Chapter 7: Priority One
"OUT!" Dean obviously was also aware that the salt rounds were doing no good and shouted the only order that made sense.
Sam wasted no time in launching himself towards the door. As he opened it and flung himself over the threshold, he felt an intense sting in his right shoulder. He ignored the pain as he and Dean scrambled to the impala, wrenched the doors open and piled in. As Sam ducked down in the passenger seat, Dean already had the car in reverse. In less than three seconds, they were flying backwards at 20 miles an hour.
Sam heard a ping and glanced towards the noise to see that the rearview mirror on his side had been blown off.
"BITCH!" Dean screamed as he hit the breaks and shifted, sending the impala into a reckless spin. As soon as the impala was facing the exit of the parking lot, Dean punched the gas and sent them flying onto the main road. Luckily, no one had been coming at the moment, or they surely would have been hit. With the speed at which they had entered the road, it would have seemed to any other driver that they had appeared out of nowhere.
"Holy shit!" Sam said breathlessly, his eyes wide and his body shaking with adrenaline.
"I know," Dean looked crazily into the rearview mirror.
Sam still seemed unable to do anything but stare at Dean, waiting for another comment. Instead, he heard himself say, "Dude, holy shit."
"I know."
Sam became aware that something wasn't quite right and could feel that his body was trying to tell him something. He looked down, sensing pain, but not quite feeling anything yet. Dean noticed Sam's stiff behavior and turned towards his brother to scan him over.
"You alright?" Dean demanded; his voice had become even more enraged.
"I—" Sam was still somewhat dazed, but his senses were returning and with them, a searing, stinging pain in his upper right shoulder, "I got shot."
Dean leaned forward to inspect the wound as much as he could while driving. His desire was to jerk the car onto the shoulder and make sure Sam was not seriously hurt, but the professional hunter in him was encouraging him to put some distance between Sam and Adeline.
"She is so history," Dean muttered as he tried to inspect the wound through Sam's clothes and blood. Not only had that bitch shot his baby, she also had shot his little brother.
"Sokay," Sam said, finally shaking the last of his shock away as he pressed his hand over the wound.
Dean was relieved to see blood in the front because it meant the bullet had went all the way through. He grabbed Sam's shoulder and pushed him forward in order to see the entrance wound. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't as bad as he'd feared.
Sam shrugged Dean's hand off and instantly gasped in pain from doing so, "Gah," Dean's foot went for the brake, but Sam saw this and spoke, "No, man. No hospital. Just go to Hugh's."
Dean hesitated for a moment before deciding that he could trust his brother to tell him if he needed to go to the hospital, "Alright, but if we look at it and it's. . . bad, we're goin' to the hospital."
Sam's expression was easy to read. Dean knew it well. Sam was trying not to moan in pain each time they hit a small bump. Instead of trusting himself to talk, Sam simply nodded in agreement.
Dean wanted to get to Hugh's quickly, but going faster made the ride harder on Sam. Dean decided it was time to get to the bottom of Sam's mystery and the conversation would help take Sam's mind off the pain.
"Sam, we gotta find the demon that's doing this. We can't stop her without knowing where she's buried," Dean spoke in a low, slightly awed tone.
"I've never seen a spirit do that—dodge the salt, I mean," Sam was obviously impressed, but his voice was also strained because of the pain in his shoulder.
Dean glanced at Sam again, frustrated, "And you gotta tell me everything."
Sam tried not to react, but his eyes flicked to the window, searching for the rearview mirror to see exactly how much his face was giving away. When his eyes found nothing there, he nearly scoffed in dark amusement, remembering that the assassin bitch from hell had blown it to high heaven.
"Somethin' funny?" Dean sounded incredulous, but was somewhat relieved to see the half smirk on Sam's face instead of the grimace of pain, "I knew you were hidin' somethin' and I was playin' along, but you gotta tell me everything. This is getting too intense. I can't protect you if I don't know what you know."
Sam closed his eyes and shook his head in exhaustion, "Don't do this."
"Don't do what?"
"Make this about me," Sam opened his eyes and looked directly at Dean.
"This is about you—she's after you."
"No, this is a case. We're trying to stop her before she hurts anyone else."
"Before she hurts you," Dean specified, "And I know that's not it—you're not telling me something—something bigger." Dean fixed his gaze on the road as he spoke. He knew if he looked at Sam, hurt and exhausted, he wouldn't be able to push him hard enough to get the answers he wanted.
Sam whooshed out a breath and sat for a long moment, trying to decide what to say, "Dean, when you—" he broke off, nearly unable to say the word as he had chosen to lock it away in a secret place within his mind and never use it when speaking of Dean, but he forced himself to go on. It was the only way Dean might understand why Sam wouldn't—couldn't—let Dean start worrying for him instead of trying to find a way to save Dean's soul. However, instead of starting with Dean's death, he spoke of his own first, "Do you remember how you felt—when I died?"
It was a rhetorical question—Sam didn't need an answer—but the question visibly affected Dean. His face darkened and his shoulders lowered as he let out a slow, heavy sigh.
Sam had wanted to avoid reminding Dean of his death, but it was the only way to make Dean understand, "When you died, that's how I felt," Sam went on, "I can't do that."
"Sam—"
"Dean, I'm afraid of what I might become—without you here." Sam wasn't only afraid of it—he'd seen it. When Dean had died on that fateful Wednesday, Sam had lived the next several months without him. He had become a machine, a lifeless tool in an endless means to no end. He could never say it, but Sam feared that if Dean lost his soul, Sam would lose his own consequently because of what he would become without Dean.
Dean sighed again and opened his mouth to speak.
Sam drove the point home before Dean could claim that the situation was somehow different—that Sam's pain wasn't the same as Dean's, "You told me once that I would never be like Max because I had one thing that he didn't have."
"I was lookin' out for you, Sammy," Dean said. It was clear in his voice that he was hurt by the fact that Sam had insinuated that Dean shouldn't have made the deal in order to save him.
"Dean, if my destiny is to become like Max, or to become evil, I'd have preferred death—even Max had enough sense to make that choice," Sam finished carefully as he looked over at Dean to see that Dean's face had changed slightly. He didn't seem as determined as he had been when this conversation had started. Sam felt a little guilty for bringing the conversation around to this in order to keep Dean from the truth, but he told himself he was doing it to save Dean—that was what mattered right now. "Look, Dean, that's not the point—I don't blame you for what you did—I'm just saying I can't let you die—not for me. So that's priority one. We can worry about my Anakin potential after we get you outta this, alright?" Sam had used the Star Wars reference in an attempt to lighten the mood and maybe even distract Dean as a bit of a bonus.
Dean gave Sam a sideways glance and Sam was glad to see the hint of a smirk on his face, "I didn't know you watched Star Wars."
Sam smiled stiffly, still uneasy as to whether or not Dean was going to keep trying to get information out of him.
"Alright, you win for now," Dean said after a long pause, "We're here, anyway."
Sam shifted his eyes as they rounded the block and saw that they were indeed at Jake's house.
As they reached the house, Dean was careful to ease the car to a halt instead of swinging into a parking space obnoxiously as he sometimes tended to do. Sam reached across his body with his left hand in order to open the door. Dean quickly exited the car and half-jogged around the front, clearly concerned about Sam's injury.
"I'm fine," Sam said as he saw Dean approaching. Sam shut the car door and trudged towards the house, not looking forward to cleaning and wrapping the wound, but eager to have it done with.
Dean reached the house first. He opened the door and stepped back, allowing Sam to enter first.
"It's us!" Dean called into the house as a precautionary action in order to avoid being gunned down by Jake, who was probably overexcited and anxious to shoot something or someone.
Sam felt it before he saw anything—the familiar feeling of his body being pulled and controlled by an unseen force. He managed a strangled "NO!" before he was launched off of his feet and into the south wall. His shoulder flared in pain and his head hit the wall within the same instant. He had to blink away the darkness that threatened to take over his vision as his mind reeled.
