Chapter Five

Sam, I don't want you to do this. The words were right there on Dean's tongue and still he couldn't get them out. It was as though someone had wired his jaw shut and every time he thought to open his mouth and speak he found a physical force stopping him. So, instead of speaking his desires, Dean blasted the radio at a volume loud enough to destroy his hearing and anyone else's standing within fifty feet of the Chevy. The music did not serve to ease his anger or nerves, acting instead as an accelerant. As the drums, guitars, and vocals reached their climax, Dean felt his emotions reaching their own zenith, until he could feel them as a physical weight in his body, but still he could not find the words to tell Sam that this plan of his, well of Dean's really, was the most asinine thing they'd ever thought up. In the passenger seat of the Impala Sam was doing his best not to look at Dean. He could feel his older brother's anger growing, something he didn't need supernatural abilities for. How could Sam explain to him that he had to do this? That he'd never been more certain of anything in his entire life?

"Dean," he began, though he wasn't sure where he would go from there.

"Sammy, I don't want to hear it right now. I want to go back to the motel and I want to wake up tomorrow and find that I just dreamed up the lobotomy you must have had that makes you think this plan is any good." He had to scream to be heard over the volume of Black Sabbath, but it felt good to do so. It made the weight in his chest a little lighter, pressing not so strongly against his lungs.

"Alright, we won't talk about it right now, but we're going to have to before tomorrow. We don't have any other plan and we can't go in there without an idea of how we're going to do this." Sam returned calmly.

"First of all, this isn't a 'we' doing something. You're going to be out cold, I'm going to be doing this alone. Second, we don't even know if Adelaide is going to agree to this." Dean reminded him, chest growing ever lighter.

"She'll agree to it." The certainty in Sam's voice pushed all the weight he'd just beat back upon his chest and once again Dean found his anger reaching a level he'd never been to before. It scared him a little that he could get that angry, especially at Sam.

"What did you have a vision of it, Sammy? Huh? Did you happen to just vision up your death?" Sam was thrown by the venom in Dean's voice.

"What the hell's your problem, Dean?"

"What's my problem, Sammy? Here, I'll tell you. My half-brained little brother is so focused on saving everyone he meets and is so concerned with everyone else that he doesn't take care of himself. He's gone and iced the cake this time though, let me tell you. This time he's going to get himself killed and he hasn't even thought about. . ." Dean cut himself off but Sam knew what he had been planning to say. Sam hadn't stopped to think about Dean, that's what this was all about. It struck Sam then, Dean was afraid, possibly the most terrified he'd ever been.

"I'm going to be fine, Dean. I trust you not to let anything happen to me." Dean pulled into a parking spot directly in front of the door to their motel room and killed the power, plunging them suddenly into total blackness.

"Sammy, when are you going to learn, I don't control the universe." Dean nearly whispered this before fleeing the car, not giving Sam a chance to respond. Sam, who had been stunned into silence, stumbled out of the car and into the motel room, where he found that Dean had locked himself in the bathroom. A minute later he heard the shower start up. Sighing he leaned against the headboard of his own motel bed and flicked through the channels on the television, settling on a college basketball game that was half over. It was only half occupying his attention, anyway.

Sam pondered Dean's behavior in the car. Not only had his anger thrown Sam but also the brief sadness Sam had seen there. For just a moment Dean's eyes had flashed with an emotional pain Sam had never seen before. Sure he'd been to plenty of funerals in his time, had seen death from every possible angle, and had comforted those left behind whenever he could, but he'd never seen anyone's eyes look the way Dean's had. Sliding down lower on the bed, Sam pillowed his head on his arms and wondered why two words were standing out in his mind. Left and behind. They circled his thoughts, dancing in and out of Sam's daydreams as the sounds of the shower lulled him into a peaceful state and just as Sam was about to drift away into sleep he found his answers. Left behind, it was what Dean feared. Dean didn't want Sam to die thus leaving Dean to fight all things evil on his own. Dean had raised Sam. When Sam had the flu Dean stayed up with him, rubbed his back as he'd retched into the bucket Dean had placed before him. When Sam had broken his arm for the first time it was Dean who had held his undamaged hand, assuring the younger boy that he wouldn't feel anything when the doctor straighten the bones. Sam had always thought that Dean had done all those things for him, but now he had to wonder how much of it was Dean's desire not to be alone? Sam would have liked to work through his thoughts more but the black oblivion of sleep was calling to him and Sam found himself powerless to stop it.

Dean finished in the shower feeling far better than when he had entered. The cascade of burning hot water had turned his skin a harsh shade of red but had served to loosen the muscles in his back and neck. He felt better about approaching the topic of the coming morning with Sam, but when he opened the door, a wave of steam following his footsteps, he found his brother asleep, hands beneath his head, the TV remote on his chest rising and falling with each gentle breath. Dean sighed and flopped down on his own bed after turning the television off. He counted to five before grabbing his pillow and throwing it at Sam's head at the same time that he screamed Sam's name. He received the desired effect. Sam jumped away with a loud, "Yah!" Turning his gaze on his brother the younger Winchester glared at Dean as he tried to regulate his breathing.

"What. . .the. . .hell is the. . .matter with. . . you." He ground out. Dean flashed Sam his winning smile and waited for Sam's breathing to even out.

"Nothing is wrong with me, but you were right before in the car. We need to plan for tomorrow." Sam studied his older brother, unsure of whether or not he was still dreaming.

"What?"

"We, as in you Sammy and I, need to figure out what we are going to do tomorrow, be it exorcizing you and Adelaide or something else to break your connection." Dean clarified.

"What changed from this afternoon?"

"I thought about something Adelaide suggested to me. That's not the point though, Sammy. The point is that if we exorcize the two of you tomorrow we need to have a plan. You guys could die as it is, we don't need any other complications."

"Are you sure about this?" Caleb asked his younger sister for the thousandth time that morning. The brother and sister were still sitting in their car before the motel they planned to meet the Winchester brothers at. All morning Caleb had been asking Adelaide at random moments if she was really ready to do this, if she was willing to put her life in the hands of two men she'd know for less than twenty-four hours, and if she was sure this wasn't some kind of scam. The last question was Adelaide's favorite. She was psychic, she knew it wasn't a scam. Adelaide, though tempted to say no to her brother simply to see his reaction, replied that she was ready, and before he could ask again she was standing at the motel door. It took only a half a knock for the door to open, revealing Sam seated on one of the two beds. The bed he faced had been stripped down to the mattress and covered with bath towels. Adelaide didn't know what to think about that but tried to slow her racing heart.

"Come in guys." Dean offered quietly as he pushed the door open for the two guests.

"So, what's going to happen?" Caleb asked as soon as the door closed. Dean took a seat next to his brother, leaving the opposite bed for the Jameson siblings.

"Sam and Adelaide are going to lay on that bed where we'll bind their wrists together and place a circle around the both of them, hopefully this will help in the cosmos understanding that we want to exorcize them together. We can't exorcize them from each other because that would ultimately lead to their deaths." Dean explained.

"What happens if this goes wrong?" Adelaide asked slowly. She felt Caleb tense next to her. He was, perhaps, more afraid of the answer than she was.

"You'll both die." Sam tensed at his brothers inability to be tactful, though he understood why Dean had been so blunt. Blunt wasn't what Caleb and Adelaide needed though.

"Everything is going to be fine, though. Dean's been through an exorcism before. He knows what he's doing." Sam tried to reassure them. Caleb only paled while Adelaide's jaw tightened.

"Do you want to take some time and think about this before we go through with it? Because once we start we can't stop." Dean offered.

"No, we need to do this now. I can't think about it anymore." Sam nodded in agreement with Adelaide. He didn't want to think about the fact that in an hour he could be dead, didn't want to think about what kind of guilt that would put on Dean's already overburdened shoulders, and didn't want to think that because of his sometimes misguided desire to save people that a girl with her entire life laid out before he could be dead.

"Okay, let's get started." Dean said. Adelaide stood and moved into her brother's tight embrace, unable to stop the tears that had been threatening to overtake her since the night before. She found herself wishing that she'd said some sort of goodbye to her parents that was more meaningful than just the "I love you" she'd given them. Sam and Dean tried to give them what little privacy they could as they finished setting up the room. Finally, when there were no other ways to delay the inevitable Adelaide took her place on the bed. Sam, preparing to settle in next to her, turned to Dean at the last minute and pulled his older brother into a fierce embrace that lasted no longer than a minute, but it left Sam feeling better about the situation.

"Don't kill me, Big Brother." Sam whispered as he let the older man go. Dean smacked him over the back of the head.

"I thought I explained that I don't do chick flick moments, Sammy." Sam shook his place and joined Adelaide. Caleb bound their wrists with a white, silk scarf before joining Dean in creating and unbroken ring of salt around the two. Dean took a deep breath and in the moment before beginning what could be the end for his brother Dean found himself thinking of their father and how for all the times that he and Sam had fought, john Winchester would never forgive Dean if he let Sam die. Shaking all thoughts from his mind Dean opened John Winchester's journal and took a breath to calm his nerves.

"Ready? Let's get started."