Chapter Nine
Dean felt the blanket shift under his head, and he jolted up, looking over at Sam. Sam shifted in the hospital bed, turning onto his back. He slowly opened his eyes, looking over at Dean.
"Hey," said Dean. "Feel better?"
Sam nodded. "How long?"
"You've been here for about five hours," Dean told him. "You slept the whole time." Sam looked around at the foreign environment of the hospital room. "Nervous?"
Sam nodded again. "Tell me something."
"You want me to talk to you?" asked Dean. Sam nodded. "How about what you asked me…about why you're so big?"
"Yeah."
"Well, uh…You see, those stories about ghosts and witches and vampires…" Sam nodded. "It's all real. We hunt them. Mom died because a demon killed her. So…Dad started training us, and the three of us began hunting supernatural things." Sam's eyes widened. "Don't worry. The demon's dead. I killed him. But, um…You're really twenty-seven years old. A hunt we were on about a week ago was about a ghost. The ghost scrambled people's brains, turning them into newborns mentally. Then he got to you. But I found out that if I was around you, you began learning. You started aging and remembering stuff. So now I'm trying to get you back to normal. Understand?"
Sam frowned, working through it. "So…it's a hex of some sort that aged me backwards, but mentally. And now I'm aging back to twenty-seven?"
Dean nodded, frowning. "How old are you?"
"Eight," Sam answered.
"When did you hit seven?"
"This morning."
Dean realized. "After you remembered about Mom and Dad."
"Yeah," said Sam. He looked down at his hands. "What about that girl?"
"What girl?" asked Dean.
"The girl I dreamed about the other night," said Sam. "The…naked one." Sam said the word 'naked' in a near whisper, ashamed to say it.
Dean smiled. "She, uh…was your girlfriend Jessica. You went off to college for a few years and met her there. I don't know how long you two were together, but you were pretty serious."
"What happened to her?" asked Sam.
"She…" Dean took a deep breath. "She died a few years ago. That's why you got back into hunting with me…to find the thing that killed her."
"Did we?" asked Sam.
"Yeah," said Dean. "It was the same thing that killed Mom."
Sam frowned. "So…this demon was after me?"
Dean hung his head. "Uh…maybe. We don't know." Dean looked back up to see Sam nod solemnly and look away from Dean, hurt. Dean shook his head.
I don't want to tell him, but…one of the things that stressed Sam so much this past year was me not trusting him…not telling him the truth.
"Okay," said Dean, "but don't say I didn't warn you." Sam looked over towards his brother, intrigued. "Back in 1973, this Yellow-Eyed Demon killed Mom's parents…and Dad. Then Mom made a deal to bring Dad back. The deal was the demon could drop by the house in ten years for something. November 2, 1983, your six-month birthday, the demon came to your nursery and…dripped blood into your mouth."
Sam frowned. "He what?"
"He infected you with demon blood," said Dean, hating every second he was talking. "Then Mom came in and tried to stop him, so he killed her. Dad trained us after that, and while you were at college, you started having dreams that Jessica was going to die the way Mom did. A few days later, she did."
"So, it was a vision?"
Dean nodded. "You had another dream about a woman. Then the next time you had a vision dream, you started having them while you were awake. You'd get a headache and then a vision. You had these for about two years until we killed Yellow-Eyes. Then they just stopped. Long story short, you started using your abilities again, but instead of visions, it was exorcising demons and sending them to hell. Then you got stronger and could kill demons. You went after this demon Lillith, who was breaking the sixty-six seals."
"What are those for?"
"Freeing Lucifer. You tried to kill Lillith before she could break the final seal, and you did, but what no one told us was that Lillith's death was the final seal. Once you killed her, it freed Lucifer. Now, we're trying to find a way to kill the devil."
"How do you kill the devil?"
"Well, that's what we're trying to figure out."
"And I freed him? It's all my fault?"
"No," Dean insisted. Sam gave him an incredulous look—the same look he always gave Dean at that age. "It wasn't, Sam. It wasn't all your fault. You may have broken the final seal, but I broke the first one."
Sam stared at him. "How?"
"Well, you see, you were killed, so I made a deal to bring you back. They gave me a year before they dragged me to hell, and while I was down there…they tortured me. After a while, I couldn't take it anymore and made a deal to torture others so they would stop torturing me. Turns out, that was the first seal. So you listen to me when I say it wasn't your fault. It was both of ours; we didn't know. We couldn't have known. We were tricked and played and hell knows what else." Sam stared at the sheets, jaw hanging open. "You okay?"
"Our lives suck," muttered Sam.
"You're telling me." Dean frowned. "I'm sorry."
Sam looked up at him. "Sorry for what?"
"For telling you. You shouldn't have to deal with this now, or at any time. I shouldn't have told you."
"No, Dean," said Sam. "I'm glad you told me. It was the right thing to do. It's good to know I can always trust you to be honest with me and not treat me like a child…just like Christmas that one time."
"What one time?"
"When I gave you that amulet."
Dean smiled. "You remember that, huh?"
"Just came to me a few seconds ago," nodded Sam.
"So…that's what you want?" asked Dean, trying to get an understanding into Sam's psyche. "You want me to treat you like an adult?"
"Yeah," said Sam. "I mean, I can't be sure since I have no memory of the past twenty years, but…I would think that we grew apart because I was sick of being treated like a kid when I wasn't."
"How do you know we grew apart?"
"The way you talked. Kinda sounded like we went separate ways at some point. And what probably led to that for me is the fact that you always treat me like your kid brother." Dean opened his mouth to say just that, but Sam waved him off. "And, yeah, I am your kid brother, but, as you can see, I'm not a kid anymore, Dean. You gotta let me make my own decisions. You gotta let me grow up."
Dean nodded, taking that in. "I can't promise anything, but I'll try." He looked up at his little brother. "Thanks."
"No problem," said Sam. "And just because I want you to back off, that doesn't mean I hate you or I don't love you."
"Oh, don't start that shit again," groaned Dean. Sam laughed. "By the way, you doing okay?"
"Yeah," said Sam. "I feel better."
"What do you say we get out of this hellhole?" asked Dean. "And no more pecan pie. You got that?"
Sam laughed as Dean headed to make arrangements to get Sam out of the hospital.
Is there anything you guys want to see happen with Mental De-Age Sam? Any ideas before he grows up?
