter darkness. Under a flashlight beam, he soon discovers a trail of trampled grasses mottled with blood. He tracks it a dozen yards from the barn until he stumbles on the edge of a trench. Or a shoddy approximation of a grave.
Oh God.
One quivering of pass of his flashlight reveals pale, gigantic bare foot and a blood-stained cuff of jeans sticking out of the hole. Dean folds at the waist to vomit in the grass.
There had been a part of him that was resigned to the notion that he couldn't have his mother and his brother at the same time. They'd never existed on the same realms of Dean's life, and he couldn't imagine them together now. And in this moment, Dean knows who he wants more. "Sammy, don't you dare!"
He's seen his brother dead before, and wonders if the fourth or fifth time will be as painful as the first. As the flashlight skims of the body that's been dumped face-down in a too-small, sloppily dug gave, and poorly covered with weeds and dirt like discarded roadkill, the answer is it hurts even more than consuming the wicked power of a million souls, more than being torn apart by hellhounds, and more than the previous times combined.
Sam's clothes, the ones he was wearing as they parted ways days ago, are so saturated in blood and grime that Dean can't figure out how he died. Was he shot or suffocated or just succumbed to whatever prolonged nightmares they subjected him to. Crimson streaks his visible corner of his misshapen face like tears. They hadn't even bothered to fully free him of handcuffs before executing him.
Dean's openly weeping and trying to find the courage to pull him out of that grave.
He drops the flashlight and kneels at the edge. He reaches down and sweeps the weeds off Sam's body. His hand settles over the back that's still warm, damp…and moving.
"Sammy?"
His brother's giant body is awkwardly wedged in every space centimeter of that grave, and somehow and instantly later, Dean's jammed in beside him. He gently turns him on his side carefully to clear his airway. He fingers on his brother's throat. The pulse is erratic and weak, but there. Dean sweeps the wet clumps of Sam's hair off his face and uses the sleeve of his jacket to wipe away some of the blood and mud. He cradles Sam's face in his hands. "Stay with me. Please, Sammy."
Sam's brows knit at the sound of Dean's voice. Dean's encouraged enough to forego the triage in order to get him out of that damned hole. He gingerly arranges Sam's limbs so they're pillowed on his chest, noting the bloody leg ripe with infection, Sam's injured eye, and an unseen wound on his chest that's still bleeding. He lifts him beneath the armpits and gingerly hauls him out of the grave and towards the light.
His brother awakens fighting, and with a series of broken coughs when Dean's dragging him towards the house. He attempts to buck out Dean's grip with a hoarsely pleading "no more..." that gives Dean chills. Worried Sam's going to hurt himself more, Dean sinks in the grass, Sam's head braced against his chest. He intercepts Sam's left fist too. "Sammy! Calm down! It's Dean." He twists around so Sam can see him without moving his head.
Wild eyes meet his and he shakes his head, face a rictus of shock. "Aren't you dead?"
"I could ask you the same thing." Dean crouches closer and fights crazed laughter. "I'm gone five minutes and you get yourself kidnapped."
"Old habits," Sam mutters, grimacing in pain, clutching his arm to his chest. He grunts and drapes the other around Dean's shoulders and pushes up. "Get me outta here. Nownow."
Even with Dean's help, he's hobbling badly, breathing even worse and is radiating more heat than a space heater. Dean had forgotten about his mother until he feels the phone vibrate in his pocket.
"I brought back a souvenir," Dean says mildly. "You're not gonna believe it."
"Crappy t-shirt?" Sam replies.
"Lil' cooler than that."
By the time they reach the front of the barn, Sam's barely conscious. Dean settles him on the ground against the side of the barn.
Mary breaks out into a dead sprint when she sees Dean kneeling over a man. "Is that Sammy? Is he okay?"
Dean moves forward to intercept her. He isn't sure how to emotionally walk her through this reunion, especially with Sam so hurt. "He's been through a lot," Dean warns.
"I don't care. Move."
It's been awhile since Dean had grappled with parental love, so he forgives himself for underestimating the fierceness of a mother. Mary hip-checks him aside and warns him off with a glare in impatience to reach her son. While Dean was physically sickened by the sight of his little brother, Mary doesn't even flinch at the sight of her youngest lying beaten and bloodied and nearly unconscious in front of him. She caresses his cheek much in the same way she did with him, and presses a kiss to his dirt-smudged forehead. "Baby," she hums softly.
Sam's eyes flutter, and he cranes his head upward, staring at the visage of his mother impassively before they shift to nothing at all. A few moments pass between them in silence before Sam gapes at Dean. "D'you see her too?"
He huffs a laugh, which dies as he takes in Sam's streaming eyes and massive pupils. Drugged, concussed or both, Sam's not tracking well. "Yeah, dude. She's real, Sammy. Parting gift from Amara."
Out of all the reactions, Dean had been too overwhelmed to imagine, Sam clawing at the edge of the barn in a frantic attempt to flee is not the one that would ever land on the list of possibilities.
Mary jolts back too, aghast and upset.
"Can you just...give us a minute?" He digs the keys out of his pocket. "Just...b-bring the car around. It's okay, he's not firing on all cylinders right now. He doesn't mean it."
The second Mary's back is turned, Dean snags the back of Sam's muddy shirt, halting his desperate and pitiful retreat. "What? Sammy, tell me what's wrong?"
Hysterical is not a word Dean would ever associate with his brother until this moment when he's flailing with fear and dangerously close to tears. "Not like this, Dean, please. I'm a mess-monster…and…please, Dean. I don't want her to see me like…this." This isn't panic or delirium, but something more akin to shame and humiliation.
Dean's heart breaks at Sam's confession and he slinks closer to bundle his little brother against him who reeks of sweat and infection and blood. No matter how many lives Sam saves or sacrifices he makes, the world is intent on stripping him of his dignity and breaking his will. He has no idea what the British Men of Letters did to him, but it was more than enough to convince Sam that he's unworthy of anything but suffering. "Okay, okay. What if I clean you up a little? It won't be a Top Model makeover, but it'll be something, okay?"
Sam hiccups and shutters through his affirmation.
There are many reasons hunters wear layers, though post-hostage wardrobe change probably wasn't one of the intended uses. Dean whips off his jacket. He soaks the flannel beneath in holy water, and laves the blood and grime from Sam's face and forehead carefully avoiding wounds that have already coagulated. He cuts Sam out of the grimy shirts he's been wearing for days, cringing at the track marks, bulbous bruises, stab wounds and freakin' burns that lie beneath. He splints fractured arm with bandanas and kindling from an aging bundle of firewood nearby. Removing the handcuff is trickier since the swollen limb has puffed up around the cuff and the lightest touch makes Sam yelp with agony. As he works, Dean fills Sam in on how and why Mary's miraculously alive and why the world hasn't ended.
When the cuff falls free, Dean bundles him in his camo jacket, zipping it up to the neck for both warmth and concealment of injuries. Sam determinedly lifts a shaking left hand to brush his stringy, blood-soaked hair off his forehead, and Dean tucks his behind his ears, arranging it around a gash on his hairline.
"Better?" Dean asks, giving Sam the last of the water from the flask.
"Nope. Get me up. Can't sit."
When Mary returns with the Impala, Sam has stubbornly risen to his full height and almost resembles a human being (who's still weeping blood from one eye). Mary opens the back door of the Impala. Dean steers him towards the car.
"M'sorry…" Sam says as Mary utters, "Sorry 'bout…" And it's Dean who's welling with tears.
"Don't worry about it, Sammy. Let's get you better."
She slides in the back with Sam, swaddling him in a blanket. By the time they hit the highway, Mary slides Sam down in her lap when he begins to have trouble breathing. "I got you, baby. Hang on, okay?"
He loses consciousness seven miles from the hospital, and stops breathing after five more.
The first memory Dean has of riding in the car with his mother and little brother, he's driving 91 miles an hour down an Iowa highway towards the nearest hospital as his twenty-nine-year-old mother cradles her thirty-three-year-old son, breathing for him for two harrowing miles.
-SPN-
Dean's done this dance a dozen times, and he hates that he knows the steps.
He spouts lies to the doctors. This time it's hazing gone wrong instead of abduction and torture. He opts for the legit insurance that Bobby set up before he died instead of a scam cards, because Sam's critical and needs extensive care, but even that comes with aliases to remember.
He sits in a lazily appointed waiting room that could be located in Idaho or Kansas or South Carolina sipping bad coffee and waiting for updates on respiratory function and debridement and brain activity.
Castiel flutters by his side sometime around dawn, wavering in his trenchcoat that's coated in a yellow dust and vaguely steaming . Dean glowers at him, but doesn't move. The other occupants, a grim-faced man about Dean's age who keeps blotting his eyes and an older woman aggressively knitting in the corner, don't seem to notice his angelic entry.
Dean grinds down on the plastic arm of the chair until it cracks. "Where the hell have you been?" He growls under his breath.
"Io," Castiel answers in a gruff. "I do not recommend it."
Dean frowns. "Isn't that one of..."
"...Jupiter's moons? Yes."
He stands and quietly sets the magazine he wasn't reading on his seat and hauls Castiel out of the room and through the exit doors by his collar. The mission to rescue Sam had been a success, but Dean didn't get to punch off any of the volcanic rage churning just beneath the surface, and he's worried about an eruption now. "You had one job, Cas, the most important one in the friggin' universe."
Castiel's face creases in remorse so ethereally intense that Dean catches its guilt-ridden edge. "After the horrors of taking in Lucifer, I was not at my normal strength. The banishment flung me into the Milky Way," Castiel explains. "It seems as if I am always saying this, but I am sorry, Dean. How is Sam?"
"I don't know, Cas. I can't ask him because he was tortured for three days. Last I saw him, they were ramming a tube down his throat." He crosses his arms over his chest to keep from smashing punching the angel in his face. Dean swallows down his ire, and gazes out across the fence to the blue sky and the cars humming past on the freeway. From a distance, it looks as if they're skimming the horizon. "I need you to not be around for awhile. I'm angry, Cas, and I'm trying really hard not to say or do something I'll regret. First Lucifer, and now Sammy's hurt. Again. You need to go."
Castiel's hanging head jerks upward. "I thought...you said it was a good decision to take on Lucifer."
Dean snorts. "Well life looks pretty damn different when you're staring down the barrel of an apocalypse," he sees Mary standing with the doctor and moves towards the doors.
"Is there anything I can do to...help?"
Dean halts, unable to look back but sees Castiel's reflection in the doors and the black-gold gleam of wilted wings. "I haven't had a chance to get back to the compound where Sam was held and scrub the place."
Castiel disappears in a gust of wind.
Dean ventures inside knowing Castiel is already forgiven.
The doctor describes Sam's condition as stable and guarded. Dean, however, is overwhelmed by the list of what Sam has endured.
The most serious ailment, the cauterized and now infected gunshot wound, has been debrided and surgically repaired. It won't heal pretty, but Sam will maintain full use of his leg as long as they can keep the infection from veering into sepsis. He's already responding to the antibiotics and is already breathing over the vent, which is encouraging. His lung was punctured, but they're confident it will heal without a chest tube. Sam has been sedated to give his malnourished body a chance to focus on healing and recovering. It will also help while they flush a devastating cocktail of amphetamines and psychoactive drugs out of his system. The sedation will also help the heal his punctured lid and scratched cornea. There are minor burns, bruises and puncture wounds will require frequent bandage changes or monitoring but he's avoided skin grafts or internal bleeding. The broken arm has been set without surgery. Sam will have a cast for at least a couple of months.
Dean gleefully requests a lime green one.
It's another six hours before a nurses escorts tem to Sam's room. Dean is grateful to see his little brother breathing on his own, scrubbed clean and face placid with sleep, even if it is bearded, bruised, stitched and gaunt.
He sinks into the chair, head in his hands, and feels every scintilla of oppressive fear, dread and joy of the past few days. It's somehow too much and not entirely enough. His grips the hair on the back of his head, denying his body's aching urge to cry or puke or cackle like a madman until they lock him up in the psych ward. Instead he shores himself up for coming days of little sleep and buckets of terrible coffee.
A hand, small and delicate, rests on his shoulder and sweeps back and forth in a tranquil glide that slows the panicked beat of his heart. Mary's resurrection isn't just a singular event. Dean keeps forgetting about her, falling into the old grooves of life, and then she'll appear or call his name, and he relives the heart-soaring joy all over again.
Mary cocks her head in the direction of the cot in corner of the room in front of the empty closet. "You're dead on the feet, Dean. Grab a couple hours. I got him."
It's not an order so much as it is a reminder than Dean isn't alone, and that there's someone else to offer guidance and help carry the load. Dumbly, Dean obeys. He gingerly folds himself onto the cot. One wrong move and he'll shatter completely. He turns to face the wall. His eyes fill and flood as he settles against the pillow and whispers tremulously, "G'night, Mom."