Author Note: Well, hi there! It's been a while, hasn't it? What have I been up to? Making a little side cash selling my short stories, which are lately veering mostly horror. Fun Fact: I actually had 3 of my older SPN fics accepted for publication in an upcoming fanwork edition of CP Quarterly. I'm SO CLOSE to a finished first draft of my novel. And I've been hanging out with the incomparable Nova42, who last summer moved to Indy, and now lives like 4 minutes away from me. Something we did earlier this month was FINALLY attending the SPN con, which we got tickets for TWO YEARS AGO. I don't want to rehash the entire experience here (there are more detailed notes on my profile) but I DID get to tell both Jared and Jensen that they're the reason I'm a writer, and their reactions/responses made both the longtime fangirl and the aspiring novelist in me smile.

Welp, that longtime fangirl awoke from a year-long slumber that weekend, and she did this wordy thing. Missing Scenes from 2X20 "What Is and What Should Never Be".


False Alarm

Sam impresses himself by waiting a whole twenty minutes before pressing 'redial.'

"This is Dean. Leave a message."

Shit.

Sam hangs up without leaving a message, scrubs a hand up through his hair. He has a bad feeling in his gut, reminiscent of the one he felt when his father sent him for that cup of coffee. He steps to the window and flicks open the curtain. The cops haven't come back, but that doesn't mean anything. False alarm, he'd told Dean. But maybe he jumped to conclusions. Maybe ditching the plates wasn't enough; the Impala stands out on the road, especially if you know what you're looking for.

He dials Dean again.

"This is Dean. Leave a message."

Sam's fingers tighten around his phone. "What's going on, man? Where the hell are you?" His mind runs through worst-case scenarios at warp speed. Henriksen, or the damn djinn? He can't decide which he prefers. They're wanted men in six states, have the feds on their asses. But when Sam suggested they lay low for a bit, Dean had waved off his concerns and handed him a newspaper.

"We aren't wanted in Illinois."

"So?"

"So, people are going missing in Illinois."

Sam had given in, and now Dean might be one of those missing people.

He tells himself that he's being dramatic. His brother is a more than capable hunter, and he's taken down nastier things on his own before. If Dean's gut told him he might have seen where the djinn was holed up, then he was probably right, and is likely dispatching the creature while Sam is fretting about the motel room. He nods, shoots off a text—You find the thing?—and expects a swift response, something in the vein of This is one fugly bastard. Instead, his phone sits silent on the tabletop.

Sam paces the room, gnawing his thumbnail down to nothing when he isn't calling Dean. Not too long ago, Dean spent a week not knowing where his brother was, whether he was OK. Sam cracks after an hour. There's no way Dean wouldn't have called him back by now if he was OK. No. He's pretty sure the damn thing got him.

He looks down at the map open across the table, a border drawn in marker around the area he had deemed to be the djinn's hunting grounds. Fifty square miles of real estate.

"Where the hell are you, Dean?" Sam asks the empty room.

They thought they were in the clear. Or, enough to take this hunt and maybe save some people. But they should really know better by now—splitting up is a bad idea.


A violent crash of emotions takes place when Sam spots the Impala in the factory's rutted, weedy parking lot. Relief that he's found Dean in the second place he tried, dread about what may have happened over the past three hours, fear over what he's going to find inside. The djinn, for starters. He grabs the knife from the bench seat, cursing the specifics of the lamb's blood that added even more time before he got to Dean, time that he hopes they both had to spare. He's just glad he had a silver blade in his bag in the room.

The interior of the factory is dank and pitch black. Sam walks the path he assumes his brother took, hugging the walls and leading with the narrow beam of his flashlight. He finds Dean's cell phone in the hallway, its cracked screen littered with the evidence of Sam's panic. 9 missed calls. 4 voicemails. 6 new text messages. After that, he follows the obvious, disheartening signs of a scuffle: smears in the dirt and dust, the drag marks of boot heels. The trail leads him to a heavy door at the end of the hall marked Basement Access. As soon as he shoulders the door open, the thick, cloying scent of decay hits him like a blow to the gut. Sam coughs quietly into his elbow, gripping the hilt of his knife as he descends the stairs, into a veritable horror show. The earliest victims of the djinn are skeletal husks hanging along the walls like Halloween decorations. There are others, some perhaps not yet dead, including a dark-haired girl in a grimy white dress, but right now Sam's wildly searching eyes want only to find Dean.

There, in the shadows, a familiar bowed head, his brother's ghostly pale face standing out like the moon in the night's sky. He throws all caution to the wind with one shout of "Dean!"

Dean doesn't react. His red-rimmed eyes are cracked open, but he's unresponsive, unaware of his surroundings. His arms are strung up over his head and his buckled legs are limp. Up close, his face is eerily gray, and Sam can feel the chill coming off him. A frightening, lifeless chill. The scared younger brother in Sam hesitates, his heart thumping like a bass drum in his ears. Then he surges forward to reach for Dean with trembling fingers.

"Oh God. Come on." He doesn't check for a pulse, doesn't entertain that alternative, just gives his brother's limp, heavy body a desperate shake. Thinking, not dead, not dead. Wake up. "Hey," he chokes out. "Wake up. Wake up, damn it."

Finally, Dean grunts. His eyes roll around before focusing on Sam.

"Hey," Sam encourages. "Hey."

"Auntie Em," Dean rasps, his face folding in pain. "There's no place like home." He winces as he works to get his feet under him, fingers flexing over his head.

That's when Sam sees the blood. Dean's skin is deceptively unmarred, but the massive needle poked into his jugular is connected to a line of red that leads to a nearby IV stand, the bag there filled enough to turn Sam's stomach. He swallows.

"Thank God. I thought I lost you for a second." Sam pulls the needle free without thinking of repercussions, his nose wrinkling in disgust as he lets it fall to the concrete with a tinny clatter.

"You almost did."

The admittance sends a chill through Sam that rivals that of his brother's bloodless hands. "Oh, God." His eyes shift down as blood wells at the hole left by the fucking needle he just yanked from Dean's neck. "Let's get you down." He reaches up with the knife and saws at the thick, coarse ropes anchoring Dean to the ceiling beams. He's barely made any progress when Dean stiffens.

"Sam!"

He'd actually forgotten about the damn djinn. Sam spins, swinging the knife in a controlled arc. The djinn is stronger than it looks, and before he knows it, he's across the basement, down on the stairs with fireworks going off behind his eyes and the creature's hands wrapped around his throat. One of those hands descends toward his head with an ominous crackle of blue light encircling the djinn's fingers. Before it makes contact, the creature's body goes rigid, and the light in its eyes dims. The djinn falls to the floor, revealing Dean standing there with Sam's knife in his hand, ashen and breathing hard.

Sam drags in a ragged breath, thankful he'd managed to cut through enough of the rope for Dean to come to the rescue. Then he sees that he didn't, that his brother has loops of rope biting into both wrists, evidence of the force it took, the strength he somehow summoned to free himself and save Sam.

Dean wordlessly turns away and surveys the area, walks unsteadily toward the girl in the white dress. Sam watches as his brother reaches to feel for a pulse.

Sam recognizes her now, from the most recent missing person's report. God, she was only gone thirty-six hours, but looks beyond saving.

"She's still alive. Sam." Dean hands him the knife, asking for help without really asking for it.

Sam cuts her down without the desperation he'd had sawing through Dean's ropes. His brother carefully removes the needle from the girl's neck and catches her when the ropes give.

"I gotcha," Dean says, though there's no way the girl is hearing him. "I gotcha. We're gonna get you out of here, OK? I gotcha. I've got you." There's an undercurrent of pain and weakness in his voice, and he starts to tremble, his strength wavering. There's a thin, dark trail snaking down the side of the girl's neck, and Dean presses a shaking hand to the spot.

Coming down from his own adrenalin rush as the roar in his smacked skull settles, Sam gets it in his head to check his brother for similar damage, knowing the sort of jugular puncture they've endured will continue to bleed if not properly dealt with. Knowing Dean has already lost a lot of blood. He grips Dean's jacket and sucks in a breath. The collar of Dean's t-shirt is stained crimson, the spot silently growing while Sam grappled with the djinn.

He presses his palm to the side of Dean's neck, creating a sort of macabre train of stemmed blood flow. His brother's skin is cool and clammy beneath his hand, and Dean flinches at the contact, a vague, delayed motion. Sam only increases the pressure, looking around the dark subterranean space but knowing it's unlikely he'll find anything clean enough to use as a temporary bandage. He pats at his pockets with his free hand, curses under his breath. He has better luck digging through Dean's jacket, pulls out a wadded bandanna that he swiftly rips in two with an assist from the knife. Sam uses one half of the bandanna to replace the pressure at Dean's neck, which has already leaked a decent amount of blood in the thirty seconds since he moved his hand.

Dean once again shies away from him. "Sam, we need to get her out of here." It's clear that every word is an effort, and another tremor wracks his body.

"You also need to not bleed out. I don't think you have that much more to spare, Dean." Sam's patience is waning, and Dean isn't thinking clearly. He tells himself it's the blood loss, the trauma. That the girl isn't the only one he needs to get out of here.

"I got her, OK?" Sam assures his brother, wrapping one arm around her slim waist. "You hold this here." He guides one of Dean's trembling, frigid hands to the spot.

He sees now that his brother has mangled his wrists good; the abrasions are nasty, a trickle of blood running down his forearm. Sam wants to wrap it, wants to wrap Dean up like a mummy and keep as much precious blood as he can inside his brother's body. But even with one hand stemming the blood flow from a jugular puncture, even with torn wrists still trailing lengths of dirty rope, even with a sickening amount of his own blood hanging in a plastic bag twenty feet away, Dean is staring wide-eyed at this girl, waiting for Sam to finish saving her.

"Okay." Sam clenches his jaw and scoops the girl into his arms. The jostle of her weight clangs the bell in his head, and he has to blink away a flurry of spots in his vision. The first thing he sees when his eyes focus is that damning bag of blood, the one that tells Sam in no uncertain terms that his brother might be standing next to him, but just barely. There had been a horrifying moment when he had first popped open the basement door that he thought he was too late.

False alarm.

But just barely.


By the time they make it to the car, Dean is shaking for real, the familiar, uncontrollable tremors of a body missing too much blood. Sam watches his brother move stiltedly around the front of the Impala, one hand trailing along the hood like he'd hit the ground without it. The girl moans in his arms, and he hastens to get her situated across the back seat. She's beginning to come around, so Sam tells her that she's safe now, that they're getting to help. She asks about her dad in a small, broken voice, and he doesn't know what to tell her, whether her father was one of the victims they've left behind or if it was just the first thought that came to her mind as she roused.

When Sam straightens, he meets his brother's eyes over the roof of the Impala and catches a glimpse of sorrow and pain there so severe it rocks him back a step.

Dean looks away. It takes him two attempts to get the car door open, and then he drops onto the passenger side with a poorly concealed groan.

Sam slides behind the wheel and turns the key in the ignition. Immediately, he cranks the heater up, hoping to stave off the chill attacking his passengers. He appraises his brother, who lays his head back against the bench and closes his eyes.

"You hanging in there?"

The corner of Dean's mouth twitches. "Mm," he grunts, without opening his eyes. Sam leans over to check the hole in his neck and is relieved to see it's no longer bleeding. There's still the issue of the nasty bits rope digging into the tender skin of his wrists, and Sam helps his brother extricate his purplish, freezing hands as gingerly as possible.

"Okay," Sam says. He sits back against the seat and pulls up the browser on his cell phone. "Just need to find the hospital."

The car falls quiet but for the ragged, rapid breathing of the others.

"It made her think she was with her father," Dean says.

Sam looks up from his phone. "What?"

Dean's throat works as another tremor strikes. "What she said. Before."

"Auntie Em. There's no place like home."

Said like he was waking from some kind of dream. Like he hadn't been here. Like the djinn had made him think he was somewhere else.

"What did—" Sam starts to ask, then swallows it back. Dean is in enough real pain right now without his brother poking at whatever damage the djinn might have done that he can't see. He needs to prioritize, needs to get this girl to a doctor. Hasn't ruled one out for Dean yet, either. "Okay. Hang tight."

Ten minutes later, Sam throws the Impala into 'park' and yanks the key from the ignition. "Come on."

Dean robotically obeys, then hisses in a breath and releases the door handle as self-preservation kicks in. "Sam," he says, shaking his head.

Sam knows that his brother is right. They're wanted men. Dean can't go traipsing into an ER and put his face on display under fluorescent, unforgiving lights unless the situation is life or death. Sam is going to have to make this as quick as possible.

"Okay," he says, mostly to himself. "I'll be right back."

Sam lies to the ER staff about where he found the girl, because he hadn't thought to grab that goddamn bag of his brother's blood on the way out of the factory, and he can't risk Dean being associated with the bodies in that basement. He'll go back for it later. It was plenty obvious that no one but the djinn had been in the building for a damn long time.

He stands in the hallway for ten excruciatingly long minutes, waiting for someone to give him an update he can pass on to Dean. A nurse comes out to tell him that they've gotten her stabilized.

"But we won't know for a while whether she'll pull through. We had to call the authorities."

Sam's chest tightens, the timer in his head speeding up.

The nurse's eyes narrow. "They're going to want to talk to you, get some more information."

He nods. "Yeah, of course."

But as soon as her back is turned, Sam is out the door and back to where his brother is waiting in the car. Dean is slumped against the window, dragging in rapid, shallow breaths. Sam grabs one of his limp, shredded wrists, needing some reassurance that this is something he can handle on his own before he speeds away from the medical professionals.

"I'm OK, Sam," Dean says in a quiet voice.

Pain creases his face as he presses his other hand to his chest, and his pulse is a thready, irregular beat beneath Sam's fingertips. If possible, his complexion is even more ashen than it had been when Sam went inside. He's not OK. Not at all. Sam remembers that slack, sightless stare, and the concern finally pushes the question through his lips.

"What did that thing do to you?"

"Nothing I can't handle."

Sam's not so sure about that. Not when Dean won't—or can't—even look at him. But there will be time for that later, after Dean's got some color back in his cheeks.

He has one more stop before returning to the motel, where he intends to deposit Dean into bed for the foreseeable future. By the time he pulls into a parking spot outside the small 24-hour store, Dean is dozing against the door, which is just as well. What he needs more than anything right now is rest.

Sam fills a basket with bottles of Gatorade and enough microwavable food to last them two days. At the counter, he grabs a few magazines, because Dean is sure to be crabby and bored at least a whole day before Sam is ready to hit the road again. When he dips into the car and shuts the door, Dean startles awake with a gasp.

"Hey." Sam puts a gentle, steadying hand against his brother's chest.

Dean frowns, licking his lips as he looks around the car, wincing at the neon sign in the storefront beyond the windshield. "Sam?"

"Yeah. You good?"

"Where are we?"

Sam doesn't like that his brother didn't answer the question, but he knows better than to be surprised. It was a stupid question anyway. "Just needed to grab you some stuff. We'll be back at the motel in like five minutes."

Dean nods. He shivers, though as far as Sam's concerned, the car's interior might as well be a sweathouse.

"Here." He fishes a Gatorade out of a plastic bag and hands it over.

Dean knows the drill. He lifts the bottle to his lips with a violently trembling hand and drinks, has enough self-awareness to return the cap before he spills Gatorade all over himself.

Sam catches another flash of his brother's raw, torn wrists, and wonders if he should have grabbed another roll or two of gauze while he was inside.


Sam is down to his t-shirt, flannel tossed over the back of a chair. The heat in the motel room is turned up like they're caught in a snowstorm instead of midwestern Spring. Dean is slumbering restlessly, antibiotics down the hatch and the last of their gauze wrapped around his wrists, taped over the hole in his neck. Sam knows he should get some sleep too, but he needs answers. Answers he can't wait for Dean to be conscious and coherent enough to give him, assuming he even will. He gets out the laptop and continues to research the djinn, hoping to make sense of what happened to his brother.

Everything he finds online is speculation. Apparently, not many people have encountered a djinn and lived to tell the tale. When it's an appropriate enough hour and he's had some coffee, Sam calls the Roadhouse. After he assures Ellen that Dean is OK and that they'll visit soon to prove it, she gives Sam the number of a hunter named Baker who was captured by a djinn ten years ago.

"You should know, Sam, he's different since he escaped that thing."

Sam's gaze darts to the shape of his brother bundled under the plastic-y duvet across the room. "What do you mean different?" he asks, keeping his voice low.

"Well, he stopped hunting, for one thing. It's been years since I saw him last, but he was…" Ellen sighs. "The only word I can think of is haunted. Whatever that djinn did to Baker, it changed him."

He digests that information, knowing that Dean has already taken hit after hit over the past year, that each one has undoubtedly left him changed in some way. How much more damage could one djinn really do?

He rouses Dean to drink more Gatorade and check his vitals, which are improved, though that's not saying much. Sam is dismayed by the ongoing irregular beat of his brother's heart, the stubborn ashen tint to his complexion. Dean bounces back like a snapped rubber band. This isn't bouncing, isn't snapping. He waits for Dean to drift off once more, mumbling something about cheeseburgers and nurses, and then calls the number Ellen gave him.

Baker might not be hunting anymore, but he's more than willing to talk, especially after Sam gives his name. At this point, he really shouldn't be surprised by how many of these grizzled old men crossed paths with his father somewhere along the way.

"It wasn't a wish like you're thinking," Baker tells him. "It's like that damn thing dug into my soul and pulled out the one thing I wanted most in the world and gave it to me."

"But not really," Sam says, his head spinning. "I mean, it didn't…it wasn't…"

The man sighs. "No, kid, not really. It was just in my head, keeping me under so it could drain me dry."

The blood bags. The victims who had been dead the longest were still connected, but the bags were empty. Drained. Sam's stomach churns.

"But it felt real," Baker continues. "It felt like I had my girls back. Like things were the way they were supposed to be."

Sam nods, starts to pace in front of the window. What was it for Dean? "How did you wake up?"

The man lets out a humorless huff. "Wish I could say it was on purpose. Stepped in front of a bus, believe it or not. One minute, I've got my little girl's hand in mine, and the next, I'm in some cave."

"So, you…"

"I died in the djinn's dream world, and it woke me up in the real world. Without much time left to spare, too."

"But like you said, it wasn't real."

His words wring another sigh from the man. "Doesn't mean it wasn't the hardest thing I ever had to do, coming back to this cold, awful world where my girls are gone, after having them back."

Sam sits down hard in a chair, staring across the room at his sleeping brother and wishing he had a drink.

"Kid? You still there?"

"Y-yeah."

Sam thanks Baker and assures him that he's helped. When he pushes upright, his vision grays out for a second. He's so tired he could cry, but he can't go to sleep until he checks on Dean one more time. He leans in to feel Dean's pulse and his brother wakes with a start, his eyes blowing wide in his still-pale face.

"Hey, hey, hey. You're good, man." Sam raises his hands and takes a step back, allowing Dean to get his bearings. It takes a moment, before the cloud of confusion clears.

"Sam?"

"Yeah. Hey."

"Are you…" Dean blinks, winces. "Is this…"

"I'm real, Dean. You're here. You're back."

"Okay." Dean's head drops back, and something unexpected flashes across his face, something that looks like remorse.

Like Dean isn't sure he chose the better option.

Sam thinks about Baker, accidentally-ing himself back to the real world, to life. He knows his brother. Knows Dean would have figured it out. He rubs a hand over his mouth. God, Dean. He quashes all his childish instincts, doesn't pry. Because the look in Dean's eyes is exactly how Ellen described Baker. Haunted.

He doesn't know how to look at brother like this, gray and exhausted and unsure whether he should be here, without thinking that this might be the hit he can't come back from.