Chapter 54: Tell Me the Truth

Author's Note: Quick heads-up, I probably messed up on the medical terms and stuff, and my explanation of how exactly the characters know some of the stuff they say in this chapter kind of sucks, so I apologize for that.

Sam did make it to the morning. He did wake up eventually, but he felt different when he did, and it definitely wasn't because his arm felt like it was on fire or he had just had the best sleep he'd had since Nora had, in most senses of the phrase, stabbed him in the back. This was different, and at that moment he couldn't quite place what.

The light seared into his eyes when he groggily opened them, feeling like someone had just plunged two knives into them. It felt even worse than any hangover he'd had, and that was saying something. He closed his eyes immediately, but it was too late. That pain was just bringing up all the other ones, and he suddenly found himself having trouble breathing, his head spinning even though he was lying down. He knew the symptoms; the demon had detailed them enough. It meant he didn't have much time left at all. Any minute, he supposed.

He was dying, could die at any moment, but all he wanted to do was sleep. Maybe that was what it felt like when you died, like going to sleep. If it was, then maybe dying wasn't as bad as it was cracked up to be. He could use some sleep. At least it wouldn't hurt, and at least there was no bright light. That was one cliché that he definitely didn't appreciate at that moment.

Burying his face in the pillow, he hoped he could suppress the few memories that hadn't come back up enough to keep most of them down for another hour or so, replacing them with the oblivion that sleep provided him. Or death, if that was what it was. One of the memories he tried the hardest to keep down was the fiasco the previous night. He didn't need to remember how he had let Dean talk him out of it, how he had thrown all of that psych bullshit at him, and how it had worked. It had even made complete sense to Sam.

His head throbbed through his temples at a steady rate, and he pressed his face even harder into the fabric, taking a deep breath and holding it, temporarily relieving the pressure on his head by moving the focus elsewhere in his body. He smelled cheap fabric softener. Somehow, that small detail helped not to ground him; the same fabric softener had been used in so many hotels they'd stayed it since he was a kid, it had become one of the most familiar smells to him, right up there with the smell of his dad's jacket from back when John had actually given Sam hugs. It must have been at least since he was eight years old; the one in Chicago didn't count.

Still, the smell of the fabric softener that could have been Snuggle, possibly Downy, had been used in so many hotels, he could almost take himself back to the beginning, before all of this had started. He could imagine nothing was wrong, that so many lives hadn't been ruined by him in one giant sweep.

"Sam? Are you awake?" It was Dean, that much was obvious, and for a second they were back again, before he even left for college. For a moment, Sam had trapped himself in another reality, and for a second he felt fine. He never would have though a memory from back in high school, when he had considered his life a living hell, would provide him any relief. He never would have thought his life could be that bad. But for a moment, he felt good. He felt like he was safe, like he was home.

Dean was waking him up for school, having been up before him because of a late night hunt that went through to the morning that Sam had stayed at home, asleep, the entire duration. He was momentarily relieved Dean was even still alive to wake him up, but so many years had blocked him from the complete terror that had kept him up all night there at the beginning. Still, he groaned, rolling over to tell Dean to go away. There was no way he was going to school; he had just finished taking the SATs and they had used up most of his energy. All those nights of staying up, staying awake on coffee, had left him with a sort of hangover effect. He opened his eyes, squinting.

And reality was back, flooding in as he saw Dean's face, older, tired, hitting him in one giant wave like it did every single time. The brief, relaxing relief was gone in a flash, and he suddenly couldn't even remember what it felt like to feel safe, though he had only experienced it seconds ago. He wished for the thousandth time he could wipe the memories away, every single freaking one of them. Maybe if he couldn't remember he was dying, it wouldn't be so bad when he actually did. At least then he wouldn't have all of the memories eating away at his sanity every second of the day.

"I'm awake," was what he said simply in response, and it was fitting. He was awake again, in every sense of the world. Reality was back, and it was so not getting a Thank You card, not after all the shit it had pulled.

He attempted to move, to push himself up, but gave up after a few seconds. His limbs felt like lead. He still had a lot of sleep to catch up on, which he probably never would. He grumbled, his voice disgruntled and far from decipherable. He was too pre-occupied to notice how shaken Dean looked, even though it was ten times more apparent in the dim light how he hadn't even closed his eyes the entire night, or how his hands were still shaking after all that time. He attempted to smile, though, but he only had the energy to keep it up for a few seconds.

"I know you just woke up," Dean mumbled, his voice gruff and hurried, but hushed. Sam wondered for a split second if it was because he knew Sam's head hurt or because he was just paranoid before he got his answer. Since he opened his eyes the first time, it was darker. The curtains had been pulled closed and the lights had been turned off. Dean had seen the light hurt his eyes. Sam was a little freaked out and more than a little guilty that Dean had been watching him that closely for so long. But, then again, what more did he have to do? "But we have to go."

"We're running," Sam reiterated absentmindedly, knowing he should have expected the move. His voice was raspy; his throat felt like it was made of sandpaper. He coughed a little for a second, his throat suddenly closing. He felt like he was choking. His head spun, and the world turned on its side. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't tell if he could feel his heart stopping because that was how scared he was or because it actually was.

It passed. His breathing returned slowly, and he slumped back on his pillows. Dean had been just as scared as he had been. His eyes were wide, and he was thinking the same thing. He had thought that was it, too. For all they had known, it could have been, but Sam convinced himself that worrying was just going to kill him faster. Dean, apparently, hadn't given himself a reason not to worry. Sam saw something in his face. He wasn't acting like Dean Winchester anymore. He looked as scared as Sam felt, and for once he was showing it worse than his younger brother. And if anything in the world would have made Sam even more terrified, that was definitely it.

"Yeah, Sam," Dean agreed quietly. "We're running."

"Why?" Sam asked, regaining his breath, and Dean bit his lip, rolling his eyes though he looked more than annoyed. Anxious, maybe. "If you want us to stand our ground and fight, then let's do it." He was slowly coming into awareness, and very little in Dean's trail of logic made sense. "Why do we have to go?"

"Well," Dean explained, like he was talking to a five year old, "if I didn't know that the drugs in your system along with the fever of 101.2 degrees were muddling your common sense, I'd think you weren't my nerdy little brother." Sam reached up to feel his forehead, and, sure enough, it was hot to the touch. Meanwhile, he stared at Dean, making it perfectly clear he had a headache and didn't want to play this game.

"Sam," Dean reiterated, annoyed, but the emotion seemed forced, like he was trying too hard to act like himself when it should have come naturally, "a hotel room is not the best place for a fight, and you know that. We'd get our asses served to us on a plate. Plus, if they're coming after us, it's only a matter of time before they get here, and you're in no shape to defend yourself."

"I'm getting worse," Sam pointed out without emotion, "if you haven't already noticed. You know that." He didn't even know why he was opposing Dean on the matter. He wouldn't have thought he was up to another argument, and plus, he agreed with Dean on some level. Every ounce of him wanted to escape, to run as fast as he could as far as he could. Every bit of him told him to, but there was another tiny part winning out. He knew exactly what it was; it was the part that wanted to go back to them, to let out what he had suppressed for so long under Dean's careful watch.

"I don't know how it matters, either way," he finished while he was still winning out. Dean rolled his eyes for the thousandth time. He pulled the covers off of Sam, and then yanked the pillow out from under his head roughly, causing him to his the hard wood of the head board.

"Awake now?" Dean asked, raising an eyebrow. He looked at Sam like he was teaching him a lesson. He didn't want to hear any more thoughts like that from Sam, and Sam understood. He nodded. "Good, because I am not going to let you lay in bed all day like a whiney little thirteen year old that doesn't want to get up and go to school. And if you had any sense of self-preservation whatsoever, you'd listen to me and get the hell out of bed."

Now this was the old Dean, the one Sam knew. He felt the relief flood through him. Dean had worried him there for a second. Something was still wrong, but his head was so cloudy he had to concentrate to realize what.

"Where's dad?" he asked tentatively. Dean didn't answer, and his back was to Sam as he double checked the room to make sure they hadn't left anything behind, but he stiffened, and when he spoke his tone was robotic, and Sam could tell he had rehearsed the lines before.

"Most of our bags are already in the car," Dean muttered, uncomfortable. "You're going to have to help me with a few, but not many."

"Dean," Sam said, more forcefully. "Where is he?"

Dean paused, blinking. His mouth was open slightly, and it moved a few times like he was going to say something, and his eyes stared at the floor like he could see the answer written there, like it was something really complicated. All he ended up saying, though, was, "He left." He didn't look up as he continued his work clumsily. He crouched down, pulling up the covers of the bed to check and see if they had left any stray shoes or socks under there. "Last night. I don't know where."

"You got mad at him, didn't you?" Sam asked, knowing it was true before he even opened his mouth, even though he could barely fathom how Dean could get that mad at his father in a million years. Yet when he thought about it, if anything could do that to Dean's unshakable faith in John, it was this. "You yelled at him."

"Of course I didn't," Dean said, but it was like a perfectly delivered line by a skilled actor.

"You told him to leave," Sam continued, and he once more knew it was true. This was different than just knowing his brother well. He could see the truth; the waves of guilt and confusion were rolling off of him almost visibly, and all of a sudden those emotions transferred to anger.

"God, I hate it when he does that," Sam heard, though Dean's lips weren't moving.

"I know you do," Sam answered him, all the same. It only took Dean a few seconds of staring at him in confusion before he understood, and he blinked in surprise.

"How do you..." he said, out loud this time.

"Can he read my mind?" Dean wondered, and once more it sounded so clear he could barely tell the voices apart. Sam pushed it away, not wanting to hear anymore. The headache he got from usually doing it was coming back, and it just brought up unpleasant memories.

"Yeah," Sam admitted.

"How long have you been doing that?" Dean asked, anger creeping into his tone, and Sam didn't blame him.

"Not that long," Sam assured him quickly. "I swear."

"What did you hear?"

"Nothing," Sam said defensively. "I didn't mean to," he continued, his tone apologizing. "I just...it's like my visions. I can't control it." Dean nodded, but his eyes were still wary. He didn't trust Sam, and that hurt more than a lot of things Dean could have said at that point.

Dean nodded, then shrugged in a trying-too-hard-to-be-casual way.

"At least he dropped the topic of dad." And suddenly, Sam could feel Dean's relief as his own. "Thank god. He doesn't need to--"

"You're still going to have to tell me what happened between you and dad," Sam said, careful not to mention how he had gotten the hint from reading Dean's mind. Luckily, Dean was too irritated he had asked the question at all to care.

"I told you, nothing," he said. "Now get the hell off your lazy ass. We're going."

"Not until you tell me the truth," Sam said stubbornly.

"I hate you, Sam," Dean thought, but he didn't truly mean it, not that time. He was thinking it out of pure agitation and nervous energy. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you."

Still, he forced out a semi-diplomatic, "I'm not lying, Sammy."

"Yes, you are," Sam insisted, and Sam could vaguely hear Dean's thoughts, though they were fading away, becoming fuzzy. Dean was wondering whether or not to just outright tell him.

"I don't have...tell...truth...completely."

"Dean, tell me," Sam said. "I won't get mad." It was too late. Dean had decided not to say anything more on the matter. His thoughts were too far away to get the truth that way, and the only other option was forcing him, and he could only do that if he wanted to lose Dean's trust completely. It would only take three simple words used with the right inflection, and he could get inside Dean's head. He could make Dean tell him anything he wanted if he just asked. Dean would tell him everything without taking a breath, without hesitation. He used that as an emergency precaution only. Still, Sam thought he deserved to know.

Dean didn't think that way, apparently. He had already moved on, and it was pissing Sam off how he could look so indifferent about the things he had most likely said. Maybe this was what he had acted like after he had sent Sam off for good. Normal, like he hadn't done anything wrong. Like he didn't even notice anything gone.

"Come on," Dean said, looking fazed for a second before returning to a calm exterior. There was a trace of a whine in his tone, one that Sam recognized but hadn't heard since they had once had to go on a plane to exorcise a demon. "Let's go, okay? Just trust--" He reached out to grab Sam's upper arm and pull him out of the room, but the second Dean's fingertips brushed his skin he jerked away, getting to his feet. Dean tried to open his mouth to say something, moving forward.

"Don't touch me," Sam said. It wasn't just because he was angry at Dean, either. The second he had made contact, he had seen something, though it was in high fast-forward. He couldn't tell what any of the separate images were, but he didn't like the way they looked in general.

"You not telling me the truth," Sam said angrily, using anger as an excuse for why he had pulled away so fast, but his voice sounded too absent. Dean was looking suspicious, but fell for it. He rolled his eyes.

"Oh, this coming from the Master of Truth himself?" Dean threw back sarcastically, with a little more venom than necessary. Sam knew he didn't mean it as an insult, but he got upset all the same.

"Fuck you," he spat out, pulling his shirt on and grabbing his bag, unconsciously reaching for his bottle of pills. He needed to do something about his headache; it felt like his head was going to explode. Dean grabbed it from his hand immediately,

"What are these?" he asked with his typical big-brother commanding voice.

"Don't change the subject," Sam said, irritated to the core. For once, he wanted to get a straight answer out of Dean. His brother just never wanted to do anything Sam said.

"Where did you get these?" Dean asked, looking at the label and having to squint at the small print.

"Prescription," Sam answered simply. "Now give them back."

"Where'd you get a prescription?" Dean asked, much better at being persistent and getting answers than Sam was, even though his technique was much simpler; he'd just ignore everything you said until you told him what he wanted.

"The hospital," Sam said, clenching his teeth.

'"These are for stress headaches," Dean said. "When did you get that? You were only awake in the hospital for one day, and that's not your doctor's name."

Sam swallowed uncomfortably. "I'll tell you the truth if you do the same," he said.

"So now we're getting into this whole 'You bleed for me, I'll bleed for you' shit?" Dean asked smugly. "No, not going to work on me."

"Fine," Sam threw back. "Then give me my medicine and shut up about it." Dean was already moving faster than him, though. He had already spotted the other two small bottles in Sam's bag.

"So this one is for night terrors," Dean observed, ignoring Sam's attempts to get it back. Sam paused for a second, raising an eyebrow when Dean made that comment, though. "I do my homework, Sammy. I'm not stupid." He grabbed the next, which had had noticed Sam trying to slip into his jacket pocket, away from Dean's eyes, just in time. "And these..." Sam made an attempt to snatch it unsuccessfully.

"Dean, no."

"...are anti-depressants," Dean finished, blinking a few times in quiet shock.

"Mild anti-depressants," Sam assured him quickly, officially on damage control. "Nothing major. I don't even take them that often. Just sometimes I go through pretty bad phases, and when I stop taking them I just get worse."

Dean finally looked up at him, his brow furrowed.

"Don't look at me like that," Sam said quietly.

"Look at you like what?" Dean asked.

"Like I'm some suicidal whack-job that needs meds to keep sane," Sam said, and Dean flinched. "It's not like that, I swear. I don't have schizophrenia, I don't have Multiple Personality Disorder, and I don't have OCD." Dean still looked away. "They just say I have recurrent Clinical Depression that can be taken care of. I just have to be careful, and tell them if I start to get worse."

"So you've been what? Seeing a shrink behind my back?" Dean asked incredulously. Sam grudgingly nodded. "How did you manage to do that?"

"Before we met up with Nora, we were in Atlanta for over two weeks working on a case, and then back when Nora was with us for another four days. I had checked a few places in the area, and I found one. That night I came to you and told you all that stuff, they say that was my breakthrough." Sam took a deep breath. If he had hoped Dean would be happy he had gotten help, he was wrong. He was probably angrier just because he hated therapists, thought they would treat Sam like a freak when they actually helped. Well, except for Ellicott, but that was different. "I guess after Nora left it just got worse, and I didn't have anyone to go to."

"That's not what I meant." Dean shook his head. "I mean, you couldn't have had any sessions in the middle of the night. How'd you get away?"

"Now that," Sam replied quickly, "is none of your business. And before you ask, neither is what I discussed there."

Dean gritted his teeth, obviously more than a little upset and hurt. "I would have gone with you," he said, much to Sam's surprise. He looked up, and Dean seemed uncomfortable. "I would have driven you; I would have sat in the waiting room reading People magazine. All you had to do was ask."

"I thought you hated shrinks," Sam said.

"I do," Dean admitted. "But if that's what you needed, I'd do it. You know that. I wouldn't like it, I wouldn't approve, but I'd give in eventually. I just don't get why you didn't tell me."

"There are some things I have to deal with on my own."

"You mean like everything you do?" Dean said, the irritation bubbling up to the anger point.

"This is none of your business."

"You've been on anti-depressants for over four weeks and they're not working at all right now, Sam!" Dean said incredulously. He was close to yelling. "God, what are you like when you're not taking them?"

"I don't take them that often," Sam threw back. "Only when it gets really, really bad. Dangerously bad."

"You didn't tell me you were going to a therapist regularly. Why?" Dean bit his lip in a futile attempt to keep his anger back. "Why, Sammy?"

"Because I couldn't take it anymore," Sam hissed. "We went over this last night, and I really don't want to recite that little speech again, and I'm sure you don't either. You were always around, waiting for me to crack. Do you know how that feels? I felt like I was being suffocated, and I needed to talk to someone who wasn't going to immediately going too judge me."

Dean actually seemed to take that comment in for once. "Damn it," he breathed, closing his eyes. "I promised myself, no more fighting with family members." He snorted. "Yet, here we are. I just don't want to fight. Not now."

"You don't want to fight with the dying guy," Sam clarified sourly.

"I don't want to fight with my baby brother," Dean corrected, sitting down on the second bed, opposite Sam, his hands resting on his knees. "So..." he said. He took a deep breath. "Is it that bad?"

"I'm really that fucked up," Sam said.

"Dangerously bad?"

"Yeah."

"I mean, I knew it was bad, just not that bad."

"Not, like, suicidal bad, but bad."

"How bad?"

Sam smiled wryly, and so did Dean. "Okay, now you're just trying to make this awkward."

"Maybe a little," Dean admitted, and Sam laughed once. He was still thinking, though.

"Yeah," Sam said. "To tell you the truth, I don't think I realized it either. I don't think I realized where I was heading until I got there, when I hit rock bottom. Everything just keeps getting more and more out of hand, you know?" He didn't break down or start hyperventilating like he had the night before. Now he spoke all of his thoughts as simple facts.

"And when was rock bottom?" Dean asked, his voice a similar tone. Sam smiled once more, without any humor tracing his face.

"That's the thing," he said. "I don't really know. Every time I thought I'd hit it, I just kept sinking lower, until I think I almost reached China." Dean grinned. "Although I have to say when it's a tie between the whole bar fight incident and last night." He blew a strand of his hair out of his face. It really did seem to get darker every day, and because his hair was jet black when he was all dark side, that couldn't be a good sign. "I have to give the trophy to last night, though. I'm embarrassed just looking back on it. Talk about rock bottom." Dean nodded as he took a second look at the prescription bottle.

"You're taking Moclobemide," Dean said, and Sam raised an eyebrow, surprised that Dean even knew how to pronounce the word, much less knew the meaning. "Isn't that an MAOI?" Sam raised an eyebrow. "Wikipedia. Try it out."

"What the hell were you searching Moclobemide for?"

"I wasn't searching Moclobemide. It's a long story, which involves me being really bored one night and pressing the Random Article button on Wikipedia. I may not have gone to college, but I know stuff. But if it's an MAOI, that usually means you've been prescribed others, but they haven't worked. At all. In fact, they usually make it worse because you hate admitting you need them."

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard it already; the first step is admitting you have a problem. So?" He didn't get the point.

"Why weren't they working, Sam?" Now Sam got it. And this was just wonderful. The one time Dean wanted to have a sharing time had to be then. This was the one thing he couldn't talk to Dean about. That was the entire reason he had gone to a therapist in the first place, and the reason he had never told Dean about it. He didn't need it to be turned into some freaking couples counseling shit. But Dean was honestly concerned, and it wasn't like Sam had tried to kill himself or anything.

"Well," he said carefully, "if you had been there, you'd have heard the entire explanation that usually the reason they don't work is because you don't think they will. That subconsciously, you don't think anything is going to work, because it's so bad. You have to believe it can work. You have to have hope."

"And…you don't?" Dean asked.

"No," Sam said quickly.

"Then what?" Sam threw a glance at Dean as he pulled his shoes on, and then silently went back to tying his shoelaces. He swallowed, thinking about his answer. He didn't want to tell Dean exactly what the doctor had said on the matter, because it didn't make sense, even to him. So he answered truthfully.

"I don't know."

Dean surveyed him for a moment. He sat on the edge of his bed, and Sam wondered just what he was waiting for. Was he watching to see if Sam was going to have another breakdown? If so, it wasn't going to happen. And if he was watching to decide what question to ask next, Sam wasn't going to answer it.

"Come on," Dean said instead. "Let's head out."

Sam took one last glimpse of the hotel room before he left. He would never know why it was so hard to leave; it wasn't exactly his home. Then again, he had never really had a permanent home. That room was as good as any place. And he had a bad feeling about leavng, like he knew what was going to happen.

"You ready?" Dean asked from behind him.

"Yeah," he responded simply, and turned around, closing the door behind him without a word. "I'm ready."

He had a bad feeling that everything was going to go to hell.

A/n: OK, guys, please don't be too harsh on me in your reviews about my explanation of why Dean would know that terminology. It just needed to be that way for the chapter, and I couldn't think of a decent excuse for why Dean would know it. It was either a lame excuse or cut the entire thing, and maybe it would be better if I had cut it, but I always hate cutting stuff out. That's probably why this story is so long.

Speaking of which, this story WILL end eventually, I promise. In about two chapters things are going to start spinning out of control. There's one more chapter of calm before things blow up, and then I'm going to be kicking off my 'Virtual Season Finale,' because as I told you before, I did start this off as a virtual season 2.

Oh, and earlier in the chapter, Sam was reading Dean's mind, and when he was talking about how he could make Dean give him the truth, I was just showing exactly what he can do with his powers. For those o you who have seen Season 2, it's the power displayed by Andy in Simon Said, and Sam can do it. Not as well as Andy, but if he tried hard enough, he can do it to some degree, and I'm playing around with that idea in the chapters coming up.

Up Next: The vision is coming up in two chapters, and it's going to show a lot of what is going to happen, and almost all of it isn't good. It's a bit cryptic, but you can figure it out. It's also not just showing one scene, Sam's seriously glancing into the future and seeing a lot of what is to come, though there's so much he can only understand parts of it, and those parts aren't good. Be prepared for one really sad scene and one kind of shocking one (ok, maybe not that shocking). Also, next chapter I'm going to try out that songfic idea, which could be totally crap, so please don't trash it when it comes out.

Until next time...