Chapter 10 – Boys and their fancies

A/N #1: Chapter title taken from Not While I'm Around, by Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd).

A/N #2: This is an extra chapter to this story, written quickly and unbeta'd. Dean has a decision to make about living or dying. Yeah. The small stuff. Speaking of Sam, well he cusses quite a lot and there's that bit at the end of the chapter that everybody wanted to see. You guys are evil. That's why I love you.

Repeat after me: this is not a death fic.

Okay. We're good. We can go now.

Disclaimer: This is for entertainment purposes only, not profit.

John and Bobby did what they could. They doused Dean with two gallon jugs of holy water, followed by two more jugs, from head to toe, of holy water mixed with an infusion of rosemary and vervain herb. They rubbed it all into his skin, washed him clean of the ash and blood and excess poison on his bruised and slashed skin.

Too little, too late.

The fever inside Dean smoldered too deeply to be put out. It flared up again, in his skin, in the air all around him, no matter what Dad and Bobby did. Dean turned his face up towards the night sky, watched the glowing orange embers of his self float skyward. The amulet Sam gave him that Christmas when they were young kids glowed warm and sunbright against Dean's skin. It wouldn't burn, or melt.

At least, Dean hoped it wouldn't. Sam could wear it after he was gone.

Bobby and John worked on him, and Dean barely felt the ground beneath his feet. He couldn't understand why Dad and Bobby didn't catch fire when they touched him.

"Hospital," Bobby mouthed through the heat shimmer.

Dean stared at him dully, swayed on his feet as Dad held him upright from behind.

"… thirty minutes away..."

Everything was in slow motion now. Dean understood. He was moving from this plane of being to the next.

Bobby knew the truth of it before John did. Dean could see it in Bobby's eyes, through that wavering shimmer of warmth that blazed in the air all around him. They didn't know enough about the poison the Handmaidens used, hadn't expected Dean to get slashed this bad.

Better me than Dad. My fault. Gotta pay for my mistake. Dean held onto that thought, even as Dad and Bobby wrapped him up in more blankets and placed him in the front bench of the Impala like he was a fragile, useless thing. It was the last thing Dean ever wanted. Wasn't Dad's fault. He hadn't twisted Dean's arm. Bobby and Dad wouldn't have to do any of this at all if Dean had followed orders like he was supposed to. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't right.

He didn't want to be a burden to anybody.

Wanna say goodbye, Dean thought dully, and the fever in his body lessened. Just a little.

Sam knew. He knew before he opened his eyes. Pastor Jim had gone downstairs for something, and when Sam opened his eyes he saw Dean sitting on the other bed.

Dean was here, and yet he really wasn't. He was bare-chested and barefoot. Sam's eye slid over the fine grey ash that covered his brother's body, the slash marks and the scratches. The bloody jeans. Sam's expression soured and Dean flinched.

He hadn't wanted to appear to Sam looking like this.

Sam's eyes narrowed as he sat up on the other bed. "You're not coming back."

"Sammy, don't be mad at me, huh?"

"I told Dad. I told him. Come back with you alive and well or don't come back at all. It was a half-assed plan, and you know it, Dean."

"I volunteered for this. It's my fault that I'm…"

"Dying? Or dead?" Sam snapped. He leaned forward and Dean just sat there, dejected, head slightly bowed. "Which is it, huh? And you thought that coming back to say goodbye would make me feel better?" Sam huffed in disbelief. "Well, I got news for you, Dean. It doesn't make me feel better. It doesn't. Only thing that would make me feel better would be seeing you walk through that door. Alive."

Dean sat there, silent.

"You're gonna leave me here with Dad." It was a simple statement of fact.

"Dad'll be here. You'll do fine. You both will. Don't start with me about Dad, Sammy," Dean said darkly. He raised his head and looked his brother in the eye.

"Why the fuck shouldn't I?"

"Watch the mouth there, dude."

"Why? You won't be around after this. When did you start caring? Asshole."

"I screwed up," Dean mumbled. "Didn't do what Dad told me to do." He looked down at the floor again, at his feet. Damn. Bitch really did a number on him down there.

"So? So what? Dad should've played bait, not you. What the hell kind of father lets his kids live like this anyway?"

"Sam…"

"I mean it, Dean. We live on the road, go from town to town. It was bad enough before, when Dad was the only one hunting, but now he's got you out there too." There was something, a tremor in Sam's voice that made Dean finally look up.

Damn. It was those puppy eyes of Sam's, something he used when he wanted his way about something. Usually it was a put-on, and they both knew it, but Dean always caved anyway. This time, though, it was real. There was desperation and rage and over all that, sadness. Sam's face was streaked with tears. "Don't do this to me, Dean. Don't. You can't die. You can't."

"Sammy, I don't have a choice."

"Yes, you do!" Sam made a motion forward, then stopped himself. There was a part of him that was dead calm, that watched all of this coolly and remotely. Don't touch him, that part said. Don't. You touch him and he'll disappear. You know the lore.

Dean shook his head. No.

"Bullshit! That's bullshit! You have a choice, Dean. You always have a choice! You think you failed Dad, and now you have to pay the price? Dude, how fucked up is that?" Sam's voice softened. "Don't leave me, Dean. I'm begging you. Don't. Please. Please."

Dean was becoming transparent now. He sat there bruised and bloodied, dusted with grey ash from the tips of his hair to the soles of his feet, and Sam could see straight through him, see the beige wallpaper on the wall behind him.

Sam cursed and Sam raged. He used every curse word he knew, and there were quite a lot of them, in Latin, ancient Sumerian, and English. He pleaded and he begged, and after a while Dean finally faded into thin air.

The air rumbled in Dean's ears when he finally came back to himself. It was the girl's engine, steady and dependable, the whisper of the road underneath her tires. Seemed like he'd spent all his life on the road. Be a fitting place to end it.

"Dean? Stay with me, son. Stay with me."

"D-Dad?"

The skin around John's eyes crinkled, like they always did when he smiled. It was a weak smile. Dean barely felt Dad's hand on his shoulder. It was a distant weight, nothing to hold him down.

Or keep him here.

"Dad…" Dean whispered hoarsely. "…didn't mean…to fuck…everything up…"

"You didn't. Dean, you didn't."

"Gave me an order. Didn't…follow through…"

John's eyes widened at the tone of Dean's voice. He'd heard that before, that same tired resignation in other men's voices. In other countries, across the seas.

Dean was giving up. His son was giving up. John knew that Dean sometimes got some weird ideas into that head of his. John never could figure out from where. John knew things bothered Dean more than the kid let on. That smart ass act was all an act. It was a shield, to keep him from being damaged more than he already was.

John pulled over on the shoulder of the road. He lightly ran his hand over Dean's forehead. It was like touching a hot oven; heat radiated out from the kid in waves. St. Mary's Hospital was twenty minutes out. The smart play would have been to put his lead foot down on the gas, break every damn speed and traffic law in existence to get Dean to the ER.

They'd arrive in twenty minutes. Dean would be gone by then. Dead.

John didn't know how he knew that, he just did.

John held Dean in his arms, rested his cheek against the top of Dean's head.

"I…see… mom…"

No.

"…she…looks…sad…"

"It's not your time, Ace. It's not. You gotta work with me on this one, kiddo. You got to."

"'m tired."

"I know you are. I know." John hugged him even closer. "Don't leave me alone with Sammy. He's a handful as it is." John chuckled. "I'm …I'm not in Sam's good books right now. If you don't come home with me alive and well there'll be hell to pay."

Mary, please…

"Mom's...mad at me…" Dean said faintly. "Sammy...too."

"They're not mad at you, Dean. They're sad. Folks say and do weird things when they're sad. We don't wanna lose you. I know your mom is glad to see you, but she's sad too."

"..dun't wanna…be…burden…'fraid I'll screw up….get you killed…" Dean sighed wearily. A sound like that had no business coming from an eighteen year old. "…better…this…way…"

Please, babe, help me. Don't let them take our boy…

"You got the wrong idea, Dean." Stay calm, you bastard. Stay calm."You think I'm perfect. Some kind of big damn hero? I'm not. Son, I…I screw up all the time. I try to keep the mistakes to zero when I hunt. That's because I want to come back to you and Sam when it's over and done. You boys are one of the two best things I've ever done in life. The other best thing I ever did was to marry your mom." John stared down at Dean, watched Dean blink slowly as he breathed in and out. Dean's eyes were dulled with fever; he stared blankly at something --- someone --- John couldn't see.

Mary, if you can hear me, help me…

Dean gave another hitching sigh that seemed to drain him completely. He closed his eyes.

Please…

"I couldn't…I can't live without you, Dean. Sammy can't either. Your mother doesn't want you to join her. If she did, she wouldn't look so sad," John rumbled softly. "Sam and I need you, kiddo. We do. Stay here with us, Dean. Stay. I love you, son. I do."

Hello, sweetie. I love you.

Mom, Dean breathed.

Sam knew Pastor Jim was watching him. Had been for the past three days now. Pastor Jim talked to Sam after he hung up the phone from John, but in Sam's mind that didn't let John off the hook. Nothing would or could.

Sam ate breakfast silently and after he was finished he cleaned up the kitchen, put everything back in its proper place. Today was the day. Sam went to John's room upstairs, and he found what he needed in John's closet.

Two hours later John Winchester pulled up in front of the rectory.

Dean Winchester rode shotgun.

Sam didn't miss one detail. Not one.

Even from a distance Dean looked washed out, tired. That t shirt, jacket and faded blue jeans he wore hung loose and baggy on him in all the wrong places. He wore dark sunglasses. Sam couldn't see his eyes, and that made him feel uneasy somehow.

Dean didn't move as John got out. John had his game face on: calm, inscrutable.

So did Sam.

John rounded the front of the Impala, opened the passenger side door and helped Dean out. Dean stood there leaning heavily on his father, wobbling on his feet, unsteady and weak.

Fourteen year old Sam Winchester sat on Jim Murphy's front steps, cradling a modified sawed off shotgun loaded with rock salt.

Plenty of Hurt!Dean and Winchester angst in the next chapter, which will be posted on Wednesday. After that, possibly an epilogue. I really appreciate all the reviews and alerts. Thanks!