Threw Stones At The Stars But The Whole Sky Fell

Chapter 7

A/N: Just so you guys know in advance, I really do have nothing against the Gideons! Oh, and this is officially the second-to-last chapter, and I am really, terribly sorry it's taken so long to get even this much more up.

Quetiapine. 800 mg a day. Commonly used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep and anxiety disorders…hell, even Tourette syndrome. So they figured they had all their bases covered.

James Milburn had Skyped with them before Bobby even returned from Kansas City with the pills, explained everything in meticulous detail—the dosage, the side effects, everything. Dean hadn't even heard of Skype before that day, even with a year of "normal" under his belt, and hadn't understood why the guy insisted on using a webcam instead of a phone, or why just explaining things to Dean or Bobby instead wouldn't suffice. Bobby already had all the information written down and had given it to Dean over the phone; Dean had it memorized. Especially while he was watching Sam struggle to pay attention during the call, keep his focus reigned in and eyes trained on the computer screen and the kind, patient young face—late twenties, probably close Sam's own age— speaking to him on the other end. But as Sam nodded jerkily a few times at the screen and scrawled the important bits into a battered old notebook, Dean realized why this had been a good idea, and was immediately filled with a rush of gratitude toward the Milburn kid. It was all for the purpose of making Sam feel like he had some measure of control over the situation, like he really had some degree of choice in the matter. Which he did—Dean wasn't about to shove meds down his throat if he honestly didn't want them—but they'd all reached the conclusion after the little parking lot incident that their options were pretty slim here. This kid was no doctor, but even so, he must've known enough about psychotic drugs in his line of work to realize that the people receiving them felt like they had little control over anything in their lives. So Sam with his forehead scrunched in concentration listening to James rattling off the pros and cons of the medication as though an informed decision was truly his to make? A blessing, however small.

The side effects, though, were something that, unfortunately, Dean had already banked on being nasty. He'd done his own research, and was chagrined to find that side effects of antipsychotics could be so bad that a whole other set of meds were often used to combat them. Quetiapine didn't look as terrible as some of the others, though, so they were lucky in that regard. Still, it was apparently a powerful sedative—"You're gonna feel like a zombie for the first week or so, and it's probably best if you don't drive or try to shoot a gun at all when you're on this stuff 'cause of the dosage," James had said, his tone a mite sympathetic, because hunting of any sort was obviously out—but hey, if a sedative kept Sam calm and helped him get some sleep, Dean would take what he could get. And then there were other, slightly more embarrassing side effects that it had in common with all psychotic drugs, ones that Dean could care less about. Weight gain—which could actually do him some good, seeing as his inability to eat anything substantial without being sick was starting to show through slightly sunken cheeks and loosely fitting clothing—and…well…impotence. Under any circumstances but these Dean would be tempted to tease him mercilessly for that, but as things stood, he couldn't think of much occasion in Sam's foreseeable future where reduced sex drive might become an issue at all, because the day when Dean would be able to take Sam out to a roadside bar and try to set him up with some smart, pretty, shy young thing sitting by herself at the counter seemed pretty hilariously out of reach. And that thought was so damn depressing that Dean wouldn't dare bring it up.

After the Skype call had ended—a few hours before Bobby was scheduled to return—Sam pushed scooted his chair back from the room's tiny table, let out a shaky breath, and carefully closed the notebook. His eyes were drifting in and out of focus, and Dean knew how much the effort of trying to pay attention to the computer screen for the past ten minutes had cost him. He'd be lucky if Sam wasn't completely out of it, or worse, thrashing and screaming, for the rest of the day.

"So," Dean said, moving to sit in the opposite chair and pushing the open laptop between them closed. "What do you think?"

"Huh?" His eyes flicked to Dean's, the sound of the laptop clicking shut having made him start a little.

"The meds," Dean said, conversationally as he could. "Still wanna go through with it?"

Sam shrugged. "Yeah…I guess. I m-mean…the s-side effects can't b-be any worse than…" he gestured vaguely, helplessly at himself.

"No, they won't," Dean agreed, mask of nonchalance slipping a little. His heart sank at the dull hopelessness in Sam's eyes before his gaze flitted away.

And Dean realized then that Sam honestly didn't think that this was going to help in the least. That he'd been paying attention to James out of mere courtesy and out of a desire to know what kind of side effects he'd be dealing with, not because he actually thought that the pills were going to work. That his hopes of finding any kind of cure, anything to make this better, had withered away right along with Missouri's worry dolls. That he'd do it, but more to humor Dean and Bobby than anything else.

"Look, man," Dean said, leaning forward a bit. "We got nothing to lose here, right? Nothing to lose, everything to gain. We're no worse off if it doesn't work."

"I know." Sam still wouldn't meet his eyes. Except they were worse off, they were a hell of a lot worse off, because Sam was getting worse, bit by bit, every day. And they both knew it. Acutely.

"Besides," Dean said, slapping a palm on the tabletop, "Anything that helps you get in your forty winks and makes you hungry for something other than a can of chicken and stars sounds pretty awesome to me. Am I right?"

"Mhmm," Sam said, his eyes having moved to stare intently at the dust-coated vent on the ceiling over his head. His hands tightened around the arms of his chair.

And Dean knew it'd be no use, that Sam would be gone in a matter of seconds, but he kept his mouth running anyway, chest clenching painfully as Sam's eyes grew wide and fearful at some new, invisible torment above their heads. "And we gotta get you eatin' your Wheaties again, otherwise you're gonna start looking less Andre the Giant and more scarecrow. A very, uh, sleep-deprived scarecrow." He paused. "Sam?"

"Hm?" Sam was inching the chair slowly backwards, as if any sudden movements would make the thing tear itself away from the ceiling and jump on his head. One hand was inching toward his pocket, toward where a switchblade would normally be concealed if Dean hadn't had to take and hide all of the weapons Sam usually kept on his person after the very first night, after the mishap with Bobby and the sawed-off.

After that, things panned out more or less as Dean had expected them to, given the sorts of days that Sam had been having of late—a few more seconds of complete unresponsiveness, Sam let out a sudden yelp, throwing up his arms to shield himself, as though whatever it was he thought he saw on the ceiling had leapt down to attack him. In doing so, he overbalanced his chair would've fallen backwards if Dean hadn't reached out and grabbed his arm to pull him back forward. And, also as expected, grabbing him just made everything about ten times worse than it already was. He completely flipped out, and Dean barely avoided the fist that nearly connected with his right eye, and could only watch as Sam bolted away from the table and wound up crouched down next to the small dresser that stood between the two beds, fingers madly scrabbling and tearing at the ratty carpet as though he were determined to shred it with his bare hands. It was as though Sam was trying to dig his way out of the room through the floorboards, Dean thought for a crazy moment.

Dean stood, carefully, and moved over to the beds. He didn't move into the gap between them, mostly because any sort of close proximity to Sam at this point wasn't likely to do anything more than freak Sam out even more .There wasn't any getting through to him now, not when he was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, putting forth his best effort at ripping the carpet to bits, his breath coming in harsh, choked gasps interspersed with what sounded like desperate whimpers.

Dean stood there, shuffling his feet—freaking hating that he didn't have a clue how to handle this anymore—for about a minute or so until he couldn't take it anymore, and took a cautious step forward. "Sammy?" he asked, tentatively.

Sam's head snapped up. His pupils were dilated.

And then he started screaming.

…

When Bobby finally came back, it was to the sight of Sam sprawled out on the floor between the beds, still and unnervingly silent, hands cuffed. Dean was sitting on the bed nearest the door, pretending to watch some late-night sitcom rerun on the battered TV with wide, glazed eyes. He felt completely drained, in every possible sense, his casted arm aching fiercely where it rested on his stomach. Sam had shoved and hit it when he'd been struggling against Dean's attempts to wrestle him flat to the ground and get the cuffs around his wrists. It sickened Dean a little that that had been necessary at all. But what was even more sickening was that, after he had spent a few moments of fighting to achieve what would've been the near-Herculean task of getting the cuffs onto a wildly struggling Sam with only one functional arm and hand, without warning Sam had gone limp beneath him. At first Dean thought he'd passed out when all the tension left his limbs and they went crashing to the floor like a dropped marionette, but then he'd noticed that Sam's eyes were open. Open, still looking at him, but as terrifyingly vacant as they had been when he'd attempted to gag himself on the muffin in the gas station.

As if all the fight had gone out of him.

Dean gulped, hands shaking a little as he took Sam's now-pliant arms and snapped the cuffs around his wrists, not even bothering securing his ankles.

Because, to be honest?

He'd almost preferred it when Sam had been fighting back.

And right about now, watching Sam lie there like a rock in the soft glow of the TV screen, Dean really wished that they'd had the cash to spare on some booze.

By the time the knock on the door came, followed by the sound of keys jangling and turning in a lock, Dean had been nearly asleep, vision blurring, unable to fight the pull of bone-deep fatigue any longer. He pushed himself off the bed with a groan, glancing down at Sam, who was still sprawled boneless on the floor, face turned away from him. He didn't stir when the door creaked open to admit Bobby.

All in all, Bobby looked pretty rough, bruises mottling his temple and the side of his face where Sam had hit him, exhaustion evident in the droop of his shoulders, the dark bags under his eyes, and the very large cup of coffee in one hand. But when those tired eyes took in Dean standing at the foot of the bed, his hair sticking up in odd places where he'd been lying on it and a weary smile on his own face, sheer relief washed over Bobby's features.

Relief that made it apparent exactly how apprehensive Bobby had been to leave Dean alone to deal with Sam in the first place. But they'd needed to find a tow—there was no way around that—and Sam and Bobby had needed the time apart to spare all three of them the extreme awkwardness resulting from Sam having tried to kill Bobby for a second time in a few months, unwittingly or no. What had worried Bobby, though he hadn't exactly said it in so many words, was that Dean wouldn't be able to handle Sam on his own, and that Sam might hurt him, or himself, despite Dean's insistences to the contrary. And neither Dean nor Sam had been crazy about Bobby driving when he might still be seeing double from getting bashed in the head, but it wasn't like they'd had another option when Dean was the only one who was able to talk Sam down— some of the time, that is— when Sam was at his worst.

"Hey," Dean said, smile widening, nearly dizzy with relief himself. "Damn, it's good to see you, Bobby."

Bobby set his coffee down on the table. "Likewise," he said, gruffly. "Always thought Kansas City was kind of a craphole." But when he looked at Sam, the crotchety-old-guy demeanor fell away, replaced with a concerned frown. "How's he holdin' up?" he asked, voice quieter. Dean followed his gaze. Sam's breathing had grown rapid, shoulders heaving, head tucked into his crooked elbows. His hands, joined by the cuffs, had clenched into fists.

Dean looked away from Sam, jaw clenched tight, and shrugged.

"That good, huh?" Bobby sighed.

"Yeah, pretty much." He noticed the somewhat crumpled white paper bag Bobby held in the hand that hadn't held the coffee. He pointed at it. "Those the pills?"

"Yup." Bobby reached into the bag, tossed Dean a medium-sized, white, unmarked pill bottle. "And I got another three prescriptions' worth out in the truck."

The "truck" was an beat-up old Ford pickup with a tow hitch on the back connected to an old empty flatbed. Bobby had found some kid, twenty-something, bored, with clearly no real automotive knowledge to speak of, stuck manning his parents' used car dealership in the city while they were away on an anniversary cruise in the Bahamas. The truck had been rotting in the yard with no potential buyers for as long as the kid could remember, though his parents were, in theory, at some point intending to buy some replacement parts for it. The boy told him, cynically, that "if you can make the damn thing run, you can keep it for a hundred bucks." And, after raising the necessary funds in cash by hustling some pool, taking the necessary parts from the rental and "liberating" a few from some of the nicer models at the dealership, the truck was Bobby's. And boy, were the kid's parents gonna be pissed when they got back. Another few phone calls later and Bobby had, with James Milburn's help, dredged up one of his mom's old contacts, who would be coming to Bootback tomorrow to help them move the Impala onto the flatbed.

And then there were the pills.

So yeah. All in all, Bobby pretty much rocked right now.

Dean held up the bottle, shook it. "This is awesome." He laughed a little. "Seriously, man, I owe you like, a billion fixer uppers when we get back to your place."

"You bet your ass you do," Bobby agreed. But what went unspoken was that, if these pills didn't do their job, there wasn't much chance that Dean was going to be able to ditch Sam to go work on cars.

A beat of silence passed. From his spot on the carpet, Sam shifted, his breath hitching.

Bobby gestured at Sam. "You wanna talk to him, see if he snaps out of it?"

Dean cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah. Yeah." He didn't know whether it would do any good at this point, but he didn't say as much. He went over to the space between the bed, thought briefly about crouching down next to Sam but decided against it, and opted instead to sit on one of the beds. He perched on the bed's edge, the springs sagging and creaking beneath him as he bent forward. "Sam?" he said, and waited a second, continuing when, as expected, he got no response. "Hey, dude, up and at 'em. Bobby's here, and he loaded up on the good stuff for ya and everything." Huh. The good stuff. Their blanket term for all knockout painkillers. As if this was just another hunt. He smiled ruefully at his word choice. "You don't wanna bum here all day and hurt his feelings, now do ya?"

"'Snighttime," came the muffled response.

Dean started a little, not having expected an answer. "What?"

Sam rolled over, slowly, to face him. "I said," he croaked, "It's nighttime. Not daytime." His face looked ravaged, sallower than it had been a week ago and unshaven. His eyes, though bloodshot, brightened a bit when they found Dean.

Some of Dean's nervousness drained away at that—thank God he recognizes me—and his face split into what must've been his first genuine smile in days. "Yeah, alright, smartass," he drawled. "All night, then."

"And no, I won't," Sam said, trying and failing to push himself upright before he seemed to realize that he was cuffed. He flushed a little as Dean tacitly offered his good arm to help him up, but took it nonetheless, and sat on the edge of the second bed while Dean fished in his pockets for the keys.

Bobby cleared his throat. Sam jumped, obviously having not noticed or else forgotten that Bobby was there, and his eyes scanned the room for a panicked moment before landing on Bobby. His shoulders sagged a bit, his relief palpable at what Dean guessed was the fact that it really was Bobby he was seeing and not another monster from inside his mind. He smiled, hesitant but genuine. "Hey, Bobby." His eyes flicked to the cut and bruises that decorated the side of Bobby's face, and the smile faded.

But Bobby smiled back, and warmly. "Good to see you up, son."

Realizing the words were meant as absolution, Sam nodded, ducked his head, and muttered a flustered, "Thanks."

Dean nearly rolled his eyes at that, torn somewhere between amused and exasperated and thankful—damn kid and his damn bleeding heart. Some things, apparently, wouldn't change, despite everything.

And he could tell things were Sam and Bobby were good now, or as good as they were going to get, and that was a weight off all their shoulders.

Dean cleared his throat. "So…" he said to the room at large, going to work on the first of Sam's cuffs. "Who's hungry?"

…

Sam took the first dose of Quetiapine later that night before he went to bed.

"Bottoms' up, Sammy," Dean had said with as much bravado as he could muster, handing Sam the pills and a Gatorade bottle.

"Thanks," he muttered, but he frowned down at the pills, mustard-yellow and oh-so-tiny in his palm. And Dean knew what he was thinking—a few little pills against a two lifetimes of Hell. Didn't seem like a very fair fight. But Sam offered no further comment, and took the pills.

When he was done, he gestured at the cuffs lying on the bedside table. When he pointed, Dean noted the ring of bruises that encircled his wrist from those very cuffs—because padded or not, he spent about half of his time locked up in them trying to escape them—and frowned.

"Uh, we should—" Sam began.

"Yeah," Dean said, grabbing for cuffs.

"Just in case," Sam added quietly.

"Yeah," Dean repeated, mouth suddenly dry, knowing that to Sam, just in case was the equivalent of because the pills aren't going to do a damn thing.

"Are you gonna stay up?" Sam asked him. Bobby had already turned in, and was sleeping on the other bed. And ever since the worry doll incident, Dean had had to stay up and watch while Sam slept, to make sure he didn't hurt himself or roll off the bed, and to attempt to talk him down, keep him from carrying on too loudly. (They hadn't gotten kicked out of the room because of noise yet, but Dean thought that that had more to do with the fact that nobody had stayed in the rooms in either side of them, this being a pretty rundown motel in a pretty crappy town.)

"Yeah, why not." He shrugged. "There's gonna be a M*A*S*H marathon on channel twelve tonight. Was gonna stay up anyway." Which they both knew was a lie, but Sam looked grateful nonetheless.

He settled down in the bedside chair once, between the two of them, they managed to secure Sam's arms and legs. Dean tugged the blanket up over him—which embarrassed Sam a bit, even if he was getting used to it by now—gave an easy smile, and said, "Now try to catch some shut-eye, dude. 'Cause when those pills kick in, we're gonna need your help lifting the car tomorrow. And you'd better damn be rested up, 'cause if you drop my baby, I'll kill you, I swear."

Sam grinned a bit, not bothering to say what they both knew—that if the pills did work, Sam was going to be, as James had told them, too "zombie-like" to do much of anything but sit there and watch, right along with Dean, who knew he was going to have to be practically chained to something to keep from hovering while Bobby and Marie's friend loaded his demolished car up.

Within minutes, Sam was asleep.

…

Dean woke to somebody shaking him by the shoulder. He must've fallen asleep himself—he was slumped over the side of Sam's bed, his casted arm squished beneath him at an awkward angle and hurting like a bitch, his nose aching viciously where it'd been pressed against the sheets. He winced, rubbing at his arm above the cast, and looked up into the amused face of Bobby. He opened his mouth to gripe about being rudely awakened, but Bobby silently shushed him, nodding his head towards the bed, past Dean. Dean turned and looked.

There was Sam, lying on his back, stone-still and fast asleep. His breaths were deep, even, silent, his face calm and neutral.

And suddenly Dean was grinning like a moron.

And so was Bobby, a little.

Dean and Bobby went about their morning activities in silence, in the interest of letting Sam sleep as long as possible. Memories of the night before, and why he'd fallen asleep, finally trickled back as he ate, showered, and dressed: Sam was just as bad as usual at first, thrashing, moaning and crying out in his sleep, but then the nightmares had, after an hour or so, miraculously tapered off. And Sam slept. Really slept. And Dean obviously had, too.

It wasn't until Dean had gotten out of the shower and was sitting with Bobby at the table over coffee while Bobby consulted a road map he'd picked up to double check the route back to Sioux Falls that Sam stirred, groaned a little, and finally sat up.

Dean's nose was starting to throb in protest all the grinning he'd done that morning, but he couldn't resist. "Hey there, Sleeping Beauty," he called. "How're ya doin?"

"Mm," Sam muttered, brow furrowed, blinking around the room until his gaze settled blearily on them. "Hungry," he said, looking confused, as if this was an entirely alien notion to him.

And Dean thought his heart might just burst out of his chest. "Bobby got doughnuts," he said, pointing at the open box. "Have at."

"Awesome," Sam muttered. He held up his joined wrists. "Gimme a hand with these?"
…

Dean and Sam ended up staying behind altogether when Bobby left for Bootback to retrieve the car. It irritated the hell out of Dean that he couldn't at least watch, even if having a cast meant he actually do anything to help. But he hadn't pushed it, mostly because Sam had looked freaked at the prospect of getting into the truck, even for a short drive.

But speaking of Sam…

Dean could hardly bring himself to believe it. Sam was doing friggin' fantastic since he'd woken up. Sure, the pills had left him exhausted, especially when he'd had to take another dosage that morning and had fallen asleep again not long after, but when awake, he knew what was going on, where he was, and who Dean was. Hell, they'd even been able to watch TV for a good few hours, have a good laugh at an episode of Jersey Shore that had come on one of the only available channels in this place, and had had a serious debate about whether or not Snooki was, in fact, just a really hot Oompa Loompa. They'd played War with a battered deck of cards Dean had found days ago in a dresser drawer, and unlike the last week, Sam had actually been able to focus on the game for more than just a few short minutes. He was drowsy, and honestly looked a little stoned, but he seemed otherwise happy, and his eyes only wandered once or twice every hour or so.

While he cut the deck for another game, the late afternoon sunlight filtering through the window and onto the table and grubby cards, Dean finally asked Sam how well he thought the pills were working.

Sam had smiled tiredly. "They're… good," he said. "Really good. I mean, I'm still, uh, seeing some stuff, but…" His eyes cut away from Dean's to something over by the opposite wall, and back again. "I know it's not real. I dunno how, but I do." He wasn't stuttering anymore, Dean noted.
"That's awesome," Dean said, and he sincerely hoped that someday James Milburn won the freaking lottery, married a French supermodel, and never had to work a day in his life again.

"Yeah," Sam said. He chuckled. "But to be honest, even if the stuff is real, I'm too fucking tired to care right now."

"Yeah, well," Dean said, "it's not." He pushed Sam's card stack across the table to him.

Sam's eyes skittered away towards the wall again. "I know."

Dean turned his first card over. "Ace," he said triumphantly.

"You suck."

…

When Bobby came back that night, with one pitifully smashed-up Impala in tow, he came bearing a pizza-box. Dean had called earlier and told him to go ahead and get it when Bobby had asked about dinner plans, cautiously optimistic that Sam would be able to handle the smell and the taste of it. Sam had said it'd be fine, and after all he'd actually managed to eat some today without once getting sick—the pills making him hungry as promised— but Dean watched him out of the corner of his eye when Bobby came through the door to make sure that the smell of grease and melted cheese wouldn't have Sam running for the bathroom.

It didn't.

Sam ate less than Dean would've liked, giving his pizza slice a weird look every now and then while he ate. But he wasn't sick afterwards, and he, Dean, and Bobby actually managed to have what felt like the first normal conversation in days.

"So I figure we can take our time gettin' back to my place," Bobby said, between mouthfuls of pepperoni. "Ain't no rush, and I don't know if that old rustbucket out there can handle goin' much above fifty miles an hour anyway."

Which meant, Dean knew, that Bobby was willing to take it slow for Sam's sake. But he did have a point—the truck was a piece of crap. Not to mention it smelled. Bad. Kinda like warmed-over cat piss. And with a busted air conditioner, and all of them packed in three across in the front seat, it was bound to be one long, interesting ride.

"Okay," Sam said, carefully ripping off a piece of crust and putting it in his mouth.

"Anything worth stopping to see along the way?" Dean smirked. "Maybe the world's second biggest ball of twine?"

"Well if you're gonna be a smartass about it, you can drive the whole way," Bobby said dryly, but he looked amused.

Dean gestured at his cast with the tip of his rolled-up pizza slice. "That's real nice, Bobby. Make the invalid drive."

Bobby snorted. "A broken arm don't make ya an invalid, kid. Take it from a reformed invalid."

"Oh, yeah, 'cause you were an invalid, but you got better," Dean said, cramming the pizza slice into his mouth.

"Don't be a jerk, Dean," Sam said, but his lips twitched. Bobby rolled his eyes.

A few minutes later, Sam scratched absently at his cheek, and under his chin, looking a little irritated. A good two weeks' worth of beard growth resided there. "God," he muttered.

"Got a little peach fuzz goin' there, Sammy," Dean said wryly.

"Shut up," Sam snapped, a bit of a flush creeping into his face.

"No, really, I think it suits you," Dean said, enjoying how incredibly irked Sam looked. "Chicks dig the whole cro-mag, lumberjack thing."

"It's itchy," Sam muttered. "Dunno how you do it," he said to Bobby.

"Easy," Bobby said. "I don't do anything."

They laughed.

"Seriously, though, how bad is it?" Sam asked. He ran a hand over his chin in distaste.

"You mean on a scale of pedo to Joaquin Phoenix?" Dean asked with a wicked grin.

"Shut up," Sam mumbled, definitely red in the face now.

"Just saying."

Before Sam went to bed that night, he emerged from the bathroom showered and clean-shaven.

And Dean couldn't have been prouder. He knew from experience how…awkward…it had been, when he'd first come back from Hell himself, to have to scrape a freaking blade across his face once a day, no matter how commonplace and mundane an activity shaving really was. There were some days when his hands were shaking so bad he'd cut himself, and others when he'd been unable to go through with it at all. Which was pretty damned embarrassing, but still, he got it, and he got why Sam had neglected to do it altogether since getting his memories back.

"Looking good," Dean chuckled when Sam walked past him and practically collapsed into bed.

"Bite me." But there was no heat behind the words.

…

The trip back to Sioux Falls, all things considered, was shaping up to take them nearly a week.

Of course, the time spent actually driving was rather limited.

For all that the pills seemed to be fairly effective, the drive still proved to be a bit of an endurance test for Sam. The pills did continue to make him ridiculously exhausted, so he was able to sleep through some of the trip, his head slumping against the passenger door. And once, unconsciously, onto Dean's shoulder as well, which had made Dean roll his eyes, but he didn't push Sam off, and Bobby mercifully didn't comment except for a quirked eyebrow. But while Sam was awake, things were tough for him. He would go quiet for long stretches of time, his eyes roving around the truck's interior or sometimes intensely focused on the road to the exclusion of all else. He'd rock back and forth in the seat most of the time, his breathing near the point of hyperventilation. Just because he knew that the things he were seeing weren't real probably didn't make it any easier when they were accosting him in such a small space, Dean thought grimly. So every two or three hours, they had to pull over, find gas stations to stop at. Or, more often, they'd find rest areas, where Sam would sit on a bench or picnic table, shut his eyes, and will himself to calm down. Dean would sit with him in silence until it passed, which usually didn't take long. Then he'd get up and pace while Dean raided the vending machines for food and fluids to replace whatever Sam wouldn't admit to having puked up when he came out of the dingy restrooms.

It was much better, though, when they stopped for the night. Or rather, the late afternoon. Sam was happy again, calmer, and by the second night on the road, they'd even removed the handcuffs while Sam slept. Sam insisted on keeping the shackles on his feet, as a precautionary measure, but he seemed relieved to give his bruise-blackened wrists a break.

They avoided diners and public places, even main highways when they could. Sam was still pretty skittish around people, even when he could now distinguish that they were, in fact, people.

But he was eating more, sleeping more, and talking more, the lengths of time where he'd get trapped in his memories or nightmares significantly less. And Dean was thrilled about it.

On the third day, as a surprise, Dean had raided a used bookstore while it was his turn to go out for food. He was a bit out of his element in that regard, but he still knew what his brother liked, and raided the classical literature section, ending up with a huge paper bag full of Dickens, Hugo, Steinbeck, Milton, and in short, anything that looked long and dry. All stuff Sam had probably read already, but it wasn't like he lugged a ton of books around with him all the time, for convenience's sake. With a grin, picked up a dog-eared paperback copy of The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum—which of course he'd known was a book before it was a movie—and added it to the sack. He bought the whole lot, after a bit of haggling, for five bucks.

"This is great," Sam had said, his face lighting up like a kid at Christmas when Dean dumped bag of books upside down on Sam's bed. He sifted through the books, grin broadening as he read each title, snorting when he saw the Bourne book in the pile.

"Yup," Dean said, "I'm awesome. I know."

"Seriously, thanks, man." For the look Sam was giving him, you'd have thought Dean had taken a bullet for him or something. But Dean got the underlying message—Distraction is exactly what I need right now, so thank you for providing it in abundance.

Dean shrugged. "I just thought, you know, in case you get bored poring over the Gideon Bible like you've been doing." He felt his smile fade. "Speaking of that…" he trailed off, giving Sam a pointed look. He'd seen Sam reading the room's Bible the night before, flipping through it after dinner while Dean and Bobby watched TV. He hadn't said anything, but it wasn't like God was on Dean's buddy list at the moment, much less the "new" God, and he wasn't exactly sure how Sam could stomach it, especially the fire-and-brimstone passages. That was part of what had prompted Dean to make the bookstore excursion in the first place.

Sam sighed. "Look, you don't need to worry, okay? It doesn't bother me."

"Well I don't exactly see how it's helping you, either."

He shrugged, eyes clouding a little. "Well it's not like the…uh, the stuff about damnation isn't anything I don't know about. But, um," he looked a little embarrassed. "Y'know, the tenets of Judaism and Christianity are essentially peaceful. I dunno. It's comforting, I guess. The Psalms and stuff. I like 'em."

The next day, a Gideon Bible found its way into the bag of books.

When Sam found it there, he laughed, a bit taken aback but clearly pleased. "You stole a Bible?"

Dean shrugged. "Eh, the Gideons'll replace it. It's what they do, right? Dress up in stuffy suits and chuck Bibles at people. Besides, figure it's better to give it to somebody who'll use it than let it rot in some drawer."

Sam shook his head, running his fingers over the glossy cover, and failing altogether at looking disapproving.

…

It wasn't until they were about a day's worth of extra-slow travel from Sioux Falls that it all went wrong.

Dean didn't even understand it—Sam had been doing fine, flopped out on the couch, eating take-out and watching an old John Wayne movie with Dean and Bobby, when he got up to go to the bathroom and never came out.

Only three minutes had gone by when Dean first started to get the feeling something was up. Sam hated missing bits of movies, however small, because he'd always claim that he'd miss something important if he left the room for however short a period of time, even when he'd seen it before, because he was ridiculous like that. It'd been that way ever since he was four years old and watching freaking Land Before Time, and Dean could still hear Sam whining for him to pause the tape, because I gotta go to da bafwoom and somefin bad might happen to Widdlefoot if I'm not watchin'.

He gave it another two minutes before he started banging on the door. "Sam?"

When there was no answer, Dean's blood froze. Bobby flicked the TV off, eyeing the bathroom door with concern.

He banged again, harder. "Sammy? You alright?"

No response.

Stomach plummeting, he rattled the doorknob, fearing the worst. "Dammit, Sam, open the door!"

Then, a small, barely audible, "Dean?"

He let out a breath, relief washing through him. "Yeah. Open up, dude." If Sam was responding to him—if Dean could still get through to him—they were still okay.

Through the door, Dean heard an odd sound—like breathy laughter, tinny when it reverberated off the walls.

"Sam, open the door," Dean said, the laughter setting his teeth on edge.

"Can't," came the faint response.

"Can't?" Dean repeated. "What do you mean can't?" He shot a nervous glance at Bobby, who had come up beside him, straining to listen through the door as well. Bobby's eyes cut to the door, brow furrowed.

Yet again, no answer.

"Sammy!" Dean yelled, rattling the doorknob again.

"Help me," Sam muttered a second later, voice barely audible even through the cheap, thin door. "Please."

Dean gulped. "Okay, man, we're coming . Just hang in there, okay?" he called back to Sam in as reassuring a tone as he could manage.

"'Kay…"

And on a count of three, Dean and Bobby kicked the door in.

At the sight that met him inside the bathroom, Dean was pretty sure his heart stopped for a good few seconds.

There was Sam, leaning against the side of the bathtub, his legs sprawled out under him like an overgrown child. He was blinking up at Dean and Bobby, dazed and wide-eyed. A pocketknife—Dean's pocketknife, in fact—was clutched tightly in the fingers of one hand.

And there was blood.

Everywhere.

It took Dean a minute to work through his blind panic to realize that the source of the blood was Sam's arms: he'd gouged into the flesh of both, and the blood soaking the front of his t-shirt and sweats and dripping little puddles onto the floor.

Sam held up both his arms. His eyes watered. "Please," he repeated. "There's s-something in me."

Dean went to drop to the floor in front of Sam, but Bobby stopped him. "He's still got a knife," Bobby muttered, and held Dean back.

Sam's face crumpled in apparent agony, and then he held one arm in front of his face, as though scrutinizing the wounds.

"Sam?"

"There's something in me," Sam repeated, and he raised the knife and sliced through his arm once more, twisting the blade, digging it into his skin.

"No!" Dean wrenched himself out of Bobby's hold and launched himself at Sam.

He grabbed the wrist of the hand in which Sam held the knife, tightening his fingers around it even as Sam cried out at the pain from the bruises there. But Sam didn't let go, and with a snarl he tried to bring the knife down onto his other arm, which Dean had pinned by his own cast-covered one. "Get it out," Sam was growling through his teeth as he struggled ferociously against Dean. "Get it out!"

A few seconds later and Sam finally tore his wrist from Dean's grasp, bringing the knife down at an awkward angle towards Dean's arm. The knife glanced off the side of the cast, and Sam lost his hold on it. It clattered to the floor. Dean snatched it up and threw it aside.

…Only to have Sam start bashing his arms, hard, against the toilet seat, leaving bloody smears across the white surface.

"Sam, no," Dean said, lunging for Sam's arms. He grabbed at one of them, and Bobby stepped in to reach for the other. Sam struggled, screaming, twisting back and forth, and kicking his legs viciously. But he couldn't free himself, even with Dean's and Bobby's fingers slipping in his blood.

Abruptly, Sam stopped struggling, and fell still. He looked up, eyes flicking between Dean and Bobby rapid-fire. Awareness flooded back into his eyes, as if somebody had thrown a switch. His breath was coming in harsh gasps. He looked petrified. His eyes settled on Dean.

"Dean…" he choked out.

"Yeah?" Dean managed, heart racing.

"You g-got blood on your cast."

Then Sam's eyes rolled back, and he went limp beneath them.

"Sam!"

…

While he was out, they dragged him to the nearest bed, Dean cursing himself a billion times over for having forgotten his pocket-knife on the bathroom counter late that afternoon, stomach lurching at the pallor of Sam's face and the brightness of the blood seeping from his arms.

"Fuck," Dean muttered, running a hand over his mouth once they had Sam settled. "Goddamn it…"

"Here," Bobby said urgently, throwing a towel snatched hastily from the bathroom at him. "Hold that to his other arm."

"Yeah." Dean caught the towel and bent over Sam, pressing the towel to the ruined flesh of his arm, gulping back a rush of bile at the sight of it, the feeling of warmth soaking through the towel. He looked over at Bobby, doing the same on Sam's other side, expression no less bleak than Dean felt. "Does he need an ambulance?" Dean asked. Normally, had this been a hunting injury, they'd have tried to deal with it themselves, provided it wasn't life-threatening. But they also knew that potential vascular damage, or severe muscular damage, weren't things to be fucked with. It was the reason they'd dragged Sam to the ER last time he'd gotten his arms sliced open—by the ghouls wearing Adam and Kate's faces—despite the fact that Dean had had to bust Sam out before he could be placed under suicide watch.

Bobby shook his head, adjusting the towel. "Not if you don't want 'em to lock him up for goin' postal on himself. But if it's somethin' we ain't able to fix, then yeah, we'll call."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, okay." But even though the prospect of Sam being under lockdown for "his own good" was enough to turn Dean's stomach, there was still an awful lot of blood. Too much.

Sam was out cold the entire time it took to clean out the wounds, not even the hiss and burn of the peroxide enough to wake him. Dean and Bobby had decided that, despite how bad it'd initially looked, the wounds really weren't as deep as they feared, and that there was only very slight muscle damage, nothing that time wouldn't fix. But they were fresh out of topical anesthetic—they'd been meaning to replace it before Lisa and Ben had disappeared—and right as Bobby stuck the needle in for the first stitch, Sam came to.

Screaming.

Dean had to throw himself on top Sam to pin him down, while Bobby fought to hold still the arm he was working on.

"Sam," Dean grunted, pushing Sam's shoulders back against the bed as best he could while Sam writhed and squirmed under him, eyes full of sheer animal terror and pain and confusion. "You gotta calm down, dude. You're gonna hurt yourself."

Sam couldn't keep up resistance for very long, blood loss finally taking its toll, and he gave up struggling, finally lying motionless. He looked up at Dean, chest heaving, tears in his eyes.

"Sam?" Dean asked uncertainly.

Sam blinked.

"Sammy?" he tried again. "You with me now?"

Sam shook his head minutely, the fear in his eyes pushed out by helpless anger. "Lemme go," he growled.

"I can't," Dean said steadily, though the anger and total lack of recognition was like a slap in the face. "Not until we get you patched up, okay? It's this or the hospital, man."

Sam's forehead scrunched up. "Hospital?" he repeated.

"Yeah, hospital. And if we go there, they're gonna take you away from me. And I don't want that to happen, but it will if you can't calm down and let us help you, alright?"

Sam's brow scrunched further. "Dean?"

Finally. Dean let out a breath, grinned, and nodded. "Yeah. Right here, Sammy."

Some of the tension left Sam's shoulders. He gave a small, tremulous smile of his own. "Dean?" he repeated.

"Yeah?"

"M'arms hurt…"

"I know. Just…" He glanced at Bobby. "Let Bobby stitch you up, okay? It'll be over before you know it, I promise."

"'Kay." His eyes drifted shut. "Dean?"

"What?"

"D-did you get it out?"

"Uh, yeah." Dean nodded. He was pretty sure he didn't even want to know what Sam was talking about. "We got it out. You're okay now. Just take it easy, okay?"

"'Kay." But he cried out when Bobby started in on the stitches once more.

And for the next several hours, Dean found himself pinning a hurting and terrified Sam down, who clearly had no idea what the hell was happening to him, or more to the point, why Dean was letting it happen. Dean passed the time whispering a litany of meaningless reassurances in his ear, and trying not to be sick at the sharp, metallic scent of his brother's blood that was barely masked by the peroxide. He was almost relieved when Bobby started in on the second arm and Sam finally passed out again.

3 AM came and went, 4 AM. Sam's arms were eventually mummified in bandages, and he was left to rest flopped out on the bloody sheets with his ankles cuffed. Bobby, completely spent, was snoring away on the other bed, blood he'd hardly bothered to wash away splattered up to his elbows.

Dean, his insides numb and heavy, had taken the couch. Fatigue tugged at him, body aching from having had to hold Sam down for so long. He wanted to sleep, he did. He tried. Why the hell not, after all. Nothing had changed.

But it was that very same thought that kept him from rest.

Nothing had changed.

They were right back where they'd started, weren't they?

Hell, they were worse.

But Sam slept on, oblivious.

…

Tbc…