An End
(or maybe just another beginning)

3:00 A.M. Saturday morning

Dean had gone through every Sports Illustrated magazine they kept on the coffee tables and had moved on to Good Housekeeping, all in an attempt to keep himself busy. He needed time to pass. He needed to keep his mind off the fact that it had been an hour and not doctors had emerged from the hallway to inform him what was going on with his father.

He wanted to move. He wanted to pace. Somehow pacing made him feel like he was doing something productive. But when he had started doing it when he just arrived, the old ladies who were with him in the waiting room kept scowling and throwing nasty looks at him. The receptionist told him to sit down; he was making them uncomfortable. He didn't care – he had no idea why they would even be awake at 3 a.m. – but he listened anyway and took a seat.

He hadn't got a good look at his father. He knew that his father was still alive when they brought him in because his chest was still barely rising, and that he was bleeding a lot from somewhere. He had been too preoccupied with getting him to the car and driving frantically to the emergency room to really look at him. It had also been too dark to see anything and by the time they got to the brightly lit hospital, he was already being wheeled away on a stretcher.

Dean peered at the clock across the room, 3:20. He groaned and answered the peeved-off look of the women next to him with a glare of his own. It had been an hour since they got there and Sam left with the car. It pissed him off that he didn't know what was going on. It pissed him off more then that they were even at the hospital. He had calmly suggested that they forgo the hospital and just bring their father back home and nurse him back to health. It wasn't like they hadn't done it before in much worse circumstances and the house was a good twenty minutes closer. But no, Sam, ever fond of institutions, told him that they had to go to the hospital. Even after he told Sam that he didn't know if Dad had health insurance and this could put them even further in debt, Sam started ragging on him and how he didn't care. And like the sucker he was, Dean went along with the guilt trip and here he was stuck in the waiting room, waiting for Sam to get back and tell him how much money they had just lost because of Sam's idiotic notions.

"Dean."

He looked up to see his brother standing there and he scooted over on the couch he was stretched out on. "Did you find it?"

"He has health insurance."

"And…" Dean knew there was a catch. He could see it in Sam's eyes. He looked scared. He seemed reluctant to talk.

"It's in his name."

"Fuck!"

Everyone who occupied the waiting room turned to look at Dean and he gave them a sheepish smile and a little wave to appease them before turning back to his brother.

"What's the problem with that?"

"Nothing that I know of yet. I just don't know what history is on his real name. I mean, if it was a fake name, it's more dangerous because it is fake but the person doesn't exist so it's harder for the crimes and misdeeds that occurred under that persona to catch up to you."

"Do they know who he is yet?" Sam asked.

"No. I just told them I was walking my dog through the graveyard and I saw a body lying there so I brought him in. Didn't tell who I was either." Dean's eyes darted around quickly to see if anyone was listening. The receptionist was on the phone and the old ladies were now preoccupied by their knitting. " We have to get to Dad before he talks to them and tell him to use his real name."

"Why wouldn't he use his real name?"

"Because his first instinct is to always lie."

Sam sighed. " Why does everything always have to be so complicated?"

"Didn't have to be if we just decided to take him home with us," Dean said, very pointedly.

"Then why didn't you, Dean, if it pisses you off so much that you're here. You were behind the wheel. You didn't have to do what I said," Sam exploded, his long fuse cut short by the stress of the night.

" I had to do what he said. It's…it's my responsibility to take care of you.
"Taking responsibility of someone doesn't mean you do whatever they fuckin say!"

"Sam, quiet down. They're staring at us," Dean hissed.

"I don't fuckin' care." Dean was reminded of an insolent child who had just learned his swear words and spent every other word trying to drop them in. He would have found it funny if he weren't the one arguing with Sam.

"Sam. I know you are stressed out. You need to calm down," Dean whispered in the most soothing voice he could muster. " Take a deep breath."

Sam glared at him but followed his advice. The blood that had flown into his face slowly parted leaving his skin pale and he stopped clenching his jaw. Dean almost thought the anger was gone until Sam quietly responded, " I saved his life by bringing him here. You can thank me when he's fine."

Dean laughed as Sam stood up, fishing for money in his jeans pocket. " I wasn't the one who was just knelt there on the ground, watching him bleed to death, doing nothing about it."

"Some of us aren't good at being emotionally cold bastards."

Dean smiled. " Ah…well, it gets the job done."

Sam stormed away from him. Dean just watched him go.



4:00 A.M. Saturday morning

Sam slurped at his ramen noodles, which were loosely wrapped around the plastic spoon. The noise made Dean want to scream but he gritted his teeth and bared it. They hadn't talked since their little spat and Dean was comfortable with the silence. The silence was their time to get over their issues with each other.

He heard the squeak of sneakers and the steady march of someone coming closer to them. It had to be a doctor and he prayed it was theirs. He needed to know. Two hours was long enough for being in suspense.

A nurse appeared from around the corner, a graying woman somewhere in her 50s, carrying a clipboard. She glanced around the waiting room before walking over to them. Dean and Sam stood.

"Are you the boy who brought that man in?" she asked.

Dean nodded.

"How is he doing?" Sam asked.

"He'll pull through."

Sam blinked. Dean took the opposite tactic " We didn't wait two hours for you to tell us he'll live. What's wrong with him?" he asked angrily.

The nurse didn't even bat an eye at Dean's waving hands and aggressive step forward. " He lost a lot of blood from the gash in his stomach. Most likely, that and being drunk made him pass out and he hit his head on something and got a concussion."

"Will he be okay?" Dean asked.

The nurse nodded. Dean exhaled in relief.

"What did the gash on his stomach look like?" Sam asked.

"Sam! Don't interrogate the poor lady like that."

"I'm not. I'm just curious, that's all," he said to Dean and he turned to the nurse. " Miss, if you could tell me, it'd be really helpful."

"Hmm…it's like nothing I never seen before, and I've been here for thirty-some years. It was like something tried to dig out his intestines."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. Now if you excuse me, I have to go to my next patient." Sam watched her go out of sight and turned to Dean to find that his brother was no longer there. He felt a brush of cold air and he looked up to see the waiting room door slamming shut. He had no idea what hair-brained idea his brother had come up with, and he jogged to the door, letting himself out to the parking lot.

Dean was leaning against the hood of the Impala, frantically flipping through pages of their father's journal. Sam tapped on the car to get his brother's attention but Dean was too involved to notice.

"Dean, what are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Dean growled, not looking up from the binder.

"Looking for an entry that includes something about a certain demon."

"Bingo. I remember an entry talking about a demon that tries to disembowel its prey. Help me look," Dean slid all the spare pieces of paper that were sticking out of the journal to Sam, and kept skimming through the hundreds of entries.

"Dean…"

"Look at the papers, Sammy. I need your help."

"Dean."

Dean ignored him, flipping through more pages.

"Dean…Dean!"

The yelling got Dean's attention and he looked up.

"Dean…it wasn't a demon that hurt Dad."

Dean paused and gently shut the book. " Then what did this to him, Sam?" His voice was so tired and resigned.

"He did it to himself."

Dean's expression changed so quickly, from weariness to the righteous anger that emerged in him every time he ever hunted a demon. " How dare you even think that our father would try to kill himself?" He was still leaning on the car but he was oddly pressed into it, like some creature ready to pounce and kill something. Sam took a step back from the car.

"Why is it wrong to think that, Dean? Is it because it will wreck your notion of his infallibility?"

Dean's eyes were glinting in the early morning light and he was smiling. Sam didn't think Dean ever knew he was smiling. It was like Dean had become a darker version of himself. Dean began laughing and Sam took another step backward as Dean raised himself off the hood of the car. Another step when Dean slunk around the front of the car, eyes baring right into his.

Sam reached his hand into his back pocket where he kept a simple hunting knife. He would need it if Dean had finally snapped. It was the work they did; killing demons made the line that divided violence for selfish reasons and violence for justice nonexistent. After time, anyone who didn't agree with your beliefs was someone who could be hunted. He had seen it with his father. It had been Dean who had stopped their father and he who was left with the responsibility of bandaging the wounds and setting the broken leg.

"Oh, I know he's not perfect. He's never been. But he lives for being alive. He would never just throw away something that is so precious to him," Dean kept stalking closer to him, and Sam kept stepping backwards, with every step bringing the knife closer to his front and at the ready.

"Life is no longer precious if there is no purpose to live."

"There doesn't need to be a reason to live. The only reason you need is because we have no other choice." Dean's eyes were wild, his face twisted in something akin to pain.

"There's always another choice and that's the one he chose, death." Sam's back hit the wall and Dean took the last step forward, closing the distance between them, pinning the hand with the knife against the wall so it couldn't be used.

"Dad would never just kill himself, " Dean screamed at him. " He would never just abandon…" Something broke in Dean and suddenly he was crying and Sam was trying to awkwardly hug him and support his weight.

" If he wanted to die, he would have succeeded," he whispered miserably.

Sam didn't say anything. He just offered Dean the comfort that Dean always denied himself. He knew that Dean wasn't crying for their father but for all the times he refused to cry, for all the people he couldn't save and for the people whose lives were destroyed because of his actions. It was for all the regrets he had in his life and all the times he wished things could have done differently.

Finally, with a long sniffle, Dean got himself together enough to back away and began walking back to the hospital.

"This never happened," he yelled from over his shoulder.

"Agreed."



8:00 A.M. Saturday Morning

The scent of iodine in the air was the first thing he registered when he came back into consciousness. It made him think of the time he got in a scuffle with this nasty pixie that kept stealing the neighborhood cats, and it bit through his finger. He was only seven at the time and it was his first shot at fighting demons. He remembered being terrified of going to the doctor's for it because he knew it would have to be disinfected and the peroxide they used at home hurt a lot and the finger wound was a lot bigger and nastier then the ones he usually received. He remembered feeling relieved when he found he only had to put his finger in the liquid for it to lose all its germs, and then disgusted when he discovered the yellow tint it gave to his skin wouldn't be coming off for a few days.

He wasn't sure when he went asleep, most likely right after he got back in the waiting room with Sam. He knew what possessed him to be so angry with Sam, but he wasn't sure of why he reacted as badly as he did. Trying to scare the shit out of his little brother wasn't the best tactic to take. It was only slightly better then collapsing on him and bawling like a baby. Dean wasn't too proud of that part.

He looked around for Sam. He didn't see him but saw the note next to him on the couch. He read it: Emergency at work. Have to deal with it. Be back later.

Dean wadded up the note and stood up, walking over to the garbage can to throw it away. His stomach rumbled, and he reached into his pockets to see if he had any money. He felt some coins and he made his way down the hall where he knew the vending machines were.

He saw a woman standing next to the machines, hands on her hips, glaring at it as it had personally scorned her. She looked vaguely familiar to him but he wasn't sure why. He never went into town or explored the neighboring areas. He scanned through all the hunts he ever went on, searching for the elusive memory she was in. And he knew who she was; he wasn't sure how he could have forgotten her.

"Layla?" He questioned.

"Hello, Dean," she smiled at him. It was the smile of someone who was at peace with the world. It made Dean feel very sad but yet hopeful at the same time.

"Do you need help with the machine?"

"A little. It ate my money," she shrugged.

Dean nodded and inserted a few coins in the machine. " What do you want?"

"You don't have to pay for me."

"I want to. What do you want?"

Layla sighed. " The Snickers Bar. "

Dean typed in A-3 and with the remaining change, bought himself a granola bar. He grabbed their food from the bin and took it to Layla who was sitting on one of the benches that littered the area.

"I prayed for you," Dean told her, taking a seat on the bench next to her.

" Thank you." She tore off the plastic and took a huge bite of the candy. Dean noticed that she closed her eyes while she chewed, savoring it. He found it more amusing then creepy. "I prayed for you as well."

"Why would you pray for me?"

" No real reason. I just felt like someone ought to make sure you were doing alright," she smiled, taking another bite of her Snickers.

"I'm been doing pretty good actually."

"That's really great to know." It scared Dean how sincere she sounded when she said it, like he was worth something. He had been told that by other people before, but they were always people who could have cared less about him and his happiness.

"How are you coping? Found any miracles yet?"

She didn't answer immediately and Dean wanted to swat himself for saying such a stupid thing. He was going to offer an apology when she turned to look at him, and she reached up her hand to slide off her baseball cap.

She was hairless with a whitish scar running off center down her scalp. Dean stared at her in fascination as she explained. " I had surgery a few months ago. They tried removing the tumor. They got most of it, just not all of it…it …it gives me some extra time."

"I'm sorry."

"You're not the one who gave me this brain tumor, Dean," she stood up to throw away the empty Snickers wrapper.

"I'm the one who stopped you from being cured," Dean blurted out. He needed to rid himself of the guilt he felt for being chosen. He needed reassurance that his actions had been correct in shutting down the Reverend's healing scheme.

He was surprised to hear her chuckling and he felt her cool palm against his cheek. It felt like redemption. " Everything happens for a reason. You were meant to be healed by him so that you could continue on with whatever journey you were undertaking. And I, I guess my path is different. I wasn't meant to get better. I have to enjoy the life I have been given. "

His eyes met hers and in the harsh florescent lighting, her baldhead covered in a thin sheen of sweat shined. " You're beautiful," he told her.

She only smiled, accepting the awkward honesty for what it was, and she sat back down next to him. " I don't feel that way a lot of the time."

Dean had no response to that and he finally opened his granola bar, taking a bite. It was a gritty consistency, tasting more like rubber combined with saltless peanut butter, and he wrapped it up, getting up to throw it out and get something different out of the machine. He settled on a bag of Fritos.

"Is me running into you here meant to happen?" Dean asked, deciding to ask the question that kept bouncing throughout his mind.

"I think so," she responded. " I've been wondering whatever happened to you. Did you find what you were looking for and did it disappoint you?"

"Yes and no. I found what I was looking for and momentarily it was wonderful but now…looking back, it was a disappointment."

"What was so disappointing about it?"

Dean sighed. " I thought everything would change afterwards. But we're all still the same people with the same issues we always had."

"Is that why you're here, Dean? Dealing with the problems that never got solved?"

Dean wasn't sure how much he wanted to tell her about what was going on. Somehow he knew that if he lied, she'd know and if he just avoided it, she wouldn't question him. She'd just wait for him patiently to tell her some other time. He wanted to deny that his father had a problem. But Dean knew his father did. He knew that he, himself, did, when it came to death. When one faces death all the time, one becomes too accepting of it. One stops fearing it. One stops caring about dying because it's just the opposite of living.

"I guess so. My father is…ill," he answered. " What are you doing here?"

She laughed. " For once, it's not for me. My mother is still trying to find someone to save me and we were going through a town near here. She crashed the Jeep and broke a few bones. They didn't have the rehabilitation services at the other hospital so we're here until she can get around on her own."

"How long is that going to be?"

"A few weeks, I think."

"Good," Dean couldn't keep the smile off his face.



11:00 A.M.

The phone kept ringing and Sam was stuck listening to more of the opening bars of " Back in Black." He despised the song so much, having been forced to listen to it nearly every day of the past year while on the road with Dean. It figured that Dean would put it as his ring-back tone.

Sam sighed and flipped his cell phone shut, setting it back in the pocket of his dress pants. It didn't look like he would be able to leave the supermarket anytime soon, and he wanted an update on his father's condition. He regretted not telling the staff he was related. He couldn't just call up and ask because it was confidential information.

The electric doors slid open and he walked through, past the grocery carts, and down to his office. He peered into the window and saw the two men still in there, eating subs and jabbering away.

It infuriated him. He hated lawyers. The irony wasn't lost on him that at one time he was planning on becoming one. They were holding him up, talking with each other instead of just dealing with the problem at hand. And who was stuck waiting for them to finish? Him.

He had gotten the call around 7. Some goth girl stole Slim Fast bars. She was caught with the box, admitted that she was trying to steal them. It'd be petit larceny; she or her parents would pay a few hundred-dollar fines, record would be sealed, no harm done. That was why he was originally called. He had to sign the papers that the police had brought to formally charge her. It should have been that simple.

But life could never be easy for him. He went to pull into his reserved spot in the parking lot at 7:30 to find a Ferrari there and he knew he was in trouble. It turned out that the girl wasn't some homeless chick who was trying to find her next meal, though Sam highly doubted a starving person would choose to steal diet food. She was a rich brat whose father was the head of the local area's natural gas provider. She was just stealing for kicks. And of course, her Daddy couldn't let his daughter take the fall for a crime that she was caught doing, and brought a lawyer with him to dispute the charges. So Sam called up the company's lawyer to represent them and the charges. But to make an annoying situation into a disaster, the two lawyers were golf buddies whose kids went to school together. They were just talking over the case jovially, interrupted every few minutes by talks about their wives, football, and other stupid topics that had no place in a discussion dealing with legal matters. And Sam had to pay for his lawyer's time, all $200 an hour for some idiot to blow off his job. He couldn't leave because the charges weren't definite and therefore, he couldn't just sign the papers. So he was really pissed and he knocked on his office window a few time to get their attention and spur them back into action.

He wished he had his master's in law. He could then officially overrule his lawyer and get the papers signed. There was no disagreement in the charges. The girl admitted to it immediately. She knew her rights before she said it. She wasn't interrogated. She was still sticking to her story from what he was told an hour ago by the police officer that was guarding her in the staff lounge. The police officer couldn't leave either but he was getting paid for doing nothing. Sam wasn't. He already went through his forty-hours-a-week and he wasn't allowed overtime despite the fact he was the one who established the company policies and wages.

"Mr. Winchester."

It was the lawyer and Sam perked up. " Did you get it sorted out?"

"Yes. You are not pressing charges against Mr. Mirabano's daughter. "

"What? Why not?"

The lawyer shrugged and Sam sensed that some shady deal had been made between the two layers. " It doesn't really matter. The kid learned her lesson. Probably is frightened enough to never doing it again." Sam doubted that. The girl wasn't going to be scared off by sitting in the staff lounge, watching cartoons and eating free chocolate cake, while her Daddy threw his weight around and made sure she never learned responsibility for her actions.

"So, no papers that I have to sign?"

The lawyer shook his head and Sam realized he had just wasted five good hours waiting around for something that was never going to happen. He sighed. " How much do we owe you?"

"Hmm…four hours. That is $800 dollars."

Sam laughed at the absurdity of it. " I am not paying you that much for something you could have just settled in ten minutes."

"Well, then you'd be breaking the law then, Mr. Winchester. My contract says…"

"I know what your contract says, Mr. Weiz. And I would gladly pay you that much if I felt the matter you were dealing with took that long to work through. However, I called you because I needed someone to talk down the father's lawyer for the girl so we could explain to him that his daughter would only have a fine and no one would ever know what happened. I didn't call you down here to chat with his lawyer, eat lunch with them, and then go against my authority and dismiss the charges."

"That's not how it works here."

Sam ignored the threat. " It will while I work here. I will send you a check for $200 tomorrow morning."

He watched the lawyer storm off with a disgruntled huff and he walked back to his office. The Subway wrappers were still lying on his desk and he threw them out, grabbing his suit jacket off the back of the chair. He wondered as he walked out of his office what he had gotten himself in. He couldn't shake the sense of dread of what was to come. He didn't think that the lawyer would be angry enough to seek revenge and if he did, he couldn't cause too much damage. Unlike his brother and father, Sam's record was clean. The only thing he feared was if Mr. Mirabano got involved, having heard the hushed whispers and the loud bombastic angry rants that accompanied his name around town. But then again, his daughter hadn't been charged. Sam hoped that was goodwill enough.



1:00 P.M.

"How'd you convince the nurses to let you in?"

Dean chuckled as Sam took the other seat by their father's bedside. " Charm. Good looks."

"She got sick of you hitting on her, " Sam translated.

Dean shrugged. " It's fine. She wasn't that hot anyway," he changed the topic. " Eaten anything?"

Sam knew he ate something but the whole fiasco at the supermarket was a blur in his mind, and his stomach hurt. He shook his head and quickly raised his hand to protect his face from the incoming food projectile. "Did you have to throw it?"

Dean just smirked as Sam unwrapped the package of Twinkies. "How is he holding up?" Sam asked before taking a bite.

" He's starting to wake."

"How do you know that?"

"His heartbeat is getting more erratic. There are more beats per minute then there was a few minutes ago."

Sam was impressed. He didn't think that Dean had any interest in medicine. "Where did the flowers come from?" All the nightstands in the hospital had flowers on them, a purely decorative touch to make the patient feel more comfortable, but normally they were fake. He could smell the flowers from half way across the room and they were very vibrant white, almost exotic looking.

"Layla. She told me they were Peruvian Lilies."

It surprised Sam that he said it so casually. " Isn't that the girl that…"

"…I took the place of in Nebraska," Dean finished. " Yeah. That's her."

"Is she still…?" Sam didn't want to say it.

"Dying? That isn't something that just goes away, Sam."

Sam looked carefully at the expression on his brother's face, searching for the regret and pain that her reemergence in his life would be sure to bring. He didn't find it. Dean looked more alive then he had seen him, despite all the stress that was on him and the lack of sleep.

"You really like her, don't you?"

Dean nodded.

"Wow. Why her?"

"Why not her?"

Dean's tone was a little bit too defensive, Sam felt. " She just doesn't seem like your type."

"And what is my type, Sam?"

"Tall, beautiful, strong women who need someone to take care of them. Bigger bust then brains, tend to be trusting…"

"And she isn't any of those things?"

"I don't mean…"

Dean started laughing and Sam realized that Dean was just hassling him. " I'm not offended. She's different from my normal; I know that. But that is what I like about her. She just… gets it. She understands that life isn't some magical fairy tale," Sam snorted at the memory of the girl who told that to Dean when he ditched her at the prom to go after a demon, "She doesn't need me to protect her. I can just be. No questions. "

"It doesn't bother you that…" Sam stopped, seeing a scared look flash across Dean's face. He couldn't say it. He couldn't say that she was dying. "…She's so much older then you."

"She's only three years older. She just looks older because of all the radiation and chemo they've used to try to shrink the brain tumor."

Sam knew how much appearance played into Dean's attraction towards women so he couldn't help asking, " What about the wrinkles and…"

Dean interrupted him. " She's more beautiful because of it."

Sam was impressed though it scared him how much his brother really liked the girl. It wasn't his usual surface attraction. It ran deeper like a common state of being that existed between them. It was one of the best feelings in the world but the most dangerous at the same time when it got stolen from you. Sam knew. He had that feeling with Jessie.

"Be careful," Sam whispered.

Dean wasn't supposed to hear it but he did. "I will."

Their father shifted in bed, rustling the sheets and both boys turned to look at him, leaning forward in anticipation.

His eyes suddenly popped open and he let out a long ragged breath and then a cough. Dean and Sam were silent, not sure if they should try to make conversation or wait until their father was more coherent.

"I'm alive, aren't I?" he whispered.

"You are," Dean spoke quietly.

"Fuck."

Neither boy had a response for that. Sam glanced over at Dean to see how he was handling knowing that their father did try to commit suicide. He looked calm and cool. It was eating him up inside.

"Why'd you do it?" Sam asked.

"You always have to question, don't you," their father grumbled. He exhaled. " Do I need a reason?"

"No. I just wanted to know why you chose that particular method."

Dean was finding the entire conversation surreal and fairly creepy. " Why is the method special?" he asked.

"It's known as seppaku. Samurais in post-modern Japan, to preserve their own and their country's honor, would take a curved blade and disembowel themselves in order to die."

"Oh, that's nice," Dean commented. "Why didn't it work?"

Sam opened his mouth to speak when he heard the knock on the door. " Come in."

A nurse poked their head in. " I need to see a Dean Winchester."

Dean's face paled and he got up out of his chair.

"What's wrong, Dean?" Sam asked.

"I never told them my name."

"Do you want me to go with you?"

Dean laughed. " I'm a big boy, Sam. I can deal with it." And with that, he left the room, leaving Sam alone in the room with his father.

"So, Sam, why didn't it work? Why am I not dead?" John was slurring his words together and Sam realized there was probably pain medications in his IV somewhere. He would be passing out soon.

" You misunderstood the procedure. Disembowelment isn't what killed the samurai. It would kill them eventually, but it was horribly painful and would have taken hours for them to die. The samurai would have an attendant who would sever their necks after they cut through their stomachs to keep them from feeling too much pain."

"Oh…" A maniacal smile came to his lips, either from a thought that formed in his head or induced from his drugged-up state. Either way, it made Sam uncomfortable.

"Don't think about it," Sam ordered, wanting to clear the idea out of his head while he could.

"You and I both know that he would do it if I asked him to."

He was right. Dean's devotion to their father had no visible end. He would kill their father if he were ordered to, Sam feared. " I wouldn't let him."

"We'll see." Before Sam could blink, their father was sleeping again and he heard someone enter the room.

"Did you have a nice chat?" the nurse asked him as she made notes of his vitals on her clipboard, completely ignoring the fact he wasn't supposed to be in the room.

"Not really," Sam answered honestly.

"No one ever does. When they wake up, they're too drugged up to make much sense."

"What if he did make sense?"

"Ignore it. He doesn't know what he is talking about," she smiled at him. " There's a commotion going on outside. I think you may be needed."

Sam didn't question how she knew about it, but he rushed out the room. Noise, a lot of it, was coming from near the visitor area. He ran towards it but halfway there, the noises just stopped. He panicked and ran faster towards the waiting room as he heard the click of a safety being removed off the gun.

The waiting room was in disarray, everyone huddled in one corner, staring wide-eyed at the other side of the room, which had police officers lying on the ground, clutching their stomachs, and one officer next to Dean, holding a gun to his head. Dean was smirking.

"…Aggravated kidnapping of Ms. Rebecca Mason, the impersonation of a public servant, an additional eight counts of capital murder for the killing of eight police officers and for tampering with government records. You have the right to remain silent. Anything…" Sam watched in horror and disbelief as Dean was read his Miranda rights.

"Is there anything you like to say?" the police officer asked.

Dean's smirk had remained on his face the entire time the police officer had made his speech. Sam feared that Dean would say something stupid and snarky that would later come back to haunt him. But he didn't. Dean spotted Sam across the room before he could and his smirk fell, revealing the lost confused boy.

"Don't talk," Sam mouthed. Dean nodded and suddenly the mask was back up, smirk in place, and the police officer ordered him to move. Dean shuffled along in front of the officer.

Sam didn't watch his brother leave. He wasn't capable of watching it. Instead he did what he knew he was capable of - getting Dean out of trouble. He found a bench in the vending machine area and started going through his friends list on his cell phone.


End Chapter 3


You seem so bruised
And it's beautiful as it's reflecting off from you as it shines
You're in the bathroom carving holiday designs into yourself
Hoping no one will find you but they found you
And they took you
And you somehow survived
So wake up and if the holidays don't hollow out your eyes
Then press yourself against whatever
You find to be beautiful and trembling with life

I'm so happy…
…that you didn't die