Chapter Thirty-Six: Take Back the Light
Bobby dropped Sam at his house on Main Street after a profoundly awkward car ride; Sam had the distinct feeling Mary wasn't the only one holding a grudge, and he didn't blame either of them. He held it against himself, too.
He went to the warehouse, wrapped in his hoodie while the rain poured, mingling with pellets of sleet that hammered his face as he walked into the wind. Sam dumped the Masque, holding his breath so he wouldn't have to smell it, drop after drop rolling down the grated in the side of the street. It was a constant battle with himself not to fall to his knees and lap up the brackish stains from the asphalt.
There was something wrong with him, deep and unbalanced, and Sam wasn't sure how to fix it, or, really, if he could. But he was going to try.
Mostly, he tried to stay busy; not with training, not when every tug of his muscles reminded him of Dean's bones snapping under his fists. He organized and reorganized his meager possessions. The gun he'd filched from Bobby's house the day he'd moved out; he field-stripped it, timing himself, over and over again until his hands cramped from the constant repetitive motions. He started to patch up the house, scavenging everything he needed from other vacated buildings in town. The harder he worked, the worse his hand started to hurt; until he couldn't deny that state of the swollen red flesh. Infected, and he still couldn't feel it. Just a nagging itch, and nothing more.
He was surprised the morning he woke up, facedown in his mildewed blanket, to the vibration of the phone by his head going off; it was the phone Jim Murphy had given him, and when Sam flipped it open his heart sank to his knees. He connected the call, sitting up and leaning back against the wall. "Pastor Jim?"
"Sam." Jim's tone was cautiously friendly. "Pardon my language, son, but you sound like hell."
"Yeah. Yeah, I kinda feel like it, too." Sam held his free hand up in front of his face; the cravings were tapering, but his body was starting to shift to other things. Shakes he couldn't control, mostly, spidering up into his shoulders. "What's up?"
"I heard about Seattle."
Sam dropped his head, his bangs falling across his eyes. "Look, I know what you think you should do—"
"And what's that?"
"You should pull your support. Stop sponsoring us." Sam got to his feet and started pacing, just to give his jittery limbs something to do. "And I agree. I was an ass—to you, to my family—this whole time. But I'm asking you, please, don't…don't stop sending Bobby money. Dean's in the hospital, we can't—"
"I know about Dean." Jim interrupted, not unkindly. "My parish is paying for his hospital bills."
Sam's eyes flipped wide and he stopped in his tracks. "You're—wait, what?"
"I'm not God and it isn't my place to extol judgment on your family because of your choices, Sam. I've come to view John and Dean, at least, as friends. And in my book, it doesn't bode well with a man to desert his friends in their darkest hour."
"You said, Dean and John…" Sam trailed off shamefully.
"You haven't been one to let me in these last few months, Sam." Jim said. "But when I talked to John, he told me the state you were in. I wanted to make sure you were all right?"
"Uh, honestly?" Sam blew out a breath. "I'm not good. I'm not okay at all. I know my head's pretty scrambled right now, and I've got this infection on my hand with nothing to treat it—"
"Do you need antibiotics?"
Sam scrunched his face, confused. "I don't get it. Why—why are you trying to help me? Everything I did went against what you believe in, right? I wasn't some kind of hero, I was—I just played a part. And I almost got someone I care about killed."
"Pastors don't just preach sainthood, Sam, we preach forgiveness. And I'm well aware which is more prevalent and needed in our world today." Jim said. "You didn't answer my question."
Sam hesitated "I don't wanna bother you."
"Then it's settled. Antibiotics."
Sam's throat felt unusually tight. "Thank you."
"We all need forgiveness, Sam. But I will give you a warning: you have got to change. Whatever's happened to you, it needs to be stopped, now, while it still can be. That means doing whatever it takes."
"Yeah, absolutely."
"Whatever it takes, Sam? No matter how awful?"
It was harder to squeeze out: "Whatever it takes."
"Then I'll be in touch, if I can find you some help."
True to his word, Pastor Jim had a bottle of antibiotics in the container of supplies that arrived on Sam's doorstep two days later, along with surgical sutures and a sterile needle. Sam popped two pills and slept; he didn't have the heart to admit, even to himself, that he was too shaky to stitch his own wounds.
The next day, he had to risk it; after worrying a splinter out of the infected cut, he knew that he couldn't count on a physical sensation of pain to tell him when he was really in trouble. His brain was hardwired backwards.
The cravings knocked him down at the end of the week; Sam woke with a hunger for the Masque more powerful than anything he'd ever felt, like bloodlust and starvation rolled into one. He stayed curled on his makeshift bed, eyes screwed shut, hands fisted over on his gut and trying desperately to distract himself.
All he could think of was Lilith; how she'd used him. Let him go because the powers he'd started to manifest in increments hadn't blossomed in the Reactor. She'd let him go back to the environment that had started his growth in the first place, and she'd poisoned it. Poisoned him, manipulated him, and Sam had let it happen. Lusiver had been right; one way or another, Sam had been a puppet on a string for a long time.
But the cost to play the demon's game had been too high, and he was sick of being the victim. Always the victim, like a rat in a maze. Every time he ran for the exit, another wall appeared in front of him, buoying him on toward whatever endgame the master had in mind.
Sam wanted to call Ruby; wanted to threaten her, cuss at her until he was hoarse. For ever walking into his life, for ever setting him on that fast road to nowhere in the first place. But he was afraid to dial the number, afraid he'd ask for more Masque instead. And Ruby, at Lilith's behest, would always be welcoming. Would stroke his hair from his forehead and tell him it was all right to want things, to take them for himself.
Sam just wanted to end the déjà-vu; wanted the Masque gone from his system. But he couldn't throw it up, couldn't drain it. He knew what the inevitable solution was, but his mind, and body, rebelled.
Knowing was sometimes more terrifying than being blind.
Five days after Bobby brought him home, Sam was ripping up every floorboard in the house, looking for a hidden flask. He stumbled out to the warehouse and threw broken, dry plastic jugs aside, hunting for one drop to chase away his emotions, to dull everything he was feeling in overwhelming force.
He pawed and flipped and rummaged, tore apart every piece of the house that he'd put together. And finally, tucked in a baseboard of the turret, he found it.
Sam sat with his back to the curved wall, breathing staggered, staring at the vial of Masque. It was an innocent amount, barely enough to slake his thirst, and maybe that was all he needed. A safe sip. Just a little down the hatch, not enough to strip him of everything, but just a feather light brush to dull the ache of his head and heart.
Sam had never felt farther away from the family who'd adopted him, had never felt more alone than knowing Mary and Bobby were fifteen minutes away, and unreachable. Sam gritted his molars together, uncorked the vial with his teeth, and hesitated, again.
His swaddled, badly-stitched hand reached almost of its own accord for the phone, speed-dialing while his eyes stayed on the murky swill.
There were a few brief, annoying chimes. "Hullo?"
Sam felt a thornbush sprouting in his throat. "I—this isn't John."
A beat of silence. "Sam?"
He thumped his head back against the wall. "You're okay."
"Yeah, dad's been checking in every day. What, nobody told you?"
"Nobody's told…I haven't seen anybody, Dean."
"You're by yourself? What the hell, Sam?" And there was hope, in that, if Dean was strong enough to be angry.
"Mary kicked me out." Sam swirled the contents of the vial. "And I am…sitting here, with a bottle of Masque in my hand."
"Masque, what the hell is that?"
"The drug, Dean, it's what I was hopped up on. Demon go-juice. And I think," He swallowed, hard. "I think I'm gonna drink it."
"Sam, don't you dare. Listen to me—"
"I just wanted to tell John not to bother coming for me when he gets home." Sam snapped the phone closed on Dean's protests and pressed his fist to his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut. In the darkness behind his eyelids, an image of his own macabre reflection, of his rage all directed toward Dean, canvassed his sight. Sam's throat heaved with a swallow, a deep breath, baring his teeth.
He flung the vial against the wall, let the Masque spray against the floorboards, and dragged a hand back through his hair, listing sideways against the wall.
He didn't realize he'd fallen asleep, didn't know how long he'd been asleep until he was jolting awake, his stomach bitterly brewing with acid. His hand stung and his head whirled; peering through a shroud of darkness and weak moonlight dripping through the broken window on his left, the one he'd punched through during his fight with Dean, Sam strained to listen.
Something clicked and thumped near the front of the house.
He swallowed, tried to stand and took his time doing it, folding his legs under his body and slowly lurching to his feet.
"Who's," He blinked rapidly, the world tipping with vertigo. "Who's there?"
A fist pounded the door. "Sam, open up!"
Sam straightened, blinking. "Dean—?"
"Sam, open the damn door!"
Sam almost tripped over a loose corner of his blanket, crossing to the door in a few unsteady steps and wrenching it open.
Dressed down in his hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, Dean leaned against the doorpost. His eyes were still underscored with purple shadows and his hair was growing long in its own right, peaking above his sallow face.
But he was here; somehow, here.
"How did you—?" Sam began.
"Dad let me check out." Dean shrugged with his hands plunged into his pockets, moving his elbows away from his body. "Said I was cleared for takeoff."
"You don't look like it." Sam stepped back. "Dean, you look like you're about to fall over. Come on, sit down."
Dean limped inside, moving like everything hurt, and Sam wasn't fooled; the drive from Seattle to Sioux Falls wasn't an easy or a brief one, and Sam had called him less than a day ago, judging by the way his head and body felt. Which meant Dean had checked himself out, and come all this way, because Sam had needed him.
Sam was surprised to feel something other than gratitude or guilt; it was a rush of protectiveness that settled low in his stomach. He stuck close to Dean into the main room of the house, kicking his blankets into a more padded seat and nodding Dean over to it. Dean sat without complaint, but his eyes were on the broken vial fetched up at the joining of the floor and the opposite wall.
Sam followed his gaze, and the shame made a return. "I didn't drink it."
Dean rubbed his fingertips over his forehead. "Good for you. That makes you—what? Five days sober?" He shook his head. "DTs are gonna start soon, man."
"I think they already have," Sam admitted. "But it's slow. Bobby could probably tell you more." He crouched on his heels in front of Dean, then splayed his legs out, linking his arms loosely around his knees. "What made you change your mind?"
Dean sighed, rough, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I didn't. I still owe you a serious beatdown for what happened back in Seattle." He refused to meet Sam's eyes, his gaze scrolling across the floor. "That can wait 'til after we get you clean."
"Okay. 'Cause, Dean?" Sam waited for him to look up, finally, before he added: "I need help."
Dean nodded with a flicker of something old and comforting deep inside his exhausted eyes. "We'll getcha back to normal, Sam."
"And then what?"
"Still workin' on that." Dean tipped his head back against the wall, and Sam quirked a reluctant smile.
"Did John really check you out?"
"Yeah, after I ripped out all the needles and got to the door." Dean shuddered dramatically. "Friggin' witch doctors man, seriously. Those guys had to be demons, right? Nobody's got hands like that."
The thought that he'd left Dean in a hospital of demons somehow made Sam feel worse. Just another strike on his bones. "I guess."
An awkward silence wormed its way in.
"How d'you feel?" Sam asked at length.
"Like a million bucks." Dean's tone was sleepy. "And like I just spent nineteen hours getting tossed around in the front seat on a gut full of stitches and broken ribs. So I'm peachy."
The words pierced in deep, like vampire teeth. "Sorry."
"Yeah, you should be." There wasn't any force behind Dean's words, and he shifted himself against the wall. "I oughta be whooping your ass right now."
"Give it a couple weeks."
The silence, this time, was tinged with sadness. "Think it's gonna be more than a couple weeks, Sam."
His eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, but Sam closed them anyway, waiting for his scrabbling mind to find composure before he let himself speak, "I wish I could take it back."
The answer was a long, drawn-out snort, and Sam cracked open one eye, then the other, blinking.
Dean was asleep, his head tipping down to his chest, his arms guarding his damaged middle. That same sense of protectiveness flooded over Sam again, his mind making up for lost time and separation. Dean's dogtags hung free, swinging against his chest, and that was another spark of hope on a dark horizon: that Dean's hadn't taken them off yet.
Hope; because, maybe, that meant he hadn't given up on Sam.
-X-
"Oh, I don't like the look of this one bit."
Bobby's foreboding words greeted them on the porch at sunrise when he flung open the heavy back door. Dean leaned one elbow against the wrought-iron railing, Sam hunched behind him, folding into himself and wracking with uncontrollable shivers. That was how Dean had found him that morning when he'd come around: huddled up and vibrating like an earthquake was tossing him from the inside.
Mary's vendetta damned, Dean had a responsibility. Still did, after everything.
"You gonna stand there gawkin', or let us in?" Dean demanded, and Bobby sidestepped without a word. Dean hurried in, as much as he could when the broken ends of his ribs felt like they were grating together, and he could feel the flush of pain rising up under his skin. It took him a second to realize Sam wasn't following; that he was still halfway down the steps, looking hollower and sweatier with every breath. "Sam, would you get in here?"
Sam went with halting, shuffling steps, like he was waiting for Bobby to chase him off his property. Bobby didn't, barely moved even, but Dean could see the herculean effort it cost him not to say something. Apparently, a day's solitary car-ride wasn't enough to say everything that needed to be said to the person who'd almost busted the insides of someone you cared about.
"Where's mom?" Dean asked, stopping in the kitchen and turning back to face Bobby as he squeezed through the doorway ahead of Sam.
"Upstairs, freshening up." Bobby's eyes were a little filmy with tiredness. "We stayed up half the night lookin' for you, boy."
"Got sidetracked." Dean swept a glance toward Sam. "We need some help."
"Ya think?"
"Bobby." Dean insisted. "Please."
Bobby removed his cap, scratched his receding hair, then puffed with frustration. "Balls." He lowered himself into one of the chairs by the table with strangely sinuous grace for a man his age. "Spill the beans."
"Sam, tell him." Dean didn't try to thaw the frostiness of his tone; all of his variegated feelings toward Sam could wait until the crisis at hand was solved.
Sam nodded methodically and focused on Bobby. "There was this demon. Ruby. She, uh—she got me hooked on something."
"Naw, I couldn't guess."
Sam's flinch was subtle, but Dean knew him well enough to catch it in the slight lift of his shoulders. "Right. So, um, it's called Masque, and it—"
"Masque." Bobby cut him off, shoving onto his feet and screeching the chair backwards on the tiles. "You're addicted to Masque."
"What, you know about that stuff?" Dean demanded.
"Only that it was makin' the rounds more than a century ago, back when demons were still the big name in the circles that folks hunted. S'the kinda thing you hear horror stories about." Bobby shrugged one shoulder at Dean's incredulous look. "After you all moved in, I figgered I'd better brush up on my demon history."
"I thought there wasn't any history." Sam seemed to be making an effort to keep his teeth from chattering.
"Not under the name of a demon, no. But there's lore goes back decades, about these humans that are more than human. And if you're this deep in on Masque and it ain't left you a drooling mess on the floor, then that means…" Bobby trailed off, his gaze swinging from Dean to Sam and back again. "He can't be."
"Blue-blooded demon, Bobby." Sam said, and Dean felt a rush of irritation at how easily Sam admitted to it.
"I'll be damned. That's what was hidin' in there all along." Bobby snorted softly. "Guess you weren't Faceless after all."
"Wish I was," Sam glanced at Dean with shadowed eyes. "I'd rather be that than—"
"All right, enough, this isn't helping." Dean gritted his teeth around another spike of pain driving into his brain. If he'd had less of a constitution, he would've started purging his insides on the walk over. The morphine had worn off sometime while he'd been asleep, and he was willing to bet Bobby didn't have any drugs that good. "How do we help him, Bobby?"
"I got an old Hunter's journal from back in the day, it's where I found that intel on demons. Might be something on the Masque that I missed."
"Great." Dean nodded perfunctorily. "Think you can—?"
"Is that Dean?" The voice wafted from the stairs, and Dean and Sam exchanged a loaded glance.
"I could hide in the fridge," Sam said, and he sounded like he was only half-joking, his distressed gaze pinned on the doorway as Mary walked in, yanking a towel from her damp hair. She stopped at the sight of them, a tumult of emotions cascading through her eyes.
And then, suddenly, she was moving toward Sam. "I told you not to—"
"Mary!" Bobby caught her wrist, pulling her back.
"What did you do to my son?" Mary was spitting with rage, straining against Bobby's strong grip, and it was Dean's turn to wince. He'd never seen that passionate fury in her eyes before, not even when Gordon had shot John.
"Mary!" Bobby repeated, more forcefully. "That kid needs help, he's—"
"Then he came to the wrong place!"
"He's detoxing from Masque."
Mary froze like Bobby's words had doused her with cold water. Sam was backed against the counter, shoulders turned to Mary defensively, and Dean felt an irrational stab of his own irritation. It wasn't fair that Sam could swap out like that, go from being a cold unfeeling bastard to the same wet-eyed kid from the cage all over again. Part of Dean was convinced it was a manipulation; but there was the other part, through a dizzy kaleidoscope of pain in the arena in Seattle, that had seen the real change in Sam. The shift in his eyes, the way his expression had gone slack with horror. Not something that could be faked, not to that extent; that look had been familiar to Dean, from the time Lilith had rearranged his insides in the Reactor. The same wet, horrified eyes had stared at him then, willing him by sheer gut feeling to stay alive.
Dean boxed that away to think about, later.
Mary stepped back, giving herself slack in Bobby's grip. "I thought…Masque disappeared from the smuggling world over a century ago."
"You read that in your fancy, demon-manufactured textbooks?" Bobby asked, and Mary swung a slightly dazed look toward him. "That's what I thought." He released her. "I'll go find John, and that journal. You watch the two of them."
The minute Bobby disappeared, Mary turned stormy eyes on Dean. He held up one hand. "Can we not do this now?"
"You disappeared last night. No note. No warning. By the time I got up to check on you, you were already gone. You never even said hello."
"Look, dad could've handled it if anything went wrong—"
"We'll talk about this later." Mary stabbed a finger toward him.
"Yes, ma'am."
Sam grunted, and Dean turned, alerted by the sound, as Sam slid onto the floor, arms wrapped around his ribcage. "I feel like there's something—inside me."
"It's in your head, Sam." Dean said, tiredly. "You're not pumping black ooze, there isn't some split personality that wants out. You're just—projecting, or something."
"Actually, he ain't." Bobby was back already, with a dark green journal in hand and John following him, yawning and rubbing one eye. Dean didn't know if John had slept at all through the entire stay in the hospital—his own memory was a morphine-clotted blur—and he didn't look like he'd done much catching up last night.
"What, you mean there's something inside of him?" Dean demanded.
"No, he's pumping black ooze. That's what Masque is, Dean, it's what makes demons look like demons to us." Bobby slapped the journal on the table and the Winchesters crowded around him; Sam didn't, maybe couldn't, join them. "This journal belonged to my granddaddy. Town drunk like myself and a real headcase, so I'm willin' to bet some of this is guesswork."
"Lucky for us, we've got ourselves a real live case of the DTs to prove him right or wrong." Dean slanted a glance toward Sam, who was taking controlled breaths, his head rocking against the cabinet behind him. Dean felt a bowels-deep rush of sympathy and compassion that he couldn't give voice or reason too.
"Says here there's an awful case of the munchies coming with this." Bobby traced the words with his finger.
"Yeah, that's not right." Sam said shortly. "I haven't been hungry for days."
"Is it true this drug blocks the pain receptors in your brain?" Mary asked, sounding morbidly fascinated; she was a hypocrite, too, ready to kill Sam one second and pumping him for information the next, but Dean bit his tongue.
"That's what Ruby said." Sam squirmed. "Seemed like that was how it worked. During fights, I didn't even slow down. Couldn't feel…anything." He curled up his right hand, swaddled with a bandage; Dean wondered but he didn't ask.
"Ruby?" Mary and Bobby said in harmony.
"I'll explain later." John leaned over Bobby's shoulder, hands flat on the table. "The strength, the single-mindedness—it sounds like it changes brainwaves, Mare, what d'you think?"
Mary nodded slowly. "That's the nature of drugs in general. But I don't see what makes Masque so special, or why the demons are so intent on using it."
"S'not just what it does to your head." Sam said. "The things I can do, the things I see, they've been a lot more…powerful, since I got hooked on this stuff."
Dean tasted something that wanted to name itself revulsion, and he tempered that, too. "All right, what else?"
Every eye shifted quickly from Sam, back to the journal. Bobby scratched his beard and underlined the next section with his finger. "Says here the detox is a real bad sonuvabitch." He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "This gets pretty graphic. Granddaddy musta had a demon he kept under watch, wrote down everything with a bottle of Jack Daniels and added in his footnotes."
"How bad is bad, Bobby?" Dean stepped closer, trying to see over Mary's shoulder.
"According to him, turns the receptors back on like flippin' a lightswitch when the poison's out. Hurts like hell."
"Real," Sam gasped, doubling over. Dean moved by instinct, dropping to a knee beside him and heaving Sam back against the cabinets with a hand on his shoulder. He glanced up at the others.
"So, how do we stop it?"
Bobby shrugged, eyes distending helplessly. "Ride out the storm, see where it takes us. Or give 'im more Masque."
"No!" Sam's tone was barely less than a shout. "I'm not taking another hit. It's not...it's not worth it."
"This is gonna be worse than anything you've ever felt, son." Bobby said frankly. "You'll probably wish you could give up the ghost. You wanna know what over a thousand of those pain receptors firin' back to life is gonna feel like?"
"Bobby!" Dean said, sharply.
"Kid's got a right to know what it is he's signin' up for!" Bobby's tone was relentless and sharp. "That's the kinda thing you don't face stoic, Sam. It'll bring you down so far, you might not get back up again."
"I get it!" Sam insisted, and Dean could feel the muscles in Sam's shoulder straining under his hand. He flexed his grip tighter, another force of habit. "Just let me get this over with."
John sounded, surprisingly, almost gentle. "You sure about this?"
"I'm not letting anyone else get hurt for me." Sam enunciated every word with precision, so none of them wavered.
Bobby straightened, shaking his head. "Well, all right. We'll take you back to your place—"
"No. Can't," Sam chewed his lower lip for a second. "I'll tear that place apart looking for a stash. I hid it everywhere. I might find some."
"There's always your basement, Bobby." Mary suggested. "We could take out the tools, so he can't hurt himself."
Bobby's acquiescing nod was brusque; he vanished, with John and Mary, around the corner and down the stairs into the basement, leaving Dean and Sam fetched up to the cabinets. Sam knotted one his fingers in the scruffy threads of his hair, the heel of one hand mashing against his forehead, the other pawing down Dean's arm and anchoring itself in the front of Dean's shirt. Strong fingers, the same fingers that had cracked and bruised Dean's face days before, hunted into the folds of his clothing like a helpless child now as Sam looked for something to anchor himself through the pain; Dean swallowed a comforting, I got you, Sammy.
Three capable pairs of hands made light work, accumulating a steady pile of old rusted tools and car parts into the corner beside the couch. Sam's skin was turning ashen when Bobby returned, finally, grabbed Sam's arm and pulled him to his feet, and Dean rose beside him. There was a silent question, a plea in Sam's eyes as Bobby steered him toward the basement door: Still with me on this one, right?
Dean glanced away, then back, briefly, caught Sam's curled lip, his forehead scrunching with puzzlement. Dean?
Bobby pulled him to a stop at the top of the stairs. "Good luck, kid."
Sam squared his shoulders and stepped inside, silent, and Bobby slammed the door shut behind him. The lock hitting home sounded like the drop of a pin.
Mary laid a hand on Dean's shoulder, pulling him around to face her. Dean let her wrap her arms around him, let his chin hang over her shoulder. The touch of her fingers at the nape of his neck was so comforting Dean felt like it was suffocating him.
"Oh, honey, I thought we were going to lose you." Mary's tone was almost childlike with vulnerability, bringing on that decades-old drive of purpose to protect her, the commandment John had instilled in him the day their family had separated.
"Yeah, pretty crazy, huh?" Dean shut his eyes.
"Don't you ever, ever walk out like that again when you're hurt without telling one of us first, do you understand me?"
"I hear ya. Sorry. I dunno what I was doing."
It was a lie, and the understanding of that lingered between them. Sam had needed him, and whatever else had happened between them, Dean had a promise to keep. Winchesters didn't break promises. If there was a next time, one way or another, Dean would be gone again.
Mary pulled back, cradling his face in her hands. "My little angel. You were brave out there." She stroked the hair from his forehead. "Your father told me everything."
"Eh, less brave and more stupid." Dean shifted his weight from foot to foot.
"You wanted to save your brother."
That word scraped Dean raw, now, left him feeling bitter. "Guess so."
"Hmm." Mary scuffed her thumb over his cheekbone, then turned him around to face the study. "Couch. Now."
She had him strip down to bare skin and bandages from the torso up, the thin layers of gauze saturated with sweat and unraveling from his restless sleep. Dean relented to her ministrations, mostly because he was too tired and too sore to do much else. Mary was gentle and methodical until the last bandage fell away and bared the entirety of the damage: stained and lumpy bruises on his ribcage, the notch where they'd inserted a stint to re-inflate his lung, the wide gash across his lower abdomen, stitched shut where they'd taken out his appendix.
"Oh, Dean." Mary's voice was barely louder than a whisper.
"I look fantastic, right?" Propped up on his elbows, Dean flashed her a megawatt grin; her rejoining look was splashed through with wetness that wiped the smile off of Dean's face. "I'm okay, ma. Doc says I just gotta take it easy for a couple months."
Mary closed her eyes for a heartbeat. "I could kill him."
"Who, the doctor?"
"Sam."
Just the name, dammit, just Sam's name shot a backlash of emotion through him. Anger and grief and hatred and he still cared. "Mom, unless he's pulling a cosmic lie out of his ass, Sam's already killing himself for this more than the rest of us are. Maybe you should lighten up on him."
"He tried to kill my baby."
"Yeah, okay, he roughed me up. You should've seen his face, mom, it was like—I dunno, the demons somehow convinced him we were all gonna jump ship on him. He had that noose around his neck for ages and we couldn't figure out why? This is why." Dean gestured with one hand, direct and focused, pointing down. "He has been sitting on this for God knows how long, because he thought we were gonna kick him out if we knew what he was."
"And how do you feel about that?" Mary asked.
"Now you're really sounding like a psychiatrist."
"Humor me."
Dean tried to snort a breath, realized that it still hurt, doing that, and when Mary caught sight of whatever spasm of pain crossed his features, she grabbed the spool of gauze and started to bind his midsection again.
"I'm dealing," Dean kept his eyes on her hands, giving himself time to think. "I told Sam it didn't change anything, but—hell, ma, I dunno. He's a demon."
"And before that, he was a monster. He was Faceless." Mary, always the devil's advocate, putting her personal opinions aside to help Dean sort out his own.
"That was different. He wasn't one of the things that got us into this whole mess in the first place."
"So the blame of his race decides how you relate to him?"
"No!" Dean protested, hastily, and Mary arched an eyebrow. His face contorting with discomfort, Dean shifted on the couch. "I never said that. I just—look at what he turned into. He played right into this trap Lilith set up. The Masque, the powers, everything. He turned into some perfect little demonic soldier."
"But here he is, trying to get better." Mary tipped her head toward the basement door behind them.
"I just…I dunno if I can trust him anymore. I mean, if he fell off the wagon that fast, just because some demon chick promised him answers—"
"Try to see it from Sam's point of view. No matter what we did, he always felt isolated, in a way. He wanted so badly to be a part of this family, but deep down he knew he was different. Once he found out the truth, he thought we wouldn't let him stay."
"Are we?" Dean asked, narrowly. "Are we letting him stay?"
Mary sighed, finishing the wrap of bandages and taping it down with surgical adhesive. "I don't know, Dean. I'll have to have a talk with your father and Bobby." She splayed a hand on the swaddle around his midsection, and Dean could feel the heat of her palm even through the layers of gauze. "My point is, Sam was at the end of his rope and he had one foot off the edge, Dean. But he stayed in, and he fought. He let his loyalty turn to obsession. In that area, yes, Sam was wrong. And don't think I will ever, ever forgive him, for what he did to you." She laid her hand on Dean's cheek. "But this isn't a black-and-white issue."
"Look who's talking. You were pretty scary back there, when you saw him."
"Sam's not the only one who lets his emotions get the better of him, sometimes." Mary pushed him down gently. "You need rest."
"Amen to that." Dean rolled over on his side, hated the pressure it put on his ribs, squirmed over on his back again and tucked one arm behind his head, letting his eyes slide shut. "Wake me up if anything happens."
"I will. If you need something, have Bobby or your father get it for you." Mary's weight vanished from the foot of the couch, and Dean cracked one eye open.
"Where are you goin'?"
"To talk to Sam."
"Don't kill him."
He drifted in and out of sleep for most of that day and the next; noticing when Mary came back upstairs, catching glimpses of John and Bobby moving through the house like ghosts, or shadows. There was a part of Dean that was surprised John hadn't put a bullet in Sam already; then again, that same part was surprised by the naked honesty John had shown, sitting at Dean's bedside in the hospital and confessing all his wrongs, making promises that would take a long time to come to fruition.
For once in his life, Dean felt patient, the cabin fever gone; he was willing to let this one play out.
The following day marked a full week since Sam had opened that flask in the arena, and Dean catapulted up on the couch to the sound of Sam's screaming.
Worse than the nightmares that had plagued him after the Reactor; worse than any sound Dean had heard him make under the slash of a werewolf's claws, at the hungry human bite of a Wendigo. Sam sounded like he was being flayed alive.
Dean threw off the blanket that somebody—Mary, probably—had tucked over him during the night and, ignoring the painful protest of his ribs, he hopped off the couch, punching the back door open and heading down the steps. Sam's screams followed him like a shawl wrapped around his head.
It was early morning, so early the sun was just a hazy gray stripe on the horizon, and nobody else was awake.
But they would be, soon. And they were all just as powerless as Dean was, to help. To offer comfort, even.
Dean retreated to Bobby's backyard; the lean-to with its straw floor had long since been disused. There hadn't been any traffic of monsters through the salvage yard since the Winchesters had moved in, and Dean didn't know if Bobby regretted that, or if he was glad the money had started to pour in through a different venue.
Dean sat beside Chelsea's grave, the one place on Bobby's property that he'd avoided for months. The memories were still fresh, the feelings not quite as raw but certainly just as real. Somehow, right now it was almost a bubble of unfeeling, where Sam's cries couldn't reach.
Dean tore a hand back through his hair, listening to the silence that was almost consuming, so absolute after the clamor from inside that it left him unbalanced. He stared at the gravestone, his thoughts in a whirl.
Chelsea had been easy to like: a guiltless kid, in over her head. A victim of her circumstances, but still innocent. Kind of like Sam, in the beginning. But Sam had chosen his own dark road to walk down, and Dean couldn't reconcile it. Couldn't find the man inside the monster, anymore.
But that dragged him right back down the line, to his conversation with Maggie Robertson in the mini-mart. The way she'd challenged him about what made a monster, a monster. And hadn't Sam defined himself through his actions, set himself on the line opposite from Dean?
It should've been that simple; but his brain kept circling around to something Bill Harvelle had told him dozens of times over the years, when Dean had insisted he was too tired to keep training:
It isn't falling down that makes a man. Whether or not he's got the guts to get back up—that's when you know what he's made of.
Deep down, Dean was rebelling; he wanted to hold a grudge, notch a chip into his shoulder. He wanted to ostracize Sam for the rest of their lives. Payback was a tough broad, and Dean was used to selling her out in spades.
But that couldn't erase the memory of a hand on his forehead, of a broken bottle of Masque and Sam willing to take on the worst pain of his life to get clean. He'd watched Jo forgive Bill every time he went sober, and still be there with painkillers when he drank himself to a headache two weeks later. He'd seen Mary take John back, after every fight, every cutting word, every promise to the contrary.
Sam had chosen to be a monster; and now he was choosing to be something better, something more than the sum of his lineage.
The ball was in Dean's court: whether or not he'd choose to be human.
-X-
The basement was dank and dark and smelled like old sweat and engine oil.
There was a mattress shoved against one wall, moth-eaten and draped with a wool blanket, most likely laid out for his benefit. The walls had been stripped mostly bare; Sam didn't think he could do much damage to himself with a cork board.
He explored, for the first half hour after Bobby locked the door behind him with a very final click. There wasn't much to see, a room long and tall with no other exits and no objects inside of any real consequence. Sam had watched them carry toolboxes and old car parts up, stashing them somewhere else in the house. Nothing sharp or jagged that he could cut himself on.
Sam didn't know what they were expecting, but it didn't bode well in his gut.
Eventually, the shaking in his extremities became less a nuisance and more a problem. Sam could barely walk straight; he submitted himself to it and sank on the mattress, trying to fold in on himself to stop the quaking. His body was begging, screaming for Masque; but Bobby's clinical recitation of the drug's effects only served to solidify Sam's resolve.
He was done poisoning himself.
When the door opened at the top of the stairs, Sam felt a brief lightning flash of hope that it was Dean; less disappointed and more nervous when he saw Mary's slender legs appear through the railing, Sam tried to make himself more presentable. He sat up straighter, shook his hair back from his eyes.
"Hi, Sam." Mary said as her feet touched down on the concrete floor.
"Hi," Sam's voice was quiet, scratchy. He cleared his throat. "What're you doing down here?"
"I came to see you." Mary's tone was matter-of-fact as she joined him, standing over the mattress. "Mind if I sit?"
"No, go ahead." Sam scooted over and Mary sank down gracefully beside him, folding her legs Indian-style. Sam studied his hands, his shaking, unsteady hands. "I guess you must be pretty pissed at me, huh?"
"That's a general understatement." Mary's tone was still all business, not a trace of warmth or of cold. Just level.
"That's okay. I'm pretty…pissed at myself." Sam let out a single breathless chuckle, then rocked his head back against the wall. "I'd take it back. If I could. I'd kick Ruby to the curb and never find out what I am."
"That's a destructive pattern of thinking, Sam. You can drive yourself crazy wondering what might've been, if you'd just known this or done that. And it buys you nothing but a broken heart at the end of the day."
Sam felt a flush of fire racing up his throat, and he choked against it, wondering if that was just the start, just the tip of the iceberg of pain that was waiting for him. "I just wanna fix this."
Mary was quiet, for a moment. "Sam, I was raised a Hunter, like Dean. We're trained to see the world without shades of gray. And that makes us strong. But also makes us pretty obsessive."
"Not like this." Sam rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, his face dewing with sweat as he fought to repress the shivers. "I'm a freak."
"No, Sam, you're not." Mary rebuffed firmly. "I've seen what fear does to good people. It turns them into monsters. And that's something I have a hard time forgiving you for. You hurt my son. Not just at the arena, but for months before that."
"And this is supposed to make me feel better?" Sam asked, bleakly.
"I understand how you feel, Sam." Mary went on like he hadn't spoken. "I lost both of my parents. They were my family. And then I lost John. Sometimes I used to lie awake and think of all the things I would've done differently, if it meant we would still be together. But the truth is, we can't change the past. We atone, we move on. That's how Hunters survive."
"How did you do it?" Sam asked, sliding a wet-eyed glance her way. "It feels like—it feels like it's gonna kill me."
"Hunters understand that it won't be easy. That you can't always win, you can't save everyone. We understand that there are going to be hard choices, every single day of our lives. But we don't let that stop us. We keep our heads down, we press on, and we do what it takes to get the job done."
"I'm not a Hunter, though." Sam rattled a breath. "I'm a demon." The more he said it, the deeper it sank in and the more it felt like a curse.
"Then be the first," Mary reached over, rested a hand on Sam's cheek and shifted herself closer to him, her forehead resting against the hollow of his temple. "Sam, be the first demon to decide he can be something better than his circumstances."
Sam lost track of time, after that; bits and pieces fell through the cracks. Mary vanished, and he wasn't sure where she'd gone or if she was coming back. He wandered in circles through the basement, the shakes worsening, but somehow the hunger for Masque started to diminish again. It was the sole beacon of relief in the whole affair, and it gave him enough lethargy in absence to allow him sleep.
Not for long; Sam woke in a puddle of his own vomit with the feeling of every bone in his body being pulverized.
The receptors under his skin were firing back to life in clusters, shooting phantom pains through every inch of his body. Some part of his brain, at first, registered that he wasn't being wounded; that he was catching up on months of old injuries that had already healed. Beyond that, there was a pressure in his teeth, like the worst headcold of his life, and he had a second to be thankful there weren't any crowbars around; he was tempted to take his own fingernails to his gums to relieve the strain.
And then the fire consumed him, and he didn't know anything anymore.
Some part of him was conscious of the fact that he was screaming, screaming himself hoarse, screaming so loud and so hard it burst the blood vessels in his eyes and ripped his throat into tatters. When he threw up, he threw up blood with the mucous and bile. He was swimming in his own sick, his body a contracted coil, fingers twisting into the blanket. He writhed, trying to escape a feeling like Lusiver's knives whipping under his skin, searching the farthest reaches under one tiny flap to sever the cords of muscle beneath.
There was a moment of reprieve after years, decades, centuries of torture. Sam lay on his back, utterly dehydrated, wheezing for breath as the sensations sank from cacophonic to a muted orchestra under his skin. Tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes, Sam lay flat on the mattress; terrified to move, terrified to set himself off again.
God, he was thirsty; so thirsty for water, his skin and his ruined throat sapped dry.
The next wave hit him like an avalanche and Sam's head wrenched back, his body arching off the mattress. He didn't scream—didn't have any strength left to scream, anymore—but his chest thrummed with agonized sounds, grunts and softer cries, until he realized he was begging; throwing pleas to an empty room.
"Guys—please, please help me, please! Oh, God—help me!"
They could've left, and the thought struck Sam like another blow. They could've abandoned him to his fate, and it was no more than he deserved.
Sam folded in on himself sideways, burrowing his head against his arm. His nose and eyes streamed freely, his stomach clenching and battering against his throat until he gave it release and vomited, again, staining his shirt and his wrist and his hair.
The day was like that, the endless, anguished day. Sam flipped and thrashed on the altar of the musty mattress, a sacrifice for his own sins. The pain never abated for more than two minutes at a time, and it was every torture he'd ever known being visited on him all at once. It was a knife biting down his vertebrae, one at a time; it was a hand plunging under his skin, squeezing his heart until it burst. Sam tasted the toxins of his own blood, and understood why no other demon had ever come back from this.
It was going to kill him.
Sam was shivering, lying on his side on the freezing concrete of Bobby's basement floor, when he heard the door creak overhead. At first he thought he was hallucinating it; in fits and bursts, he'd hallucinated other things. Thought he'd seen Azazel lurking under the stairs, Lusiver prowling the corners. Once, catching a glimpse of platinum blond hair, he'd been convinced Lilith was sitting at the top of the landing, calling abuse down on him.
It wasn't a demon that came for him this time; it was a slow, hesitating walk, something cautious of every jarring footfall.
When he tilted his gaze up to meet Dean's eyes, Sam managed to speak, for the first time in hours, for the first time since he'd stopped calling for help: "No."
Sam rolled onto his belly and tried to crawl away, and Dean moved, surprisingly fast for somebody in his condition; his hand anchored itself to Sam's shoulder.
"Sam, stop, dammit!"
"Let me go!" Sam rolled weakly onto his side, tried to break Dean's grip. "I don't want you to see this!"
"Too bad, it's not your call!" Dean's face was broken with a sheen of sweat as he tugged Sam up into a generally vertical position.
"You can't help me, Dean, just let it go!" It sapped every lingering ounce of Sam's strength to keep his head up. His chin rested on Dean's fist, tangled in the putrid collar of Sam's shirt. "It's over, just stop. Please, just stop, all right? I don't want you to see me—"
"Tough." Dean said, no room for argument, and Sam's protest was cut off by the next round of abuse. His body spasmed, pummeled by the awakening of the pain receptors, and he swayed in Dean's grip, biting his tongue hard enough to bleed just to keep from screaming.
Dean dragged him toward the wall, two wounded soldiers in a foxhole, and he did something he'd only done, once, before. He folded his arms around Sam, pinned him down with Sam's back to his chest.
"Sammy, it's okay. It's gonna be okay, pal, I'm right here. Right here." Dean guided Sam's hand to Sam's heart, its pace out of control. "Just keep this beating, and we are gonna fix it. All right? We can still fix this."
Sam slammed his flat palms to the floor on either side of Dean's knees and gagged, gagged until his throat was folding in on itself, and Dean's grip didn't go slack even once.
"Why—are you even—down here?" Sam panted.
"'Cause you're still the closest thing I have to a brother." Dean latched onto Sam's wrist. "Let me see that hand."
Sam let him, let Dean's fingers worry loose the bandage while he rested and rallied what little strength he could, between bouts. Dean's thumb traced the haphazard stitches, and he snorted.
"Who taught you battlefield triage, Sam? It looks like you went after this thing with a broken sewing machine."
"Bite me." Sam's teeth chattered.
"Sorry, sweat and puke aren't exactly on my list of favorite flavors." Dean snarked. "Don't worry, I'll get mom to stitch this back up when you're clean."
Sam felt like that day would never come. But at least he had Dean, and that was enough to keep him sane. He'd stay down here drying out forever if it could somehow bridge the gap between them.
"Sam. Breathe, dude."
Sam breathed.
"You're gonna be fine. You're too much of a pain in the ass to die."
It didn't matter to him, right now, if he lived or died. All Sam knew was that he didn't want Dean to leave him alone again.
Dean started humming,some song Sam didn't have a name for. Sam slumped in Dean's grip, his forehead touching his knees, and waited for his body to wring itself dry.
-X-
Dean didn't even realize he'd fallen asleep; but he came awake, abruptly, eyes flipping open when he felt something soft and warm descending on him.
He was still in the basement; Sam was beside him, now, he'd been exhausted but stable enough for Dean to let him loose after a few hours of just sitting there, asses numb on the spring-coil, neither of them moving. Sam was asleep, too, completely spent from the detox, his head on Dean's shoulder.
Mary was crouched in front of them in the semi-darkness, light pooling down the steps from the kitchen. Her hand still rested on the blanket she'd draped over Dean's lap. "How is he?"
"Drool-y." Dean complained, keep his voice pitched low. "I think he's been out for a while, though."
"Well, it's been forty-eight hours. He may be through the worst of it." Mary touched two fingers to the side of Sam's neck, and Dean felt a brief surge of panic when Sam didn't even stir at the contact. "His heart is racing." Mary's eyes flashed with sympathy in the darkness. "He'll be weak, Dean. Very weak, for a long time. He may never gain back the kind of strength he had before."
Dean wasn't surprised, but it still left him feeling drained, like he'd been the one battling phantoms in his own body. "I'm taking him upstairs."
Mary hesitated. "He may have another fit—"
"I don't care." Dean interrupted. "He's done."
"Then at least let your father help."
"I'll get him." Dean insisted. "He ain't heavy."
Mary studied him for a moment, testing his mettle with a glance, and then she nodded faintly. "I'll make sure he has a place to sleep."
When she was gone, Dean jostled Sam with his shoulder. "Hey. Sam. Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty."
Sam finally picked his head up, blinking drowsily. "What's up…?"
"Time to get you someplace comfier. It's past bedtime for snockered little Sammys."
"Not drunk, Dean, just tired." Sam's eyes started to drift shut again.
"I know, Sam, I know." Dean stood, giving Sam's arm an insistent pull until Sam couldn't ignore him, and had to unfold to his feet. Sam was staggering blearily, still coated in his own vomit. He smelled rank, and Dean wrinkled his nose. "Dude, you are one sight for sore eyes."
Sam's headed nodded listlessly, chin dipping to his chest.
"Whoa, easy, there, cowboy." Dean braced a hand on Sam's back, steadying him, then pulling Sam's arm over his shoulders. "One step at a time, huh?"
It took them an inordinately long time to make it up to the second floor; Sam was almost deadweight, but he made some effort to shuffle his feet. Dean's midsection was a riot of different hurts by the time they made it to the hallway, meeting Mary outside the bedroom door.
Dean dumped Sam unceremoniously onto his bed in the guest room, glancing at Mary over one shoulder as she hovered in the doorway. "I got this, mom."
Mary's face softened. "I know you do."
She disappeared, hopefully to scrounge up some painkillers. Dean yanked the blanket up to Sam's shoulders. "Cozy enough for ya?"
"Dean." Sam's tone was so serious, Dean felt a rush of vigilance chasing out his own hazy fatigue. "We need to move."
"Oh, you're not goin' anywhere, Sam."
"Ruby knows where we are. Dean. She'll come looking for me." Sam snagged the front of Dean's shirt, dragging himself up into a sitting position, their faces inches apart. "Dean, we need to go."
"Not until you're back up and running with all engines on go." Dean peeled Sam's hand off his shirt. "Sam, trust me, she can't get us in here."
"She'll call me out. Like…like a siren." Sam's eyes slid out of focus, fluttered shut, then sprang open, his gaze flicking rapidly over Dean's face. After a few seconds, it turned uncomfortable.
"Sam, what're you doing?"
"You have a lotta freckles."
"Good grief, you're such a damn girl sometimes." Dean shoved Sam back down on the bed, gently. "Get some sleep."
"Promise you won't go anywhere." Sam pleaded, and that innocence was back in his tone, back in his eyes. "Dean? Promise me."
Dean wondered if it was guilt, or grief, or the side-effects of the detox that made Sam clingy. "I'm staying right here, Sammy."
Sam's eyes hooded, and he rolled onto his stomach. "'Kay. What about Ruby…?" Sam yawned, burying his face in the pillow. His voice tapered, and he was deep-breathing asleep in seconds.
"That bitch isn't gettin' near you, kiddo." Dean murmured. "Trust me."
It didn't take him long to pack his duffle with weapons from Bobby's collection, even with his ribs throbbing. Dean raided the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, grabbing a bottle of Vicodin and giving it a shake; it rattled to satisfaction and Dean popped one, shoving the bottle into the duffle with the collage of knives and guns.
He didn't know how to kill a demon, or if you even could without the Colt; but he had a feeling it'd be damn hard for them to move around with their limbs hacked off. And Dean knew a thing or two about pain.
The downstairs was quiet, Bobby fast asleep on the couch; Dean treaded softly past him and out to safety, pausing on the porch for one last glance inside.
This was stupid, and he knew it. He wasn't even sure where to start.
But he knew scared when he saw it; he knew Sam had been downright terrified at the thought of crossing paths with Ruby again. Bad blood or not, nobody was going to make Sam look like that, feel like that, as long as Dean was around.
Dean stepped out into the night and closed the door softly behind him.