Bobby tried to avoid hospitals just as much as any other Hunter, maybe even more so than the usual. He hated the smell and the white coats that made the doctors seem like skinny polar bears. Whenever one of the boys were in the hospital as kids, he would let John handle it while he watched the other, never volunteering to spend the night or take more than one shift. As uncomfortable as he was however, he never paused when Sam handed him a pair of scrubs and pointed him toward a sink.
"All the way up to your elbows," Sam explained. "They're really strict about germs here." John was suiting up by himself a few feet away, pulling his legs through another set of throwaway pants with unusual slowness, as if the pants were liquid and John wasn't confident in his ability to swim.
Angie met them at the door with a scouring look at Bobby, who managed to maintain his ruggedness even in a light blue jumpsuit that sagged in all the places it shouldn't have.
"You are?"
"Bobby Singer. Pleasure to meet you, ma'am." She didn't even blink at his smoothness and John hid a grin by turning his back. Bobby always knew how to turn on the charm when he wanted to; it was how he persuaded people to tell him things they hadn't told anyone else.
"Pleasure," she repeated, but voiced it more as a question. "Sam?"
"This is my – our – Uncle Bobby. Remember Dean telling you about him the other day?"
"I heard you've been taking real good care of our boy," Bobby said, bowing his head slightly. "I 'preciate that." Angie's hard expression softened into something more recognizable of her nurturing personality.
"Well, Dean's pretty special. I'm sure you know that."
"That boy is like a son to me," Bobby said, voice low and gruff.
"He's awake but I don't need to tell you to stay calm and quiet. He's a little confused but his breathing is stable for the moment. We're keeping a close eye on him, you know that."
She led them over to Dean's bed where the curtain was partially pulled back. Dean's bed was still propped up but his eyes were open and Sam was both surprised and pleased to see there was color back in his cheeks. His eyes widened even further when he spotted Bobby standing behind the other two. Angie moved over to his side, checking the oxygen levels and nodding approvingly.
"How you feeling, handsome?" Dean's head was tilted back on the pillow but he nodded, making all of them smile in return when he turned his left thumb skywards. "You've got some new visitors." Dean nodded again and pulled the oxygen mask down with a shaky hand, letting it rest on his chest.
"I'll be right outside," Angie told Sam before she left the room.
"Bobby," Dean rasped in greeting, his gaze sweeping over the older man.
"Hey, sport," Bobby said, walking over to the empty chair and sitting down. "Sorry it took me so long to get here."
"S'okay," Dean said, coughing just once before Sam had him sip a glass of water. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer though still not nearly as strong as Bobby thought it should have been. "Long drive."
"Nah, it wasn't too bad. Don't mind getting to take one of the cars out every once in a while. Besides, I wanted to see my favorite Winchester." This earned a grin from Dean and a fake disgruntled noise from Sam, who was just happy to see his brother communicating. "I've got a new Rottie pup up at the house," Bobby continued. "I've had him for four months and still haven't named him. Just been calling him Pup. He's causing all sorts of troubles, can't get those long limbs of him under him. Reminds me of Sam when he was a youngin', always running into things, falling over." Bobby was rambling but Dean seemed entranced by his words; it had been too long since he'd been to Bobby's or even seen the Hunter in person. "You boys need to come visit him soon, train him up a bit."
"Thor?" Dean asked, naming Bobby's other dog, a mongrel of a thousand breeds that had wondered into the junkyard a few years ago. The name came from a lightning bolt shaped on his rump and his utter glee whenever there was a thunderstorm. Bobby rolled his eyes, though the gesture was affectionate.
"Don't worry, that old grump is still around. Loves Pup by the way. Missing you though, so you get better so you can come get him in line too."
"Yessir," Dean said, letting his eyes fall shut for a couple seconds. Bobby patted his hand and stood, letting John in closer to his son.
"I'm going to stick around for a while," Bobby said mostly to Dean but watching Sam out of the corner of this eye. The youngest Winchester's head whipped around to stare at his quasi-uncle.
"Why?" he asked. Bobby just shuffled to the end of Dean's bed, scrunching his hat in one hand.
"You best let your daddy explain that one."
"Dad?" John was sitting in the now-vacant chair, leaning close to his eldest son, who was watching him curiously, his chest moving in deeper breaths than before. "Dad, don't stress him out," Sam warned. "You know what Angie said."
"M'okay," Dean said, eyes darting between the three of them situated around his bed. "What's wrong?"
"Dean," John said quietly, wondering just how nearby Angie was and then deciding it was worth the risk. "When you woke up the last time, you told me a yellow-eyed demon told you hi. Do you remember that?"
Dean felt more than saw the three pairs of intently staring eyes boring into him as his father asked the question. He used his good hand to pick at blanket covering his bandaged ribs, knowing that he had woken this time to a feeling that something was off. A nagging, almost tingling feeling that spread through his gut but one he couldn't place the origin of until just now. Until John had said something about a demon with yellow eyes and then Dean did remember. Not everything, not at first, but snippets enough to gather that it had not been a Rakshasa who had attacked him in the desert but this so-called demon. Attacked him and left him for dead and then came back to haunt Dean through his dreams.
The last part gave him pause. Was it really a dream? Surely he had been asleep and yet Dean couldn't remember a past dream that had felt as strong as the images coming back to him, the pictures in his mind that echoed more of a memory than nightmare. A man with gray-speckled hair and a business suit rolled up to the elbow. The leering breath and slightly coffee-stained teeth that were too close to his face; why were his teeth that close? The thin lips were moving but Dean couldn't hear – couldn't remember – what was being said and the only other thing his battered mind allowed him to remember was the pain.
It was a twisted comfort to know where it came from, to know that it was just his body unwilling to fight. Instead, Dean had been mauled by a supernatural creature with powers great enough to manipulate his mind. Even he knew that was no joke, nothing to take lightly in any event, least of all his almost-death. Yet he couldn't help feel relieved with part of his memory back intact; at least a few of the puzzle pieces were back in place. His mother had taught him to always start with the border pieces and fill in the middle last and that's what Dean felt like what was happening now. His foundation was coming together and now he just needed the details, needed to get through few more rounds of trial-and-error before he succeeded.
"Dean, take a breath," John instructed, putting his hand over his son's to help bring him out of whatever thoughts were spinning through his mind. Sam hovered and even Bobby was leaning into the bed railing as Dean's eyes refocused on the room they were in, on the blankness of the walls, and the sterility of every machine and piece of equipment. "There you go, easy does it. Want your mask back on? No? Okay, just breathe or I'm going to call Angie. You want to try coughing?" Dean shook his head and narrowed all his attention to the not-so-simple task of pulling air into his lungs.
Right now you are lying in a hospital bed with your stomach ripped open and your lungs turning to dust because of me.
The voice was faint but unwelcome, like a drop of water lodged in his ear canal. A shiver wracked through his body just once at the sound of it and then his breathing was easier, smoother.
"I remember," he said, voice hoarse again. He wasn't sure it would ever sound like it did before.
"What do remember?" John asked. Dean's brows knit together as he considered his father.
"The demon," he said and out of the corner of his eye saw Bobby ran a hand over his mouth. "He said to tell you hi. Dad, I don't –," he shook his head slightly, "Who is he? What does he want?"
"Easy, sport," Bobby said, coming around to Dean's other side. "We only know as much you do. You tell us what remember, that's all." Bobby was looking at him as thought he were on his death bed and John had a pained expression on, as if he really did have a secret to share. The two men weren't giving away any clues so Dean slid his eyes to Sam.
"Sam?" It was more than his brother's name; in that one syllable, a thousand questions were voiced, ones that Sam had no answers to and ones that he did. Dean counted on his brother to tell him the truth, to expose whatever John and Bobby wanted to keep hidden from him. Except that Sam wouldn't quite meet his eye, he was staring at the top of Dean's head or maybe over it, Dean couldn't tell from this angle. "What's going on? Sam?"
It was John who answered.
"Dean, you need to relax. You're pretty sick." If he had the strength, Dean would have flipped his father off. He knew he was sick, could feel the illness in his veins, as if someone has filled his bones with lead. But life wasn't going to stop just because he was laid up in a hospital bed.
"Dad, come on. The demon. Who was he?" Angie stuck her head in the room.
"Everyone doing alright?"
The three healthy men nodded while Dean didn't answer, just kept staring at John.
"Dean?"
"I'm fine," he said.
"You need your rest, okay? Five more minutes then everyone has to go home."
"I'm not going anywhere," Sam protested.
"We'll see," Angie said. "Five minutes, boys."
They waited a minute after she left and then John scooted his chair even closer.
"I think the demon who talked to you is the one who killed your mother."
"John."
"Dad!"
The color that Sam had been so relieved to see was gone in an instant as Dean took in the information and when his expression turned horrified, Sam actually cringed, looking to Bobby for help.
"John, I don't think…" But there was nothing Bobby could say to fix the scenario; it was too late. The eldest Winchester had thought that the release of information would help jog Dean's memory faster but in his rush to understand, he hadn't considered the negative effects the truth would have on his son. He seemed to forget or rather ignore the fact that unlike Sam, Dean had been four years old at the time of the fire, old enough to have memories of Mary, faded at the edges like an old photograph but still tangible. Still enough to make him hurt.
Now, with Dean's breathing shallowing out and panic starting to filter in, John had a flicker of doubt about what he'd just done. He fixed the oxygen mask been in place but Dean's expression wouldn't relax; his eyes jumped between the three men as if he simply didn't believe them. As if maybe they were lying.
Like Sam, Dean never had a clue what had killed Mary Winchester when he was four years old. There was little he remembered about the night except that the heat from the fire seemed to sear his skin as it climbed the walls of Sam's nursery. He remembered how large his father's face seemed as he bent to place Sammy in Dean's arms. The next thing Dean remembered was the chilliness of the grass on his bare feet and wondering why the grass wasn't burning too. The fire had loomed large in front of him, exploding his house just moments after John burst through the front door. It had seemed like a monster of golden mass, filling the sky with black smoke darker than any night sky he had seen since.
When he was old enough to understand that the fire was no accident, Dean had resolved to hunt with John until the thing that killed her was brought down. In his darkest fantasies, it was Dean who murdered the thing. His imagination had dreamt up a thousand scenarios but it always ending with Dean shooting the final bullet, aimed right at the creature's heart, whatever it was.
So when John told him that the yellow-eyed demon from Dean's memory wasn't just a random monster run-in, but a meeting with the thing he had vowed to kill at age fifteen, something snapped within him, as if it was a mere rope holding him in place and not a backbone and someone had just taken a pair of scissors and cut right through him.
The yellow-eyed demon.
Dean knew it was him, just knew. He couldn't explain it, though he had no doubt that's exactly what his father wanted him to do, but he could sense it like the pulsing of his heart in his wounds: the demon who did this to him was the one who burned Mary Winchester alive. Dean had had the chance to make him suffer, make him pay, and instead he'd been flung around like a rag doll, gutted like a fish. Some hunter he was.
He barely recognized the fact that Angie was hovering over him, shooing his visitors out the door, asking him to rate his pain on a scale of one to ten.
A hundred, he wanted to confess. A thousand. A billion.
Infinity.
Infinite pain so much different than the kind he was used to pierced through him, a meat hook through his heart. He'd been so damn close, so very very close. That face in his mind – the one whose lips twitched every time Dean screamed – was the last thing his mother had seen. Sweet Mary Winchester who used to put down the laundry and cuddle with Dean when he cried over a skinned elbow. The woman who sat with him at the kitchen table to color a thousand pictures that all looked exactly the same. The one Sam never got to meet. The one John never got to say goodbye to.
"Dean, I'm going to give you something to help you fall asleep."
He didn't want to sleep. He wanted to stay awake forever, to watch over and over in his mind what had happened, push his memory into confessing what the demon had said to him instead of the silent movie that was replaying in his head. John wanted to know, Dean had to tell him.
He tried to tell the nurse what he wanted but nothing but a whimper came out and then he was crying. Not a tear or two but outright sobbing, his ribs and lungs aching with the fierceness of his cries but Dean was oblivious to the pain in his body. Because nothing would ever come close to comparing with the pain stabbing through his heart. More than anything though, Dean just felt alone. Isolated on his very own sinking ship and for once, Dean didn't have any energy to ride the waves; it was easier for him to give in and give up and so that is what he did.
A/N: That line could be interpreted several ways but just so y'all know, Dean did not die. But that doesn't mean he's okay either. We'll just have to wait and see...