Dean had begun running the moment he heard the crashing sound, not taking the time to marvel at his newly discovered strength.
Sam was close.
There was complete silence as he continued to run in the direction of the crash that had pulled him to his feet only moments earlier. He needed more. Needed a clear direction to run in.
He came to a grinding halt as his hunter senses pointed out something to him. This was about where the sound had come from. And there was a door that was propped against its frame. Seizing it by the sides, he set it against a wall and rushed into the small room.
"Sam?" he gasped.
Someone had just been in this room. Judging by the fresh shifter slop in the corner, however, it hadn't been Sam.
More crashing and banging called to him from further down the hallway, pulling him away from the shifter skin.
As discreetly as he could, he crept down the hallway towards the sounds. Something wasn't right about this. Sam wouldn't make so much noise if he was escaping. Either there was a scuffle, or someone was creating a diversion.
As the sounds quieted, Dean slowed, watching carefully for danger. For shifters. For his brother.
He'd gone about forty feet when he froze, crouching in the shadows of a corner. Footsteps were rapidly approaching, clicking in a aggravated rhythm.
Dean clenched his hand over his mouth, muffling his heavy breathing as he watched the shifter move quickly towards him.
Don't see me, don't seem me...
He slowly wrapped his other hand around the silver knife at his belt. The hunter stalking his prey.
The villainous beast was approaching, slinking down the hallway in complete oblivion to its hunter.
The hunter remained hidden in the shadows, prepared to spring upon the animal at any moment, when it turned and let itself into another room. Cat like, it slunk it, shutting the door behind it.
The hunter leaned forward, waiting. Not rushing ahead too soon. Giving the prey time to feel safe.
After assuring himself that Lewis wasn't coming out anytime soon, Dean crept forward again, inching his way up from a crouching position to look through the small window in the door.
A familiar sensation rose up in his chest as he saw what was on the other side of the door. The knots in his stomach somehow loosened and tightened simultaneously.
He'd found his brother.
His brother was tied to a table, at the mercy of a shifter. The cat. The prey suddenly turned torturer and mastermind.
Dean watched intently as his brother seemed to have a discussion with his captor. Come on Sammy, let's get you out of here alive. Don't say anything emotional. Don't be emotional. Don't be stupid.
Sam looked healthy and well, and besides being tied to a table seemed to be unharmed. Good. He wasn't too late.
The conversation was becoming more heated, so Dean pressed his ear against the door, hoping to catch a few words.
The words ended, and as Dean turned his head to look through the window again, he saw that Sam had come off the table and was lunging at his captor.
Dean took that as his cue to join in, and flung the door open just in time to watch the shifter shoot his brother through the chest.
He flew across the room to where Sam had fallen, barely registering that Sam had managed to take the shifter down. The monster had crumpled at their feet, his neck twisted unnaturally, his eyes unrepentant and glassy.
"Sam!" Dean grabbed his brother's shoulders and pulled him up onto his lap, letting the kid's head rest while he examined the wound. Blood bubbled up and out of Sam's chest, leaking out vital blood. He would be dead in minutes. Dean forced himself to be calm.
"You're going to be okay. Hang on."
Sam shoved Dean's hand away and grabbed his arm, panting in pain.
"No." he gasped.
"Don't be stupid!" Dean protested, looking around frantically for something to slow the bleeding.
"I'm not Sam!"
Dean ignored the claim. "Yes you are. You're okay. We'll get you to the hospital. It's not even that bad."
Good. A cupboard with towels in it. He put his brother's head back in his lap, holding the towel over the gaping hole.
"Listen to me! My name is Katie."
Dean would laugh if he wasn't so close to tears. "The heck are you blabbing about?"
"You're Dean, right?" Sam continued. "I'm Katie. You have to believe me." Sam-claiming-to-be-Katie pointed at the crumpled shifter. "I'm his daughter! I'm a shifter!"
Dean pulled away, reality finally sinking in. "You better start talking. Fast."
"I was trying to save Sam from my father." a cough produced a heavy slog of blood. "I switched places with him and took him to a safe place. Please, you have to believe me. You have to go to him."
"Where is he? If you're not Sam, where's my brother?" Dean forced himself not to shake the shifter.
"Go left and then down the hall until you get to... I put him in a broom closet. Somewhere my father would never look for him."
"You said you were saving him?" Dean questioned incredulously.
The creature nodded. "Hurry. Save him."
Dean's head whirled. He wasn't sure if he should kill this creature right now, or if it was Sam, and he had lost his mind. Maybe, somehow, the thing in front of him was actually telling the truth.
"Here, hold this there." he pressed a towel into the large hand and laid the head gently on the floor. "I'll be right back."
He rushed down the hall, the words ringing in his head.
I'm not Sam.
He was so muddled that he almost tripped over the figure lying on the ground a few feet out of the opened door of the broom closet.
This is Sam.
The version of Sam he'd left gunshot and bleeding in the other room resembled his brother more than this one. For the second time in a five minute span, he fell to his knees beside a dying man. The horror of this Sam's appearance was too much to take in. The skin was thin and yellow. Blood was everywhere. Even though it had only been a week since Dean had seen Sam, his brother was almost entirely made up of skin and bone. And that without much skin left.
"Sammy?" Dean whispered. He took his brother's face in between his hands, searching frantically for a sign of awareness. Consciousness. "Come on, wake up, buddy. Sam, it's me. I broke out of the sick house to come see your sorry mug, at least show some respect and wake up."
He patted Sam's cheek, shook his shoulder, chaffed his hands. He shuddered as the cold in his brother's fingers transferred to his own. Icicle like, the digits hung limp in Dean's hands.
Finally, Sam came to with a scream.
"Hey. Sam. It's okay. It's me." Dean planted himself in his brother's line of vision. "I'm here, it's okay."
Sam's hands, shaking so much they barely would obey him, went up to Dean's shoulders, grabbing them weakly.
"Dean? Dean?"
"Yeah. Man, what happened to you?"
"Dean?" Sam still seemed to be in complete shock.
"You're right. It's me. It's Dean."
Sam's eyes began to roll back, and Dean snapped his fingers under his brother's nose.
"Hey. Stay with me."
Sam's eyes snapped open again.
"Katie!" he exclaimed. "Where is she?"
Dean's heart dropped into his stomach.
"She's in the other room."
"We have to save her..." Sam gasped. "Save her from Lewis."
Dean shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around Sam's trembling shoulders. "You think you an walk?"
Sam whimpered, so Dean crouched and lifted him from the ground without another second of hesitation.
"Please tell me...she's still alive." Sam begged, his head rolling limply against his big brother's shoulder.
Dean forced himself to stay on his feet, ignoring his own wound. It wasn't helping his calm to realize how much lighter his brother was, how much easier to carry. "Sam, that shifter had a gun. I didn't get to her in time. I thought she was you."
Sam gurgled. "What? You thought she was me? Why?"
"She's a shifter, man. It's what they do. She's got your face.
Sam pulled away a little, disbelief clouding his eyes. Dean almost dropped him.
"She's not a shifter!"
"What? She said she was his daughter!"
"She is! But she's half human! She's never shifted before!" Dean's other piece of information seemed to sink in suddenly, and Sam went rigid. "Did she get shot? Dean? Is she shot? Is she okay?"
Dean didn't have to answer as he carried his brother through the door and set him down next to a mirror image of himself. Same stupid haircut. Same oversized limbs. Same face that was still trying to hope in the good people in the world.
Katie was bleeding out, her mouth working like a fish out of water, her eyes wide in terror. Her hands, now Sam's hands, clutched at the floor, looking for something to hold on to.
At the sight of Sam, she started laughing through her tears, reaching her hand out for him.
He pulled himself closer to her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. Dean watched, mesmerized by the weirdness in front of him.
"You did it." Sam whispered to her. "He's gone. It's over. You're safe."
Katie coughed some more blood.
"Sorry I stole your body." she whispered.
Sam laughed hollowly, stopping as Katie clenched his wrist, her body rigid with pain.
"Hey, you're okay." he comforted. "Why don't you tell me how it happened? Tell me how you changed?"
Tears spilled over her cheeks as she pressed her hand over her wound.
"I think I was so scared...of losing you." She closed her eyes and sighed.
Sam patted her hand, his bloodied fingers leaving little red marks on her skin.
"Katie, stay with me, okay?"
She was wide awake suddenly, clenching him with both hands. "I don't want to die like this. Sam, I can't. I'm not a shifter. Please, help me. I have to die as me."
Sam looked at Dean over her head. Dean's heart twisted at the sight of the tears flowing down his brother's face. He was beginning to grasp a better idea of the situation. He'd seen this look before. After the fire when Jess had been taken by the yellow eyed demon. After Sarah had talked about her daughter and then was icy cold on the floor of the hotel room moments later, Crowley laughing over the phone lines. When they'd stood in the hallway of Madison's apartment, Sam clenching the gun in his hands. It was that look all over again, and Dean couldn't take it.
"What can we do, Katie?" he asked, taking the girl's other hand.
She looked at him, surprised. "Dean?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know. I think..." she grimaced. "This'll sound so weird."
"We're used to weird. What is it, Katie?" Sam asked gently.
"I...what changed me. It was my father. Things that he did, or gave me. I changed because I was scared. Hopeless, you know?" she started crying again. "Because I thought you were gone." she tapped Sam's hand with her finger. "I think...to change back, I have to have something human. Something that my mom gave me."
"What would that be?" Dean asked.
The ticking of the clock on the wall grew ominously loud as silence fell in the room. Dean watched Katie's face, the bravery on the Sam-like features that was so different from his brother. Courage that was newer and fresher. This wasn't a monster. It never had been.
Sam broke it the silence.
"Dean, can we have a minute?"
Dean, startled out of his reverie, nodded. "I'll be right outside."
SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN
It was so incredibly weird for Sam to sit on the floor of the operation room, his murderer dead at his feet, and himself in his arms. His body that was encasing someone...Someone. He didn't even know what to call her in his mind. He was about to lose her, though, and the thought of it was too painful. She had fought too hard, striven too sweetly and purely for this. To end like this, defeated by her father's bullet and his genetics, wouldn't be acceptable.
He knew what to give her.
The door had clicked shut behind Dean, and Sam just sat still, holding Katie as she gasped for breath in harmony with him.
"Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going to give you something human." he said, his tongue almost too dry to form the words.
"What?" her face crinkled in confusion.
"You gave it to me, I'm just giving it back now." he said. "Close your eyes."
"I'm afraid to!" she sobbed.
"Okay, okay. That's okay. It's going to be alright." he told her.
When they had been kids, Sam had never liked the way Dean so naturally was talented with his voice. It was a kind of rough, rock and roll sound that Sam had never acquired. A sense of pitch that never had graced his ears. But that didn't seem to matter right now.
"You never sang the last verse of that song your mom taught you." he told Katie.
"Sam. I really don't think I can sing right now." she whispered.
He closed his eyes, drawing as much strength as he could. His own life was slipping away, but he had to save hers first. Return the favor.
"That's okay. Because I know the last verse."
Here goes nothing.
I could make you happy
Make your dreams come true
Nothing that I wouldn't do
Go to the ends of the Earth for you
To make you feel my love
To make you feel my love
When he'd finished, Katie was shuddering violently. Sam grabbed her, holding her head to his chest. Her skin fell in nasty, oozing strips and sheets, but he kept holding onto her, humming tunelessly in an effort to comfort her.
Finally, like a newborn baby, she was there. Red hair coursing down her shoulders and around her pale face. She felt like a doll in his arms compared to the size she had just been.
Her delicate fingers were still in his, and for a moment he thought she was dead. He took the towel that she'd been holding against her wound and covered her with it, clearing away the discarded skin so she could be relatively clean and comfortable.
"Katie?" he breathed.
She opened her eyes, the vivid greenness of them piercing into him.
"Did it..." she looked down at herself, relaxing as she realized what had happened. She twisted a lock of her hair over her fingers, taking it in slowly. Then she looked up at him, putting her tiny hand on his cheek, studying his eyes as if she wanted them to take up all the room in her memory.
"I'm me." she smiled.
Then she was gone.
