Chapter 13: Silent Night

The rush of blood pulsing through his head and the lancing twinges of pain were his first sensations that managed to stick with him. It hadn't been like his previous bouts with unconsciousness, this time though, it hadn't been filled with warm floating fogs or cozy dreamless nights. No, this time he'd been dogged by terrifying dreams of abandonment, loss, and finally betrayal. He didn't know how long he'd been out.

The last clear memory that Dean had was over being strapped to the rack when Sam had been possessed by Lucifer. Oh God, did they save him? Or was his brother still acting as the meat suit for the devil? Struggling up out of the hazy remnants of pain-filled unconsciousness, he ignored the flair of agony that nearly split his head apart. Memories warred with one another and he did his best to put them into some sort of perspective.

It took several moments for him to realize that he wasn't hearing anything but the rushing of his own blood. That sent a spark of fear through him. What the hell happened? Dean couldn't quite reconcile the images that kept replaying inside his head. He watched himself kill Sam multiple times, in so many different ways that it honestly scared him. But not as much as seeing his brother sporting that white suit.

The lack of humanity in Sam's expression was so unlike his brother that Dean couldn't accept that this version was anything but wrong. And yet he had visceral memories that hurt in ways he hadn't felt since his time in Hell. Groaning, his eyebrows twitched and forced his eyelids apart.

The entire area was blurry and…silent.

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Sam had managed to make it to the kitchen and brew himself a strong pot of coffee. His head was slamming with a nasty headache and his entire body ached. The lacerations along his chest had been sutured, knowing that Dean was completely incapacitated he assumed that the surgical work must be his mothers.

The bunker was quiet in the wee hours of the morning. A chill from the concrete floors worked through his socks and he shivered, grimacing as it sent shockwaves of pain through him. Glancing around, he wondered if he should just drink it in here? Thinking about his brother and the possibility of him waking up alone, Sam trudged back toward the infirmary.

A sudden clanging crash and cry of frustration had him increasing the speed of his return. Careful not to spill the hot coffee, he rounded the corner and stumbled to a stop. Dean had lashed out his right arm sending the stainless medical implements to the ground. He'd struggled into an upright position, his eyes swinging violently around him. Sam had seen his brother in similar states before, but the underlying confusion and fear was something new.

"Dean?!" He dropped the cup barely registering when it shattered, spreading coffee across the floor.

His brother froze when he spun around, his green gaze landing on Sam's worried face. But he didn't rush forward to embrace him as he would have before. Instead, he simply stared, his body radiating the pain he was obviously in. The white bandage stretched around his midsection had started to darken. Tremors caused his hands to shake and his gaze darted around the room frantically.

Sam swallowed his rising fear, frowning he took a step forward only to have his brother shrink away from him. He knew what Dean had been through while trapped inside his head, at least he'd thought he understood it. But look at this version of his brother, he wondered if he knew everything. "Dean?" he questioned softly.

Pounding feet had him holding up a hand and stopping Mary and Castiel in the hallway just outside the room. Shaking his head at their confused expressions, he motioned them away. Neither of them was very happy about it, but they realized that Sam wouldn't have done that if there wasn't a damn good reason.

'Take care of him.' His mother mouthed silently. Nodding, Sam stepped back into the hospital room. His brother hadn't moved, his back was to the wall and his expression was wild with both pain and anxiety.

They stared at each other for a long time before Dean finally managed to say something, "You real?" His strained voice was layered with disbelief.

Nodding, Sam stepped forward. Again, his brother's reaction was almost violent. He slammed his back into the wall and then moaned as pain lurched through him. His hand flew to his head as he sank down into a seated position on the concrete floor.

Carefully lowering his lanky body, Sam sat across from him. He didn't make any movements toward his brother. It was obvious that Dean was still caught by the things he'd experienced as a result of the spell. Waving his hand, Sam waited for his brother's frantic gaze to connect with his. When it did, he pressed his lips together.

Blood had started to well out from Dean's ears again, and his bandages were taking on the distinct rust color of seeping blood. "Dean, can you hear me?"

His brother's eyes widened, his hand lifting to wipe at the crimson along his neck. Slowly he shook his head 'no'. The silence in that single head shake was the loudest damn thing that Sam had ever heard his brother say. Without words he'd sustained what the younger Winchester had already suspected. His brother couldn't hear.

"Do you remember anything?" He wasn't sure that he really wanted to know the answer to that question, but he needed to.

Swallowing, Dean blinked several times before nodding once. His eyes rolled around the room and his blonde eyebrows pulled together with obvious confusion. "How?" He asked, the strain clearly coming through.

"How did you get back here?" Sam finished evenly. He didn't move toward Dean though everything inside him wanted to. A slight nod was Dean's only answer. "Mom and I—" He realized that his brother was staring at him without comprehension. Lifting his hands, he looked around for something to write with. Once he'd obtained the pen and a pad of paper, he turned back toward Dean.

His hands shook as he wrote out his answer. Deep down he could feel his frustration gathering as he tried to simplify how they'd made it back to the bunker. 'Mom and I, we brought you back after the men of letters tried to kill us in that basement.' He tore the paper away and slowly moved toward Dean. When he didn't shift away, his eyes a combination of curious and worried, Sam sighed, handing the note over.

Dean cradled his busted left arm against his chest, leaning forward to grab the paper. He sank away, reading the scribbled handwriting. His eyes blowing wide before they flashed up to Sam's expectant expression. "Mom?" he questioned.

Tilting his head to the side, Sam frowned. "Yeah, mom."

It was clearly apparent that his brother had understood him when Dean's gaze shifted to the closed door. Sam hurriedly scrawled another note, giving him a quick rundown before asking, 'Can you hear anything?'

Pulling in a breath, Dean sank down onto the infirmary bed before shaking his head 'no'. His expression blanked out and his eyes unfocused as he stared straight ahead of him. Sam wanted to offer him something, but he didn't know how to do that without screwing with Dean's head. His heart ached knowing that he was the cause for his brother's confusion and distrust. The spell had weaved his reality and the worst things his brother's mind could conjury up and thrown those nightmares at him until he couldn't tell what was real.

Sam had been there. He'd had his head screwed with after coming back from the cage. The leakage after the wall had come down had nearly destroyed him. Only the divine intervention of Castiel had managed to pull the crazy from him. His other ace in the hole had been Dean. His brother's voice had pulled him back from the brink of self-destruction and loathing; it pained him to the depths of his soul that he couldn't do the same thing for Dean.

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He could see that his inability to hear was sending Sammy down a spiral of failure. Dean had seen in a million times over the years. His memories collided with what his brother had explained was a nasty spell and all he could see was Sam wielding the demon-blade or one of the many other weapons he'd used over the time he had Dean on his rack.

Except that he didn't. Sam never tortured me, and he didn't end up as Lucifer's prom dress. But it didn't matter how much he told himself those things, his heart continued to hammer in his chest in a way it hadn't since coming back from hell. He was still haunted by those months, the ones after he'd learned that Lilith was still tracking him and Sam. It wasn't all that different from the time he'd been infected by ghost sickness.

His blood pulsed through his head and he hated that he couldn't block it out with normal sounds. He had no clue how to live in a world without sound. I can't be stuck in silence for the rest of my life. Swallowing his fears, Dean lifted his guarded gaze to watch his brother's reaction. "Are you okay?"

That one question was so ingrained within him that he couldn't have stopped it, had he wanted to. Sam's eyebrows shot up and his mouth worked for a few seconds before he managed to answer. "Uh yeah, Dean. I'm okay."

Dean watched the movement of Sam's lips very carefully. He'd seen the answer to this question so many times that he didn't need to hear it. Upon seeing that his brother was pretty much okay, he allowed the exhaustion to settle over him. He was in pain and he was currently disabled and there was no telling if that was permanent or not. Knowing the Winchester luck, it just might be.

Normally they'd rely on magic or something else to try and reverse something like this. But this time it was the magic that had caused the problem in the first place. And if they hadn't figured out a way to erase what had been done to him already, chances were even that they couldn't. But he was having a difficult time even looking at Sam let alone forgetting the way his flesh had been filet from his bones by his brother.

Movement over Sam's shoulder caught his attention. Dean shifted enough that it must have warned his brother too. Turning, they both stared as their mother slipped through the partially opened door. Her blue eyes shifted between the brothers. Her presence at least gave Dean a reference as to which reality was actually his and which had been created by the spell.

She moved into the room slowly, like she wasn't sure if she was welcome. Despite the pain throbbing through his body, Dean attempted to shuffle forward. His knee gave before he'd made it more than two steps. Sam rushed to catch him as he started to go down, but Dean twisted away from the contact like he'd been burned. His entire body lit up as the nerves hit him with excruciating pain, the right knee slamming into the hard floor.

"Shit!" The cry was ripped from his as he crashed to his chest. He couldn't concentrate on anything but the pain when his left arm was pinned beneath his body and the floor. He didn't even have enough time to catch his breath before his mind sent him into the darkness.

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Mary sank to her knees next to her eldest son. She'd seen the pain flash across Sam's face at Dean's reaction to his touch. It had wounded him in a way only someone you desperately loved had the ability to do. Gathering his head and lifting it until it rested on her folded knees, Mary tried to offer some comfort.

"Sam, he's been through so much. We only know about some of what she did to him." Her blue eyes shifted from Dean to her youngest son. "And to you. She held you, tortured you, did God knows what to you, and you're still trying to help him. Sam, he will come through this." Turning enough she could reach up, allowing her fingers to ghost along his jawline, she tried to smile. "You both will."

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Rowena stared at the teacup, the wisps of steam wafting up only to curl as she infused it with her will. She considered their current situation and sighed. The spell had changed when the angel had infused himself with it. Part of her was grateful, it was only the addition of his grace that had kept both Sam and Dean from being killed during their time under the spell. She hadn't seen that one coming.

For all of her many years on earth and her general knowledge of the supernatural, Rowena didn't know much about angels. For all she'd known, they had been myths. Turns out that myths are sometimes based in reality. Of course, she knew that.

Mary turned the corner, leaning against the door jam, "They're a mess."

The witch lifted auburn eyebrows and then frowned. "At least they're alive."

"Yeah, how is that possible? I thought you said that they'd die out here if they died in the spell?"

"Well, I hadn't considered the addition of angel grace. Not normally an ingredient I come by." She finished with a shrug of her shoulders.

The being in question interrupted them, "We do not tap our grace under normal circumstances."

"I'm grateful you chose to this time." Their mother replied softly.

Castiel inclined his head, acknowledging her gratitude. "These are not normal circumstances."

"No, no they are not."

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The second time he came back to himself, Dean remembered most of what had transpired recently. His entire body hurt, and his head felt like someone was driving a spike through it. Slowly, he forced his eyelids apart. Luckily someone had dimmed the area in the infirmary, so he wasn't stabbed in the brain by the lights. He looked at the ceiling and wondered how long it would take him and Sam to come back from this one.

Of course, it would help if he could have a conversation with his little brother that didn't involve a piece of stationary and a pen. The whoosh of blood was still the only thing he could hear, and Dean wondered if he would ever be able to listen to music again, or the perfectly tuned engine of the Impala. Or Sammy. Although he would never admit it, Dean loved to listen his little brother drone on about geeky things as they drove to their next case.

An image of Sam's unyielding expression as he pulled the blade over Dean's flesh tainted that memory and he cringed. I've worked through hell once; I can do it again. The torture wasn't the part he was having trouble with, it was all the weird memories of Sam leaving and denying his family…denying Dean.

And yet part of him knew that what had happened head been inside his head. It didn't make it easier, but it meant he had a shot of figuring how to come back from it. Rolling, he turned toward the bed that was about eight feet away from him. The larger form of his brother was silhouetted against the low light. Sam's shoulders rose and fell in a rhythmic way that told Dean he was sleeping.

Carefully, Dean pulled his battered body up into a seated position. Looking around, he saw a cane leaning against the dresser near his bed. He didn't know who had left it there, but he was incredibly grateful for it. Slipping off the mattress, he grasped the polished wooden handle and rested his weight on it. Sliding another glance at his sleeping brother, Dean quietly moved toward the door.

He ignored the pain that rolled through him as his body adjusted to the numerous injuries and movement. Limping through the men of letters bunker helped to solidify that he was really and truly back home. Rounding a corner, he stumbled to a stop and stared at the tile. Two half inch lines were embedded into the wall. His pain-addled mind threw the bloody image of his brother's crushed skull.

Dean hadn't expected his legs to fail as he stared, wide-eyed, at the damage he could have caused. Did cause? It was like having images overlapped with one another. He allowed his body to slide down the wall, his legs stretching out as he leaned back against the cool tile. He knew that he had to have made noise, but the total silence inside his head doused any doubt he may have had about his current state. He was broken in more ways than he could quantify at this point. How the hell was he supposed to protect Sammy like this? Hell, protect his mom? Because Dean couldn't lose them, not again. He let his head fall back until it was resting against solid tile wall, his eyelids dropping closed.

How do I do this, dad? He used to talk to his mom when things got bad, but with her back, he would have to talk to someone else. Not that I can hear anyone anymore. He could almost hear his father's voice, 'Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Dean. You have your brother to take care of, not to mention your mother. Get it together kid.'

He didn't realize that someone had slid down the wall next to him. Shoving down his immediate response, he turned. Sam was seated about four inches from him, his hands resting on his folded knees. Dean didn't say anything, but he did reach out and pat his brother's folded leg.

Sam's eyes flickered over. Pulling in a breath he nodded once before leaning his own head back against the wall.

They sat in companionable silence until Dean's legs were completely asleep and his entire body more than ached, it throbbed in electrifying zings of pain. But he didn't move. He wouldn't be the first the one to disturb his now sleeping brother. So he did was Dean did best, he endured in silence.

TBC…

Author's Note: Coming back isn't going to be easy, but it is possible. The question will be, will it take a case to get the brother's back where they'd been? Or can they do it without the thing that makes them 'them'? Thank you to all of you that have continued to read and review. If you're reading this and wondering if I'll finish the other stories, the answer is 'yes'. I'm working on those new chapters alongside this story. Again, thanks for sticking around.

Reviews are most welcome and keep me motivated. Consider leaving one?