A/N: Vivi here! I have a feeling that this chapter is highly anticipated by a lot of readers, so here you go! Just a few things before we get started. I wanted to send a shoutout to SpnKsl5 and Happygoddess2003 for their awesome reviews! Thanks guys, it means a lot! Also, I'm nearing the end of writing this story at the moment; this chapter will be about 54,000 words into our narrative, but the whole story will end up being about 92,000. I didn't anticipate it being so long, but the plot need it, so I listened. Also, I'm thinking about a second story following some loose-ended plot points from this one. Let me know what you think as the story progresses! For now, enjoy the latest chapter of Internal Medicine.
I woke with a start as Dean moved quite suddenly in his sleep. It was pitch black in the room but I could still hear his congested breathing and feel his heartbeat. Comforted, my eyelids started to close. Then they shot open.
His heartbeat was way too slow. Something was wrong. I reached over and turned on my desk lamp. Looking back to Dean, I gasped and adrenaline began pumping through my body, spiking my heartrate. It took me a few seconds of stunned silence to realize that the man in the bed next to me was Dean. The old Dean. Our Dean.
"D-Dean?" I said as my stupor subsided.
He had been lying on his back, as I made him do when he was a toddler. He groaned and rolled over to lie on his stomach, head tilted away from me and the desk lamp. I shook his shoulder gently and called his name again. He still had a fever and was radiating heat.
"Eh?" He grunted, mostly asleep.
"Dean? You in there?" I asked as my heartbeat slowly began to decline.
"Damn straight." He muttered. I sat up and looked him over, but most of him was still covered by sheets. Nothing looked particularly out of place.
"Dean, wake up." I said.
"No…" He whined. I punched his shoulder gently, but with more force than I'd use on a toddler. "What the hell…" He turned to look at me with confusion in his eyes.
We locked gazes and I spoke with a smirk on my lips. "I don't like strange men in my bed."
I watched as the gears started to turn in his head. He looked down at his arms and his eyes grew wide. "Li, am I…?"
"You're a big boy now." I smiled, knowing that somehow Sam and Cas had broken Fisher's curse.
Dean smiled hugely and sat up, checking himself over. His nose was still running and was bright red from all the tissues we'd used but otherwise, he looked fine. He was, however, naked and covered only by my plaid flannel sheets. I stood and went to his room to grab his robe.
"Thanks." He said as I tossed it to him.
"Welcome back, Dean." I said, sitting on the edge of my bed and averting my eyes as he donned the robe.
"Good to be back." He sat down on my bed again and sniffed his nose. "I'm still sick."
"Yeah, I'm guessing that wasn't part of the curse." I said.
"Ug, I ache all over." He frowned and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples.
"I'm glad you're back, Dean. Let me go call Sam real quick; I'll bring back some pain pills." I left my room and walked out to the library to make the call. There was no way I was going to go to the dungeon right now. There was no telling what I'd see.
"Ali? Did anything change?" Sam asked as I reached him after the first ring.
"Yeah, he's an adult again. Walking, talking, and smiling but still sick. What happened on your end?" I asked.
"Fisher is dead." Sam said bluntly. I felt like he wasn't giving me all the information. "Cas got some of his mojo back too. We think Fisher has been trying to track us for a while. He said he was working with demons but he wouldn't give us any names. We think he used them to attack Cas with cursed weapons."
"Wow. Okay, glad to hear Cas is kinda back, I guess. So… are we in the clear now? Is anything actively hunting us anymore?" I asked.
"I don't think so, but it's hard to say. Fisher wouldn't tell us much. We think he may have been working with someone else, other than the demons he hired." Sam seemed to cut short again, but I let it go. I was just glad my friends were back to almost-normal.
"Okay. What's next?"
"Not sure. We need to figure out who he was working with, but he didn't give us any leads. We may just need to lie low for a while."
"Good idea. Hey, Dean's still pretty sick so I don't think he can help dispose of…"
"Yeah, let him rest. I'm just glad he's finally back to normal."
I smiled to myself in the dark library. "Go team." I knew Cas could hear our conversation as well.
Sam chuckled. "Yeah. Go back to sleep, Ali. We'll see you tomorrow."
"Night guys." I said. From the kitchen cabinet, I grabbed the whole bottle of ibuprofen.
Dean was asleep in my bed with the lamp still on when I returned. I set the pills on the nightstand and rather than wake him, I just scooted in the other side and pulled the blankets over us both. "Just for tonight, okay?" I whispered. With the lamp off, I couldn't see him move closer to me, but I could feel the scratchy robe and the radiating body heat with no problem. He was practically hugging me by the time I fell asleep.
My alarm went off at its usual five a.m. the next morning. I silenced it quickly and pried Dean's arm off of my side without waking him. He needed all the rest he could get. This cold had been a nasty one. No one in the bunker felt 100%. Sam still had stitches in his arm, Dean was sick, Cas was miserable without all his grace, and I was dealing with Wendigo claw marks, a bullet graze, and a suicidal uterus. Luckily, the first day of shark week was over and the pain was only lightly throbbing today.
With a spring in my step, I set to work making a big breakfast. It had been weeks since I'd made this kind of morning meal. Soon, breakfast was sizzling on the old eight burner gas stove. I pulled out my mp3 player and turned it up. Hash browns, bacon, eggs both scrabbled and omelet style with veggies and turkey, and a few chocolate chip pancakes got to watch me dance to my favorite pop songs as they cooked. I closed my eyes and enjoyed this easy feeling, the warmth from the stove, the cool tile underfoot, the knowledge that my friends were safe and well on their way to recovery. Just before I needed to flip the pancakes, I started the coffee machine and checked to see if Cas was up.
I must have brought in the scent of breakfast when I entered the library. Cas' nose sniffed hard and he lifted his head, looking around.
"Morning, sunshine." I said with a smile on my face.
He blinked sleepily. "Why did you call me sunshine? Is my grace showing?" His voice was a little hoarse still from yesterday. I also noticed that he hadn't changed out of his trench coat, which was spackled with traces of blood.
"It's just a saying. A term of endearment." I waved the turner that I held. "Breakfast will be ready after you clean up."
"Okay." He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. I rushed back to the kitchen to flip the pancakes just in time. As an afterthought, I dug the leftover cherry pie out of the fridge and put it in the oven to warm up.
A few minutes later, I heard a door open and close. "Oh, yeah." The voice of the younger Winchester echoed softly down the hall. He walked in, rather stiffly and breathed deeply, taking in the smells and warmth from the stove. The boilers had yet to kick on and the hallway was still frigid.
"Morning, Sammy." I said. "Coffee's almost ready."
"You're awesome, Ali." He made his way to the kitchen table and sat down heavily, putting his laptop in front of him.
"Isn't it a little early for that?" I asked.
"I want to see if anything strange happened when we killed Fisher." Sam said. I frowned. For the first time, I realized that I'd been an accomplice in a murder. I mean, I was already a full blown serial killer to the rest of society. If the police ever caught me, I'd be pinned down for at least thirty-seven murders and probably several accomplice charges. If that did happen, I sincerely hoped that the guys wouldn't get swept up in it too.
"Let me know if you find anything." I said. The pancakes were done when Cas returned, freshly showered and shaved. He must have borrowed clothes from Sam; I recognized the green plaid shirt.
"Food's ready." I said as I took the last pancake off of the stove.
"Should we wake Dean before we eat?" Cas asked.
"Yes. Yes you should." We looked up to see a droopy-eyed, red-nosed Dean in the doorway, still in his robe. It was open in the front, but he'd put on a few more layers since I last saw him. There was box of tissues under his arm.
Sam smiled hugely and stood quickly. They hugged like they hadn't seen each other in weeks; the tissues hit the ground and Dean kicked them to the table. I poured a few cups of coffee and set one at each seat; coffee was really starting to grow on me. "When your chick flick moment is over, you can get your own food. It's all done." I said. "Have at it."
Dean didn't miss a beat and took his place at the head of the line as he usually had. His plate was piled high as he set it down triumphantly at his seat. His food was halfway gone when I sat down with the rest of them at the table. "Dean, doesn't your throat hurt?" I asked. "It looked terrible yesterday."
"Hurts like I swallowed a bee." He said with a mouthful of pancakes and bacon.
I stared at him for a few seconds. "Then why are you eating so much?"
"I've been a baby for like two weeks. I missed solid foods and stuffing my face." He took a long swig from his white mug. "And coffee. Oh, coffee. You fed me all that healthy stuff Sam's always trying to get me into. Nothing to clog my starving arteries."
"I do not apologize." I said, taking a bite of my omelet. "However, I did make you some chocolate chip pancakes just now, did I not?"
"'ou did." He said with a huge portion in his mouth.
"The pie should be almost warmed up too."
"Pie?" Dean's eyes lit up.
"Yeah, leftovers from yesterday. I have another one in the freezer." I smiled, but my smile faded quickly as Dean began coughing. It passed quickly enough.
"You're going to willingly let us eat pie for breakfast?" Sam said, smirking.
"You are grown men. You can eat pie for breakfast if you want. It's not my job to monitor what you eat." I said, grinning. "I just warmed it up for you." Then I pointed my fork at Dean. "I only monitored your diet because you were a toddler and tried to eat bullets and dust bunnies on several occasions."
Dean's face flushed and Sam laughed. Cas chuckled quietly as he munched on some hash browns. "Yeah, well, everything was so much more intense in such a tiny body." Dean looked into his mug, which was probably empty by now. "It was like I could only focus on one thing at a time and everything was pulling at my attention. The car and then the crayon and then I couldn't figure out why I was being strapped down in that seat or trapped in that baby corral. I felt like I was losing myself sometimes. Like I really was just a kid." The weight of his words bore down on us and we were silent for a few moments. The realization that we really had almost lost Dean was a lot to bear. Who knows how much longer he could have stayed like that before he succumbed and forgot who he was.
"You're back now, Dean." Sam said softly. "And we killed the guy that did it."
"You mean guys?" Dean said, looking up at Sam. Slowly, all of our faces were colored with alarm. The food was forgotten. "You got them both?"
"We- we killed both Wendigoes and the witch that changed you." I said slowly, hoping –praying- that he meant the witch and the Wendigoes.
"They were controlling the Wendigoes. The two witches. You didn't gank them both?" Dean asked, looking between our faces.
"We didn't know there were two." Sam said.
"It was an old guy and a woman, probably mid-thirties? She was hot, but really strong. The Wendigo hung me from the ceiling and she beat me half to death before she left and told the other guy to hold me for a few days before letting the Wendigoes have me." Dean frowned into his coffee cup. I took it from him and refilled it. "Thanks, Li."
"So we have another witch on the loose." Sam said, stabbing a juicy piece of egg.
"Did you get a name?" Cas asked.
"No, but she had all these nasty blisters on her arms and some on her face. Five four, maybe? Couldn't have been more than like a hundred and thirty pounds. Blue eyes. Uh… Brown hair? Maybe if we search the town's traffic lights, we can track her down. If they caught her, she'll be hard to miss." Dean said. He coughed a few times.
"Perhaps that's the reason I remain unable to fly." Cas said suddenly.
"You still can't fly?" I asked. "I thought you were mostly back to normal after Fisher died."
"I am mostly back to my old self, but I'm too weak to fly." Cas said. "Perhaps the other witch cursed me as well."
"Hey, you could just heal Dean's cold, right? You're strong enough for that?" Sam asked with hope in his voice.
Cas shook his head slowly. "If I heal Dean it's likely that I'll be unconscious for a few days. I'm very weak and still human in most senses." He frowned. "I had to shave today."
"Well, it was worth asking." Sam said, returning to his meal. After a few minutes, and with quite a bit of food left on his plate, he set his fork down. "I'll check the traffic cameras and security footage from nearby motels."
"Hey, finish eating first." Dean said, holding his brother's shoulder down as he tried to stand. "I may have been tiny but I saw how you ate the last couple days."
"Fine. How's the cold?" Sam asked, resuming his meal with resignation.
"Awful. And I got a shot that didn't help." Dean glared at me briefly. "I hate shots."
"I honestly thought he was a real doctor. I'm sorry." I said. "I tried."
"And I appreciate that you were concerned enough to get me some help. Pills would have been fine."
"You were in the body of an eighteen month old child, Dean. You couldn't have swallowed pills." I said.
"Whatever."
"Eat your pancakes." I said shortly. I lifted my fork, filled with breakfast goodness, to my mouth and my eyes met Dean's. He seemed to have been staring at my hand.
"Where'd you find that ring?" He asked.
"What ring?" I asked, my mouth full of food. Holding my hand out in front of me, I noticed the silver ring I'd found still lodged securely on my thumb. "Oh, that one. In the Impala. Do you know whose it is?"
Dean nodded. "Keep it. But don't lose it."
"O-okay." I said, unsure of how to take the response.
Cas stood and returned with a piece of pie. Dean eyed it and finished his meal quickly. That slice he retrieved after downing his second cup of coffee didn't last long.
Sam finished his meal and forewent the breakfast pie in favor of starting his long day of sifting through traffic camera footage and security tapes. Eventually, Cas and Dean followed him into the library. I did dishes while listening to my mp3 player. Since the demon was removed from me, I found so many things much easier to do. I could wash the heavy dishes without dropping them, work on cars without fear of them falling on me, talk to the guys without overanalyzing every word. I loved this feeling of freedom.
I joined the guys once I finished. Sam and Dean were typing away at their computers and Cas was reading old Enochian myth books again. "What can I do?" I asked.
Sam looked up. They'd never gotten me my own computer; I counted myself lucky to have a flip phone and an mp3 player from like three years ago. "Uh, you could help Cas." Sam said.
"Sure." We sat for hours, flipping through pages and pages of Enochian lore and traffic camera websites. I made more coffee. A lot more.
It was early in the evening before Dean perked up. "I think I found something." He squinted at the screen and started reading aloud. "Renowned artist Melody Rinninger found dead two days ago." He flipped his laptop around so that we could see the woman's picture in the article. "Burned to death. In her own home."
"Is that the other witch?" Sam asked. The woman in the picture had blue eyes, long brown hair, a slight build and a beautiful smile. She looked happy; this was obviously a professional picture, probably taken to help her better present herself in the art world. "Kinda looks like Ali."
"A little, maybe, and yeah, that's the witch. Apparently she'd been dead for a while when they found her. A neighbor called about a funny smell. Estimated time of death is... like two days after I saw her." Dean said.
"Then why am I not at full power?" Cas asked, sitting back in his chair and rubbing his neck.
"Good question. I haven't been able to find any footage of her on the roads or near the motels around Centerville." Sam said.
"So we have no leads and a dead suspect?" I asked. "Seems like Cas just needs a while to recover. Healing takes time."
"Maybe." Dean said. "I say we lay low for a while. The demons are probably planning on us going into town for a supply run eventually. If there are even demons around anymore."
"Sam said we should lay low too. I think that's a good idea." I said.
Cas sighed. "I have to agree. I'm still having trouble seeing your souls in their entirety, so I won't be able to warn of any approaching demons. We'll be safer if we stay out of any potential trouble."
"So… weekend at Bobby's?" Sam suggested.
A/N: Please review! I love hearing from you guys! Also, since I only post about 2-3,000 words a chapter, I'll be posting a few times a week from now on. Thanks!