Chapter 10: Bound by Death

Dean leaned against a wall watching as the sun slowly dropped below the horizon. The smell of a coming storm invaded his senses and he wondered if life was going to keep kicking him in the daddy pills. It wasn't like he hadn't earned it, but still…it sucked out loud. Their lives were one series of tragedies after another. None of them as devastating as the recent turn of events. His throat bobbed with the repressed emotions as he worked to forget what he'd done.

Lifting the sweating bottle of beer to his lips, he took a long deep swig. 'Tastes like swill.' He thought wryly. Even the beer tasted worse since he'd managed to murder the only living person he cared to drink with. Glancing up, he watched as the multitude of colors blurred together when the last rays disappeared into the deep blues and purples of the night sky. Swallowing the aching pain swirling deep inside, he considered just making the damn call.

The guy with the boat had agreed to Dean's terms and he'd already paid half of the money up front. But he couldn't quite bring himself to pull the trigger on it, not yet. Glancing behind himself, he popped the top on his second, or was it his third, piss poor beer. Sighing as he stared at the outside light as it flipped on. The exterior bunker door lit up in the dull yellow glow he'd seen a thousand times, but it didn't fill him with relief. His gaze lifted to the grass above the cement arch door, it had died months ago. The weather was shifting in Lebanon, Kansas, winter was coming. His eyes drifted upward to the larger structure that housed the bulk of the bunker. It would appear to be a dam project to the uneducated eye.

It was still a sight that he couldn't get enough of; or at least it had been. Because inside the walls of the one place that had been their home, he'd killed his little brother. The chasm of self-loathing that cracked open inside Dean made him want to pick up that damn phone and make the call right now. But then the raised mark on his arm flashed past his eyes as he tossed back another gulp of the liquid. He'd never wanted this; to outlive Sam. Hell, he'd sold his soul to make sure that didn't happen. 'God I would take the rack over what I did.'

Rain started to fall as the winds picked up and suddenly the storm was here. Dean couldn't hide outside anymore. Pulling in a deep breath, he started toward the bunker's entrance. Every time he had to walk back into that place, he was reminded of what he'd done, of what he'd sacrificed in his attempt to kill Abbadon. He'd tried to move past it, to find a way to exist without his brother; it simply wasn't possible, not for him. The gravel crunched beneath his booted heels as he closed the distance and slowly inserted the key into the specialized lock. The creak of the heavy iron door was same. His instincts kicked into high gear almost immediately because when he'd left, he hadn't left the lights on.

Frowning, Dean pulled the ever-present Taurus from his belt and clicked the safety off before stepping through the door onto the mezzanine. Moving with a stealth he'd earned over a lifetime of hunting; he quietly descended the metal staircase. Keen green eyes swiveling around the great room, but he didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Cas?" he decided to try and get whoever was hiding out in this place to come out in the open. Listening carefully, he hoped he'd hear the angel rather than the unending silence. At first, he didn't detect anything, so he stopped to listen harder.

The scrape of boots over the cement floor yanked his attention toward the far hallway. A shiver ran through him and he had to force his feet to move; he hated that particular hallway. The image of Sam's crushed skull swept through his head and he had to blink several times to clear it. A lump settled in his throat and his breathing hitched for a moment before he got control of himself again. "Might as well come out. I know you're there." The pitch in his voice dropped as he shifted into 'hunter-mode'.

What stepped around the corner wasn't what he'd expected. Although if he really considered it, Dean wasn't sure what he'd expected. A hunched over, broken version of his baby brother limped into the light. His shoulder was sagging, like he'd been bashed with a something extremely heavy. The damage to his face was a reflection of Dean's worst nightmares. It looked like it had the night he'd…

'No. I can't keep doing this.' His green eyes dropped to the mark and he grunted before dropping his pistol and pulling the silver blade from his back pocket. He didn't even think before he'd clicked it open and started slicing at the raised flesh.

"Dean?! STOP!" Sam was moving as quickly as his injured body would allow. It wasn't fast enough to stop what his brother was doing, but he did manage to get his good hand around Dean's wrist and yank. The bloody blade clattered to the cement just before Sam's damaged leg gave and he too went down.

A cry of pain ripped past his clenched teeth and Dean clapped his hands over his ears. He desperately wanted to block out the thing parading around as his brother. "You are not him. You are not him. You are not him." He kept repeating it over and over, hoping that the hallucination would go away.

Shaky fingers grasped at his leg and Dean couldn't ignore the pained plea. "Dean…help me."

Oh God, even if this Sam really was just inside his head it would be worth it. The depth of his need for his brother was so ingrained within him that he couldn't ignore the plea for help. 'At least I won't be alone anymore.' He wasn't under any illusion that this wasn't a side-effect of his guilt, and probably the damn mark. If he'd known than what he knew now, he would have insisted that they find another way to kill Abaddon. Her death wasn't worth the price he'd paid; the price Sam had paid.

Lowering his hands, Dean wrapped his fingers around Sam's elbow and tried to help him to the chair tucked under the table. Sam's muscles trembled when they touched. There was a flash of light and suddenly everything wiped clean, like a slate being set for a new lesson.

Sam's wounds healed instantly. The dripping crimson blood and ragged pieces of flesh draped along Dean's arm disappeared along with the mark. Both brothers stared at each other in confusion.

"What the hell just happened?" Dean asked, his eyes widened as he tried to understand.

Sam shifted, "A spell. That bitch cast a spell that caged your mind."

Dean's head tilted and his mouth worked; he didn't say anything because the memories of his time in the basement came flooding back. He remembered the burning pain and the blinding panic when he'd realized that Sammy was missing. Not even the return of their mother could temper that fear. "Mom?" he asked quietly, his hope that he hadn't imagined the whole damn thing.

"She's fine. She's with Cas and Rowena." His gaze softened. "In the real world."

"The real world?" Dean glanced around, narrowing his eyes. "Then what the hell is this? Frightmares at Disneyland?" He was almost afraid to ask.

Shaking his head, Sam bit his lower lip before answering. "Your head."

His expression shifted, "Come again?"

Shrugging his broad shoulders, "We're inside your head." Sam repeated.

"Sam, why are you inside my 'head'?" It occurred to Dean that there were things inside the deep dark places of his mind that he didn't want his brother to know about. Their lives hadn't been a picnic, even before the entire world had slid off the rails, and some of that history needed to stay buried in the black corners of Dean's head.

Blowing out a breath, Sam threw his hands in the air. "Because it was either me or mom. I figured you would rather it was me."

Well, he wasn't wrong about that. The thought that his mother could have been the one to see inside his grapefruit send a wave of nausea rolling through Dean. She didn't need to know just how screwed up he really was. Hell, she'd probably be packing a bag before he could explain any of it. So, while he didn't want Sam scrambling around in here, at least it was better than his mother. Not by much, but a little. Clenching his teeth, he nodded once. "Okay. So, how do we get out of here?"

"I don't honestly know."

Lifting a blonde eyebrow, Dean's expression blanked then turned into surprise. "You don't know?" he asked incredulously. "You marched into my swizzle-stick of a brain without having a plan to get back out? What the hell, Sammy?"

"No. Dean, you don't understand, we were supposed to be out. I don't know why we're back." Sam pinched at the bridge of his nose as agony sliced through his brain. He crashed to his knees; his hands wrapped around his head. "Agh…" Tension running through his expression of pain.

"Sam? Sammy?!" Dean cried, rushing forward and sinking down next to his brother. Everything around him went dark and he felt his hold on the present slip away.

XXXX

"How do we separate them?" Mary asked. She was struggling to control the rising concern for her boys. Instinctually she knew that they were indeed hers, even if they'd aged thirty-three years since she'd seen them last. She hadn't even had the chance to hug Sam. Her heart ached at the life her boys had been forced to live. And it's all because of me. She thought sadly. He'd barely noticed her other than a cursory nod every now and then, but he hadn't done more than stare at her like she'd disappear at any moment.

Castiel stared blankly at her but said nothing. The witch had huffed and gone to grab her spell books. The angel didn't move a muscle as he looked down at the two men that were as close to him as own brothers had been. Over the few years that he'd known the Winchesters, they'd continued to stand by his side. Despite his many mistakes, Dean and Sam had remained his friends. And yet he was terrified that he was going to fail them. He hadn't been able to break the warding around that farmhouse and the brothers had paid a terrible price.

Allowing his gaze to drop, Castiel took in the damage sustained by Dean and the emotions he'd gained when assuming he'd taken a vessel bowled over him. He'd thought that the elder Winchester was dead and then he'd failed to protect Sam from the men of letters. Knowing that if he'd just been able to keep the younger brother safe none of this would have happened, hurt.

"Have their lives always been like this?"

Mary's strained voice broke through his thoughts and he turned. "Like what?"

She tugged at the seam in her jeans before sinking into a chair near the door. Her blue gaze lifted to gaze at her sons, shifting from one to the other. "How often does stuff like this happen?"

Castiel took a deep breath. "Too often." He was fairly certain that Dean would not want him to answer that question directly. But the look on her face told him that she wasn't going to stop asking just because he didn't want to answer. This woman was truly their mother in every sense of the word. "Life has been difficult for them." Narrowing his eyes, Cas tilted his head to the side and continued. "I do not believe they would have chosen another path. They have each had opportunities to walk away from this life and yet they remain committed to it and each other."

A small smile pulled at the edges of her lips. "They take care of each other."

"To a fault." Rowena's intrusion in their conversation halted any further revelations Mary may have sought.

"Did you find anything?" Mary shifted her attention. She didn't trust this witch, but it appeared that her boys did; so, she would have to. It went against everything that her father had taught her and frankly put her on edge to trust anyone with ties to the supernatural. And yet she'd learned that her youngest son had been turned in the vessel for Lucifer and her eldest had done time in hell before becoming a demon himself. Pain unlike anything she'd experienced before burning rattled through her. She'd failed her family in ways that she would never fully understand. Mary didn't think that she could stay after they figured out how to save her boys.

How could she look them in the eyes after this? Would they even want anything to do with her?

XXXX

The hunt hadn't gone as either of them had expected. It was supposed to be a milk run for them, but when had things ever gone to plan for them? The blade that had been driven through Sam's leg had been bad enough, but the fact that they were lost in the middle of the freaking woods made it so much worse. They had never seen something like the monster they had been hunting, their father's journal didn't mention it either. The damn thing fed on intense emotions and they certainly had enough of those.

The temperature was dropping ridiculously fast and they had pretty much no shot at making it out tonight. "I keep telling you, camping is for sissy ninny pants." Dean groaned out, helping his brother scrambled over downed trees and along the muddy pathway.

Sam huffed, "It wasn't camping, Dean. It was a hunt." He hissed when his leg hit a branch they hadn't seen sticking out. "Son of a bitch."

"Hey, that's my line." He protested the use of his favorite phrase just as the rain shifted to sleet. "Fantastic, not only are we going to be cold, we're going to be wet." Reaching out Dean pushed another branch out of the way. He didn't like seeing Sammy hurt, but he liked it even less when he couldn't stop it.

He felt Sam shiver, shaking his head he stopped and pulled off his second layer and pulled it around his brother's shoulders. "No Dean. You're gonna need it." He tried to shove the offered clothing away, but his brother wouldn't allow it.

"I'll be fine." He ground out. Shifting his shoulder under Sam, he started them moving again. "We're only a couple of miles from that old cabin. We can hold up there for the night."

"That thing is still out there, Dean. Pretty sure it has our scent." They slowed when a large downed tree obstructed their path. Slowly, Sam settled down and then shifted his injured leg over until he was able to regain his feet. He nearly went down when he put too much weight on that leg. The blood-soaked wrap around his upper thigh slid down a bit.

"Stop." Dean knelt down in front of Sam and carefully retied the makeshift bandage. He hadn't been able to save his brother even though he'd seen the asshat monster shift its attack. His emotions had taken on a cascading effect that Dean couldn't control. It had been like being a bug crushed under the boot of a giant. And he hated being at the mercy of anything. He could still feel the thing scrambling around inside his head.

Sam's hand touched his shoulder, "You okay?"

Shaking his head, Dean pulled himself back to his feet. "Not really. But when has that ever stopped me?"

"Yeah…" The soft-spoken way his brother said that alerted Dean that he wasn't on board with pretty much anything that they'd spoken about. "It's going to kill me."

"No. It isn't." The subtle shift in Dean's tone was something that he'd heard a number of times over the course of their lives. His brother would never allow him to be killed, not without doing everything in his power to stop it.

The cold snow/rain increased and quickly soaked through their layers of flannel. Dean never saw what hit him, but he sure as hell felt the flight through the air and the bone-crushing impact with a tall tree about twenty feet from the trail. His head cracked against the hardwood and dizziness assaulted him as he landed in a heap. The sound of Sam's cry of pain pulled him from the darkness that was threatening to overwhelm him.

Crawling to his knees, he couldn't stop the wave of nausea. Bile raced up his throat and he vomited all over the forest floor. Another tortured scream from his brother had him scrubbing at the spittle on his chin and clambering to unsteady feet. "SAM!" Stumbling in the direction of his brother's fading cries, Dean could barely make out the trail through the increasing sleet. His emotions were on overdrive and they were pulling him apart at an almost cellular level. Fear. Loss. Hate. Anger. Remorse. Betrayal. Regret. Rage. Loneliness. All negative emotions and all of them combining to break him down into a quivering puddle.

But above all of that there was one emotion that couldn't quite be overwhelmed, love. Dean cold feel that every one of those negative emotions was tied to his love for his family; for Sam. Gathering himself together, he ignored the pain inside his skull and radiating along his spine and started after his brother. His body was shaking with the cold, his teeth chattering so hard he wondered if he'd break them before this night was over. He sure as hell hoped not, it's not like hunters have insurance or anything. Carefully, he moved along the same path that the creature had taken. Dean knew that the son of a bitch had Sammy. Two long drag marks followed the broken branches and crushed weeds. Which meant that that thing had knocked Sam out cold.

'He'd better just be out cold.' Dean could barely even think about that. He had to focus to keep his body moving or his resolve would fade into the combination of feelings that wanted him to give up. Stumbling over the hidden roots, Dean grunted when he crashed to his knees and his ankle lit up in fiery pain. "Shit!" he cursed angrily. "Can a guy get a break!" He knew better than that, but it didn't stop him from wanting one.

XXXX

Sam could barely keep his eyelids apart. His stomach was rolling, and his head cracked over and over on everything from rocks to tree trunks as he was dragged. The monster was at least eight feet tall and twice as wide through the shoulders as Sam was. The thing was some weird mashup of a yeti and a wendigo. Scary as hell and stronger than most Gods they'd come up against. Except that this SOB could control minds or at the very least, the human emotions that drove the mind.

Mud slipped up under his shirt as it rode up toward his shoulders. Jagged rocks tore at the soft skin along his spine, biting his lip he kept silent. He was desperately trying to hear anything, like Dean calling for him. But so far, he couldn't make out anything but the heavy breathing of the monster. The clawed hand that was latched onto his right ankle tightened and he hissed in pain. He wanted to be frustrated, he really did, but he just too tired. The cold was seeping what little fight he had left, and his head was pounding when the creature stopped, suddenly dropping Sam to the ground.

Turning, the thing took off at a loping gate that Sam assumed must be a 'run'. And then he heard it, the distant cry of his brother's searching voice. "SAM!" There was a brief pause and then, "SAMMY?!" He couldn't stop the warmth that flooded through him knowing his brother was looking for—

In a flash of memories, Sam recalled the basement and the British bitch that had tortured him and Dean. "Dean…" The whispered words slipped past his lips before he could stop them. The ghosts of his pain rambled over him to combine with the indescribable loss he'd been feeling at the time. He'd been positive his brother was dead. And yeah, he'd lost his brother before, but this was different. Because there was no coming back for them. God was gone and Billy had been explicitly clear that the next time either of them died, that was it.

Their lives weren't easy and that had given them an almost supernatural ability to cope. Pulling strength from somewhere so deep that it couldn't be quantified, Sam forced his battered body up. The knife wound zinged as the flesh pulled painfully. The only saving grace was that the ankle that had been used as a tow bar was on the same leg. His head spun and his gut heaved before Sam spilled his breakfast over the muddy ground. Pulling his muddy sleeve over across his lips, he spit out the last of the bile and slowly straightened. 'Oh God, everything hurts.'

"DEAN!" He called into the cold darkness, praying he'd get an answer. His voice was shaky, but strong. Turning, Sam started limping back in the direction he'd been taken from. His head continued to throb; it was only outdone by the gash in his leg. He was pretty certain it was infected. It had happened in the late afternoon and they'd been trying to work their way out of the forest since then. They'd come back and kill the beast once they learned more about it.

But now, Sam knew that they weren't on a real hunt and that neither of them would survive if they didn't figure out how to get out of his brother messed up noggin. When they'd been younger, he'd wondered what bumped around inside his older brother's head. Now he wished he didn't know. Because it was never over for Dean. Even in his sleep he hunted the things that went bump in the night. And he was always facing the loss of his loved ones.

Without meaning to, Sam had learned what makes his brother tick, hunting and family. He'd always suspected that, but now it had been clarified in a way that would haunt Sam's nightmares for the foreseeable future. 'God, our lives suck.'

He didn't know what he'd expected after the whole Amara thing, but at least he'd hoped that maybe things would change? If only a little.

A shadow trudging along the trail just ahead of him caused Sam to slip into the trees. He was vulnerable enough without advertising his location.

"Son of a bitch." His brother's terse voice cut through the darkness and Sam felt a tiny bit of the fear lift.

Stepping back onto the path, he allowed a brief smile. "Dean?"

His brother stopped and released a pent-up breath before shaking head. "Sammy. You look like crap dude." But affection was laced through the insult in a way that only his big brother could accomplish.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Not looking so good yourself." He took in the way his brother's head was tilted to the side and the wild uncertain look to his eyes. The rain had let up and Sam was able to see Dean more clearly. There was blood running down the right side of his head. The wound was still bleeding, or it would have been washed away by the storm.

Just as he started forward, intense pain shot through his lower back and up into his brain. "Agh…" was all Sam could manage as the world immediately darkened. The last thing he saw as he sank away from the world was the shocked anguished gaze of his older brother.

"NO!" Dean screamed as he rushed forward, catching Sam's body as it dropped bonelessly to the ground. The gaping hole in his chest where the creature had thrust it's clawed hand, before yanking out Sam's heart, clearly visible in the moonlight.

XXXX

Sam's back arched, his hands clenching as his body seized.

"Sam!" Castiel rushed forward, trying to hold the youngest Winchester down as the larger man thrashed with unseen pain. Suddenly, his body went limp. "Sam?" he asked again before laying his hand over Sam's forehead.

"Oh God, is he okay?" Mary gasped out. Her hands covering her mouth and fear written throughout her expression. Her gaze flickered to Rowena as she ran into the room only to be frozen mid-step by the sight before her.

The angel searched for Sam's light. But it was gone. Something very bad had happened inside Dean's mind and now…

"He's gone. Isn't he?" Rowena's brogue broke the silence.

TBC…

Author's Note: Don't worry, not a death fic. But I did have a few ideas while trying to figure out how to devise an escape plan for the boys. I figured of all the things that Dean could go through, killing his brother was the worst and the second worst would be watching Sam die right in front of him. I also assume that he would never have forgotten the helplessness he'd felt that night in Cold Oak when Sam died for the first time. So, having his brain throw that one at him made total sense. More to come…

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