Chapter 12: Real Life and Consequences

Castiel hadn't known what he'd expected, but a falling sensation definitely wasn't it. Angels were supposed to be graceful, but at this particular moment he wasn't. Landing in a heap on the floor, he grunted before righting himself. Looking around, he realized that he was back in the bunker and that he wasn't alone. Both Mary and Rowena were frozen as they stared at the jumbled bodies of the 3 men.

Turning, he was surprised to see that Sam and Dean were indeed back. But their physical states were not what he'd anticipated. Neither brother was unscathed by their trip through Dean's mind. Sam had multiple gashes along his torso, which were bleeding sluggishly, and a stream of dark red blood running from his nose. To top it all off, he was completely unconscious.

Shifting his eyes, the angel swallowed his shock at seeing the damage to the eldest Winchester brother. Dean was a mess. His left arm was twisted in the wrong direction at the elbow, multiple lacerations littered his body, his right knee was swollen, and there were crimson stains below both ears. The angel had no idea what any of that meant other than it couldn't be good. Rising, he leaned over and placed his palm over Dean's forehead. But just like before he was helpless to do anything. His blue gaze lifted, connecting with the worried expression of their mother. "I can't see inside his head and I can't help him." It pained him to admit failure, but it was obvious that she'd been harboring some kind of hope.

"What about Sam?" Her attention shifted to her youngest son.

He attempted it and was frustrated to get the same result. Shaking his head, "Nothing."

Rowena sighed. "It was very powerful magic. I'm afraid the boy'll have to recover the old-fashioned way. On their own." She didn't like admitting that there were things that her magic couldn't conquer, but under the circumstances it was better than leading the other two into having false expectations. Her gaze shifted to the boys and she pressed her lips together in frustration.

Mary didn't know how to feel about what she was seeing. The last time she'd seen Dean he had been bad, but not like this. And Sam? He hadn't been injured at all. Now they both looked like they'd gone twelve rounds with a Wendigo and lost every one of them. The instincts she would have denied rose up and threatened to overwhelm her senses. Instead, she kicked into hunter mode. "Help me move them to the infirmary."

Rowena used a levitation spell and cradled her previous burdens in the waves of purple magic as she followed the angel. She was moderately familiar with the bunker, but not enough to know where she was going. Once inside the large bay, she deposited her charges onto separate beds. "Now what?"

Mary looked around, "Castiel, do you know where they keep the medical supplies?"

He nodded absently. "Get them." He didn't argue, simply moved about the area gathering the same items he'd seen Sam and Dean use a hundred times over the years. Handing them to her, the angel watched as she sifted through them, dividing them between the two beds.

The low light made it incredibly difficult for her to see clearly, "Does it get any brighter in here?" The sudden flair of bright white light had her squinting.

"Better?" Rowena asked. A small floating ball of light was now hovering above Mary's head.

Glancing up, she took a deep breath at the differences in her life, since she'd died anyway. She now had two grown, overgrown, sons that she knew next to nothing about. Other than the fact that they've led a very difficult life. And that fact was on her. She couldn't change the past, but she could try and salvage their future. Allowing her eyes to drift between the boys, she had to make a choice. Which of them needed her skills first?

In the end it wasn't the severity of the injuries that drove her choice, it was knowing that Dean would be angry if she didn't tend to Sam first. Out of respect for her eldest son's primary objective, she did what she knew he'd expect. "We start with Sam."

Castiel frowned, "But—"

Interrupting him, "Who do you think Dean would make us care for first?" Mary finished evenly. It wasn't that she agreed or disagreed with it, but she'd homed in on that one thing about her oldest son within five minutes of talking about him and Sam. Dean would always put himself last, if it came down to a choice.

"Can you get me a large bowl of warm water?" She didn't turn around but knew that Rowena was standing there. "And several cloths?"

It took a long time to clean the dried blood from Sam's chest and to stitch the lacerations closed. Mary ignored the various scars that littered her youngest boy's body. It was a stark reminder that their lives haven't been easy. "Hold him up?"

Castiel settled himself behind Sam, lifting his large frame up to allow Mary to wrap the bandage around his chest. It secured the layers of gauze in place and ensured that if there was any damage to the ribs, they would stay firmly in place.

Turning toward Dean, she wanted to sob. He was lying deathly still on the stark white sheets, small crimson stains surrounding him. "Oh, my baby boy…" she whispered brokenly. Carefully, Mary began taking stock of his injuries and what they'd need to do for him. It took several minutes for them to remove the black T-shirt. It had dried against his skin; pieces of the material had been burned into the soft flesh of his stomach. Her insides churned at the damage he'd sustained due to those son's a bitch's, the men of letters.

In all her years learning about the lore, she'd never known that magic this powerful existed in the world. This was beyond her ability to handle alone. Her blue eyes shifted to the witch keeping a close eye on Sam and the angel walking back in with yet another warm bowl of water. Her sons had surrounded themselves with limited, but loyal, people. Can I really call either one of them people?

"Just set it there. Thank you." Turning back to her task at hand, Mary continued cleaning the blood from Dean's pale skin. Her fingers ghosted over a raised inch and a half scar, she sighed. She'd seen enough knife wounds to know exactly what had caused this. Shifting her gaze, she took in the multitude of other healed injuries and wondered just how either of her boys had actually made it to adulthood. With a practiced ease, she slid the sterile needle through Dean's flesh and gently pulled the long laceration closed. It took sixteen stitches to seal up this one cut and she hadn't even contemplated his broken elbow of the tight heat emanating from his right knee.

Swallowing her rising emotions, she focused on transitioning to the long gashes on Dean's prominent cheekbones. Reaching over she threaded another needle, half the size of the one she'd been using on the larger injuries, and carefully placed several small, neat stitches. Neither of the men she was working on had so much as shifted in the last several hours.

Pulling her shoulders back, she stretched along her spine, several vertebrae popping as she did. Castiel handed her another small pile of clean cloths. "What about his arm?"

Blowing out a breath, she laid the bloody needle down. "We'll have to set that before we can immobilize it."

Stepping to the other side, he knelt down, staring across Dean's bare chest. "What can I do to help?"

Mary stood up and turned toward him. "Hold him while I stretch the arm out. That should pop the joint back into place." Leaning down she whispered, "I'm glad you're out cold. This is going to hurt like hell."

It took a matter of moments to reset the limb and then tie it to a long sam splint. The blue and orange material molded around the joint allowing them to wrap it in a tight Ace bandage. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do. Looking him up and down, Mary knew that the last thing she had to do was wrap that knee up and then hope for the best. For her the biggest concern she was whether or not her boys would wake up. They'd both been affected by the magic and she didn't know what that would mean long term.

It occurred to her that an angel of the lord should have been able to do more than play nurse maid. "Why couldn't you heal them?"

Castiel jerked upright, staring at her in surprise. It was apparent that he hadn't expected her to ask him that. "Well, it's…" he trailed off, not sure how to answer her in a way that wouldn't make her hate him.

Rowena took the opportunity to out him to their mother. "It's because he tapped into his grace to enter the spell. His power was drawn into it, increasing the power exponentially."

Turning irate blue eyes in her direction, the angel spluttered furiously. "That's not…I couldn't…they would have—"

"What?" Mary asked angrily. "They would have what? Died? Been trapped until we figured out something else? What Castiel?"

In true Rowena style, the witch stepped in to answer where magic was concerned. "The answer to all of your questions is 'yes'." She walked around the bed until she was standing across from the angry mother. "Both of your boys would have died. Do you have any idea how far the spell had progressed?"

When Mary shook her head, Rowena continued. "Sam was possessed by Lucifer and he had Dean on a rack. We don't know how long they were trapped in that loop. Time is different inside one's mind. It could have been moments or centuries. The only way we'll know for sure is when one of them wakes up."

Choking back the bile that threatened to send her racing for the bathroom, "And they will? Wake up I mean?" Mary asked through clenched teeth.

"Eventually."

XXXX

Sam struggled against the blanket of warmth he felt wrapped around him. That wasn't his usual reaction to unknown situations. Of course, normally when he found awareness returning to him, it was on the heels of some very unfortunate situations. His head was hazy, and he was having trouble pulling the details from his memory. So instead of lurching upright, he continued to lie stock still and try to figure out where he was and how he'd gotten there.

The shift between dull aches and sharp twinges of pain alerted him that he'd been injured recently. And from the pull along his chest and the tight pressure around his ribs, it had been pretty bad. His entire body was sore, like he'd been running a marathon recently. And while he liked to run, he did not in fact run marathons. Dean would give me so much crap if I actually entered one.

The thought of his big brother brought everything crashing back into his mind. The darkness and God. The time spent in that basement believing that Dean was dead. His mother's return. And then the spell that had trapped his brother inside a prison worse than hell itself, his brother's own head.

Struggling up out of the cocoon of hazy warmth, Sam surged into the antiseptic smells of a hospital. Before he realized what he was doing he'd sat up causing his entire upper body to lite up in excruciating pain. "Argh…" he gasped out, his hands wrapping around his midsection.

"Sam?" Castiel stepped out of the darkness, moving to lay a comforting hand on the injured man. While it was true that he was Dean's best friend, he'd grown to love Sam throughout the years too. His affinity for the Winchesters had grown into the same type of love he'd had for his brothers and sisters in heaven. Except that Cas would do anything for these two mortals, where he wouldn't do that for his fellow angels.

Sam wheezed through the pain and slowly got his breathing back under control. Disjointed memories were colliding inside his brain. Forcing his eyes to focus, he realized that it was Cas that was leaning over him, not Dean. "Where's Dean?" he managed to push past his pain and confusion.

"What do you remember?" The rough voice of the angel penetrated his fog, pulling him into the present.

That's not something that Cas would have asked him if Dean was okay. Which meant that his brother wasn't okay. He remembered everything right up until he was shot while seated next to Dean outside a motel in Wisconsin. And yet that memory was at war with how that night had really gone down. Sure, he'd been arguing with their father, but when wasn't he fighting with the man? And then he'd realized that Dean knew about Stanford and that Sam would have to walk away not just from their dad but also from his brother.

Dean had been hurt on a hunt and he was barely out of bed when that final argument between Sam and their father had started. Part of what had driven his anger had been the fear of losing his older brother to the life they led. Dean had barely been conscious when he and John returned from that hunt. His brother had been beat to hell and back again when the hunt went sideways; like they always seemed to. But watched his dad haul a completely unconscious Dean into the motel covered in his own blood had spiked a fear in Sam that he couldn't control.

The argument that night was spawned from many other nights where one or both of Sam's only living family had been on the verge of dying, and he was sick of it. He had no intention of burying his brother or his father until they'd managed to live to a ripe old age. But that wasn't the life they'd chosen. Both Dean and his dad were driven by the need to hunt and kill as many supernatural beings as they could find. And if along the way they managed to save other families from their fate? Well, that was an incredible bonus.

Sam shook his head, immediately regretting the action when pain spiked through it. Lifting a hand, he wiped at the pressure building behind his right eye. Turning, he managed to see a lump-shaped form in another bed less than ten feet from him.

"Cas, can you get the lights?" He asked softly. Sam knew what he would see in that other bed, but he was terrified of the state his brother might be in. He knew that Dean had been shot at the same time he'd been tagged in that mind-state spell. Which meant that he'd be in at least as much pain as Sam was.

The angel didn't say anything, but a single lamp did flick on near Dean's bed. Sam blinked at what he saw there. Dean was wrapped up like something out of a mummy movie. Swallowing his immediate reaction, Sam slowly pulled himself from the bed. His steps were unsteady, but he managed to cover the distance with as little movement as possible before sinking down onto his brother's bed.

Lifting glassy, emotion laden eyes, Sam asked, "What happened to him?"

The angel took up the position on the other side of the bed. His azure gaze flicking between the brothers. "Do you remember the spell?"

Sam nodded.

"And you remember what Rowena told you could happen because of that spell?" He was obviously testing the water before he dropped a celestial bomb on Sam.

Another nod. But the younger Winchester's insides were churning like the underside of an ocean wave. The angel shifted his weight and sighed loudly.

"What don't I know, Cas?" It wasn't an accusation, merely a plea for understanding. Sam's eyes dropped to the bandages and wraps that littered his brother's body and he knew it was going to be bad.

"What's the last thing you remember after entering the mind-state with Dean?"

Lifting dark eyebrows, Sam considered his answer. "Uh, a messed-up version of the night I left for Stanford. Some of it was right, but most of it wasn't. Like Dean getting shot outside that motel room. That never happened."

Castiel tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes as he listened. He hadn't expected to see Lucifer all cuddled up inside of Sam happily torturing Dean when he'd entered the spell. The joy he'd seen in Sam's eyes as he'd carved into Dean with everything from a blade to biting words would haunt him for eternity. It wasn't Sam. Remember that it wasn't Sam.

"You were also shot that night." He watched the youngest Winchester shake his head to deny that. "I have no reason to lie to you, Sam." Glancing over at the silent body of Dean Winchester, he continued. "Lucifer offered you a choice. Say 'yes' and your brother lives. Continue to deny him and Dean dies."

The onslaught of memories turned his stomach and he had bite down to keep from vomiting. He saw his own hands tear his brother's body apart over and over again. He heard his own lips and voice pry apart Dean's insecurities in a way that only someone he loved could. If he'd devised a way to destroy his brother, this would have been it. "Oh God…"

Dean's massive injuries took on a whole new meaning and he wanted to shrink away from the consequences of his actions. The shallow rise and fall of his brother's chest was barely noticeable under the tight wrappings. Sam shook his head, his eyes filling with unshed tears. Lifting shaky fingers, he gently touched his brother's jaw.

The muffled groan of pain surprised him as Dean's expression twitched. His eyes scrunching together as the intensity of his injuries fired off the nerve endings in his brain. Castiel stepped closer, and briefly glanced up at Sam. Neither man said anything as they waited for the elder brother to work back into the land of the living. It took longer than Sam would've like, but slowly Dean's eyelids slid apart and his forest green eyes rolled around the room until it settled on Sam.

He wasn't expecting the wide-eyed alarm and immediate tensing of every muscle in Dean's body as he stared at Sam. Forcing himself to ignore the pain and betrayal he saw clearly reflected in those green eyes, Sam asked. "Dean? You okay?"

Dean's gaze narrowed and fear lanced his expression as he shifted his attention to Castiel and then back to Sam. "Dean?"

A realization seemed to slam into him even as his injuries started to take their toll on his awareness. "Sam…" he gulped, desperately trying to keep his body from fading back into the darkness of unconsciousness. His eyes flashed back and forth between the two men staring down at him before he managed to say, "I can't hear you. I can't hear a damn thing." And with that his body had had enough and promptly shut itself down leaving a stunned Sam staring at an equally shocked angel.

"Cas, what does that mean?"

Shaking his head, "I don't know."

"Is he deaf? Is it permanent?" Sam choked out as his legs threatened to fold beneath him. Stumbling backwards until he was leaning on his own bed, he stared desperately at the only other being on earth that knew his brother the way he did. "Did I do this to him?" His eyes begged to be told 'no'.

"I don't know." Cas answered slowly. His own system still trying to find a way to process what he'd just heard. Not only were they dealing with the horrific injuries, any of which could be debilitating, it appeared they were also dealing with the loss of one of the five senses. His blue eyes shifted up to connect with Sam's broken expression. And if they couldn't figure out how to fix Dean, they were going to lose the younger Winchester too. These two are a package deal. You can't have one without the other.

TBC…

Author's Note: As promised here is the next chapter. Thank you to those of you that posted a review, I appreciate it so much. Also, as I was throwing knives at Dean it occurred to me that getting him back into the real world to work through the mental and physical trauma was necessary. But I also didn't want it to be all that easy to get him back into full hunting form and knowing that Sam's body was the one he saw every time Lucifer ripped into him wouldn't just fade away with the spell. And then there was the bleeding from the ears, that has to mean something…it does, and it's directly tied to the spell's hold over Dean.

As always, thank you for the reviews. If it's not too much trouble, let me know what you think of the newest chapter?