-AN- Did I just post a second chapter, almost twice as long as the first, within 24 hours? Yes, yes I did. I'm gonna be honest, guys. When I called my mom earlier this week, I lamented about how I had so many works left unfinished, and she commanded me to work on at least one of them. So I guess you have my mom to thank for the sudden content increase? Anyways, who knows, maybe there will be another chapter fairly soon.
-GNS-
Dean dragged Sam from the car and into their motel room as Henry gathered up their medical supplies.
Dean ripped through Sam's shirt with the knife tucked into his waistband and started stripping off as much of Sam's wet clothing as he could.
"Thanks," Dean said, not looking up as Henry placed a cheap bottle of Vodka and the sewing kit next to him. "Can you go to the office? Get some extra blankets? Once this is stitched, we'll need to get his body heat back up."
Henry nodded, eyeing Dean suspiciously but not protesting. Dean didn't pay the younger man any attention as he went. Instead, he smoothed a palm down Sam's chest, trying to feel his brother's shaking breaths.
"This'll sting," he said, pressing down to hold Sam to the bed as he poured the alcohol over the wound.
Sam bucked up slightly, hissing from the pain even as he drifted in and out of awareness.
"Gonna stitch you up good as new, alright?" Dean soothed, placing the bottle aside and threading the needle. He worked slowly and carefully, tying Sam's skin back together. Black blood oozed through his fingers as he worked until his hands were slick with it.
Henry returned with a stack of blankets.
Dean patted Sam's hip once the stitches were closed.
"C'mon, up," Dean said, "let's get you over to the dry bed and wrapped up in some blankets. Then it's a steady diet of pain pills and antibiotics. I don't even want to know what kind of crap was in that water."
He pulled Sam up carefully before placing him back down on the other bed. Sam had begun to shiver, which was a good sign at this point. Meant his body was at least attempting to warm itself back up. Henry passed over a blanket from where he was standing at the foot of the bed, and Dean tucked it around Sam's body.
"Gonna be just fine, eh Sammy?" Dean pushed Sam's wet hair out of his face.
Sam blinked into awareness and nodded stiffly.
"Atta boy."
Dean backed up slightly and squeezed Sam's ankle once before collapsing down into the wet spot Sam had made on the other bed, slumping as the adrenaline of the night flowed out of him. He was so tired at that moment all he wanted to do was sink into the floor.
He heard Henry as he walked over to Sam's side to supply him with the medication. There was a rustle of sheets and the thump of a glass of water being placed on the bedside.
"Talk," Henry said stiffly, still standing near Sam's bed.
"I—" Dean huffed, "yeah I guess I did promise you an explanation."
Dean sat up straight and slid so he was sitting at the edge of the bed.
"I'm not your brother," Dean started, "I mean, I am Dean, but I'm not your Dean. I just—woke up here. I don't know how I got here, or why, but I do know that wherever I am, it's not my universe."
"Right, because that makes sense," Henry huffed, his voice had lost all of its petulant little-brother tone that Dean had grown used to over the last twenty-four-hour. Dean noted Henry's hand snaking around to the back of his jeans where Dean knew a gun was tucked.
"Sam knew. He figured it out in the diner, tailed me to the bathroom," Dean told him, eyes trained on the hand reaching for a firearm.
"Bullshit, Sam would've—why wouldn't he have told me?" Henry asked carefully.
"He didn't think I was a danger, and he didn't want you to know," Dean said simply, shrugging slightly.
"Why not?" Henry emphasized.
Dean sighed, dragging a heavy palm down his face.
"Because in my world—you don't exist. It's just me and Sam," Dean explained, wincing slightly.
"Oh," Henry breathed, sitting down on the edge of Sam's bed, deflating with the news.
"Yeah," Dean said lamely.
Dean didn't know what to do here, didn't know how to comfort someone he'd only just met as if they were his brother. He didn't know if he wanted to, not really. Too much of his energy was still focused on making sure he could hear Sam's steady breaths from where he was knocked out in the other bed. Because even if it wasn't really his Sam, he was still setting off all of Dean's big brother alarms. Alarms that had, Dean was beginning to realize, lied dormant since he got back from Purgatory.
"So that's why—that's why you had been acting so weird. It wasn't the hangover it was—" Henry trailed off.
Dean nodded wordlessly in response.
"And, and that's why you were asking all of those questions about Sam, about why he wasn't riding with us and stuff."
"Yeah."
"Okay," Henry sighed, seeming to steel himself against the news, "alright."
"Ok?" Dean asked, incredulous, "that's it? The whole reason Sam didn't want me to say anything was because he thought you'd, I dunno, that you'd freak out or something. That you couldn't handle the news. And it's just—okay?"
"I mean, it's not okay, Dean. But I can't—I'm not surprised, alright?" Henry said, voice weary.
"Not surprised?" Dean drew the question out slowly.
"I guess," Henry explained, "it makes sense when you think about it. I can't say I hadn't—that I didn't suspect—"
"What do you mean?" Dean asked carefully.
Sam swung the heavy metal door of the bunker open, before flicking on the lights and heading down the stairs. Dean stumbled in closely behind him.
"Home sweet home," Sam mumbled with a sweep of his arm before heading down toward the map room.
"Woah," Dean breathed, taking in the scene wide-eyed, "you guys live here?"
"Like I said, newly-acquired. But yeah, it has been our home base as of late," Sam explained. He dropped his duffle bag carelessly onto the map table before slumping down into one of the spare chairs.
"Tell me you aren't winded from like, ten stairs dude," Dean chuckled, finally making it down the stairs himself.
Sam smiled weakly with something that looked more like a grimace. In truth, he hadn't been winded by the stairs, which was honestly a great improvement to how he'd been feeling just that morning. It was dizziness that had him struggling to stand.
"Just need something to eat, probably," Sam told him, rubbing at his temples with his hands. It wasn't the truth, Sam knew that eating wouldn't make him feel any better, hadn't made him feel any better lately. Not with the way the trials had left his stomach queasy at any attempt at swallowing something down. With how little he'd eaten in the last few days, though, it was reasonable to assume that that was the source of at least some of his dizziness.
Dean hummed in response, swinging his gaze around the room.
"This place is sweet," he stated. Mind if I take a look around?
"Sure," Sam waved him off, "but be careful not to touch anything that looks like it could be cursed. I don't know what half the stuff in here does." Sam tried not to think about how maybe a couple of years ago, before Purgatory at least, his own brother would have offered to get him something from the kitchen, would have mothered him with blankets and soup and glasses of water. Once again, Sam was worried he had broken something he wouldn't be able to repair. He knew the only way he could fix it would be to get his brother back.
After a few steadying breaths, Sam pushed himself up from the table and wandered over toward the library. He scanned the titles of a couple of books before selecting a few, dropping them down onto the desk, and flipping on the lamp closest to him.
"Better get to work," he sighed to himself, pulling the first book open.
Dean wandered down the halls of the bunker, pushing open doors and glancing inside. Sam was right, it was kind of like a bat cave for magical librarians. Dean wondered vaguely if that was a phrase his other self had coined.
Most of the rooms were largely uninteresting—stacks of shelves, a linen closet, and the bathroom. A few of the rooms appeared to be unused bedrooms. Eventually, Dean wandered a little farther down one hall and pushed open the door to reveal something that finally caught his eye.
"This has got to be mine," he said, somewhat in awe. Dean had never had his own room before, and this definitely looked like how he'd set one up if he did. Guns lined the walls, there was a stack of albums in the corner. Dean's eyes scanned the room hungrily until they landed on a pile of photographs on his desk.
At the top of the pile was a picture of him and his mom when he was little. Dean smiled and traced the image with the tips of his fingers.
"Hey Mom," he breathed to himself.
After a few moments, he turned to the next one in the stack.
It was a picture of Dean, maybe seventeen, all teenage swagger and hard lines, and Sam, still baby-faced and well before the growth spurt that had him shooting up like a weed. Dean had his arm wrapped around Sam's shoulder, his other hand in the process of ruffling Sam's hair. Dean was grinning wildly at the camera, and Sam's eyes were downcast, avoiding the lens. But on his face was the slightest smile, the barest fond hint of a dimple.
Dean squinted at the unfamiliar image for a moment, before flipping to the next one.
It was another picture of the two of them, this time neither of them was looking at the camera. Dean was standing by the driver's side of the Impala, a half-cracked smile playing over his lips, looking smug and pleased with himself. Sam was on the other side of the car, head tipped back and laughing openly, looking fresh-faced and not even twenty-three. Dean could almost imagine the scene play out in front of him. Dean telling some dumb joke before the two of them slid into the car. An onlooker, from the looks of the scenery probably Bobby, snapping a picture of Sam's bright and honest reaction.
Dean's brow furrowed as he fiddled with the edge of the picture. Sam had never been open with him like that, they'd never been close enough for it. Dean didn't know what to do with the new information he had been presented with. It was one thing for this Sam to tell him they were usually close; it was another to see the evidence so clearly photographed.
Dean flipped through the next photo, and the next, for more of the same.
Instead of it making him feel warm, it left a deep lurch in his gut. Henry wasn't in a single one of the pictures, not one. Which made sense. Henry wasn't real here. The stark reminder of that fact would have been enough to make Dean feel sick. But more than that, Dean couldn't even imagine the place in the picture where Henry would be. Dean thought back to all of the photos he had of the three of them. Henry hadn't been in the back of any of them, not off to the side, not out of the frame. It was always his bright smile framed front and center. Henry was the one on the receiving end of well-meaning noogies. Henry was the one laughing mid-camera shutter.
Sam was always the one brooding in the background, the one off to the side with the furrowed brow. But that had always just been—Sam—hadn't it? Looking at these photos now, Dean wasn't sure.
Sam didn't know how long he'd been turning through pages before Dean finally found himself in the library.
"Hey," Dean said in way of greeting, his brow furrowing slightly. "Thought you were gonna eat something, dude?"
"Maybe later," Sam sighed, closing the book in front of him and pushing it away. "That one's useless," he said, pulling the next book open.
"Maybe later—" Dean started, glancing down at his watch, "dude it's been nearly two hours since we got here. It is later."
"I said later, Dean," Sam protested. His voice came out in a familiar little brother whine. One that before would have prompted an eye roll from Dean before he turned on his heel in search of sustenance to force-feed Sam.
"Fine, starve yourself, see if I care," Dean stated instead, pulling out a chair from the table roughly and sitting down.
Sam watched him, slightly startled for a moment, before turning back to his book. Sam guessed it wasn't too much unlike how Dean had been acting lately—too quick a fuse when it came to Sam frustrating him. Still, it felt sudden and weird compared to the companionable silence they had at least managed in the car.
"Sorry, I—sorry," Dean apologized after a moment, glancing up at Sam from across the table. "Weird mood. You should eat something, though," he finished awkwardly.
"Yeah," Sam agreed, "I will, promise. Just—just later, alright?"
Dean nodded in acquiescence.