Chapter 6

Sam lay in bed unable to get to sleep. It had been such a rollercoaster day, going from the ultimate low of Dean nearly dying to the great relief of dispensing with the spirit and finishing this job. It left him with a residual nervous energy that had his toes tapping against the sheets, he couldn't switch off.

Dean was out like a light as soon as they'd arrived at the motel and again Sam had felt that worry creep inside him that maybe his brother wasn't okay. Settle down he told himself it was a close call but Dean's fine. The young hunter really wasn't enjoying this in your face fear that he was currently experiencing, he always felt a latent concern for Dean because his brother was aggressive in the way he approached things, an offensive rather defensive player but since the attack this afternoon he found himself scanning his brother's face for hidden signs that he was hiding health issues, paying close attention to the way he moved and the things he said for clues that Dean was about to come crashing down. And he found those clues and signs, it was natural that his brother would have some hangover from nearly being killed a few hours ago, and it only served to perpetuate his fear. Conversely, he knew that the closer he looked, the more Dean would try to hide and it made him wonder if the things he could perceive were the tip of some terrible iceberg.

God he had to get over this. This suffocating worry was going to drive Sam insane. It was over. There had been a danger and now it was gone. Dean had been injured and now he was fine, well on his way to fine anyway.

In the dark Sam listened to his brother's deep regular breathing and used that to chase away the persistent anxiety. See? Breathing, fine, go to sleep. But it wasn't that easy, fear was a pervasive thing and once it had a hold it was hard to shake off.

In the next bed Dean stirred, Sam could hear him shifting and then he was muttering something. The younger brother raised his head off the pillow listening for what the muttering was about.

"No, no, no, no," Dean moaned quietly.

Sam was on his feet in an instant and crossed to his brother's side. He was surprised to find Dean awake, his hands clutching his head. He didn't look well and worry squeezed at Sam's heart. "What is it?"

"The crying. I can't take that crying anymore."

Sam was stunned. The banshee? Why was she visiting Dean tonight? They had dispensed with Casey/ Susan, the danger had passed. He sat down heavily on the floor next to his brother's bed. He thought it was over, he thought Dean was safe, but there was something else and they were back to square one.

Sam pressed Dean's shoulder hoping it felt comforting and said, "It'll pass. Just let it pass."

Dean was exhausted. He needed to sleep. He wasn't like his brother who made lack of sleep look easy, he suffered if he didn't receive his full quota and this was the third night that he'd been robbed of his entitlement. If he'd been feeling a bit stronger he would have reacted to another night of interrupted sleep with anger, grabbed his gun and stormed out looking for the woman, even knowing he probably wouldn't find her at least it was doing something. But at the moment he wasn't sure he could get out of bed, he felt physically incapable. He'd pushed himself too hard at the cemetery, stubbornly refused to acknowledge the warnings his body had given that he was overtaxed, and that wouldn't have been a problem if he'd had the rest of the night to recover and regain his strength, by morning he would have been fine, but it wasn't even two hours since they had returned from the cemetery, he wasn't close to rejuvenated.

Dean considered whether to remain in bed and be tortured by the crying for the next ten minutes or force himself up and let the act of doing something lessen the impact of the noise. He really wanted to stay in bed, rest a while longer and it depressed him because he knew that was the wrong answer, he should want to take action. On some level he understood that it was unreasonable for him to expect to bounce back from nearly being killed earlier, but he couldn't get away from the mindset that physical incapacity equated to weakness and failure. And he'd already been a failure tonight when he'd lain down on the job. If he was actually carrying an injury, if he had suffered a broken bone or a deep gash he could have said to himself there's your problem, that's why you can't get out of bed, but there was nothing like that to hold onto. All he was feeling were the after effects of an attack that had occurred nearly twelve hours ago and his subconscious was yelling Get up wimp.

Sam's hand on his shoulder sealed it, it felt like pity and he couldn't accept that, he had to get up. Dean pushed off his brother's hand and rolled his legs over the edge of bed.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked, his voice laced with suspicion.

"Getting up."

"Why?"

"I'm going to find that bitch," Dean resolved and started to rise.

Sam put his hand on his brother's chest and pushed him back into a sitting position. "Dean. It's a wasted effort, you won't find her. Just lay down and I'll turn the tv on loud."

"That won't help. Get off me Sam." Dean pushed Sam's hand off his chest but it was quickly replaced. The older hunter looked at his brother with a frown. Are you challenging me? "Get off."

"I'll go," Sam offered and immediately regretted the condescending words.

"You can't even hear her," Dean replied indignantly and shoved his brother away.

But the younger brother was determined that Dean not go on this wild goose chase. It became Sam's quest to prevent Dean leaving. His older brother had endured a traumatic day, he was tired, he wasn't well, he was being warned of his death and it just made sense to Sam that he stay in bed and wait until morning when they could delve into what was going on and figure out where to go from here.

Sam stood up and put both hands on Dean's shoulders to hold him down.

"Are you kidding me?" Dean exclaimed as he forcefully broke the hold but Sam then caught his brother in a body tackle that pushed him backward onto the bed where they wrestled.

"Jesus Christ," Dean yelled as his brother's weight pinned him to the bed. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I don't want you to go outside." It sounded lame, Sam couldn't really explain it, he knew it wasn't entirely rational but he was prepared to hold his brother down to prevent him leaving the room, he'd drawn a line in the sand that he didn't want his brother to cross.

"Would you get off me."

Dean struggled against the lanky lump on top of him then took some gasping breaths and cried, "I can't breathe." He had calculated that would have an effect on Sam, it was low to use his near death experience against his younger brother, play on Sam's fear but his strength was down and he needed to find an advantage outside the physical. Sure enough the pressure on him eased as the younger man raised himself slightly and Dean took advantage of the space to jab a blow into his brother's stomach. The younger brother doubled over with a groan, allowing the older to roll away and find his feet.

"I swear to God Sam, if you ever do that again-" Dean was fuming, speaking in the low tone of someone who was about to explode and Sam couldn't say anything. I've gone too far the younger man thought, in trying to keep his brother close he had pushed him away. He knew at the first word he would send Dean over the edge and he wasn't sure what his older brother might do, Dean looked furious.

The older hunter pulled on his jeans then grabbed a jacket and his car keys all the while glaring at his brother, daring him to say something.

As Dean strode toward the door Sam said quietly, "Don't. Please."

The anguish in that plea wasn't enough to halt Dean, everything about Sam was oppressive and suffocating. He noticed that the wailing had stopped, but that was no longer Dean's reason for leaving the motel room, he had to get away from his brother and he strode out without a backward glance.

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Loud music blared through the car speakers as Dean tore through the deserted streets. The hunter hadn't a destination in mind when he stormed out of the motel, his only thought was to put some distance between himself and his brother and after a half hour of directionless driving listening to his favourite tunes he still wasn't feeling soothed, still wasn't ready to deal with Sam.

A sawn off shotgun lay on his lap and another was beside him on the seat. He had stopped the car a few miles from the motel and retrieved them from the trunk mindful of the banshee's warning, then had continued on the aimless drive. He was vaguely aware that being out by himself in the middle of the night when he just been warned that death was still stalking him was reckless but Sam had pushed him to this.

Dean pulled the car onto the soft shoulder of the highway and turned off the engine. There was no point driving any more, it wasn't doing the job he had hoped, he was just burning gas. He slid down in the seat so that his head rested on the upholstery and he was looking out at the night sky through the windscreen, using it as a background for his thoughts.

Sam was going to have to get a grip. Dean wasn't sure he could stay with him if he was going to get hysterical about every little thing, they were going to have to get separate rooms or something just so Dean could get a break from the hovering presence. His younger brother trying to forcibly prevent him going outside was over the top and well into the realm of insulting. He wanted to be understanding, he wanted to be sensitive to whatever it was that Sam was going through, and he knew it had something to do with his loss issues, some unresolved feelings about Jessica's death, but he wasn't sympathetic to displays like that.

It was all the banshee's fault, why couldn't she just shut up? She was freaking Sam out. And truth be told she was freaking him out a bit as well. A person shouldn't know if they'd been marked for death, there was no benefit to receiving that warning, not if it didn't come with instructions on how to avoid said death. It made Dean feel powerless, like nothing he did would have any bearing on the outcome that had been predicted. How could he know which actions were hastening him toward his death and which were confounding it? Whatever he did or didn't do was inexorably leading him to the same conclusion.

Perhaps that was why he bucked so hard against Sam's efforts to protect him, because he couldn't stand to give up whatever little power may still be his, didn't want his brother making decisions for him, telling him how to react. If death was imminent, then he didn't want these last few days to be spent huddled in fear, taking useless precautions, letting his brother make all the decisions. There was no honour in that, no dignity in dying that way. If he was on the way out then he wanted to go down with defiance on his face, a come and get me attitude and all guns blazing.

The phone in Dean's pocket rang. The third time it had rung since he'd left the motel. He didn't answer. He knew who it was and he knew what Sam was going to say, I'm sorry, please come back, and there would be that edge to his voice, the barely contained emotion that Dean was a sucker for, that always made him feel guilty as hell even when he didn't think he was in the wrong. Not yet. He wasn't ready to come back yet. There were things he needed to think about first.

Dean drew his hand across his eyes. What a mess. His death around the corner, at loggerheads with Sam, not really sure what the hell was going on. Against the backdrop of not knowing where their father was right now or if he was okay, still looking for Jessica's killer, still looking for answers about why their lives were so screwed up. Christ it was exhausting. There were times when he felt on top of things, like he knew what he was doing, and then times like now, when it was all just balls up in the air waiting to come crashing down.

Some sleep would help. Another reason that he despised the banshee. Warn me during the day, stop interfering with my downtime.

With his hand still over his eyes Dean felt the presence before he saw it. It didn't surprise him. He figured that the subject of the banshee's warning hadn't changed, that burning Susan Benson's body hadn't removed the danger. Casey did it deliberately, he surmised, waited until he was alone and distracted, then made her move on him. She was very good at it, she picked her moments well. He jerked his hand away from his eyes while the hand in his lap tightened around the shotgun laying there and he raised himself in the seat so that his back was against the driver side door.

Casey was sitting in the passenger seat regarding him with a slight smile. There was something different about her. Dean's brows furrowed slightly as he tried to pinpoint what it was. She wasn't looking quite so human, she seemed indistinct around the edges and Dean suspected she was no longer solid, he almost reached out to touch her and check.

The spirit sat unmoving and Dean registered an initial confusion that she hadn't attacked him yet. Then he realized that this was the first time he'd had a gun in his hand when she'd appeared and she was wary. The hunter could have blasted her immediately but he waited, wondering if he could get some information from her, some clue as to why she wanted him dead.

"What do you want?" he asked, and then gave a short laugh because she'd already made it pretty clear what she wanted.

"I need to finish this," she replied. "Just let me finish it."

"You're not finishing anything," he retorted with weary annoyance. "What the hell is this all about?"

"Its only fair, you killed me and now I should kill you."

Dean blinked. He hadn't killed her had he? Nah, he hadn't killed her. "You got the wrong guy lady."

"Its only fair," she repeated, ignoring his words.

"You really want to talk about fair with me? Because I've got a whole catalogue of things I could trump you with."

"I'm entitled to justice."

"I didn't-" Dean began and saw that he wasn't going to get far protesting his innocence, he was arguing with a spirit, they weren't the most logical of creatures. He changed tack. "Tell me how I killed you?"

"You hit me with your car."

"What the hell?" Where did that come from? "Weren't you strangled?" he queried and Casey shimmered in a way that reminded Dean of the robot from Lost in Space saying that does not compute.

"No, you hit me with your car," Casey repeated.

"Aren't you Susan Benson?" What a bizarre conversation. Dean was trying to sort out a spiritual mistaken identity.

Casey frowned. "You know who I am, you hit me with your car."

"I didn't hit you with my car would you stop saying that." The phone in Dean's pocket rang. Excellent timing Sammy. Dean slowly reached into his pocket without shifting his focus from Casey and pulled out the phone. "Sam?"

"Dean could you please-"

"Shut up Sam," the older brother snapped. "I'm entertaining." There was an audible intake of breath down the line. "And you really screwed up this time."

"What did I do?" Sam whined and it almost made Dean laugh because whining was so inappropriate right now.

"Casey, Susan, whatever the hell her name is-" then on a whim he asked the spirit, "what's your name?"

"Casey. You know my name because you hit me with your car," they both finished the sentence.

Returning to the phone Dean said, "Casey is claiming I hit her with my car."

There was silence from Sam. "Did you?" he eventually asked.

"What the-. Are you seriously asking?" Dean was flabbergasted. Did Sam really think he had hit some woman with his car and kept it to himself? He couldn't keep the hurt from his voice. "You know I didn't."

"No, I'm just- Why would she say that?"

"Because she's a-" psycho Dean was about to say, but Casey suddenly swiped his gun to the side and hit him across the face, causing him to crack his head hard against the steering wheel. That was new, she's expanded her repertoire. He couldn't afford to lose consciousness, Sam didn't have his back this time. The phone dropped from Dean's hand but the fingers of his other hand had been curled around the shotgun trigger and that grip prevented the gun from falling out of his grasp. The blow to the head momentarily stunned the hunter but Casey's delicate grip sliding around his throat brought him to his senses, he lifted the gun and blasted the spirit into nothingness.

Shit I'm sick of being strangled he thought. Really sick of it.

Dean took a few deep breaths then checked himself in the rearview, there was a red welt on his forehead which was probably going to turn into a bruise but no blood, thank God, so Sam wouldn't pounce on him as he walked through the door. Sam. Dean was reminded that he had been talking on the phone to his brother when Casey attacked and it occurred to him that Sam may have heard what just happened through the phone. Man that would be awful, the stuff of nightmares, listening to someone being attacked and not being able to do anything about it. He fumbled around for the phone which had fallen onto the floor and noted when he picked it up that the call to Sam was still in progress. Shit.

"She's gone," Dean advised, then added, "I'm okay," and winced at how inadequate that sounded.

"Come back," Sam implored, a slight hitch in his voice like he was only barely holding it together, the neediness making him sound so young, and it was Dean who thought I've gone too far, I shouldn't have left. They were torturing each other.

"Yeah, okay."

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A half hour later Dean pulled the Impala to a stop before the motel room, bleary eyed and barely able to form a coherent thought. His greatest wish was that he could go inside, bypass any conversation and lay down to sleep but he doubted Sam would allow him that. He could probably force the issue if he wanted, fix his brother with a scowl, address Sam with a hard tone, wave him away with a dismissive gesture, but it wasn't fair to Sam to do that. Dean smiled wryly as he thought of Casey's words. It's only fair. Everyone's looking for fairness.

The hunter tiredly pulled himself out of the car and made his way to the room. As he pushed open the door he saw Sam standing next to the small table housing the laptop, with a face like thunder.

"We torched the wrong body," Dean said, hoping to divert whatever vitriol Sam was about lay on him.

"You-" Sam was choking on his words and took a step toward his brother causing Dean to take a step back, not sure if he was about to be punched. "You selfish bastard."

Hey you did this Dean thought you made me leave but he didn't say it, he didn't want to prolong the conversation, didn't want to throw fuel on the fire, he just wanted Sam to say his piece so he could crawl into bed.

"I'm not saving you anymore," Sam raged. "If you don't want to be saved then fine, I'm not doing it."

Dean took that with a grain of salt, if he was being attacked he didn't expect Sam could turn away, but he didn't say anything. He walked over to sit on the edge of the bed and started taking off his boots. Macho bullshit…obnoxious... insufferable…arrogant…reckless… Dean didn't bite at any of it, he let the storm roll over him and waited for it to pass.

"You don't even care about me, do you?" and that had Dean's head up with a snap. He could take most criticisms levelled by his brother, let it slide like water off a duck's back, but not that, that one cut. The things he had done for Sam growing up, the sacrifices he had made, the struggles he had endured. Who didn't care? Who took the other for granted? It wasn't Dean.

"You need to stop," Dean said in a too quiet voice, "before you say something you can't take back." Sam folded his arms and pouted, but he stopped the tirade and Dean couldn't tell if Sam was pleased that he had wounded his older brother or if he was sorry. He was probably sorry, Sam wasn't the malicious sort.

"We torched the wrong body tonight," Dean reverted to the safe topic of the job. "We need to find out who Casey is and deal with her." His boots now on the floor he shrugged off his jacket and climbed into bed.

"We didn't torch the wrong body," Sam said petulantly, "I'm telling you Casey is Susan Benson."

"Well the evidence says otherwise." Dean closed his eyes and he could feel that sleep was going to hit him fast. "We'll talk about it in the morning."

Sam watched his brother fall asleep. Dean was pale, he had dark circles under his eyes, he looked sick, he looked wrecked and it made Sam so angry he wanted to put his fist through a wall. Christ his brother was hard work, he never took the easy option and Sam wasn't sure how much longer he could live with it, it was agonizing to watch, to be a part of but have no influence over. He sat down heavily on the bed and put his head in his hands. He wanted to walk away and leave Dean to his death wish but he knew that wouldn't solve anything, it would just add a layer of guilt to the turmoil he was already suffering.

Just finish the job he told himself. Put personal issues aside and just finish the damn job.