Reprisals chapter 2

"Sammy!" Dean called careening out of the kitchen and into the hallway where he collided with his younger brother who turned him around and shoved him toward the front door in front of himself.

"Go… go…" Sam urged pushing hard against the wall that was Dean.

"What? What is it?" Dean demanded over his shoulder.

"Pissed… really pissed…" he insisted pushing Dean out the door and down the front walk to the sidewalk where they stood breathless, waiting to see if it could or would follow them.

At the motel Sam took off his jacket as Dean hit the bathroom. He'd been sure to keep Dean in front of him, or keep himself facing his older brother once they were back in the car but it hadn't done much good. He was going to have to ask for help anyway.

Damnit! I can't even escape a pissed off poltergeist without frakkin' that up too! He stepped outside with his jacket in hand and shook it out, amazed and mystified by the sound and volume of crystal slivers that fell to the ground. They looked so delicate, as if they shouldn't have been able to penetrate the layers of heavy cotton but he was going to have to get his hands on some duct tape to make sure he got them all out of the tight denim style weave, he might even have to count the hoodie as a casualty entirely. He held the jacket with the hoodie inside of it up to the bright afternoon sky and shook his head again. It looked as if he'd been peppered with buckshot. Man am I gonna ache later…

Shaking his head he leaned back and started at the scalp, working his fingers through his hair, feeling like he was running his hand over a boar-bristle brush until he felt wetness. Wonder if gloves would help, he thought shaking out as much as he dared, unwilling to risk getting crystal fragments into his eyes or anything.

"Sam?" Dean called from deep in the room.

Sam bowed his head and kicked the door open so Dean would know he was alright, "Out here…"

"What're you doing?" Dean asked holding the door open and looking at his little brothers' red coated right hand while his left plucked at invisible some-things in his skin.

"What did you do?" Dean demanded angrily and grasped Sam's hand and pulling him into the room. "What happened? What did you do?" he repeated.

Sam shook his head.

"The…whatever it is?" Dean asked shining the light of a gooseneck lamp onto his hand and picking out the visible shards.

"Yeah…I think it's a poltergeist… they're usually more malevolent and this one..." Sam shook his head watching his brother go to work.

"Yeah this one's got a monopoly on malevolence…" he said focusing on the task at hand for another moment before looking up into Sam's big ole puppy dog eyes. "Damnit Sam you're supposed to let me know if you're hurt!"

"Yeah well…" he sighed and shrugged then froze holding back a visible wince.

"What else?" Dean asked cocking his head to the side expectantly.

Sam shook his head but Dean's Spocked eyebrow forced him to see the futility of trying to hold back anything else, "A few shards got through my jacket…"

Dean let go of Sam's hand and rose looking his brother in the eyes, "Don't touch…" then moved around to his back. He sighed and hung his head, "Lean forward…"

Sam did as he was told and forced himself to keep still as Dean pulled his bloody t-shirt away from the skin of his back, hopefully removing a few shards in the process, then slid it over his head and carefully off. Dean moved gingerly, taking the t-shirt into the bathroom where he shed it in the sink, unwilling to leave bits of glass on the floor for them to step on if he could help it.

"Son of a bitch…" he hissed standing behind Sam, "Damnit Sammy! This kind of macho crap isn't you! What's wrong with you!"

"What?" Sam asked just as he started to feel something dripping into the waistband of his jeans, "How bad is it?"

"Bad enough…" Dean growled and returned to the bathroom where a second later water was running.

Sam's brows furrowed and he looked into the eyes of his reflection in the mirror above the dresser on the far left side of the room, next to the door. He twisted, trying to get a look and felt his jaw drop. His back looked like someone had poured a pan of red paint down it. Mesmerized by the sight he pushed back in the chair and was almost off the seat when Dean poked his head out of the bathroom and motioned him back down with a harsh admonishment.

"Sit!"

"Arf," Sam mocked still craning to see the damage done. That's not possible… it was just a few shards… he thought then heard a reply from his own mind, well no doubt here it was genuine crystal… I wonder how bad it really is…

"I'll get what I can out with tweezers but what would really help is some Elmer's glue…" Dean called emerging from the bathroom, "I'll tell you something else Eisenstein… I am not picking any glass out of your ass you got that?"

"Good to know…" Sam nodded slowly and felt Dean roll a towel into the waistband of his jeans before setting to work. "What's the glue for?" he asked as Dean meticulously plucked nearly invisible slivers from his brother with more patience than anyone who didn't know him would have guessed he possessed.

"Grabs out slivers after it dries…. hopefully it'll work on crystal too…"

Later, amid several bloody towels Dean wiped the sweat from his forehead, his hair was soaked and Sam's back looked like hamburger as he leaned on the table, head resting on his forearms, fully unable to believe how many slivers his brother had already pulled from him with still another quarter of his back to go.

"I'm guessing we'll probably be visiting Miss Guinardi in the morning," Dean sighed evenly. He couldn't blame Sam for this, and he really didn't, but he was angry for the delay. This thing was just plain mean and he wanted it done! That's one more time I didn't protect him…I let him down again… if he'd taken the kitchen he would'a been safe and I'd be the one with a back full of crystal shards… God one of these things could work its way through him into his kidney or something, slice up his body from the inside so he bleeds to death or has a heart attack or something crazy like that… could it really do something like that? he wondered and determined it didn't matter. His job was to protect Sam and once more he'd failed.

He stopped picking for a moment as another voice made itself heard in his head, He was protecting you Dean… he'll be fine… accept that he wants to spare you more pain… give him the chance to be what he can be, for you, for John… for himself. Let him… be. He knew that voice and he knew her advice was good and valid, but he'd been Sam's protector for so long, he didn't know how to let him fall, how to let him be wounded in service to someone else, That's my job! he thought but shook it all away for the task at hand. The idea would take time for him to get used to.

About three hours later, just as MST3K was starting its own particular take on the movie classic The Blob (original version) on some local b-movie channel Dean pronounced Sammy as clean as he was going to get this night. Once he'd finished picking out the visible shards Dean had run across the street to the Circle K and bought a couple bottles of glue and a paint brush, then a pair of heavy cotton gardening gloves he'd used to wash Sam's hair out in the tub while the glue dried. He'd peeled off the layer of glue, noting an impossible amount of crystal embedded into it and wrapped the pieces into yet another towel he'd have to throw away.

He sat on the bed, Sam in front of him, fresh out of the shower in his sweats, and dabbed triple antibiotic ointment onto the bazillion cuts in his younger siblings' back and shoulders while they both laughed at the stranded human and his robots as they commented on the movie classic. It was one form of entertainment they could always agree upon.

While they sat there chuckling at the same jokes in the same movie Sam's mind flew back in time and he flushed with affection. He remembered a time when he was about nine or ten-ish and Dad had been off on another hunt, leaving Dean to fend for them both again, a situation like the Shtriga, but in this case, they were in Arkansas and Sam actually remembered it. He remembered it because he'd been in the same school for almost three months and he'd blown the bell curve for everyone in the class. Consequently they hated him. He never knew how or who nor did he really want to, but someone had managed to rig up his desk so that when he opened it he was squirted with the musk gland of a skunk. He remembered pounding the three guys he'd just known had been responsible for it until they'd cried for their mothers, then when all was said and done, he'd cried for Dean who came and rescued him.

Dean had spent hours bathing him in tomato sauce, brown sugar and baking soda until the stink was barely noticeable, and he'd conned a nice waitress at the local truck stop into writing a note to excuse Sam from school for the next week. Sam had been grateful at the time but now, sitting on the edge of yet another motel room bed, in yet another town in which they would never settle Sam felt a strange sensation in his guts. The skunk incident had happened not too long after he and Dad had been felled by a terrible fever that had kind of wasted them both away. Sam remembered Caleb, Bobby and Shep working hard to get them all to eat and "regain their strength". He wasn't sure but he thought there might have been something unusual that happened to Dean during that time too. All Sam could remember was Dean in his dreams sending him strength, helping him feel brave.

"What?" Dean asked noticing that Sam had just gone somewhere very very far away.

Sam shook his head, "Nothing…." he sighed stepping back from his reverie, seeing in his mind's eye Dean with a broken finger and looking positively terrible. That was a hard summer for them all, but for some reason Sam could remember all the grown ups being real curious about Dean for a while. Then Dean had stormed at them, told them to leave him alone, that everything was fine… and they had, but they'd still worried.

"You're a crap ass liar Sam, what?" Dean asked.

Sam smirked, and turned ready to pull his t-shirt over his head, he knew how to get Dean to drop something, "I was just thinking… You know I love you right?"

"Oh man! shut it! I am NOT hugging you! You got frakkin' triple-x all over your back I ain't touchin' you!" Dean shook his head wiping his hands on one of the two small towels left just as MST3K cut to a commercial so he could go wash his hands.

Heh heh… gotcha. Sam smirked to himself pulling his t-shirt down, he swilled a couple quick mouthfuls of Dean's pint o'Whiskey then lay on his stomach on his own bed, beer in hand so he could watch the rest of the show.

In the morning they would find out everything they could about Carol Guinardi and whatever it was that wanted her tormented beyond reason. No matter what each of them thought the other might think… this had become personal.