Title: Blackbird
Author: Oldach's Dream
Summary: Someone or Something is trying to trap Sam within his own mind. Alluring him with the promise of the normal life that he's always wanted. Will Dean be able to save his baby brother before he's gone forever?
Disclaimer: Supernatural defiantly isn't my creation.
Rating: M
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Chapter Four
Sam sat up, blinking rapidly.
It was an odd sensation. Waking up here, knowing that he had just left another world, so to speak. Switched realms. He was left the factual knowledge of what had happened, but the emotions he had experienced while there, the panic and disbelief; it was dulled here. He knew why he had felt it, but he had to get a grip on his surroundings, before new emotions had a chance to form.
This hospital room was a little different, Sam noted absently, as he took a few deep breaths. The room he had been in before was large enough for his entire family, plus the nice doctor, to stand comfortably. It held a couch even, in front of the window a few feet to the bed's left. Although when he had been present in it last, no one had been seated on it.
This room, however, was big enough to fit only one uncomfortable looking chair, which Dean was currently slouched down in, snoring lightly. The door, which lead to the hospital hallway, was right in front of his bed. While at the other one, it was to his right. An observation window sat where this one's door did.
"Dean." He said, without really thinking about it.
"What..." his brother was awake immediately, jerking into a more upright sitting position and rubbing his eyes. "Sam?"
"The one and only." He joked, but then cringed, remembering his own worries in the other world. He couldn't help adding, "Kind of."
"Not funny." Dean said immediately.
"Nah, not really." Sam agreed easily. He did not want to fight right now.
"You okay?"
"You mean other then the fact that I'm going completely nuts?" San clarified. "Yeah, I'm fucking peachy."
"You're not going nuts." Dean insisted. Sam really didn't want to hear the hope in his brother's voice. It wasn't often that Dean held irrational hope for anything, and Sam didn't want to think about how disappointed he would be when he realized he was wrong.
So instead of answering the statement, he asked instead, "Do you remember that movie we saw when we were kids? The really creepy one that had me freaked out for days?"
"Brazil?" This Dean remembered the name. "What about it?"
"Do you remember it?" He asked again. "What it was about, I mean."
"Yeah. Well, it's been a while, but I remember the end. The guy..."
"Sam, his name was Sam."
Dean cringed, obviously having figured out where this was going. "Yeah, him. He got tortured..."
"He had a complete mental breakdown." Sam said, very matter of fact, he didn't like the way his brother was dodging around it. "He escaped into his own mind."
"That's not what your doing." Dean said at once.
Sam gave him an angry look. "How do you know? How else do you explain this, Dean? This sure as hell isn't normal." He paused for a second. "Actually it is."
Dean gave him a confused look and Sam pressed on. "That other world, mental breakdown place, whatever the fuck it is. It is normal. Everything there is normal."
"Well then, I guess you know it's not real." He smirked hopefully and Sam glared.
"It feels real, Dean. When I'm there, it is real." Sam sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Hell, maybe it is real. Maybe this is what I'm making up."
"Sam..." Dean started, but Sam cut him off, with another seemingly random question.
"I wrote a lot when we were kids didn't I?" He asked. "I know I was always good at it, I always liked it, but I never really had time to do it that much in high school. What with the hunting and the training and the fighting."
"Ah..." Dean rubbed the back of his neck slightly. "Yeah, actually, now that you mention it. I could never get you to stop making up stories when you were in elementary school. I remember a lot of the teacher's you had, said that you had a gift for it." Dean smiled and Sam couldn't help but notice that it looked proud. "Then again, a lot of your teachers also had to call dad because you would always lie to the other kids."
"They weren't lies." Sam felt the need to defend his younger self's behavior, now that the conversation had been breached, he was recalling the answer to his own question. He had asked it really only to start a conversation. "They were just creatively embellished versions of real hunts we'd gone on."
"And that's so much better." Dean said sarcastically and Sam looked sheepish. All right, that was fair.
"You know, I..." Dean trailed off, and he got that look he sometimes got when he knew he shouldn't have opened his mouth in the first place.
"What?" Sam asked immediately.
Dean sighed, but answered nonetheless. "It was nothing major." He pre-warned. "It's just, when you were in about, fourth grade, I guess. Your 'lying' and 'story telling' got so bad that you had to get evaluated by the school shrink."
"The guy with the bright green sweater vest? The one who looked like Santa Clause?" Sam asked, knowing instantly what event Dean was talking about. It was one of the things he had pushed into the farthest reaches of his mind, until now.
"I guess." He shrugged. "I never saw the guy. But dad told me he said you had a, slight detachment from reality."
Sam snorted, "Well that's ironic."
"Sam," Dean's voice was very level. How it got when he was explaining something important and he wanted to be sure his little brother was listening. "You were living in a house surrounded by stuff that no one else believed in. Supernatural stuff that anyone normal would call crazy, if we ever told them about it. It's not all the surprising that the school shrink thought you had detachment issues."
"The guy, Sam, from that movie, he had detachment issues too, look what happened to him."
Dean shot him an exasperated look, but kept going, ignoring his brother's comment. "Me and dad just figured it was a phase you were going through. The need to get attention, or...I don't know, just a phase. And we were right, by the time you hit middle school, you learned to keep quiet about our home life. You stopped writing stories too."
Sam nodded, understandingly. It made sense. Now that Dean had brought it all up, he did remember most of the details from that phase of his young life. He had stopped writing more because their dad had sat him down and explained, rather threateningly, or at least it seemed threatening to a nine year old, that he couldn't go around telling their secrets to everyone.
The Winchester's had a very important family business. And if anyone ever found out about it, their lives would be in danger. They did what they did; and they shut up about it.
Needless to say, at the end of his little speech, Sam had been too frightened to even think about telling another story that wasn't entirely based on facts. Facts you could find in a history textbook, that teachers could agree on with without compliant.
By the time he had been old enough to no longer care what his father thought, or to posses the common sense that might allow him to tell stories without giving away their secrets, he no longer held any desire to.
"Sam?" Dean questioned after a few moments of quiet. "Where is this coming from?"
"Take a wild guess." He snapped.
"Dude, don't be a dick, I'm trying to help." He snapped right back.
"Sorry." Sam said, rightfully apologetic. He was on edge, that much was obvious, but there was no reason to take it out on him.
"Damn straight." Dean nodded. "Now explain."
"Jessica...she, in the other world... she knew what I was talking about...she knew about the stuff we fight." Sam explained, his words lacking eloquence.
"How?" Dean sounded baffled, not even bothering to tease his brother's stammering.
"Because apparently it's the plot of a book I'm writing." Sam smiled a bright, fake smile, which quickly faded into a smaller, slightly apologetic one.
Dean however, just looked rather thoughtful. "You know, that kind of makes sense."
"You're joking me right?" Sam asked dubiously. "You want to try to make sense out of this thing?"
"Think about it Sam." He requested.
"I have been thinking about it." He paused. "Actually, I've been living it."
"Then don't you think it would make sense, that whatever's doing this, would try to make it as believable as possible?"
Sam jerked slightly. "What do you mean, whatever's doing it?" He had been thinking the same things in the other world, but now that he was back here, he was more doubtful. Not to mention cynical.
"What, you think your actually going crazy?" Dean asked doubtfully. "Come on Sam. You may be psychic... A topic we will deal with more later. But you're not crazy. Not this kind of crazy anyway."
Sam had to smirk lightly at his brother's attempt at a joke, but he couldn't keep the doubt out of his wavering voice when he spoke again. "What else could be causing this?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you since you woke up, but your stupid ass wouldn't stop asking questions." Sam rolled his eyes and Dean continued. "I've been looking all over the web, I found some, rare, ancient magical texts at some funky old bookstore downtown. I even conned one of the hot nurses into letting me borrow a couple medical textbooks..."
"How long have I been out?" Sam couldn't help but interrupt, the research Dean was describing sounded pretty in-depth.
"Twenty two hours." Dean answered immediately, and ignored Sam's widening eyes. "Like I was saying, what's happening to you is rare, but it's not unheard of. A higher-level demonic creature or, more likely, a witch could be doing this. It's not all the hard to pull off if you have enough power. It's just a matter of too many...ah," he gestured, making a circular motion with his hand. "That thing that changes all the time..."
"Variables?" Sam supplied and Dean snapped his fingers.
"Exactly. Too many variables." He went on. "You have to know the person you're cursing pretty damn well, to be able to trap them inside their own head. It's medically explainable too, which makes it that much harder to identify and fight. "
"And you think someone's doing that?" Sam asked hopefully. "Using a spell to trap me in my own head?"
"How else would you explain all this Sammy?" Dean asked ludicrously.
"Well, I was kind of partial to the, 'I'm going insane' theory."
Without warning, Dean's hand came up and slapped his shoulder angrily. "Hey!" Sam protested.
"You are not going insane." Dean said firmly. "And if you say that one more time, I'm gonna have to kick your sorry ass."
"Alright," he agreed with a small smile, rubbing his shoulder lightly. "I'm not insane."
He wasn't sure if he believed it entirely, but he knew it was what his brother wanted to hear.
"Good." Dean said, and resettled himself on his chair slightly. "That having been said..." he took a deep breath. "You have to go to a mental hospital tomorrow."
"What!" Sam exclaimed angrily.
"Calm down." His brother said quietly. "It's not because you're crazy."
"Really?" Sam asked, outraged. "Because the last time I checked, mental institution equaled crazy."
"It's not like that." His brother cringed openly at the venom in Sam's words.
"Really?" He bit out. "Then why don't you explain how it is then?" He crossed his arms over his chest.
"What am I supposed to do Sam? You're blacking out randomly. You can't go hunting like this." Dean spoke somewhere between patiently and anxiously, needing his little brother to understand his logic.
Sam sighed, as much as he hated to admit it, that did make sense. He was a tad bit indisposed at the moment. But still, "Why can't I just stay at this hospital?" He asked.
"It's a tiny rural town, in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire, they don't exactly have a lot of extra space. They won't let you stay here unless you have an actual, physical, medical problem. I was talking to the doctor yesterday." Dean explained, sounding somewhat relieved at Sam's seeming compliance. "They have a psychiatric hospital that's technically a part of this hospital. It's a couple miles away, but it doesn't cost anything."
Sam opened his mouth to protest, but Dean knew his kid brother too well, and continued before he had the chance.
"And it's safer than a motel, or the car, or anywhere else at the moment. I'm not gonna be able to hunt this thing down and kill it if I don't know your safe. And
I can't protect you while I'm hunting. And don't even say you can take care of yourself, cause you can't right now. Whether you like it or not." Dean's gaze was set and his words logical, professional almost, which was really saying something, coming from Dean.
Sam sighed. "How are you even gonna find it?" His question indicting that he had given up the last of his protests regarding the mental institution, for the moment.
"Well, I'm actually gonna need your help for that part. See, for any spell like this to work, the person casting it has to have a personal item of the one they're casting it on."
"Personal like, favorite T-shirt personal?" He asked, sounding hopeful. "Or personal like..." Sam trailed off and Dean nodded.
"Personal like, hair, blood, any bodily fluid really." Dean answered and Sam cringed, not wanting to think about how some evil thing, person, had gone about acquiring that from him, without his knowledge.
"That's gross."
"Yes it is." Dean agreed and smiled somewhat morbidly. "But I need the same thing if I'm gonna find whatever it is that's casting the spell."
Sam sighed and dodged the subject for a moment. "Who do you think is even doing this? I mean, the last time we checked, we didn't exactly have any human enemies."
Dean shrugged. "We've pissed off a lot of people over the years Sammy. I'm sure at least a few would be more than willing to dip into the dark arts to get revenge."
"Yeah, I guess." Sam said agreeably. "Personally, I'd rather fight a monster."
"Not many monsters could pull off anything this complex." Dean launched into explanation mode. "Even the thing that killed mom. Demons, monsters, ghosts, spirits. All they ever really want is death and destruction, or revenge. Or some combination of all that."
"I know, I know, nothing inhuman could do this." Sam said, he decided to keep his theories about alternate dimensions to himself for the time being.
"Which brings us back to finding out who's doing this." Dean reminded and Sam groaned slightly.
"Well, you can have some of my hair." Sam said. "But you're not gettin' anything else."
"Actually..." Dean started.
"Oh, come on!" He exclaimed, he had a feeling about where this was going.
"The location spell I found works better if I have more than one." Dean grinned hopefully, and Sam knew he really didn't have a choice in the matter.
So he rolled his eyes agreeably but mumbled to himself, "I think I'd rather stay crazy."
End Chapter.
A/N: Well, you know what they say: Reviews inspire the muses!
