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Chapter title is from song by by Metallica.
28
Enter Sandman - Metallica
It was chaos. But then the ER always was.
He had Toby by one hand so he wouldn't lose track of him. The questions were endless. The things they didn't know about the girl were legion. Plus, they all looked like they had been in a bar brawl with a bear.
Eyebrows were raised.
They lied like pros.
Sam met his eyes in the ensuing mess. Go?
He looked down at the kid by his side. The hard bite of lips compressed tightly together, blue eyes dry. Only the occasional giant inhale gave the boy's fears away.
Déjà vu.
He shook his head at Sam, his own mouth turning down.
Not yet.
Sister Agnes was holding her down. She squirmed, fighting, because Sister Agnes had black eyes, black eyes and horns and a scaly hand around her chin, tilting her head up, trying to get her to open her mouth. The scratchy drape of Sister Margaret's habit brushed her face, smelling of incense and cloves, before Sister Margaret pinched her nose shut. She lashed out, her feeble fist connecting with something soft. She tried twisting her head, but the fingers crimping off her air just pinched down harder, holding her in place.
Whiteness swam before her eyes.
No. No. NO.
She gasped, opening her mouth for air.
Quick as a snake strike there was a bitter tablet on her tongue and her mouth was being held shut.
NO.
"Hush. Hush, child. Hush now. Sleep."
NO.
No.
no
"Find any relatives?"
Sam's face was grim, so Dean knew the answer already, but he asked anyway. Zee would have run the search first thing herself, and the fact that Toby was still with her said pretty much everything they needed to know. There'd been no place to take him.
He glanced over at the sleeping kid, curled up on the hospital room's sole cushioned chair, tucked under his heavy jacket. Toby was going to wake up flailing in about 30 minutes, the leading edge of a scream in his throat before he swallowed it.
The monitors by the bed beeped when Zee flinched. He jumped and Sam jumped when she swung wildly with her right hand, then that hand shot under the pillow, looking for a weapon that wasn't there.
"Shit." He murmured under his breath, moving to keep her still before she tore the iv out of her arm.
His touch was light. He knew that. But the second she felt his fingers restraining her wrist, she tried to clock him, left arm coming up cocked with a fist that would have caught him on the chin had he not ducked.
"SAM." He hissed, but Sam was already there.
"Shhh." Sam said in a panic, trying to catch her waving arm without hurting her. "Shhhhh."
She got Sam with an elbow, right on the nose, tracking his voice. Sam jerked backwards.
"OW!"
Her eyelids were fluttering, struggling to open. She wasn't even fully conscious yet.
She was reaching blindly for the bedside table now. There wasn't anything on the plastic surface, but it wasn't a hard guess to know there was supposed to be.
Normal people didn't wake up this way.
He caught her hand in his, and curled his fingers securely through hers before she could go weapon hunting again. The last thing they needed was to set off the alarms that would bring the nurses back in here.
Her eyes popped open. She was incredibly agitated for someone doped up on drugs.
She squinted in his direction, as if there might be two of him. That probably wasn't helping. She made a croak of sound. He couldn't make it out.
Cautiously he leaned in so he could hear.
Sam stiffened when he reared back and looked down at her with a frown.
"No. Not a good idea."
She insisted, squeezing his hand for emphasis.
Inwardly he swore. It didn't matter that he got it.
She was trying to free her hand again. What the hell? Oh no. Come on.
She wanted to get up.
Son of a bitch.
"Fine."
She was still trying to talk, squinting suspiciously at the unhappiness on his face.
His hand tightened around hers.
"I'll take care of it. Just…try to rest."
It smelled of candles and cedar and iron and blood. Cold hands yanked her right arm away from her chest, peeled her protective fingers away from the shallow slice across the center of her palm, bending her fingers back until the cut stung and bled. She whimpered softly, unable to help herself. Then she was being picked up, her short legs dangling in the air, maneuvered so her palm rested on the recessed center of the elaborately wrought door. The dark metal was cold, her warm blood squishing wetly onto the rough surface until there were a series of clicks.
"Take the brat away."
Cool fabric against her hand, carelessly wrapping around the cut. She kept her eyes on the floor, not wanting to look, because things looked funny. Candlelight was funny. It made strange shapes over people's heads, did strange things to their eyes. She kept her eyes on the floor as she was carried to the other door, the normal door, clutching her wrapped hand to her chest.
Stay quiet, stay quiet, stay quiet.
You know what happens if you don't.
Sam looked at him like he was crazy.
"That's not a good idea."
Didn't he just say that?
"Why?"
How would he know? Hunters were hunters. They had weirder quirks than most. He shrugged.
"Dean."
Sam pulled out his I-know-better voice. He looked pointedly at Sam's red nose.
"She's already on morphine, dude. She's just going to keep fighting it. You saw her."
Sam looked dubious.
He scowled. That need for control, for constant vigilance—he understood it. And he had promised.
"I hope you know what you're doing." Sam muttered under his breath as they found the doctor in charge.
Not really, but when did he ever?
Fire.
There were flames licking at her skin.
Automatically she twisted, trying to stop, drop and roll.
Pain tore up her side, stunning and white, bringing tears to her eyes. She bit the inside of her cheek to avoid crying out. There would be pills if she made noise, and she hated the pills. The pills made everything fuzzy; made it hard to tell what was real. She curled up, clenching in on herself tight, willing the blinding pain to go away. She just had to concentrate. Mind over matter.
Focus.
She sniffed a tight, shivering breath. Ah god, that HURT. Clawed fingers dug deep into her side, twisting and pulling. She batted at where it hurt, jerked wildly when icy cold fingers gripped her wrist, cried out when something BIT down into her flesh. Fiery poison spread, burning painfully in her blood. Everything blurred, the velvet smooth voice of an angel whispering, mingling with Mother's tinkling laugh. Delicate China doll hands tore into her, ripped at her. She was being chewed up between dull teeth, her will ground down to pulp, stinging acid eating away at everything until she was nothing, consumed, and becoming, turning into all the things she hunted. Hungry. She looked down at her hands and didn't recognize them, because they were pale with pink nails and holding a jagged hunk of pink-red flesh, still dripping with blood.
She looked up into ice blue angel eyes staring at her, willing her to eat.
She was starving. She opened her mouth.
NO.
With a gasping cough she woke, her hands flinging nothingness to one side, trying to throw away the bloody fragment of a nightmare. In a panic, she tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids were stuck shut. Blindly she coughed again, trying to spit out the taste of bile and blood, hack up a lung if she needed to, just to get the taste out of her mouth.
"Hey."
She took a swing at the voice.
"son of a …"
A little to the right.
"HEY! Hey. Stop that. Hey. Easy. EASY!"
Just like that both her wrists were caught and held, someone applying just enough pressure to keep her from swinging her arms, being surprisingly careful not to bruise.
"EASY."
She tried again to peel her eyelids open, though they felt thick and caked and sluggish. She pulled against the calloused hands, jerking away at the thoroughly odd sensation of someone running their thumb soothingly along the inside of her right wrist.
"Easy."
She didn't do easy. She pulled again, hard with all her strength, twisting at the waist to get away from the restraining hands.
Mind-blowing pain flared like fire, white hot and blinding, shooting up each and every single nerve, finding ones she didn't even know she had. Something tore at her side, the agony of it drowning out the rapid stream of curse words being muttered above her head. She stopped moving abruptly, because it hurt too damned much, and concentrated on breathing. In out in out in out in small pants, desperate sounding, her eyes watering and her teeth grit tight and it hurt so damned much because, right, no painkillers.
She'd asked someone about that. The someone who was cussing a blue streak over her head, left hand moving up to her shoulder to make sure she kept still.
Right.
Dean.
She licked experimentally at her lips, trying to sort out consciousness. Separating nightmare from reality, past from present. She brought her freed left arm in around herself, scrunching up tight into a ball like it might help, wrapping herself around the pain, a bitter taste still in her mouth, unable to control the shudder that racked her from head to foot.
"Zee?"
That stroking motion again. Up and down along the old scar on her wrist, and she focused on it, trying to take her mind away from the pain.
"Hey."
A finger brushed at the uncomfortable strand of hair that had gotten caught in her mouth while she struggled. She forced her eyes to open and her head to turn in response to his voice, and blinked from the harshness of the fluorescent lights overhead.
Green eyes came into view, partnered with a frown.
"Are you sure? About the drugs?"
Yes. Yes yes yes yes. She nodded once, breathed around the flare of nausea that came with movement and then nodded emphatically again to make sure he got it. His lips twisted down severely, looking strange for a demon. She went for nodding again, to emphasize she didn't want to be doped up, because as bad as this was, it was preferable to whatever that other thing was, the taste of flesh and blood in her mouth, the weird, insatiable hunger of the morphine induced dreams. His hand around her wrist tightened and he let out a frustrated sigh.
His thumb resumed that stroking thing again. She went back to concentrating on the sensation, a borrowed focal point, looking for control. She took a shaky deeper breath and willed herself to uncurl. She eased her legs out slowly, flinching when a red hot jab of pain spiked with the movement. Dean's frown deepened at the amount of effort it was taking her, but he said nothing. She sucked in a deeper breath and held it until she could look him in the eye. She turned her head around slowly, taking in the whiteness of the hospital room and the blipping machinery by the bed.
She croaked out a question.
"Toby?"
"He's fine. I sent him off to get lunch with Sam."
She nodded once. Dark sleep was pulling at her again, dragging her under. She fought it, not wanting the things sleep would bring. She needed to stay awake and in control.
Dean's fingers laced through hers as she tried to keep her head from drooping back into the sterile smelling pillow. He was running his thumb absently along her wrist still, each stroke steady and hypnotic against her skin, punctuating the low murmur of his words.
"Sleep. I've got you. Just sleep."
"Dean."
A nurse walked by. Sam shut up and smiled. Nothing to see here. Not the clusterfuck of supernatural coincidences nucleating like a gathering storm, not the lousy premonition sending chills down his spine, creeping him the fuck out.
They should get the hell out of Dodge.
They were standing just outside the hospital room, where he could keep one eye on the sleeping kid while Sam made his arguments to stay. It was against the rules, sticking around after a job was done, because there was always a mess. But it was a people mess, and folks were surprisingly tough. They picked up what was left of their lives after having had it turned upside down, by ghosts, by revenants, by werewolves or by demons, and they went on. It was easier to recover if everything about the nightmare just went away, and that included the hunters that had come with it.
"She is a hunter. The rules don't apply."
He narrowed his eyes and scowled tightly at Sam. Sam stared right back, undeterred.
"And you heard her. She said angel."
He glared at his brother.
"There were no angels there, Sam. I would have sensed it. She's still half drugged. For all we know, she's sweet talking in her dreams to some guy."
The get-real look Sam leveled at him was loaded. There were hunters and there were hunters, and Ninja here could give a snowman frostbite. The idea of her calling anyone by some pet name had about as much chance as a pig with wings.
Toby fidgeted restlessly in his sleep on the hospital chair, caught up in another nightmare. The fuzzy blue blanket he'd put over the boy slipped to the floor, and automatically he moved back into the room to drape it back over the kid. Sam watched him with too keen eyes, making mountains out of molehills, before Sam followed him into the room, looking down at Toby.
"Besides, we can't just leave the kid alone."
He flicked an irritated glare at Sam. Sam was pushing, and he had some inkling what Sam was angling for. He wasn't making that mistake again. Déjà vu, being in a hospital room like this, Ben glaring daggers at him, silent and sullen and it had all been his fault. He should never have gotten anyone involved in his mess. He wasn't doing it again.
Angel.
She had been trying to warn him about something, back at that sawmill. But he hadn't felt anything. Anyone. And nothing had shown up.
She had to be talking about something else. Some other hunt, maybe.
His lips pursed. There was no angel blade in her things. She wouldn't have survived a run-in with the holy rollers, unless she knew about the Oz sigil, but there was no sign of that either. There were a bunch of fine white scar lines on her right palm, but they were faint and old, matching the barely visible scar angling down her right wrist that must have been one helluva nasty gash a long time ago. The docs had given him a downright skank look when they'd checked her over and discovered all that, plus the do-it-yourself patch job she'd done on the fresh rip running down her left shoulder blade; the new one she hadn't seen fit to say anything about, surprise, surprise, but that scar looked more zombie than angel.
So how did an angel figure into all this?
Sam had fallen silent, watching him. Watching him, because Sam already knew he'd reach the unavoidable conclusion he didn't want to reach.
Fuck.