A/N:
I decided to try a one-shot a couple of years ago ... OBVIOUSLY …
this was an anonymous request 6 years ago.
So girl, I hope you're still around?
If you're ever going to get my message, here's your story:
Didn't stay a one-shot though … my muse devoured me like a bitch not knowing when to stop it, folks. You've been warned.
The original prompt: hurt or sick sam, mentally hurt sam, caring protective brother dean, brothers in love, hospitalized sam, ICU, suicidal sam, dean to the rescue, wildlife-service
So, due to the prompt I have to give you a fair WARNING:
AU, but close to the original, except for: hurt!suicidal!mentallyhurt!hunter!sam, caring!protective!asshole!bigbrother!hunter!dean, unrelated!wincest, love, featuring!bobby, sam/dean
AU: SET SOMEWHEN AFTER SAM KILLED LILITH AND JUMPSTARTED THE APOCALYPSE!
MIND THE TRIGGER WARNINGS, please. Don't wanna hurt anybody with this one.
I wrote this story to the tunes of "The Gambler" & "Night Moves". It ran nonstop whenever I'd write …
This story is not beta'd. But SPELLCHECKED
And by the way … partly written on southern comfort (not meaning that I was actually drunk when writing this).
Oh, and my first language isn't english – so I'm sorry for mixing shit up when it comes to phrases and the correct use of words etc.
Sue me … I'm a bit Castiel about it …
Anyway, here we go:
TRIGGER!WARNINGS: suicidal!thoughts, dark!thoughts, emotional!hurt, physical!hurt!Sam, caring!protective!dean, featuring!bobby, hunter!SAM, hunter!dean, dean/Sam, unrelated!wincest, love
When Autumn Falls
CHAPTER 1 ~ The Hunt
Previously on "When Autumn Falls":
Sam's foster-parents got killed when he was only 8 years old.
The police figured it had to be a robbery.
No one would believe an 8 year old chubby Sammy, that there had been furred, huge monsters with ugly faces and horns growing out of their sculls doing this.
No one.
But John and Dean Winchester, who eventually managed to kill these freaks.
They had saved Sam's life back then.
Sam ended up in yet another foster family after that.
Then he vanished. Just like that, he didn't come home from school. He was just gone.
Demon-activity was spotted in Sam's new hometown about that time too.
The whole thing of Sam's disappearance ended up on the news. - Ole John Winchester figured it had to do something with the demon-activity.
So he went down to Lawrence, dragging his 12 year old son along, to figure out if the signs were connected to the disappearance of kid which parents had been killed by monsters.
Too many circumstances all the way …
In the end, John saved the abducted kid from the demon's nest with quite some help from a couple of old hunter-friends.
One of them was Robert Singer, who happened to own a junkyard just on the outskirts of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
It wasn't save for the boy out there, as long as he didn't know about the whys and wherefores the demon's had taken the kid.
So he figured the best choice was to keep Sam disappeared and get him off of everyone's radar.
And which place was better warded against demons than Robert Singer's Salvage?
Exactly.
None.
***DW & SW***
So Samuel Winchester was risen by Bobby and on occasion John had tried too. But the kid and John Winchester were headbutting way too often. No matter what it was about, and even if it was JUST BECAUSE, they were fighting over little things.
Like – Where the bananas in a peanut-butter-banana-sandwich had to be in the sandwich. Do you mash them? Mix them with peanut-butter? Cut them into slices? And if you cut them into slices, do have both sides of the sandwich have to be covered in peanut-butter or just one?
Robert Singer wasn't exactly father of the year either, and sometimes gone for a couple of days too long for his own opinion, but that was how it was.
The old man cared about Sam. And that was one of the most important things.
Sam would spend quite some time with Dean whenever he and his father were holing up at the Salvage to lick their wounds.
Or Dean would stay with him whenever John and Bobby had have something more complicated at their plates than just a simple salt and burn.
So actually Dean and Sam became part-time-brothers. The older kid got him his first fake-ID, showed him how to produce them, and he'd have his first alcohol-induced blackout with Dean when he hit sixteen.
Soon after that he went with the Winchesters and Bobby on hunts.
However, Sam didn't go to college. He had tried, but it was no use. After his girlfriend died, there was no intention to stay at Stanford, because everything reminded him of her.
Their apartment, the dorm ... simply everything.
So Sam returned to the family business. He was quite a good hunter too.
Specially he and Dean were one hell of a team out there. Killing monsters. Saving People. The family business.
They fell into a comfortable routine about acting like brothers, actually becoming brothers with all the ups and downs siblings had to deal with in their relationship.
It was no surprise, either to John, nor Bobby, that the both of them were some of the best hunters out there in the world.
Their perfect hunter's-life wasn't all lolly-pop and candy-canes, but they were together in this. They were trusting each other with their lives. They could relay on one another no matter what.
And soon fate decided to put them on an acid test.
***DW & SW***
They've split up.
The werewolf's tracks lost in rain and mud.
It had been the last night of the full moon. If they couldn't hunt that bitch down that night, they'd have to wait another 28 days and probably another victim.
It had to be that night.
And that was, when it all started to go down south fast.
Dean Winchester had heard shots in the distance, howling, a cry and then deadly silence.
Dean's shouts for Sam, HIS SAM stayed unheard.
Dean had been looking for Sam for hours. Wet from the pouring rain. He had eventually been able to catch on the creatures trail, following the werewolf's tracks around for days after that, only to find the former Were's human form dead in a pool of blood. One of Sam's bloodied boots not far away in a ditch.
The kid was nowhere to be found.
He was just GONE.
As if a pit had opened up and swallowed him whole leaving nothing but his boot behind.
Dean had tried to reach out to Castiel, but the Angel wouldn't answer his forsaken prayers. Like so often lately, the angel was MIA.
By now he was gone for two days. Fourteen hours. Thirteen minutes.
Dean was desperate. Sam could be hurt, straying through the woods in delusion for all he knew.
It wasn't likely for hunter to bring authorities into the game, but he had reached the point of break.
There was no way he would find his so-called little brother – all by himself.
Bobby himself was on a hunt somewhere in the back-country
He'd have to cover more ground than one hunter could possibly muster.
***DW & SW***
It was dark. Cold. As cold as the first winter's night of the year.
He was freezing and soaking wet to his underwear. He was shaking all over, his clothes torn, blood on his scalp from an open wound. His head hurt. It hurt so bad … searing pain lancing through his head as if to split in in half.
His ribs hurt.
His whole damn body hurt.
"Dean.", fell from his lips like a silent prayer in the bitter cold of the night.
Sam noticed, that he's had lost a shoe somewhen. Somehow. Somewhere.
All he knew was, that he had to keep on moving. He didn't know where. He just knew he had to.
Dean, was echoing in his mind. He had to get to Dean. He had to get to him, before the creature would.
Sam knew he's lost orientation. He knew that he was badly wounded, and he knew that neither of them would leave the woods alive, if he wouldn't be able to warn Dean before the threat could reach his big brother.
Actually he couldn't remember what threat it was, he had to warn him about. He just knew he had to. At any cost.
At least one of the both of them had to survive this …
Sam Winchester could hear it's whispering. It's seducing voice disturbing his calls for Dean. .
***DW & SW***
So here he was. Wildlife-services involved. Searching the woods with thermal imaging cameras from their helicopters. Scouts. Man-trailing.
Too much attention, but who would care?
This was his little brother missing. Probably hurt and lying somewhere unconscious and bleeding and freezing to death.
Then – finally- on the third day there came news over the mobile radio.
They've found him.
More dead than alive, not mere than a few hundred yards from where Dean had found the rotting body of the Werewolf.
They've brought Sam into the closest hospital with an helicopter.
Dean hadn't seen him yet. He had went straight for the Impala, accelerator flooring as he took off, never minding any speed-limit on his way.
The hospital was a hive of activity when he eventually arrived there. He tried to get a hold of some nurse. Or anyone else that was capable of telling him where Sam was. How he was and when he would be going to see him.
There was no use. He needed to wait.
Long nerve-wracking hours drew by with no new information about how Sam's surgery was going.
The only things Dean Winchester had heard when first a doctor came at him were:
Hypothermia.
Dehydration.
Torn chest.
Broken ribs.
Pierced lung.
Head-trauma.
Head-trauma was the only one of these injuries which kept echoing through the hunter's mind over and over again, attended by "coma", "no signs of brain-activity"...
No signs of brain activity
***DW & SW***
A/N: Are we cool about this? Wanna read more?