Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

Warning: Language, and most likely inaccurate medical information. I am not a doctor or in any sort of medical field.


He opened his eyes to blurred images of too bright lights and blue rubber glove hands hovering all about him, poking and prodding.

A woman's face came into his line of sight. While he could tell her mouth was moving, he couldn't hear her. He couldn't hear anything over the high-pitched ringing in his ears.

His head turned to the side, more of its own accord than from his control, and he saw Amy strapped onto a stretcher. People (paramedics, his sluggish mind remembered) were around her and moving in a rush.

He watched her stretcher be loaded into the ambulance.

He watched the van's roof above him turn into sky, then into the roof of the ambulance as he was loaded in after.

And then there was darkness once again.


The Impala had been taken back to the apartment and safely stowed in one of their two allotted parking spots, and Dean sat in the backseat of his father's truck while they drove through the streets of Austin. Hours passed since he found Sam's backpack in the park, and he never felt like they grew any closer to finding him.

He found Sam's cell phone in one of the backpack's side pockets, displaying the abundance of missed calls from Dean.

Gluing the phone to Sam's hand when they found him sounded like a pretty good idea. How was it useful if Sam never had it with him when it mattered?

"They could be out of Austin by now," Dean said. "They had a long enough head start, and we don't even have a start."

"Would you rather sit in the apartment and wait?" John asked.

Dean stayed silent. Sure, they were doing something, but it felt more like moving in circles than making progress.

He watched the sun start to set from the window. The winter days were shorter, but the end of the day signal from the sun solidified Sam's absence.

He'd gone missing on Dean's watch again. He'd been taken because Dean wasn't there again.

Dean grit his teeth together until it hurt. How could this keep happening? What did the world have against Sam?

John's phone rang and he looked at the caller ID. Despite the brief moment of visible confusion, he answered and pressed it to his ear.

"What?"

Dean's head almost knocked against the window as his dad swerved, then righted the truck and pulled over to the side of the road, putting the truck in park.

"What the hell happened?"

Dean leaned closer to his dad, but couldn't make out what the faint voice on the other line said.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm his father. Now, tell me what the hell happened."

Dean tried to get even closer to hear what was going on, but a glare from John stopped him. That, combined with the way his phone creaked under the pressure of his grip, meant that nothing good was being said, and he suspected that it had to do with Sam.

"Yes, of course. Do whatever you have to," John said. "But I need to know what happened. Where was he?"

Dean saw anger and worry form a dangerous mix on his dad's face, but he managed to stay relatively calm while he talked to the person on the other line.

And whatever they said next made anger overtake the worry.

"Fine," John said, his voice low and gravelly. More like a growl than speech. "I'm on my way."

He hung up and tossed his phone to the side.

"Who was it, Dad?" Dean asked. "What's going on?"

"Sam's in the hospital. They needed my permission to perform surgery on him since he's still a minor," John said. "They wouldn't tell me more than that."

"Balls," Bobby said.

John drove as quickly as he dared through the Austin streets (which was pretty damn fast), and Dean's mind raced through all the possible, horrible things that could have happened to Sam. The only blessing that came with the call was that they knew Sam was still alive (hurt bad enough to require surgery, but alive) and they knew where Sam was.

Dean watched the city speed by. He was angry at Sam for lying and ditching school. He was still angry, but now the worry was starting to consume him (along with an unhealthy dose of guilt and self-blame). There were too many what-ifs (the worst were the ones asking 'what if Sam didn't make it through surgery'). He wasn't there for Sam. Again. Now, Sam was hurt.

Again.


Dean was beaten into the emergency room only by his father, who immediately demanded to see Sam. They were redirected to a different waiting room by the surgical wing.

"I'm sorry, sir," said the nurse there. "He's still in surgery, but I'd like to ask you about some of his scars that we found."

John nodded and waved to Dean and Bobby to go take a seat. He could handle it on his own, it was how he preferred to do things, after all.

There weren't many people in the waiting room, and he supposed that was a good thing. There weren't too many people forced to hear about the physical state of someone they loved.

One girl was off to the side in a wheelchair, her leg in an unblemished white cast from her toes to right below her hip and one of her arms in a standard blue sling. She was a strange sight, sitting in the waiting room for surgery looking like she should be in one of the rooms herself, but he would have passed her by anyway.

If she hadn't been staring straight at him, narrowed eyes and mouth drawn into a thin line.

"What?" he asked.

"Are you Dean?" she asked.

"Why do you want to know?"

She nodded at John. "He's looking for Sam, and you came in here with him and the other man," she said. "Not exactly a quiet entrance."

"How do you know Sam?"

She didn't look like a trafficker, and there was no evidence of her being investigated over the matter.

"I was in the car wreck with him," she said. "So, are you Dean?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm Dean," he said. "Who are you?

He took the seat next to her, glad that he caught her stare and didn't pass her up (though the no nonsense attitude that radiated off of her meant she might not have let him just pass her by).

"Amy. You know, you mean a lot to Sam," she said.

Dean nodded, but he didn't have much to say in reply. He must not have meant much if Sam felt he had to beg to go to school just so he could have some alone time for a few hours. Dean would have given him space if he asked. Enough for independence, but not enough for Sam to land himself in trouble without help in sight.

"What the hell happened?" Dean asked.

"We were in the park, then there were men pressing rags over our faces. I think I passed out first, but I woke up in the back of a van—tied up—and Sam was there, too," she said.

Her soft words sounded laced with sadness, but Dean noticed the way she never fully took her eyes off him. The way she was always guarded and shifted around in the wheelchair like it was never comfortable.

Dean didn't blame her for not trusting him. It had to be hard enough to talk with a stranger after being kidnapped.

"What did they want?"

He suspected he already knew the answer.

"Sam, I think," she said.

John came over and sat by them. Bobby sat in the row of chairs across from them, giving them an illusion of privacy.

"Dad, this is Amy," Dean said. "She was taken with Sam."

He turned his attention back to Amy. "What did they do that made you think they recognized him?" Dean asked.

"One of the men called Sam his new student and said that everyone had his picture. And something about the numbers on his arm."

"Was there anything else they said?" Dean asked.

"They talked about some bounty put out for Sam," Amy said. "And we crashed."

They had to be traffickers, and a bounty being placed on Sam was not something they needed to deal with on top of everything else.

"Were you able to see how hurt Sam was in the crash?" Dean asked.

Amy looked worse for wear, and would be recovering for weeks to come, but she obviously hadn't needed surgery for any injuries if she was sitting there so soon after being injured (or hadn't needed emergency surgery, at the very least).

"No, I'm sorry," she said. "My injuries looked worse than they were, but I think his were worse than they looked. The doctors wouldn't tell me much since I'm not family."

Dean looked at his dad. "Did they tell you?" he asked.

John nodded. "He's having surgery for internal bleeding," he said. "A few of his ribs were broken, and they think they ended up puncturing at least one organ."

Dean hunched over, his forearms rested on his knees, and let out a long sigh. Keeping Sam safe felt like fighting a battle he knew he would always lose. No matter what he did or how hard he tried, Sam got hurt anyway.

He still had so many questions for Amy, but Sam was alive and that was all he cared about for the moment. Sam was going to get hell from all of them, but he'd escaped being trafficked again.

"John," Bobby said, "I think it would be best if we take Sam back to my place and let him heal far away from the traffickers here."

Dean watched John, hoping that he would agree with Bobby this time. They could always track down the traffickers another time, and they obviously knew that Sam was in the city. The longer they stayed, the more dangerous it'd be for him.

And the last thing Sam needed was more trauma.

The lines in John's face grew deeper. He ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. "Fuck," he said. "I know. I know, it's just… Damn it, we were so close this time."

"People like this don't usually pursue other careers, there will be another chance," Bobby said. "There's no need for us to push ourselves, especially when Sam needs us."

John nodded, but he looked far from happy. "Sam has a lot of explaining to do," he said.

Dean nodded. He had a lot of his own questions for Sam.


His head throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and his memories returned in fragments.

The park.

The van and Amy.

The crash.

He was in too much pain to be dead, so he ruled that out (unless death was horribly painful instead of peaceful and they were all misled).

"Sammy?"

Sam cracked his eyes open into a squint.

"Sammy, you in pain?"

Sam had no idea how Dean always managed to read him so well, but it was times like these that he was unimaginably grateful for it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought that Dean should be pissed at him. He should be yelling at him, not checking if he was in pain.

But that was one of the things about Dean that made him Dean. Even if he was pissed and wanted to tear Sam's throat out, he'd always make sure Sam was okay first. After all, Dean couldn't kick his ass if he wasn't alive for him to do it.

Even the slight nod he managed made the throb in his head worse, and there was something on his face, covering his nose and mouth, but it was too difficult to really concentrate on anything or try to reason out what was going on.

"I'll get the nurse, okay?" Dean asked. "She'll give you some of the good stuff and everything's gonna be just fine."

Sam could barely make out the shape of Dean in his blurred vision, but he was certain that there were two other people in the room as well, silent and watching from off to the side.

Then, a woman hovered over him, and the design on her scrub top danced until he was dizzy and nauseated.

"Don't worry, sweetie," she said. "You'll feel much better in just a minute, okay?"

His head lolled to the side and he saw her arms moving around by the mess of medical equipment next to his bed.

The pain faded, but his consciousness went along with it.


His head didn't hurt as much when he woke up again. He didn't know whether it was due to good pain medication, or if he was out long enough for it to have healed up a bit.

He remembered a lot more of what happened, and he remembered hearing and seeing Dean the last time he was semi-conscious and wracked with pain.

"Sammy?"

But he didn't want to deal with Dean right now. He knew that he was going to receive many lectures while he was stuck in a hospital bed and unable to avoid them. And he already knew that what he did was beyond stupid, that he should have told his family he wanted some time to himself instead of lying and sneaking off on his own. He knew that there were traffickers in the area, that was the entire reason they came to Austin in the first place.

He kept his eyes closed and hoped that Dean would leave him alone for now.

"Sammy, I know you're awake," Dean said.

But of course, Dean wouldn't leave him alone after everything. He had to be dying for answers. Sam heard him bouncing his leg on the ball of his foot on the tiled floor, a nervous habit he'd had for as long as Sam remembered.

"Sam, open your eyes," his dad said.

Great, Dean was mostly bearable even after he made his worst mistakes, but his dad's fury was something straight from nightmares. Sam figured he'd be lucky to ever be allowed to leave whatever dump they called home over the next ten years.

Sam opened his eyes to the eggshell white of the hospital room ceiling, resigning himself to the inevitable.

"What the hell, Sam?" Dean asked.

Sam tilted his head towards Dean.

"What were you thinking?" he asked. "Why would you ditch class and wander off on your own when you know why we came here in he first place? Did it never cross your mind that it might not be a good idea?"

Sam stared at him for a long while, but he didn't have anything to say in his own defense. He knew it was a bad idea, and he did it anyway.

Dean had his fists clenched, and he was almost shaking in a cross between anger and worry. Enough anger that his face was the faintest shade of red.

"You aren't going back to school, Sam," his dad said.

Sam tilted his head to the other side to face his dad instead of Dean.

"You'll get your GED like Dean did, and even that's a maybe," he said. "You've made it very clear that we can't trust you. You wanna tell us what you've been doing when you should have been in school?"

Sam shook his head. Let them be angry with him, it was better than them finding out just how much of a monster he became and having them hunt him.

Although, that might not be the worst outcome. If anyone was going to kill him, at least they'd make it quick out of respect for who he used to be. They'd give him peace without torturing him first, or using him like a supernatural hunting dog.

The more he thought about it, the more appealing it became.

"Fine," John said. "Was it hanging out with that girl, Amy? Was it worth almost dying for?"

Sam shook his head, because it wasn't about hanging out with Amy. That was never planned. Whether or not practicing his pyrokinesis was worth dying for, he didn't have an answer for that. Sometimes, he felt like he would die if he didn't use them, like it would build up inside him until he burned to death internally.

"You want Liu dead, don't you?"

Sam nodded.

"Then, why would you go and destroy the first chance we got to finally find him?" John asked. "God damn it, Sam! Did you think at all?"

John didn't give him time to answer before he stormed out the hospital room.

"Sammy," Dean said once the sound of their father's footsteps faded away. All of the previous anger in him had been drained away. "Sammy, he's just upset."

Sam shook his head.

Dean moved a few steps closer, as close to the bed as he could get without climbing on top of it. "No, Sammy, he is. You know how much it freaked him out to spend the day looking for you, only to get a phone call because you'd been in a car crash and he had to give permission for them to operate? Do you even know how much damage that wreck did to you?"

Sam shook his head. He didn't know the exact damage, but the way his head hurt earlier had to mean that it took a nasty hit or two.

"Where do you want me to start?" Dean asked. "You have some broken ribs, which shish-kebabed your organs and the doctors had to surgically stop the bleeding. You snapped your wrist, too."

Sam lifted his arms as much as he could. The right one felt heavier, and he saw the white cast weighing it down.

"And," Dean continued, "you topped those off with one hell of a concussion and so much bruising that your skin is more purple than it is white. You're looking at a pretty unpleasant recovery."

Sam shrugged. If he was going to be under their watch for the rest of his life anyway, it didn't matter how long it took him to recover. He wouldn't be allowed to do very much, regardless of whether he was healthy or healing.

"Why were you skipping school, Sam?" Dean asked. "Why'd you lie?"

Dean looked so broken when he asked, his voice cracking the slightest amount, and for each moment that Sam didn't answer, the despair in his eyes looked deeper.

"I'm sorry," Sam said, his words muffled by the oxygen mask.

A small smile spread on Dean's face, but it was far from happy. Far from his signature cocky grin. "I don't think you're sorry for the right things, Sammy."

He was sorry for a lot of things, but he couldn't stop repeating Dean's words in his head.

Was he sorry for the right things?


A nurse wheeled Amy into the room a few hours later.

John hadn't returned. Dean said that he was helping Bobby take care of the details for moving out of the apartment, but they didn't have enough belongings for it to take that long. He appreciated Dean trying to make him feel better by lying, but he knew it was more likely that John was at the bar, drinking away his anger.

Amy looked between him and Dean.

Dean smiled at her and said, "Hey, Amy. Thanks again for identifying Sam so we could find him."

Sam hadn't thought about how his family got there, but it made sense that Amy could give enough information to the hospital to find them. His school was right next to the park they were at, and his school had a list of real emergency contacts in case he broke down while there.

He wondered how different things could have turned out if one of those things were not true. Would he just have died without his family knowing until it was far too late?

Amy's smile was shaky and forced. When confronted by traffickers, she was confident and dangerous. In front of Dean, she was guarded and uncomfortable.

Sam wondered if he would become the same way, always having to be on guard because of hunters. Always having to be careful that no one saw the monster beyond his human facade.

"Dean, could we have a minute?" Sam asked.

Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam, but surprisingly didn't protest. "I guess I don't have to worry about either of you making a break for it," he said. "Ten minutes, Sam, and I'll be right in the hall the entire time."

Dean left and closed the door, but Sam almost expected that he'd have his ear pressed against it, trying to catch any bit of the conversations that he couldn't start because Sam wouldn't respond to his attempts.

Sam moved his oxygen mask off, hoping that his oxygen levels wouldn't drop low enough to draw attention. "I guess we'll have to talk softly," he said. "Dean's probably listening, or trying to."

"How are you holding up?" Amy asked.

Even though Sam was the one who got her into trouble (twice, now), she looked so sad.

"I'm not feeling much," Sam said. "Whatever they're giving me must be pretty good. What about you?"

"I'm glad you're feeling better, and I'll be fine. Dislocated shoulder and my leg is, well, busted. It all looked worse than it really was, and I'll be back to normal in a week or two. But that's not really what I meant."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, I know."

"So?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I mean, you saw my scars and everything. What happened back then and what happened to us is something that I'll never be able to forget. It'll always be there."

"Still sure you don't want to run away together?" she asked with a small, short-lived smile. "I don't think you want to stick around hunters, not after what I saw you do."

"They're still my family."

"What happens when they find out?" she asked. She kept her voice soft and calm, like she was trying to talk a child into being reasonable.

"Then, at least they'll give me a quick death," Sam said. "I'm sorry, Amy. I just can't go with you."

"I understand, Sam. I do. I just don't want to see you get hurt anymore," she said. She pulled out a little business card that she had tucked by her leg in the wheelchair. "This is one of the doctor's, but I wrote my cell phone number on the back. That phone is one of the few things I'm glad my mother forced me to have, even if they aren't all that popular yet. Promise me that you'll call if you ever need me."

"Yeah, I promise," he said.

Getting the card from her hand to Sam's took a little more effort on both of their parts than either would have liked (and Sam thought for a second that he might have torn a stitch or two in the process).

"Well," Amy said, "I'm going to try proving to the nurse that my shoulder is fine now and I can use crutches, then get out of here. I've pushed my luck a little too much already."

"Amy, I'm so sorry for everything."

"You don't have anything to be sorry for, Sam," she said. "I really wish the best for you."

They spent the rest of their ten minutes in comfortable silence. Maybe there was a lot left unsaid between them, but they both knew where they stood and that it wouldn't change.

And it wouldn't have to be a permanent goodbye, not when Sam now had a way to contact Amy at any time. He just hoped that Dean found his cell phone in his backpack back at the park.

Dean came back in the room. "Time's up, kids," he said.

He looked between them, and the large grin slid off of his face. Dean's mind probably went to all the wrong places, and Sam wondered if he realized that neither of them were in a condition to do much of anything other than sit or lay (despite the fact that Amy claimed she would be healed up quickly and her shoulder was already well enough for crutches).

Amy slipped her arm out of her sling and started wheeling herself to the door. "Maybe I'll see you around, Sam," she said.

"Yeah, maybe."

She disappeared from the room, and Sam wondered if they would see each other again, or if one of them would be killed before they got the chance.

Dean pulled his oxygen mask back over his nose and mouth. "Gotta leave this on, Sammy," he said. "It's helping you."

Dean took his normal seat beside the bed. "Have a nice chat?" he asked.

Sam shrugged. "It was okay."


Some moments left Dean wishing he could crack open Sam's head and see what was inside.

Sam was back to barely speaking, which meant that he also wasn't answering questions or explaining what the hell he was doing in the park and not in school in the first place. Dean expected setbacks in his recovery. He really had. But expecting something and experiencing it were two very different things.

Bobby came to sit with him and Sam. John hadn't been back yet, and Dean could only excuse his absence for so long.

"Dean or your daddy tell ya we'll be heading back to my place?" Bobby asked Sam.

Sam shook his head, and all it did was remind Dean once again that they were back to gestures instead of verbalization. For all intents and purposes, they were back at square one.

And that was not okay.

"A lot safer than sticking around here," Bobby said. "And I got a friend to track down one of those dreamcatchers you boys wanted."

Dean didn't want to get his hopes up, but if that dreamcatcher could be the one thing that works out for them, he'd appreciate it. He just wanted to be able to put one piece of Sam back together. He wasn't sure he'd be able to piece all of Sam together, but just one piece would be enough. It would be a start.

"Can't wait to try it out, Bobby," Dean said. "Ain't that right, Sammy?"

Sam didn't have the oxygen mask anymore, and that was a welcome sight. He still looked on the verge of death, but he was coming back from it. Unfortunately, despite the fact that there wasn't anything over his face that would muffle his words, but he kept them to himself most times.

He didn't even acknowledge Dean most times, and this was one of them.

"Don't worry about your dad, either," Bobby said. "He overreacts. We knew that we might not get Liu this time before we even came all the way down here. We'll keep trying, but your health is more important, Sam."

"Actually," Sam said, "I think I have a plan. To get Liu."

When he flicked his eyes towards Dean, then firmly focused them on his own hands, Dean knew that whatever the plan was, he wasn't going to like it.

He wasn't going to like it at all.


Author's Note: It's late. I'm sorry. My semester started and it ended up being a lot more stressful and busy than I first thought it would be, but I will continue to do my best and update as frequently as possible. Please continue to bear with me in the process.

Amy bows out for now, but Sam at least has a way to contact her this time.

Thank you to everyone who reads, reviews, follows, favorites! If you could leave a review before you go, I'd appreciate it. I thrive on them.