I don't own Dean, Sam, or Supernatural. But the story is all mine.

Hi hi! Once again, I'm absolutely thrilled by your responses. You guys make my day! Thanks so much! My only question is whether I'm just so transparent that you guys knew exactly where I was going with this chapter, or if it was just wishful thinking on your parts that happened to coincide with my thoughts. Won't say exactly what, but you'll know who you are when you read the story. Anywhoo, I hope you all had a great holiday, and I hope you enjoy this next installment. As usual, keep reading and responding.

Dammit Sam! Spinning on his heel as fast as his battered body would allow, Dean scanned the room for any sign of where Sam had gone. The bathroom was empty, and Sam hadn't left any kind of a note, not that Dean really expected one. There was only one possible door Sam could have slammed, and as Dean stumbled towards it he prayed that Sam didn't have much of a head start.

He was weak; the blood loss taking a major toll on his injured body, and Dean had to stop when he reached the door frame. He leaned heavily against the sturdy wood, rekindling his sapped strength and taking several deep gulps of air before he could latch onto the knob and turn. Pulling the door open, Dean prepared himself to take off after Sam as soon as he knew which way to go, but stopped in his tracks when he saw his car.

The passenger side door was wide open and Sam sat in the respective seat looking absolutely tormented. Dean lurched forward, using the hood of the car to keep himself upright. He could finally see the present source of Sam's suffering and fear engulfed him, a lump forming in his throat. Sam held an object in each hand, his eyes spastically darting back and forth. There was a decision to be made.

xxxxxxx

After Dean had guided Sam back to the bed, Sam laid there for what seemed like an eternity. His mind raced, flashing all sorts of freakish images in the subconscious' version of a movie reel. Images of the demons and other haunts they had hunted taunted him, blinking in and out as though backlit by strobe lights. Flashes of Jess in flames on the ceiling above him, and thoughts of times he'd seen Dean injured jumped out at him as though he was reliving them in

3-D. He'd whimpered, cried, screamed, and spent more time in the bathroom, hovering over the toilet as he dry heaved.. And in his delirium he never noticed that he was suddenly doing it alone. Dean had passed out, dead to the world, but Sam hadn't noticed that fact either. He missed the increasing stain of blood that seemed to encase his brother's body as it spread across the cotton t-shirt. But then, as suddenly as the withdrawal symptoms had come on, they subsided, granting him clarity.

He wasn't out of the woods yet. His hands still shook with the power of a jackhammer. His head still pounded, a million tiny soldiers attempting to hatchet their way through the walls of his skull. His stomach ached, although now more from the violent heaving it had endured trying to conjure up remnants of meals Sam had eaten as long as a year ago. But the sweating had finally lessened, and the horrifying images he'd been broadcasting in his mind were now distant memories. And suddenly, his problems seemed to not matter at all when his eyes finally landed on Dean's passed out form struggling for breath.

Sam had run to Dean, finally comprehending exactly what Dean had been fighting in himself through the hours he'd been with Sam. As his hands prodded at the wound, Sam vaguely remembered Dean's pain filled expressions and hidden motions during the horrific ordeal, and he now knew why. Clarity offered him one piece of knowledge, the fact that he had to get Dean help, and he had to get it now.

After scanning the room and finding no sign of the first aid kit, Sam darted from the hotel room towards the Impala. He was surprised to find the doors unlocked, and even more surprised to find the desired kit already opened on the passenger seat. Damn, Dean, if you knew you needed this thing so bad, why didn't you just take care of yourself. I'm not that important that you had to risk your own freaking life! Sam had reached desperately for the box, his hand clutching tightly onto Dean's salvation. But he allowed his eyes to wander before he could return to Dean, and they had landed on his backpack, stuffed halfway under the seat. At first, he'd ignored its presence, ready to turn his back on it for the sake of his dying brother. But the nagging little devil on his shoulder taunted him, dared him, reminded him. Because Dean hadn't found all the pills when he'd gone through Sam's stuff. He'd missed the Tylenol bottle that Sam carried in the pack, and it was now mere inches from his outstretched hand. And God, how he wanted to alleviate all the pain still coursing through his body. He sunk onto the seat, reaching in the backpack and pulling out the precious bottle, fingering the cap. His subconscious prodded him. Come on, Sam. Just take them. Dean will never know. And you can help him better if they're in your system. You'll be able to think more clearly.

Sam shook his head, trying to vanquish the thoughts from his head. He stared at the two objects in his hands, alternating back and forth between the first aid kit and the pill bottle, fighting an internal battle over which to choose. And that's when Dean appeared.

His brother clung desperately to the side of the car, haunted eyes pleading with Sam to make the right choice. But what is the right choice?

"Sam!" Dean's weak voice cut through his mental torment and Sam slowly looked up as Dean lost his grip on the car and collapsed painfully on the ground, Sam's decision made for him.

The pill bottle was tossed on the floor as Sam sprang from the vehicle and landed at Dean's side. His brother was panting, his hand plastered against his stomach as he tried to stop the blood flow which had started up again the minute he'd gone after Sam. Pulling Dean's arm around his shoulders, Sam dragged him back to his feet and together the brother's stumbled back into the hotel room. Sam barely got Dean to the bed before the older Winchester crumbled onto it in a graceless heap, the pain gone and replaced by an allover numbness. Losing much more blood would surely lead to shock, possibly even death.

"Come on, Dean, stay with me," Sam encouraged, patting his brother's face to keep him awake.

Unfocused eyes looked in Sam's direction as a slight smile crossed Dean's lips, and if Sam wasn't mistaken, he could detect pride emoting from within. The next words out of Dean's mouth confirmed it. "Keep up the fight, Sammy. I knew you could beat it." And then his eyes fluttered shut as he lost consciousness again.

Dean's breathing was raspy, fragmented, and Sam kept a panicked ear on it as he fumbled in the first aid kit for the tools he would need to stitch Dean up. He pulled scissors from the kit, using them to slice through the blood soaked fabric, and praying the shirt's destruction wouldn't result in Dean killing him after everything he'd gone through to fight for his life. That would be far too ironic.

Dazed eyes took a precious moment to fully consume Dean's appearance, and Sam couldn't suppress the gasp as he recognized his part in the wounds. The bruises, the fractured bones, sprained tendons, the internal bleeding, all of it could have been prevented if he had just been stronger when he'd first started taking the Codeine. If he could have just stopped himself in the beginning...

But there wasn't time to dwell on that, and Sam recognized that even through his haze of self pity and guilt. His hands shook, now a combined result of withdrawal and anxiety, and he nearly dropped the stack of gauze as he pulled it from the kit and pressed it firmly to Deans' wound. Holding that with one hand, he reached back into the kit with the other and pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol, twisting the cap off with his mouth. He lifted the gauze just long enough to dump half the contents of the bottle on his brother's stomach, flinching with sympathy pain though his brother barely moved. The blood thinned out as it mixed with the sterilizer, but still stained the comforter. Sam immediately pressed the gauze back on Dean's wound, hoping to keep the blood clear until he could prepare the needle and thread.

On a lucid day, Sam would have found it difficult to thread the needle with one hand. He'd always been amazed at the way Dean could slide the thread so easily through the eye of the needle as it protruded from clenched teeth, but Sam had never mastered the task. And now he could barely focus his eyes, nor could he make his hand stop quavering long enough to match the two up. Realizing he had to let go of the gauze, Sam grabbed Dean's limp hand and laid it in place of his own, hoping that some pressure was better than none at all. It took all his focus and all his control to pass the thread through the eye, but Sam finally accomplished the feat and turned to Dean, ready to face his next challenge.

Sam stitched the wound as best he could against the circumstances, allowing a stream of expletives to spew from his mouth like a drunken sailor. He could barely see Dean's skin through the slimy pool of blood that refused to be wiped away, and what little he could see was difficult to connect with through his shaky hands and fuzzy vision. But somehow Sam managed to finish, and the skin joined together, and the bleeding stopped.

For the next half hour Sam occupied himself with cleaning up the mess in the room. He pulled the stained comforter from underneath Dean's unconscious body and threw it in a corner to be washed before the maid found it. He tossed the bloody gauze pads and tissues in the waste basket, discreetly covering Dean's destroyed shirt with them. He remade his own bed, starting from scratch because he'd made that much of a mess of it. And in the bathroom he cleaned the mess he'd made in his hazy stupor, wiping down tiles and righting fallen objects. The floor of their room was still covered with Sam's clothes, tossed there by Dean in his rage to find the Codeine Sam had hidden in his duffle bag, and Sam now stooped to pick those up, focusing his attention on meticulously folding each and every one and stacking them neatly back into his bag.

But soon, there was nothing left to occupy himself, and he could only check to ensure Dean was still breathing so many times before even he had to admit it was an indication of insanity. Sam nervously paced the floor. Now that the initial emergency was over, his mind had immediately refocused itself back on the little bottle of Codeine out in the car, waiting impatiently for him to retrieve it. The pills called to him, taking the form of wispy childlike voices as they invaded his head and began singing to him, repeating his name. Sam. Saaaaam. We're heeeere! Come get us, Sam.

Tormented fists clenched handfuls of hair as Sam fought against the voices in his head. He knew he had to be strong; knew he would soon get past the desperation for the medication if he could just work through the urge. It had been Dean's request just before he lost consciousness. And he'd seemed so proud of Sam. He knew Sam had fought the hardest demon they would ever face, and so far had triumphed. But Sam also recognized that the fight was far from over. The demon was gradually losing its hold on him, but it was still strong enough to invade his mind and tempt his body. And the only thing Sam had to cling to were Dean's words. There was no physical Dean to keep him from going after his salvation. It was hard. So hard.

Sam finally gave up the fight, and he quickly crossed the room to the door, clutching the handle so tightly his knuckles turned white. The devil was back on his shoulder, coaxing him to fulfil his desire. But the other shoulder finally conjured Sam's angel, and unlike most people's angels this one wasn't in Sam's likeness. This angel was in Dean's likeness, wearing white jeans, and a white leather jacket. Sam almost laughed, realizing how Dean would have hated the outfit, really would have hated that his favorite jacket had been bleached to albino. But instead of laughing, he listened. The Dean angel pleaded with him to return to the bed. To fight through the desperation and lay down and try and sleep it off. And maybe in the morning things would be easier. And by the end of that day, he might be able to go ten minutes without contemplating his next fix. Dean angel encouraged Sam to believe that, maybe in a month or two, he might not even think about Codeine at all.

And Sam complied, allowing the white hallucination to win out over the red one. He returned to his bed, pulling back the covers and sliding in. He vowed to not climb back out until morning - no matter what his body told him. Even alone, he would fight this. Because Dean deserved it.

Don't worry guys. I'm not done yet. Close, but not yet.