Supernatural and its characters are not mine.
Many thanks to Tyranusfan, Nana56, barkeep, Lisette, PissedOffEskimo, sasha2002, Faye Dartmouth, Annibal, carocali, Liz Bach, sugarquill4ron, SilverKitsune1, MistyEyes, bally2cute, Sara Wolfe, Onari, mtee1958, Harrigan and PadfootObsessed329 for their kind reviews! You guys are great.
Lisette: if my Dean seems more colourful than the real Dean, I like to think that's because we don't get to hear the real Dean's thought processes! I guess the episodes would be much longer if we did... (just like this fic is turning out to be...)
barkeep: thanks for the crit! It's much appreciated :).
Sorry for the delay in this chapter, guys. Looks like my muse decided it would be fun to play somewhere else for a week or so...
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But for the Grace, Chapter Ten
Dean jolted awake with a start. He felt like crap.
No, wait, he didn't feel like crap. That was weird. He was pretty sure he was supposed to feel like crap.
...why?
Something... something had happened and... he couldn't quite grasp the thought. He could almost see it, shiny and sort of purple for some reason, slithering away into the dark recesses of his mind as he tried for a tackle and ended up with a faceful of random memories.
...OK, he was obviously high. That was the only explanation. Maybe around now would be a good time to open his eyes.
Hm. White. Lots of white. Either he was in a snowstorm or a hospital, or maybe outside the universe, because when Dean was ten a teacher had explained the concept of the universe to him and he had been very worried about what might be outside it, until he figured that if the universe was endless black, then outside it would be white... wait.
Hospital.
Actually, that sounded like a more likely explanation than either snowstorm (not cold) or outside the universe (faster-than-light travel apparently not invented yet, and what the hell was taking those geeks at NASA so long anyway?). Especially given that his view was now starting to resolve itself into white walls, a white bed, and a woman in a white outfit (a nurse! God bless us, every one) staring at some chart.
Dean was in the bed. He was in bed, and there was a nurse.
Hey, wasn't Heaven supposed to be all white too?
OK, so if he was in Heaven (and God, that nurse's legs went all the way up, how could he not be?) then he must have died. That was why he didn't feel like crap, presumably. Probably you weren't supposed to feel like crap in Heaven. But what had he died of? And why did he feel like he ought to feel like crap? (Aside from the fact that actually, he spent a large proportion of his life feeling like crap for one reason or other.) He wondered if the nurse (angel) knew, and cleared his throat to ask her, only to find it felt oddly scratchy, not painful, but thick and hard work. The nurse looked up and smiled, but Dean wasn't paying attention any more, because the odd feeling in his throat brought back a flood of memories, of black eyes and a vice around his neck, of staggering through trees and burning ribs and Sam oh God Sam.
"Where's Sam?"
"Is that the young man you came in with?" the nurse asked, and when Dean nodded she said, "I'll go and find Doctor Hughes."
Then she was gone, and Dean didn't even enjoy the view of her backside swaying out of the room, because the last thing he remembered was arriving at the hospital and seeing his brother's unmoving body being pounced on by a swarm of doctor types before everything had gone black. Great, he had totally passed out in the ER. That was lame.
A short guy in a white coat appeared in the doorway and smiled warmly at Dean. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Marshall."
Marshall. Dean could vaguely remember one of the paramedics asking him his name. He had been completely fucking out of it. Looked like lying was another one of those things his body could manage without any input from his brain.
"Where's Sam? Is he OK?"
"Your friend's stable," the doctor said, examining Dean's chart. "He's sleeping now. Barring complications, we'll take him off the ventilator when he wakes up."
Ventilator. Shit. "I want to see him," Dean said, starting to sit up. His head felt like it might float away any time now, and Dean definitely did not want that to happen, because he didn't know how his body would see to catch up with it.
"Calm down," the doctor said with a gentle hand on his shoulder pushing him back down. "You need to rest."
"I need to see Sam," Dean insisted.
"He's not going anywhere. And neither are you. You have two cracked ribs and a concussion, not to mention serious bruising of your throat."
"I'm fine," muttered Dean, subsiding into the bed as a wave of light-headedness washed over him. Christ, whatever these doctors had pumped into him, it was good shit.
"You will be," the doc said, "with time and rest. You'll be pretty sore for a while, though. I've prescribed you painkillers to help with the worst of that, and we'll keep you in overnight for observation. After that, you'll be free to visit your friend, but I want you to take it easy until those ribs have had a chance to heal, OK?"
Dean grunted. He had had to deal with enough doctors in his time to have worked out by now that this was one of the ones that he should just agree with until he went away. Then he could sneak out to find Sam. The doctor seemed to take his response as a sign of submission, and leaned over to check out the bag of clear fluid that was attached to the back of Dean's hand via a long length of tube.
"So," he said, sounding casual, which made Dean's spine stiffen, "care to tell me what exactly happened?"
Oh, so it was that time already, was it? Dean had a stab at thinking fast, but right now the inside of his head felt kind of like the moon, you know, with zero gravity and thoughts kind of bouncing about all over the goddamn place. OK, Dean, get a grip. You were in the woods, so... "We were out hunting," he said, pleased to have made it as far as an actual coherent sentence, "and this... guy... jumped us."
The doctor raised an eyebrow. "A guy jumped you in the woods?"
Dean thought about woods. Usually they were full of... deer and bunnies and shit, not demons. No, wait, he hadn't said it was a demon, he'd said it was a guy. Yeah, well, why shouldn't there be a guy in the woods? There was no law against it. OK, so Dean didn't actually know there was no law against it, but you'd have to be an idiot to come up with a dumb law like that. "Yeah."
The doctor crossed to a cabinet and pulled out a clear plastic bag. Inside was Dean's gun. "This isn't exactly a hunting rifle."
Depends what you're hunting, thought Dean, but he said, "That's not mine. It was his."
"His?"
"The guy. The crazy guy in the woods. He tried to shoot us."
"Oh?" the doctor asked, still all casual like he was freakin asking about the weather or something. "How did you get away?"
Dean concentrated hard. He had to get his story to fit the facts, which were his injuries, the gun, the location. OK. Deep breaths. Stupid freakin painkillers. "He, uh, he was crazy. He was like, you know, like those guys you see on the street, kept going on about the end of days or some crap like that." That was good, details were good. Made it believable. "He pointed the gun at Sam and I wrestled it off him. Got pretty beat up doing it. Then Sam and me, we just ran."
"You didn't shoot him?"
Dean shook his head emphatically, then stopped because seriously, it actually really definitely was going to come off any time now. "Nah, man. I've never even used one of those things." He noticed the doctor was looking at him skeptically, and tried to work out why. Why would the doc assume he'd shot a guy that he'd just freakin made up?
Oh, right, the fact that his clothes looked like he'd been kicking back in a slaughterhouse might have something to do with it. Way to remember the important details, Dean.
"He was bleeding though," Dean said. "When he jumped us. It looked like he'd already gone a few rounds with someone else. He was covered in that shit. Total freakin horror show." He glanced up from under his lashes to see if the doc was buying it. He still looked kind of suspicious, but he put the gun down and squared his shoulders, and Dean thought that if nothing else, he'd bought them some time.
"I've got to say, I'm surprised your friend was happy to wander around in the woods, given his condition."
"Condition," Dean said slowly.
"Alcoholism," the doctor said bluntly. "I've never seen an alcoholic willingly separate himself from ethanol for long enough to cause seizures. Must have been some hunting trip."
You don't know the half of it. "Yeah, that. We, uh, we had some booze back at the cabin, but we got pretty turned around after we ran into the crazy dude. Lucky we managed to find the road when we did, really."
"So he's not being treated for his alcoholism?"
Dean felt his lips twist in a bitter smile. "He's... what's the word? Self-medicating."
The doctor nodded and sighed, and he looked like he'd seen a hundred of these cases and could remember the first name of every single one. Yup, he was the bleeding-heart type, all right. Probably the best kind of doc you could have, if your main aim was getting good treatment rather than getting the hell out of the hospital before anyone noticed your insurance was faked. And he was very obviously concerned about Sam.
"Listen," he said, leaning forward slightly, like he was a freakin teenage girl about to spill the goods on his crush or something. "I really don't want to see that young man leave the hospital without getting him into a programme. I know it's difficult, but... I can keep him here for a couple of days, find some excuse not to discharge him, if you'll try and persuade him for me."
Dean pulled back a little. Wow, this guy totally had the wrong idea about where Dean stood on this issue. "I dunno, doc, if he doesn't want to..." he started, but the doctor cut him off.
"Mr. Marshall, alcoholism is a very serious condition. Your friend could very well die, and even if he doesn't, his quality of life will be seriously affected. Do you want that on your conscience?"
Dean was pretty much floored. Bleeding heart or no, this guy knew how to pull out the big guns, and Dean realised he kind of reminded him of Sam, his Sam. Yeah, the easiest way to get the hell out of this mess was definitely going to be to agree to whatever this crazy care-bear Stalin wanted, and then sneak off when he was looking the other way (which, when he came to think about it, was pretty much how he dealt with Sam too). He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'll talk to him."
The doctor straightened up, looking satisfied. "Thank you. OK, I'll be back to check on you in a few hours."
Dean watched him go. A few hours. That was plenty of time to find Sam.
----
Hospitals really needed to get a new colour scheme, Dean decided as he made his way along yet another echoing corridor. In fact, they could do with doing a whole image consultancy thing. Puke green combined with too much white was making his head hurt. It was like being stuck inside a can of pea soup and sour cream, and actually, pea soup and sour cream sounded disgusting enough that Dean had to stop for a moment to pull himself together. Or maybe that was just the painkillers wearing off.
Freakin hospital was too freakin big, as well. He'd manage to score some scrubs from a biowaste bin (OK, so rooting through containers that had Potential Biohazard on the side in ominous letters wasn't necessarily the smartest way to go about things, but Dean's brain wasn't exactly working at optimum capacity or whatever right now), but he was still too wary of being caught to just ask where his brother was. Didn't help that he couldn't remember what name he'd checked him in under.
So, ICU, right? Because Sam was on a ventilator (ventilator), and that sounded like the sort of thing that would happen in an ICU. Goddamn hospital maps were completely freakin useless, and Dean had been back along this corridor three times already (or at least, a corridor which looked exactly like this one, though that wasn't saying much, because in Dean's experience hospital décor was not exactly overflowing with originality), and he was beginning to worry that he wasn't going to find Sam at all when he peered into a room and saw a familiar mop of hair. Yahtzee.
And then there was the thing: Sam was on a ventilator, and if Dean had been freaked out by hearing about that, he was ready to put his fist through a wall now that he could actually see it. It was hideous, was what it was, like a freaking accordion pumping air into Sam's lungs, and it had really got to that point, where Sam couldn't even breathe for himself, and of all the things Dean could do for him that was not one of them. The goddamn machine had taken his job, and left him with nothing but guilt.
"Sam," he muttered, coming closer to the bed. Sam looked worse than he had back in the woods, eyelids looking bluish, mouth slightly open, the tube of the ventilator pulling down on his lower lip. Son of a bitch.
Dean cleared his throat. "Just so you know, we're not going to have a touching bedside scene, here," he said. "And I'm totally gonna kick your ass when you wake up, OK? But I pretty much need you to do that now, because I think the doc might have called the police." He waited. Sam ignored him. The ventilator hissed. It was all pretty much par for the course.
"OK, well," Dean shrugged. "I guess we gotta do this the hard way." He grabbed Sam by the shoulders and shook him, hard. He'd seen enough daytime hospital soaps to know that wasn't what you were supposed to do with comatose patients (but what you were supposed to do was cry and tell them how much you loved them and how sorry you were for accidentally sleeping with their evil twin or stealing their freakin goat or whatever, damn, those shows were all the same, and that was definitely not going on Dean's agenda for the afternoon), but he figured this was an emergency situation. If the cops found the guy in the mansion, or even just wanted to take their fingerprints for having an unlicensed gun, Sam might as well kiss his law school career goodbye. Dean figured this Sam's life was fucked-up enough already as it was, without narrowing his options even further (not to mention the possibility of jail time, and no matter how much of a hardass this Sam might be, Dean was not about to see him in leg-irons). So, shaking it had to be.
At first Sam just flopped about like he was on drugs or something (and Dean eyed the IV bags and figured that actually he was, lots and lots of drugs), but after a moment or two his eyelids fluttered, and seconds later he came to. Of course, Dean hadn't bothered to think about the fact that he had a freakin tube shoved down his throat (well, aside from the requisite ER-style moment of horror when he walked in, of course), so when Sam started flailing and choking and all kinds of alarms went off, he decided it was time to beat a strategic retreat before someone realised that, scrubs or no scrubs, he wasn't exactly acting like a health-care professional.
He made it out of the door and round the corner moments before the first flurry of activity reached Sam's room. He was too far away to hear what was going on, but he hoped the doc had been serious when he said he would take Sam off the ventilator when he woke up, because OK, Dean could do CPR and stitch gashes and knew the difference between a head injury that rated a hospital visit and one that was probably fixable with a couple of pills and something to throw up into, but he wasn't about to go fucking around with the machine that was helping his brother breathe. And if Sam didn't come off the thing, they couldn't get the hell out of Dodge, and that could cause a few problems, which, given that almost everything that Dean could possibly think of had already gone wrong that week, might be a few too freakin many.
After a while, he heard the sound of people talking quietly while moving away, and moved back to the room. It was empty except for Sam, who was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, looking like the freakin Crow or something but mercifully ventilator-free. Dean wondered how long he'd been gone from his room, and moved to check Sam's chart. After squinting for a while to read the doc's handwriting (seriously, the guy should get together with whatever idiot wrote that book Dean had been trying to read back at Jim's and run a workshop on writing with your feet or something), he made a mental note of the drugs Sam had been prescribed, especially the ones next to the comment for alcohol detox, and moved over to the bed.
"Hey, Sammy," he said, touching his brother's shoulder. "Time to get up now. School starts in half an hour."
It was a joke he'd used a few times on Sam since the two of them had gone back on the road, and it never failed to get him a sleepy scowl and a swat on the arm. Of course, this Sam had never been woken like that by Dean, even when he really had been at school. Still, Dean's head still felt like it was full of cotton wool, and he wasn't exactly on full scintillating form.
Sam opened one eye. "What the fuck, Dean?" His voice was raw and whispery, but the anger was unmistakable. Huh. Looked like Sam didn't need the background info to be pissed off by that joke, then.
"Not exactly the reunion I was hoping for, but beggars can't be choosers, right?"
Sam shifted and sat up. "Why am I here?" he asked, and this time Dean caught both the slurring and the fear beneath the anger. Hospital. Sam was scared of hospitals.
"Couldn't help it, Sam. You stopped breathing. But we're out of here right now, OK? Think you can walk?"
Sam blinked a couple of times then swung his legs over the side of the bed, movements sluggish. "Head feels... weird," he said.
Yeah, I know what that feels like. Dean glanced around the room, spotted a closet and crossed to it. Sam's clothes lay packaged in plastic inside, stiff with reddish-brown blood. He shoved them in the bag with his own stuff (the doc had swiped the goddamn gun, though, and God knew where he was gonna get the money to spring for a replacement, although actually, since it was Jim's gun, maybe God really did know) and pulled out the spare set of scrubs he had brought. Potential biohazard was right. They freakin stank. Still, at least they didn't look like they'd just been extras in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "Put these on," he said, tossing them over to Sam, who was still perched on the edge of the bed. "Follow my lead."
Sam struggled into the blue drawstring pants OK, but had a little trouble when it came to putting on the shirt. Dean, standing watch by the door, glanced over to see him growl in frustration and dump the offending item on the bed. "Dean, 'm tied to the bed," he said.
It was the IV that was causing the trouble. Sam tugged at them and then winced, and Dean thought that his brother was more out of it than he'd realised (which, considering he'd just woken Sam up from a drug-induced unconscious state brought on by a near-death experience, was actually no freakin surprise). Dean crossed the room quickly, extracting the IV from the back of Sam's hand as gently as he could given the clumsiness of his fingers (and next time he wound up in the sick-house, he was so not letting them give him whatever they'd given him this time. Unless he had, like, a week to spare and some good buddies to share it with), and then handing him the shirt again. "Let's do this thing, little man," he said.
Sam shrugged the shirt on, then slipped off the bed, wobbling until Dean caught his arm. He itched to put his arm around his brother and support him, the way he always did when Sam was hurting (in a manly way, of course), but they weren't exactly going to look like a couple of doctors if they were leaning on each other like a couple of old grandmas (wounded war heroes, dammit), since the whole doctors getting beat up by patients thing probably didn't happen too often outside General Hospital (not that Dean ever watched that show, obviously). "You gonna be OK to walk?" Dean asked, and Sam took a step and nodded. It would be OK. All they had to do was get to the parking lot.
Of course, as soon as they exited the room and turned towards the main bank of elevators, Dean saw a couple of cops talking to a nurse at the end of the corridor. Shit. That as just absolutely freakin typical. OK, Dean had wandered up and down this goddamn hospital fifteen times already, he ought to be able to work out an alternate route without too much hassle. Of course, there was the issue that his head still freakin felt like it was going to come off at the slightest provocation, which made creating a map of the hospital in his mind's eye a little more tricky than it might otherwise have been, not to mention the fact that every goddamn corridor looked exactly the same (seriously, it was like one of those behind-the-scenes shows Dean had seen once where they had only one set and they just kept changing the furniture, only Dean was pretty sure he would have noticed if there had been hordes of techies running around with bedpans and gurneys and unconscious people or whatever every time he turned his back – he may have been drugged up, but he wasn't completely oblivious). OK, well, the cops were on the right, so that at least made the decision a little easier.
"Left," he hissed to Sam, who clearly hadn't got the memo about avoiding the long arm of the law. He hurried Sam down the corridor with a hand on his arm, only breathing easier when they'd turned the corner and were out of the cops' line of view. He glanced sideways at Sam to see him looking pale and tense.
"Hey, you OK?"
Sam nodded without looking at him. He was sweating slightly, and a muscle twitched in his jaw.
"You sure? You look like crap."
"I'm fine, Dean, would you just drop it?" Sam snapped under his breath, and Dean took in the way his hands were clenched and decided that this wasn't a sign of an oncoming seizure (thank fucking God), it was something else, it was that thing, the thing he'd thought earlier (Jesus Christ, when was this fucking drug going to get the hell out of his system?), oh yeah, Sam was scared of hospitals. Well, there was pretty much nothing Dean could do about that except try and get them out of there as fast as may be, so he kept his hand on Sam's elbow and steered him towards what he thought might have been the most serendipitous service elevator he'd ever seen. Not that that was what Dean called it in his head, of course. And if he did, it was the drugs talking. Seriously, serendipitous? What did that even mean?
They made it out of the hospital without further incident, which was pretty much the most successful any mission of Dean's had been for a while, and he was willing to take his luck where he could get it. Right now, he was feeling blessed because his bundle of clothes contained not only his wallet, with enough in it for the cab fare out to where the Impala was hidden, but also the goddamn ugly priceless art treasure that he'd almost forgotten about, thrust in the inside pocket of his jacket with an expired betting slip (shit, he knew he'd totally put a bet on that fight, goddamn, there was twenty bucks he was never going to see again) and an impressive quantity of lint. OK, so maybe the gods weren't exactly smiling, but at least they weren't doing the whole death-glare thing any more. For now.
The Impala was where they'd left it, covered in random leaves and branches and crap and looking none the worse for wear for its night out in the woods (which was more than you could say for its owner, whichever one you wanted to pick right now). Dean's head was beginning to clear, which was definitely a good thing, but his ribs and throat were beginning to ache again, which was kind of annoying. Neither he nor Sam was wearing any shoes, and when Dean went through the stuff he'd brought from the hospital, he could only find one of his boots. That was freakin weird. Who the hell steals one boot from some unconscious guy in a hospital? He remembered a time he'd run up against a spook with a thing for women's shoes, but at least that damn thing had always gone the whole hog. This was just amateurish. And also? Kinda creepy.
Shit. He'd left his boot on the freakin road. Well, there was nothing he could do about that right now, and after a little bit of practice he decided that it was easier to drive barefoot than with one shoe off and one shoe on. If Sam thought anything of all his general footwear manoeuvring, he didn't say anything about it, but then, he hadn't said much about anything since back in the hospital, and Dean figured he was still pretty much out of it. That was OK. It kind of made things easier.
The next stop was the motel. Dean was relieved he'd paid for two nights, and dodged into the room to grab their stuff. Everything was still laid out ready for the spell, and the place stunk to freakin high heaven. Jesus Christ, what the hell was it with bats and their goddamn blood? It was just wrong that something that came out of a freakin flying rat or whatever could smell that bad. Plus, Dean was pretty sure that if he'd had any intention of sticking around to check out at the appropriate time, he would have been saddled with a hefty cleaning bill to get the stench out of the soft furnishings. Even though he was planning on skipping out, he still felt vaguely outraged on his own behalf. Freakin bats.
When he got back in the car after shoving the stuff in the back, Sam glanced over at him and wrinkled his nose. "Dude, you reek."
"I'm not the one wearing a potential biohazard," Dean muttered, which wasn't strictly true, because he still had his scrubs on under his jacket, but it wasn't like Sam didn't have a little eau de gross about him too. Seemed like drugged up and stinky was the order of the day. Well, it was better than dead in a forest clearing.
"What?" Sam asked, kind of slow, like he was speaking underwater or something.
"Never mind," Dean said, and reversed out of the parking lot. Witty banter was definitely off the menu until the drugs worked their way out of Sam's system. In the meantime, Spokane was definitely no longer the place to be. They needed somewhere quiet to hole up and regroup, somewhere where they hadn't just ripped off a priceless piece of crap and left the owner dead on the floor. Also, they needed a pharmacy, preferably one that was closed, which, given that it was getting towards evening, shouldn't be too tough. Even when he was feeling about as compos mentis as roadkill, Dean remembered the name of the detox drug from Sam's chart, because some things were too important to forget, like your name, the name you were checked in under, where you left your car keys and your gun, and the medicine that might save your brother's life.
In the end, the pharmacy wasn't too tough. Dean found one on a back street that was closed and had an alarm that a kid could've handled (well, at any rate, he could've handled it when he was a kid), grabbed a couple of bottles of Sam's pills plus some painkillers that wouldn't knock him on his ass, and got back out to the car and Sam in record time. "Here," he said, thrusting the bottle at Sam. "Take two."
Sam fumbled with the childproof cap for a couple of seconds, then dropped the pills into his hand and swallowed them without asking what they were. It was weird, because it was really handy how Sam was being so obedient and easy to deal with, but every time he did something without arguing or even making a snarky remark, Dean felt his stomach twist. He knew it was just the drugs, and that Sam would be back to his normal, pain-in-the-ass self once they wore off, but each moment of silent acquiescence made an image flash before his eyes of Sam lying like a freakin wax doll in that clearing with no breath in his lungs.
Thoughts like that were really not helpful. Dean put it out of his mind, trying to come up with something else (wax doll New York Dolls punk heavy metal Metallica) but the damn image kept coming back (OK, wax doll House of Wax Paris Hilton sex tape porn, hey, that was a good one). Growling softly to himself, he pulled out onto the highway and headed out of Spokane.
Somewhere about fifty miles later, when Dean was sure that Sam had drifted off (wax doll blow up doll sex toys strippers, yeah, he was definitely getting better at this), a quiet voice sounded from the passenger seat.
"Dean... the things he said..."
Dean took a moment to get himself together, but only a moment. "It wasn't a he, it was an it. And demons lie, Sam. That's what they do. None of that crap was true, you hear me?"
Sam sort of turned, but from his sluggish movements and the fact that his eyes were still a little unfocussed, Dean could tell he wasn't with it yet. "How do you know? You don't even know me."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I only lived with you your entire freakin life."
"Not me," Sam muttered, and Dean wasn't even sure why he'd said it the way he had, except that Sam was Sam, maybe a little more twisted and bruised, but Sam nonetheless.
"You're not so different," he said.
Sam went quiet, and Dean looked over to see his head was lolling a little, though his eyes were still open, glazed but watching Dean. He tapped his hand on the steering wheel and ground his teeth a little, thought about trying to find a classic rock radio station, thought about how much he hated driving in the rain (not that it was raining, but it was something to think about, right?) and finally blew out a breath and bit the bullet.
"I know him too, you know," he said, wondering if Sam would remember this conversation in the morning, kind of hoping he wouldn't. "He loved you. I know he did."
Sam shifted and swallowed a couple of times. His head lolled over to the other side, facing out of the window, and Dean didn't know whether it was intentional or not. He didn't answer, and Dean figured he might as well finish what he had to say.
"There's no excuse for what he did," he said tentatively, because even though Dad was a universe away and hadn't ever hit Sam in anger, it felt disloyal to speak about him like this. "But I know he loved you."
For a while, Dean thought that maybe Sam had drifted off and hadn't heard what he said at all. Maybe it was better that way, except that demons were experts at finding your exact weak spots, your most painful insecurities, and ripping them open, and Dean didn't want Sam to go on thinking that their dad wished he was dead. And then Sam spoke again, his voice muffle and still raspy from the ventilator.
"I don't hate him, Dean. Sometimes... sometimes it was good with us. Jess thought I ought to, but... I never hated him."
Dean didn't know what to say to that. He felt his throat constrict, and a weird sense of relief, like he'd been waiting for that all this time, waiting for Sam's absolution for their father (for Dean). "How come?" he asked, and told himself his voice was rough because he'd just been choked half to death twelve hours ago.
Sam sort of sighed, and his shoulders twitched, but he didn't turn towards Dean. "He was my dad," he said.
A roadsign flashed by, announcing their approach to the state line. Dean took a deep breath and drove on into the dark.
----
"Hey," said Sam, looking up from the book he was reading. It was past nine o'clock, and they'd been on the road for hours, stopping at a gas station for junk food and to change their clothes in the filthy bathroom, but otherwise just driving, kind of back in the direction of Blue Earth, but really mostly aimlessly. Dean still didn't feel safe enough to stop and find a motel to do the spell in. At least, that was what he told himself.
"What?" Dean asked, turning the radio down. Sam had been growing steadily less dopey, and the haze in Dean's head was almost entirely gone, replaced with a bone-deep ache that the more conventional painkillers he'd ripped off from the pharmacy didn't quite manage to quell.
"I found a passage about demons in here," Sam said, waving the book at him. Dean barely recognised it as the stiff, shiny new paperback they'd bought the day before. It looked like it had already been read fifteen times, its cover battered and dog-eared like it had been chewed on by a freakin puppy or something. Dean had a sudden image of Sam chewing enthusiastically on books of ancient rituals and stifled a laugh.
"Oh yeah? What did those sumo wrestler guys have to say about ol' black-eyes and his pals, huh?"
"Sumerians," Sam said. "Listen: 'The demons are immortal, but they require allies. They seek not to bond, but to subjugate. Those who could destroy them are those who will fight under them, for the tools are immortal but they are poured into mortal shape.'"
Dean thought about this. "Great. Everything's suddenly crystal clear."
Sam shook his head. "I'm not finished. 'The tools are the ploughshare and the sword, the hammer and the loom. The demons do not understand the complexity of creation, for they seek only to destroy, and only those tools of keen edge are sought by them. They shall have dominion over the sword and the axe, the arrow and the spear, until the day the sword is forged anew and brought into the world beneath a shield. On that day the crows will gather, and war will be foretold.'"
"Jeez," Dean muttered. "Didn't anyone ever teach these guys how to speak English?"
The pause that followed this was so long that Dean looked over to Sam, who was staring at him, unblinking. "What?"
"Nothing," Sam said, looking back at the book. "I just thought you were joking."
"Yeah, well, I ain't," Dean started, and was going to add something about freakin prophecies and their lame-ass melodrama when Sam grunted and hunched over, screwing his eyes shut, and Dean decided they had some bigger problems than some dead crazy seer guys from a few thousand years ago.
It was lucky the verge of the road they were on was grassy and soft, because Sam fell out of the car as soon as Dean opened the door, and Dean's reflexes were still too shot from drugs and pain to catch him before he hit. He groaned, curling in on himself, jerked a couple of times, and then went stiff in that way that was becoming all too goddamn familiar, and started staring at nothing, his eyes moving rapidly. Dean sat anxiously next to him and kept a hand on his arm, as much for his own sake as for Sam's.
When it was done, Sam rolled over and quietly threw up in the grass. Dean kept a hand on the back of his neck and hated everything that had brought him to this moment. Cars flew by on the road, and neither brother moved.
Finally, Sam struggled to a sitting position. "It's bad," he said. "It's bad."
Dean felt his stomach lurch. He almost didn't dare ask, but he did anyway. "What is it?"
Sam closed his eyes, started to shake his head and then winced and stopped. "He's having visions. All the time, one after another. I could... see them." He looked like he might throw up again at the memory. "He can't... break free from them."
If Dean hadn't already been sitting on the ground, he thought he probably would have collapsed. "That's why he's in the nuthouse," he said, not even remembering to sugarcoat his words (and at this point, sugarcoating really was pretty low on his list of priorities).
Sam looked miserable. "I think so."
Dean chewed the inside of his lip. "How did he seem?"
It was a long time before Sam answered, and when he did he didn't look Dean in the eye. "He's not calling for you any more," he said finally.
Dean gave himself one more minute, allowed himself that much time to break down, and then pulled himself together and clambered to his feet. "Come on," he said, reaching down and hauling Sam up, ignoring the protest in his ribs. "We need to find a motel and do this thing."
----
If the bat's blood still stank, it didn't register on Dean's senses. He felt both utterly lost and more filled with purpose than he had since he had woken up to find Sam gone. His doubt was still there, flaring up every time he saw Sam watching him, and he knew he should say something, should somehow make it right, make sure Sam would be OK once he had gone. But he was afraid to start, because what if the answer was no, what if Sam wasn't going to be OK, and what the hell could he do about it? Every time he closed his eyes he saw his Sam lying alone in an institution with the deaths of strangers searing into his brain. He couldn't not go. He couldn't.
Sam painted a curving line across his bare back, and Dean suppressed the urge to shiver at the touch. "Make sure you follow the diagram exactly," he said.
Sam grunted, but didn't reply. Dean didn't even want to analyse that. There was no point making it even worse. All the same, he was freakin antsy as hell (well, he was about to try and transfer between realities without a freakin warp-drive or wormhole to his name, so he had the right, really), and he couldn't stop himself as he looked around the complex circle they'd drawn on the floor from saying, "Sam, you hear me? We've only got one chance, it'd better be right."
"I'm doing it, OK?" Sam snapped. "You're the one who... Jesus."
Dean frowned, wanting to twist to get a view of Sam but afraid to mess up the freakish forest of curlicues and freakin bunny rabbits he was drawing on Dean's back. "You OK?"
"Yeah, I just... still got a headache from earlier, that's... fuck."
There was a heavy thud behind him, and Dean did turn now, because he had heard the sound of six-foot-four of Sam Winchester hitting the ground often enough to recognise it instantly. Sam was twitching, and for a horrible moment Dean thought it was a seizure again, and his brain was screaming not now not again can't do this can't help them both when Sam started doing the vacant stare thing and Dean realised it was another vision. Another one. Christ.
And if it was another vision so soon after the last, what did that mean? Was it another vision of his Sam? Did that mean something had changed? Jesus Christ, when did the visions ever take this long anyway?
And then Sam came out of it, pupils blown, blinking and gasping, and the words he whispered made Dean feel like he was falling from a great height.
"You're too late," he said. "You're going to be too late."