Chapter Thirty-Five: Sins and Scars

Once he'd started running, Sam couldn't stop.

He busted through the arena door, slamming through a crowd of people huddled outside in the clammy gloom, smoking sweet-smelling cigarettes. Ignoring their protests as he ricocheted between them, Sam scrambled up and over the fence, gouging his palms on the barbed wire; knowing, but unable to feel. He wished he could feel, wished an iota of the pain would seep through to tip the balance of the searing anguish that roiled in his chest like a storm.

Sam plunged over the treeline and through the forest, ignoring branches that caught and ripped at his clothing, gashing his shirt and digging into the denim of his jeans. He fled the sight of Dean's broken body, his own guilt, and all of the devils that pounded on his heels, reminding him that there wasn't a future left for him, especially not now. Not after what he'd done.

Sam ran until his lungs felt small and tight and inflamed, until he'd put more distance than he could measure between himself and the arena, and it still wasn't enough. He tumbled down a short incline and landed on his hands and knees in a fast-flowing stream. The water was cold as icemelt and gushed over his cracked, bleeding knuckles, and Sam stared at his reflection: his hair hanging over his ears, framing cheekbones freckled with Dean's blood. His chin was sweep-coated where he'd practically fed—fed—on Lily's throat.

Sam didn't recognize his own face; hadn't looked in a mirror since the night Ruby had told him exactly what he was. But in his echo on the water he could see the skirling lines of Masque that littered his veins: finally solving the mystery of the cloudy insides of demons, what made them so different. Sam wondered if it had traveled to his eyes, pooling through them like Andy's. If he'd stared at Dean through a haze of onyx, and hated. Hated so bitterly, he'd almost killed.

Almost killed Dean.

Sam swiped a hand down his face, turning the blood to pink runoff and saturating his hair. He scrubbed his hands vigorously clean in the icy swells, then scooted up the bank, muddy and shaking, realizing belatedly that it was raining, that he was soaked all the way through. Just another thing the Masque had dulled him to.

The revulsion that pierced through him was sharp as a hammerstrike. Sam pitched to his hands and knees and shoved his fingers down his throat, heaving up a spray of greenish-black and red, mingling into brown: blood and drugs, purging his system but not emptying himself of the horrors he'd faced, of what he'd done.

Sam vomited, over and over again, because once he started it was hard to stop; he hadn't eaten decent food in days, had been surviving on a diet of Masque and scraps of food and training, and he was done. Worn thin and wrung out and done; and there was a part of him that was glad no one came to wrap an arm around him, to sit him up and sweep the hair from his clammy forehead and make sure he was all right.

He didn't deserve it.

But after a few minutes of his stomach folding in on itself and dispelling nothing, Sam had to relent, had to drag his fingers out of his throat and look around him. Several feet up the bank, a tree had fallen and sunk deep into the mud, offering shelter in a tangle of branches that formed a three-sided hollow. Spitting and shaking so hard his arms could barely support his weight, Sam crawled inside and faced the open. Bringing his knees to his chest, he crossed his arms on his upper legs and rested his forehead on them.

And waited.

He counted every heartbeat that thrummed in his ears, and tried to justify what he'd done; tried to fit it into the mold of everything that worked, into a two-dimensional world where he was in charge, in control. The hero of his own story.

None of those things made sense now; Sam was seeing his strings, a puppet that had danced at Lilith's command from the moment he'd left the Reactor. The way she'd pushed him, and he'd let himself get pushed; into isolation, and further, into rebellion. He hadn't been worth the struggle that the Winchesters had put forward for him, and he'd always believed that.

But Sam had never wanted it proved with Dean on the losing side of his fists.

Swallowing mucous and saliva, Sam squeezed his eyes shut tight; trying to retrace his footsteps through a filmy blanket of drugs and ambition, he couldn't find any one place where he'd fallen off the wagon. He'd been stepping down, really, a inch at a time, trying to be inconspicuous about it. And maybe that had all begun the day he'd decided nothing mattered except winning his way through the Leagues, making sure Lilith couldn't steal whatever happiness he had left in his family.

He'd lost sight of that, too. Lost sight of everything except cashing in the chip on his shoulder against the demons; he'd forgotten, really, that there was a purpose other than proving a point. What was the use of a home you could never go back to, of people you could never belong to?

But Dean had made him belong.

Maybe with his dying breath.

Sam shivered, burrowing his head harder against his forearms.

He wasn't surprised when he heard the crunch of boots over soaked twigs, swishing across wet leaves and squelching through the mud. The approach slowed, close at hand, and then stopped altogether.

Sam tipped his head back, slowly.

John was breathing hard, open mouthed, like he'd been running, and the accusation in his eyes was hot enough to burn in a way Sam could really feel. He clenched his jaw.

"Did you come out here to kill me?" The words emerged out shaking around full-body tremors despite his best efforts, and Sam sniffed rainwater from the tip of his nose, drying his face with a sodden sleeve.

He was stunned to see John's eyes soften on the approach. Resting one hand on the roof of interwoven branches, John ducked his head down. "I didn't come to kill you, Sam." He surveyed the cave. "Mind if I sit?"

Sam shrugged noncommittally, putting his chin down on his arms this time, to watch John as he crawled his way inside and turned around, situating himself with a few feet of careful open space between them.

They listened to the rain fall, and gradually Sam realized John hadn't been joking; he wasn't here to exact his revenge.

"Why'd you do it?" John asked at length, and the question fell like a pin dropping in total silence.

"Why'd I hurt Dean?" It was a loaded question with a loaded response.

"Why'd you stop?"

Sam was surprised, again, and had to mull it over as he watched the rain washing his vomit down the slippery hillside. "He told me I was still family."

"And we made you doubt that, huh?"

"God, no. It wasn't your fault, it was me." Sam scratched at his arm, wanted to scratch the infection from under his skin. "It's what I am." He let a pause swell in the silence. "You should kill me. I could show you how to do it."

"Already told you, I'm not here to pick a fight."

"Then why are you here?" Sam was surprised to find the strength to put a punch into the question. He waited with bated breath, not entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"Dean figured it out. What you were." John said. "Me, I didn't know it until I saw those dark veins on you, son. But I think we were all just foolin' ourselves off the jump. It was the only answer that made sense."

That gave Sam pause. "You thought maybe I was a—?"

"I had theories. Notions. Nothing concrete to go on, and no proof. Most of the time, you seemed…hell, average. Almost human. I don't think any of us really wanted the truth, Sam. Faceless is easier."

"You should've killed me back when you first picked me up."

"Stop for a second, and listen to what I'm telling you." John interrupted sharply. "I followed you because I know what's going on in your head right now, Sam. And maybe—" He cut off abruptly, dragging a hand down his mouth. "Maybe I can relate."

There was a beat of silence. "How could you possibly—?"

"By all rights, I'm half-demon, Sam." John's gaze was fixed on something faraway, something Sam couldn't see or comprehend. "Means Dean's quarter, but him and Mary, they don't know a damn thing about it. My father came after me with an axe when I was just a boy, and I killed him—tried to kill him, anyway, son of a bitch could still be alive for all I know—and I bailed. Ran away to the military, ran into hunting, ran away from Mary and Dean."

"I don't…it's not genetic, right?" Sam asked. "Dean's all human."

"No, I don't think it's genetic." John admitted. "These things don't just pass along. But I still got the blood of something unnatural in me, Sam, and it's scared the hell outta me for decades. Thinking about what might be living inside me, it's still eatin' me alive to this day. So if any man can understand what you're goin' through," He rocked his head slightly. "Believe me, I'm him."

"Why didn't you tell Mary and Dean?"

"Why didn't you, Sam? How long you been sittin' on this, and you never came clean to any of us?"

There was a prolonged and profound silence, and Sam continued to shiver; his ripped shirt had long since been soaked through, and his skin prickled with goosebumps.

"It started back in Montana." He said, softly. "There was this girl, Ruby. At first I just thought she was kind of a…casual admirer. I sort of forgot about her. Then she showed up, in, uh," He cleared his throat. "In New Orleans. She gave me her number."

"And you talked to her?"

"Brought her into town, actually." Sam's tone was hollow, he felt hollow; what use was lying? What had it gained him up until now?

"Sam." John shook his head.

"We started training," Sam added, quickly, eager to finish the story now that he'd started. "She was showing me these moves that were supposed to help me, supposed to keep me from getting hurt. I dunno, I guess I was so sick of having all these monsters rip me to shreds every week, I just…I jumped on what she gave me."

"Manipulating. Demons are good at that."

Sam shifted his numb hindquarters on the soil. "Yeah. Well, she played me like a fiddle. Got me hooked on this stuff, Masque, and I just," He smoothed a hand over his mud-caked jeans. "I lost control."

"Is this Ruby girl still around?"

"No." Sam murmured. "After I found out what I was, I made her leave. She hasn't tried to contact me since." He wet his dry lips with his tongue. "She, um. She told Lusiver where I was, though. So he probably knows where you guys live."

"Uh-huh." John hummed. "And what about the fights with Dean? The way you moved out in a hurry?"

"I got obsessed. Maybe I still am, I dunno." Sam pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "I just know that…nothing else mattered. Y'know? I wanted to shoot straight for Lilith, and I forgot about everything else. Even you guys." He swallowed around the next painful truth: "Especially you guys."

"Especially us?" John echoed in a steely voice.

"Yeah. I mean, having a family, it's the only thing I ever wanted. And I pretty much talked myself out of it when I found out I was a—" The word stuck like a thorn in Sam's throat, refusing to be given over.

"Demon?" John supplied, and Sam flinched.

"Yeah. One of those."

John drew one leg to his chest and stretched out the other, leaning his shoulders back against the mesh of branches. "Sam, I've seen a lot of what this life has to offer. The good. The bad. The downright nasty. I've seen men drag girls into dark streets, watched them steal from each other. I've seen a human put a gun to my son's head in a busy street because he lost a fight. I've heard hundreds of them out there, laughing while fighters bleed. But you know what else I've seen?"

"What else d'you need?" Sam matched him, question for question, but John didn't seem fazed.

"I saw a boy pull Dean out of a wrecked car before he'd fix his own head. That same boy—that same man, he held me up when I was too sick to stand on my own. And when this family didn't have a hope left for makin' it through the week, that man said he'd fight for us. And I believed him."

Heat budded in Sam's eyes again. "I'm not that person anymore. I never was, John, I'm a demon."

"Sammy, you're not listening to me." John reached over, gripped Sam's shoulder. "It's not what you are that makes the man. It's what you do."

Sam sucked in a shivering breath through gritted teeth. "I just…I almost killed Dean." He rolled his eyes sideways to hide the wetness that he could feel dappling his field of vision. "I did that."

"Life doesn't end on one choice, Sam. It's a whole series of 'em." John let his hand drop. "It's your move."

Sam studied him. "You'd take me back. You, of all people. After everything?"

John's gaze hardened. "I won't say I trust you. I can't go back to that. But I won't let you freeze to death out here." John crawled out from under the overhang and turned, offering a hand. "Sam. Your choice."

Sam stared at John's hand; wanted to grab it, so powerfully he almost choked. He wanted to be taken in and set right.

"Can we just…what about Dean? Is he okay?"

John smiled a half-smile, taut, then going soft. "Baby steps." He moved back, and Sam followed him out, stiff and frozen halfway through. "Jo went with Dean to the hospital in the city. You sure you wanna go in there?"

The word hospital clunked on the mud between them. "What could Lusiver possibly do that's worse than what I already did?" He shook his head when John started to answer. "I don't think I can face him, though. Dean. I don't think I can—"

"Sam." John cut him off firmly. "You need to see him. Talk to him, when he wakes up. He needs to know what happened. He's been down a long time, tryin' to figure out what happened to you."

Sam stood there feeling naked, arms wrapped around himself. "Every choice I made—every choice—was the wrong one."

"I won't argue that." John laid a hand on Sam's back, giving him a gentle shove back toward the dense treeline. "But I'd be a hypocrite to disown you for it."

Somehow, that was worse.

The drive to Seattle was painfully long and Sam spent it with his heart in his throat and a swollen tongue. John didn't say anything, with tense words intimated in the silence. Even with the unparalleled tolerance John was showing him, Sam knew there was blame there, and it rested on his shoulders.

Sam leaned his temple against the window, staring at that same unfamiliar reflection; like falling asleep and waking up with a stranger in the mirror. He knew the Masque had taken every weakness and every hurt and magnified them tenfold, had shut down the pain receptors in his brain and heightened everything else like a spotlight.

But that didn't excuse what he'd done.

Seattle was a hub of activity and John had to take several backstreets to find the hospital, following directions on a soggy postcard from his pocket. From the paramedics, he'd explained when he'd whipped it out, and the fact that they'd need paramedics to take care of Dean—that this wasn't something a t-shirt, a spool of gauze and a dishrag could cure—left Sam wanting to hang his head out the window and throw up again.

He wanted somebody to take his face in their hands and explain how this had happened; any of it, all of it.

The hospital shown with bleak sheetrock contrast to a murky mauve sunset as John pulled up in the parking lot. Sam hunched low in his seat, exhausted from the fight, exhausted from running, from feeling. Like he'd opened himself up to a barrage of emotions he'd repressed for months, and he'd lost his touch, now, he couldn't control a single one of them. They were in full focus, in power.

"Ready?" John popped the door of the Impala and slid out, and Sam ran his hand over the dashboard once before he climbed out, too, slamming the door shut in his wake.

John caught sight of Sam's palms as he swiped them down his jeans, the crusting of blood with leaf litter mashed into the gashes. "That's gotta hurt like a sonuvabitch."

Sam swallowed. "Remember that drug I said I was taking?" He flicked a glance at John, then looked down again. "I don't—can't feel pain." He chuckled, brief and empty, then hid his hands in his pockets. "Guess my head's pretty messed up."

John didn't say anything, just walked on ahead toward the hospital; Sam could read the anger in the lines of his shoulders, let his own shoulders slump forward.

The inside of the building smelled like vinegar, antiseptic and just a hint of urine. Sam wrinkled his nose and tried to meld into the background, sinking into one of the hard plastic chairs and massaging his palm; dinging in, with his fingertips, trying to prompt some sensation of pain and receiving no reward for his efforts.

Eyes studied him in passing; they knew him. They knew who Sam was, and they steered clear. Two irrational halves of Sam split apart: the side that thought they were smart to keep their difference, and the side that screamed with the loneliness that could only come from being in a crowd.

"Dean's on the fifth floor," John said, and Sam bounded to his feet, half in shock at being addressed. "He's in surgery."

Surgery. Another blow to Sam's fragile mentality. "How bad?"

"We won't know until we talk to the doctor." John raked a hand back through his curly dark hair. "I'm gonna find Joanna."

Sam's brain scrambled to align the name, and when it did he wondered why Jo Harvelle was even there; but he didn't ask. "Yeah. Yeah, sure, go find her. I'm gonna…use the head." Sam jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the bathroom.

"Don't wander off. I'll meet you upstairs."

Sam nodded, ducked through the wide brown door and studied his reflection in the row of mirrors across from the stalls. Not rippling, now, but showing him his hollowed eye-sockets, the slack downward tilt of his mouth, the scrunch of concern on his forehead.

He'd been so afraid to feel anything, for months, that now he felt rusty on all the things he was letting in. It was almost enough to make him want to shut down again; but he didn't have any Masque left on him, and even if he had, the shock of what he'd done, what he'd nearly done, was enough to quell any appetite he had, for Masque or anything else. Combing a hand back through his unwashed hair, Sam blew out a breath, ballooning his cheeks, then letting it out.

"This ends right now," He murmured to himself. "No more running. Face it, or knuckle under."

His reflection accepted the challenge like a mute, and Sam tugged, again, at the ends of his hair. Thoughtful, now.

He stuck his head out into the reception area. "S'cuse me? Can I borrow a pair of scissors?"

-X-

Sam joined John and Jo on the fifth floor with two coffees and a lighter head.

John surveyed Sam's chopped hair with one crinkled brow. "You cut your hair."

Sam flashed a smile that wasn't really a smile at all, and handed one coffee to John, one to Jo. "How is he?"

Jo glared at him. "Like you have any right to ask, you son of a—"

"Joanna." John interceded, and Sam ducked his head.

"She's right. I'm the last person who should be asking about Dean." He met John's eyes. "But I need to know."

John heaved a sigh. "Doctors say he has contusions on his liver, a punctured lung and a few fractures on his ribs. Few fractures on his face, too, but that'll all heal in time. They're more worried about his appendix. Ruptured. They gotta pull it before his belly fills up with blood."

Suddenly lightheaded, Sam rested his hand against the wall. The I'm sorry, I am so sorry, caught in his throat.

This is what demons do. They ruin everything they touch.

"He can survive that, right?" Jo had turned her back on Sam, ignoring him entirely now.

"Dean's tough." John said grimly, pulling out his phone. "I gotta call Mary and Bobby, let 'em know what's goin' on."

He moved a ways down the white-tiled corridor, and Jo rounded on Sam with murder in her eyes. Sam held up both hands.

"I know you want to kill me. And believe me, I want the same thing." He said. "But at least let me talk to Dean and apologize first, okay?"

"Yeah. If he makes it that far." Jo shook her head sharply. "Do you have any idea what you just did? Dean really cares about you, he fought for you, and you just—"

"You think I don't know that? How messed up I am? Believe me, Jo, I am…well aware that I'm nine kinds of crazy." Sam shook his head. "But that's why I need to apologize. I need to tell Dean that this was my fault."

Jo folded her arms at her waist, puckering her lips, raising her eyebrows with polite disbelief. "So. That's it? You just go back to being this perfect little monsters?"

Sam's ears rang with the tinny echo of the fight he'd had with Dean in the shoddy house back in Sioux Falls. The insults they'd hurled, the way Sam had tried to sever ties, right then and there; and he'd meant it. Everything he'd said, about being used, and toyed with. Standing on this side of the fight, he still knew that feeling.

But it paled in comparison to what he'd never said, what he'd been too proud and self-absorbed to atone for. What he'd been running away from, when he should have been running toward it: the family who'd taken him in.

"It's complicated." Sam murmured as John reappeared, snapping the phone shut with a graying face.

"Mary said to tell you, and I quote, that if you ever show up on our doorstep again, she'll blast you so full of buckshot you'll crap lead."

Sam swallowed. "Point taken."

Jo looked smug.

John squeezed between them and headed for the elevator. "You two, come with me. We're no good to Dean sitting here on our hands."

He made them both eat, even though the cafeteria food was flaccid and bland at best and Sam didn't have anything that amounted close to an appetite. But with John eagle-eyeing him, Sam fell back into a pattern of obedience that was almost easy to embrace in the tumult of what their lives had abruptly come to.

Sam, meeting expectation, because he didn't care enough to do anything else. He choked down two grilled cheese sandwiches and half of a bottle of apple juice, while Jo picked over a chicken sandwich and glared daggers at him. John didn't eat anything at all; Sam beat down the caustic part of him that was screaming hypocrite, so loud Sam thought they should be able to hear him.

When a throat cleared over his shoulder, Sam twisted around to look up at the doctor; something crumbled in his chest when the man's face—pencil-thin moustache, small, wide eyes—dawned with recognition.

"What's the diagnosis, doctor?" John asked, straight to business.

The man stripped off bloody latex gloves. "It was touch and go and he almost crashed on the table there at the end, but we've got him stable now, in the ICU. You should be able to see him shortly, but I expect he'll sleep well through the night."

"You got his appendix out?" John pressed.

The doctor hesitated. "Off the record? That damaged scrap of meat hardly passed for an appendix." He nodded to each of them, then hurried out.

"John, can I—?" Jo swung a pleading look toward him, and John nodded.

"Call Ellen first, let her know where you are."

Jo pulled a slim silver phone from her pocket and followed the doctor out. Sam dropped his hands into his lap and let himself breathe through the relief of we've got him stable now. Belatedly, he realized there'd been no promise that Dean would pull through in the long run.

"We should…we should probably give Jo some time with him," He said awkwardly, his mind spilling over a hundred things, a hundred scenarios and possibilities and should-have, could-have beens.

"Sam." John's voice was quiet, and Sam looked up at him. "Mary's pissed, and she's got every right to be. But we're not cutting you out, not all the way. If you head on back to your place, I'll make sure we keep an eye on you."

"Don't let me change back," Sam fumbled over the words.

"We'll help you dry out. It'll just take some planning."

They sat in uncomfortable silence for several minutes before the hiss of opening doors brought their heads swinging up; Ellen charged in, swaying auburn hair and eyes like dark fire.

"Where is she?"

"Ellen, take it easy—" John got to his feet and Sam was right behind him.

"My daughter was at a League fight." Ellen was almost breathless with fury. "After everything?"

"She's with Dean. She's safe here." John replied.

"Not in a city of demons. Not in this city." Ellen cussed, perching her hands on her hips. "How could I be so stupid, I knew there was another reason she wanted to stop in Seattle for the night, God almighty—"

"We'll get her for you." Sam said, because John looked a little lost for words. "Right, John?"

"Yeah. I'll bring her down," John said.

The receptionist in the intensive care unit steered them to Dean's room, and they stopped in the doorway. Sam's grilled cheese made a valiant effort to reappear all over his boots, but he swallowed it back.

Dean was hooked up to half a dozen machines; a steady, lethargic beeping filled the room, monitoring his heart rate, and a nasal cannula hooked back over his ears, feeding oxygen into his damaged lung. Jo sat beside him, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles, her hand cradling his. Dean was unresponsive to the touch.

Sam leaned against the doorpost and studied the floor, looking anywhere but toward the bed.

"Joanna." John said, and she looked up, her cheeks dampened with tears. She pressed her lips into a thin line and got to her feet, moving to join them.

"What is it?"

"Your mother's here, and she's not a happy camper."

The heart monitor gave a sudden leap and bounded into overdrive. Three pairs of eyes swung toward it, and John's forehead creased. "Maybe we oughta—"

"I'll stay with him," Sam said quickly.

"No, hell no, you won't." Jo protested.

"Not your call, Joanna. Downstairs." John motioned with his head. "Now." He added on an aside, "Sam, I'll be back in a minute."

Sam nodded, passing Jo on his way into the room without trying to catch her eye; no apology would ever be enough for her.

Dean's pulse was spiking when Sam sank into the chair beside the bed. He felt his heartbeat speeding up to match, from stress or by force of habit, he wasn't sure. Every fiber in him pulled to move in step with Dean. Just like always.

"Hey. Hey, Dean." Sam shifted himself closer, laying a hand on Dean's forehead, the way Mary had done for Sam when he was feverish. "Cool it, man. You're gonna…give yourself a heart attack or something."

He blinked, taken aback and feeling a small tinge of hope when Dean's heart rate slowed its marathon run at his touch, drifting back toward normal. Compulsively, Sam moved his thumb, rubbing it against Dean's brow in a gentle rhythmic sweep, then taking his hand back and crossing his arms on the bedspread. It was starchy and wrinkled, nothing like their beds back in Sioux Falls.

Sam's throat tightened at the thought.

"Dean…I'm sorry, man. I am so, so sorry." He dropped his head on his arms, his eyes fixed on Dean's face; feeling the willpower traveling through him, that if he could heal Dean, bring him back from the brink with the strength in his own body, he would give every breath he had. "You can't quit now, Dean, not like this."

Seconds ticked past in the beating of Dean's heart on the monitor, and Sam let his eyes fall shut, turning his head to one side until Dean's knuckles brushed his scalp. A steady mantra of I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just hang in there, carried him toward an exhausted coma of rest.

When John returned, both boys were asleep: Dean, his pulse steady and reassuring, and Sam with deep, sinuous breaths lifting his back. Neither of them noticed John settling with his back to the wall, prepared to sit vigil for the night.

In the bowels of a hospital in a demon's city, they found something like peace for the first time in months.

-X-

When Sam woke, he was hungry for Masque.

It was the first thing that struck him, like a blow to the side of the head, when he opened his eyes to streaming daylight. His stomach was digesting itself, and he wanted, so badly he was cramping for it.

It took him a second to realize he wasn't in his house; he was in a hospital, and his back was sore from lying slumped over the bed. Dean's bed, and it sent an electric jolt into his gut that staunched the craving. Scrambling up and licking the fetid taste of morning breath from his chapped lips, Sam glanced toward the door.

John was sitting with his back against the wall, hooded eyes fixed on Dean. When Sam shifted, John's focus moved to him.

"Sam." He inclined his head slightly.

Sam scrambled to his feet. "I should—I'm gonna get us some coffee."

"Yeah," John creaked to his feet, his joints popping. "You do that."

Sam felt like a coward, stepping out as quickly as he could and sliding into the elevator. He mashed the buttons to close the doors, rubbing a hand over his face and studying his reflection in the mirror.

He looked different, better with his hair hacked shorter again, but the emptiness in his eyes hadn't left, and that scared him. That emptiness had almost destroyed everything that mattered.

And he was still craving, so incredibly hungry it felt like his body was hollow and the one thing, the only thing that could fill him, was Masque.

Wouldn't it be better, his mind cajoled, To feel nothing at all, instead of everything?
 Sam took the pain of what he'd done and let it fill every lightless corner, keeping him on his feet while he retrieved the coffee, trying and failing to enjoy his but drinking it anyway. The heat scalded his esophagus and put the thirst at bay, for the time being. Sam brought the other coffee to John.

He stopped just outside the doorway at the sound of a muffled voice. John's voice, low and bass, murmuring: "—and when I think about the way we fought…hell, that was about the last thing we did before we came out here. Goin' at it like cats and dogs. And that's on me, Deano. You were right, I was runnin'. Been on the run for a real long time. And that wasn't fair, to you, or to your mother."

Sam put his back to the wall, knocked dizzy by the grief on John's tone. We're not grieving, Dean's not dead.

"I'm gonna do better. Be the father you deserve, the husband Mary deserves. But you gotta get by, Dean. I can't," John broke off, and Sam heard him straggle in a breath. "Can't do this one without you, son."

Sam's throat burned from more than the stain of the coffee. He made an effort of walking loudly, boots slapping the linoleum floor as he swung around the corner, and John sat back from Dean's bedside.

"Black, no milk, two sugars, right?" Sam pressed the Styrofoam cup into John's hands, maybe a little too eagerly.

"Thanks." John drank in incremental sips, his eyes still charting Dean's face. "Doctors say there's no change, but he's showing increased response to stimulation."

"Meaning—?"

"Meaning he's coming out of it." John carded a hand back through his hair. "Vitals are still stable, which is a good thing considering all the trauma."

John said it bluntly, without incrimination,, but Sam felt that unbearable pressure of guilt cascading over his shoulders all the same.

They stood in silent vigilance for a moment, shoulder-to-shoulder, and Sam shut his eyes and quirked his mouth against that insatiable thirst making a reappearance. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since his last hit of Masque; that was a record for the last three weeks. Unfortunately, his body seemed to know it, and rebelled. His fingertips were tingling and his mouth was dry.

"Sam." John nudged him. "What's wrong?"

Prizing his eyes open, Sam swallowed. "Nothing. I'm good."

John watched him with a parental intuition that reminded Sam of a voice that had screamed, Everyone turns their back on you. "Right. I'm gonna talk to the doctor, you watch him, understand?"

"Yeah, no, I'll be here." Sam held up one hand slightly, then dropped it against his thigh as John and his coffee swirled from the room, leaving the musky aroma of the brew hanging over the antiseptic hospital stench.

When the door swung shut behind John, Sam blew out a breath and tossed his half-full coffee into the garbage can.

"Recycling saves the planet, y'know."

Sam almost jumped out of his skin at the groggy taunt. "Dean?"

"Last time I checked." Dean's eyes were still closed, scrunching his forehead. "Tell me I don't smell hospital."

Sam half-smiled, moving closer to the bedside and leaning his flat palms on the thin sheets. "How d'you feel?"

"Like I got run over by a cement mixer."

The words socked Sam low in the gut, and he wondered how every physical pain could be numbed, and every emotional one could needle in a thousand times worse. He moved away from the bed, gripping the back of the chair to keep his hands steady. Whether he was shaking from nerves or the craving, he wasn't sure. "Dean, I—"

"Don't." Dean cut him off, studying the blanket where he was twisting it between his scuffed fingers. "Just, uh…I don't wanna talk about it, Sam."

"Then don't talk. Just listen." Sam said firmly. "I need to get this out."

Dean shrugged one shoulder, wincing at the motion and tucking his ear down like it hurt, and Sam wanted to dose him full of enough painkillers so that he'd sleep off the worst of this. He wanted to trade his numbness for everything Dean was feeling.

But he stayed, scouring the chair with his fingernails, his chin tucked against his chest. "I never meant for any of this to happen. I didn't want you to get hurt."

"Eh. Well, bang-up job on that one." Dean scratched at one of the butterfly bandages under his sunken, bruise-shadowed eyes.

"Dean." Sam said, softly. "I mean it. I know I screwed up, but I just wanted you to know that…I was wrong. Every single thing I did, I was wrong."

"And what's that buy us, Sam? Huh?" It was exhaustion, or a stalwart sadness, or all of the various hurts that made Dean's voice soft, his gaze even softer, so close to slipping back into sleep. "What d'you want from me?"

Sam pulled in a burning breath through his nostrils. "Tell me how to fix this."

"I don't—" Dean pulled a vacant smile. "I don't know if you can, Sam."

Sam shook his head, looking away. "You said…back in the arena, you said we were still family, Dean. Let me fix this, please."

"I've been thinkin'," Dean scratched at his bandage again, then dropped his hand into his lap. "How are we supposed to go back to what we were, Sam? Huh? You're hopped up on something, I dunno what. The things we said, you don't just take that stuff back. It's out there, it's who we are."

"Dean, no—listen to me—"

"Sam." Dean's eyes fell shut, and Sam went quiet, watching him, feeling the rictus of grief in his chest pulling tighter. "Just…don't, okay?" When Sam didn't reply, Dean eased out a breath and went on, "Look, you're right. We're family. But I don't think we can go back to the way things were. And right now, I need you to leave, all right? Just bail out until I figure—"

"Is this because I'm a demon?" Sam twisted his fingers through the gap in the back of the chair. "Dean, I would've put myself down the day I found out, I just—"

"Don't say that to me. Don't you ever…say that to me." Dean sucked in air harshly, gripping a hand against his side like his broken ribs were throwing fits. "I don't want you dead, Sam, I just…I can't deal with this when everything else is screaming in my head, okay?"

"Okay," Sam murmured. "Dean, I get it. And I'm sorry, man, I'm so sorry for every crappy thing I did to you. Beating Lilith was the only thing I cared about and I know how screwed up I am. I do. I just wanted you to know that I'm done. With the drugs, with…everything I was doing."

"You really think that's gonna make things better?" Dean asked, his voice scratchy like he'd been chain-smoking. "Sam, it's already done. You get that? This, all this crap," He gestured to his bandage-mottled body with one hand, "You can't make this go away. I don't care how many times you apologize, man, the devil's in the details. And he really worked us over."

"Dean, if I'm gonna beat this, I'm gonna need you to back me up. Please. I can't do this on my own."

Dean rolled his head sideways. "Just, uh…just take a walk, Sam, all right?"

It was clean, succinct dismissal that wounded like a broken bone. Sam dragged a hand down his chin, pinching his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger before he dropped his arm to his side. "Yeah, okay. Get some rest."

"Yeah." Dean's voice cracked slightly, and Sam beat a hasty retreat.

He almost collided with John in the hall, catching the cell phone that slid from John's grip; it was a mark of how truly distracted John was, that small sleight of hand. John was usually impossible to startle.

"Sorry, here." Sam dropped the phone back into John's palm. "What did the doctor say?"

"He wants to keep Dean under observation." John replied curtly. "I called Bobby, he's on his way. He's gonna take you home. Dean and I will stick around until he gets the green light from the doc, and then we'll head on back to Sioux Falls."

"You can't…you guys can't stay here, this is Lusiver's city!"

"Believe me, it's the last thing I want to do." John's eyes were steely with regret. "But if we move Dean right now, there's a chance he'll turn septic. He needs a stable, clean environment, and let's face it, Sam, Bobby's place isn't exactly a mansion of hygiene. He's better off here, for the time being."

Sam pressed his lips into a thin line and looked past John. "Fine, just…just stay in touch. Okay?"

"All right." John clapped Sam on the shoulder in passing. "You watch your back out there, Sam. There's gonna be a lotta talk after this fight."

"There always is." Sam said, turning after him. "Hey, John. Who won?"

John stopped in the doorway of Dean's room. "Lily was dead. It was still your fight, Sam." He glanced back with hunted eyes. "You're a step away from the crown."

Standing alone in the cold hallway under the glow of fluorescent lights, Sam wasn't sure how much that mattered anymore.