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


Last time:

"Sam," Jess spoke again, and her voice was detached, eerie. It reminded him of possessed Dean, the monster impersonating his brother. Only now, it was Jessica.

"Turn around." She demanded in that same, cold tone.

Sam didn't want to obey, but he couldn't really stop himself. His whole world had become some bizarre plot line, and he was just a mindless puppet being forced to follow the script.

Only he could feel it too.

All he could do was feel the emotions now. He could barely act of his own accord.

And when he turned to face Jessica, his emotions told him to run and scream at what he saw, to act on his fright and horror. But he was trapped, he had the power to do nothing but stare, and wait.


Chapter Sixteen:

Jessica was still Jessica.

. And if he ignored the demonic voice and the giant, gaping, bleeding slit in her stomach, it would be as normal as could be.

Normal. Sam thought absently. This world was supposed to be normal.

What a load of shit.

"Look at me Sam." The tone of her voice had not changed, and Sam didn't fight away his frightened feelings, he just didn't act on them. Couldn't act on them.

He followed her command and forced his eyes to meet hers. The orbs were black, as if decaying from deprivation; Jessica was being deprived of her soul.

"You did this Sam," and suddenly he was trapped in the hollow depths of his nightmares, watching the love of his young life gesture angrily to her bleeding stomach. "You killed me. And you don't even care."

Sam shook his head and attempted to defend himself. "I do...I'm so sorry. More sorry than you'll ever know."

His words were almost as lackluster as hers, but it wasn't from lack of emotion. It was simply from a lack of existing, it was getting harder and harder to focus on any one thing. Jessica was in front of him, looking at him through those black eyes, but she was all around him too.

Her laugh, her smell, the feel of her arms around his neck...her love, her hate, her distrust, her accusation - all of it was surrounding him. Comforting him, threatening to suffocate him.

"Its okay, Sammy." Her voice echoed around everything. He couldn't even tell where he was standing anymore - if he was standing at all. "All you have to do is trust me."

And suddenly, she wasn't Jessica anymore.


All hell had broken loose.

And Dean was right in the center of it.

Men like Dr. Kabala - men who've spent dozens of years and millions of dollars perfecting their illegal practices - don't go down without a fight. Men like Dr. Kabala - insane men with sociopathic tendencies and a large gun collection - don't go down without taking as many other people with them as possible.

So far, that list of people spanned three F.B.I. agents and four patients, and Dean was not about to just stand around and let those numbers skyrocket even higher.

He was capable of helping - and he damn well intended to.

Not to mention, when Dr. Kabala and a few of his insane sidekicks started firing outside, right into the waiting wall of government officials - everyone had become a bit scattered, and the hunter inside if him was not beyond taking advantage of that.

People were grabbing guns, firing back, rushing in, arresting, shooting, warning, screaming, dying...all hell had broken loose.

Dean felt his nerve endings tingle with something akin to excited, nervous anxiousness as he skillfully stalked down the abandoned hospital hallway.

This wasn't just another hunt, and he didn't try to fool himself into thinking that it was for a second, this was his baby brother's life that was on the line. This was a human that he was hunting.

That he was prepared to kill.

And as he kept creeping down the empty hall - loaded gun in hand - ignoring the shouts and gunshots echoing from other parts of the building, his mind was completely blank. All thoughts of revenge or guilt or hope, or anything else, were nothing but a distant memory.

He'd have time for thoughts like that once Sam was okay. Once this was all over.

Turning down yet another hallway, he stopped and listened. Most of the building had been evacuated as soon as the chaos had begun. People sporting doctor scrubs and handcuffs, patients on gurneys, and in body bags.

Dean had remained outside for a few minutes. He had taken a good look at every single human being who had been removed from the building. Even checked the body bags with his breath held - but none had been Sam.

He had taken off into the building while the remaining members of the F.B.I. had tended to their wounds and waited for backup. He had prowled through two and a half floors of this place so far, he'd run into people who knew that he shouldn't be there, but he disregarded them, and they did the same. They knew he was there to help, and in moments of extreme danger like they were facing, that was all that mattered.

Now, finally, he thought that he had found what he was looking for. Or what someone was looking for, anyway. He moved slower, before finally stopping outside the door where the noise was coming from.

Dean's heart was beating - annoyingly loud - in his chest as he listened.

"You can't run. You can't hide. We're all waiting. All inside."

Quite possibly the most insanely disturbing melody that he had ever heard drifted through the small crack the open door provided. Dean's face scrunched in an effort to concentrate and he took a step towards the doorway, now as close as he could be without giving himself away.

The singing and humming continued, broken occasionally by words and phrases.

"It's gonna be okay," he finally said at a solid tone, and Dean was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was indeed Dr. Kabala.

The fucking psychopathic neo-nazi from hell.

The words, "I told you there was a greater purpose, Sam." drifted through the hall and Dean's blood boiled. All his rage finally reached the surface.

Everything that he had been suppressing for the last week, all his anger towards himself, towards the demonic chick - Meg - who had caused all this in the first place, Dr. Kabala and his sick, twisted games, towards his father for not sticking around and helping him; all mixed with the adrenaline of not sleeping for days and finally holding a gun again, of being in control.

Everything finally boiled over, and he didn't even stop to take a breath before stepping back and kicking the door open, so hard that it cracked.

It was fucking show time.


"Trust me, Sammy." He turned his head, and felt like he was doing so under water, but when he managed to focus again - if only marginally - it wasn't Jessica that was surrounding him anymore - it was Dean.

"Dean?" Sam called out. He couldn't see his big brother; he couldn't see anything anymore.

Everything around him, everything physical, was dark - like a black hole had sucked him into the depths of some other dimension.

But the feelings - the knowledge and sounds - that surrounded him, they created an existence all their own. Sam wasn't focusing on the immediate darkness - he couldn't - he paid attention to everything else.

Now, of Dean's voice all around him, echoing in surround sound.

"You can't run. You can't hide. We're all waiting. All inside." The demonic tone was back, and Sam's memory provided him with snapshots of the nightmare Dean in the kitchen.

How was he supposed to trust that?

"Dean..." Sam tried again, although he didn't really feel like he was speaking. He had a thought that he wanted vocalized...the rest was done by something else. Some other force on the outskirts of his consciousness. "Dean, help me, you have to help me..."

But before the words were even completely out, the demonic voice was sounding again.

"It's gonna be okay."

Sam wanted to believe him, wanted to trust his brother. But this was a demon, or a vision, or a nightmare...it was something that wasn't Dean - and he didn't trust it for a second.

Then the pain came.

If he wasn't sure before - he was now. Everything came back into focus slightly, stopped being distant - and he was indeed still solid. Still human.

Still capable of feeling.

He yelled out in shock, and his hands went immediately to his side, they were covered in blood just moments later. He looked down, saw the rip in his shirt - growing steadily and seemingly coming from nothing. As the rip grew, so did the wound.

His flesh was being torn apart - and he could feel every single, goddamn second of it. When he managed to lift his shirt away from the growing flesh wound, he could see it better; it seemed even intensified in this place.

This, half reality place, that he had been knocked into somehow. The blood was thicker; a brighter shade of red, the line was being drawn straight through his side, evenly, as if done by a professional...a doctor.

His mind tried desperately to latch onto that thought, knowing it was important, but not understanding why.

Then Dean spoke again, "I told you there was a greater purpose, Sam."

There was nothing of his big brother in the tone - other than it was actually his - and Sam was about to tell the fucking demon to give it up, because he knew his real brother would never hurt him.

Then there was a loud cracking sound, almost like a gunshot, only softer.

The wound on his side stopped growing and Sam felt vaguely like something cold and metallic was being pulled out of it. His hands remained, covering it and stopping the blood flow, but now that the immediate pain was gone, he drifted away from it.

He was focused instead on the sounds that were surrounding him. He could hear them clearly now - one was his brother, his real brother. The protector, not the demon - and one was the demon. Only now, the demon had a name.

And Dr. Kabala's voice wasn't there for long.


The doctor jumped away from Sam when the door swung open, he obviously hadn't been expecting an interruption.

"Dean," he spoke in a sickening delighted tone, regaining his grip on the situation almost immediately. "How good to see you again."

The eldest Winchester raised his gun level with this guy's head. "Go fuck yourself." He responded evenly.

"That's not very..."

"Shut up." Dean snapped. No more games. "What in the hell are you doing to my brother?" He had seen the scalpel in his hand as soon as the door was out of the way. Only now did he notice the blood.

Sam was lying - still as dead - on an operating table. Bleeding.

Dr. Kabala just smiled. "I'm keeping your brother alive, for your information. Whatever's being done to him - it's keeping him from waking up - I think it might be killing him."

Dean risked another look at Sam; seeing the gaping wound through his side, and swallowed his nausea at the thought of Sam being cut open like that without any anesthesia. What if he could feel it? Meg's curse, after all, had been broken.

He felt helpless at not knowing what was going on in Sam's head, how much pain he was really in.

But he did know one thing for sure. He knew that this...human psychopath was defiantly part of the problem.

"This is all one big fucking game to you, isn't it?" Dean spoke levelly. "A business."

"I do what I do for the betterment of mankind." Dr. Kabala's tone was firm - a scolding adult - he was trying to teach a lesson.

"Killing people, murdering them, that's for the betterment of man kind? That's helpful?" Dean was amazingly clam, his decision, after all, had already been made.

Dr. Kabala sighed. "People like your brother, people with these sorts of mental problems, they're a burden on society. They should all be eliminated anyway, if there's ever going to be any hope of creating a society worth living in. It's called race purification."

"Yeah," Dean tossed his words casually. "I think that was Hitler's view on the world. Look what happened to him."

Dr. Kabala chuckled. "My dear boy, I don't even pretend to be as great of a man as Hitler. I just try my best to make these deaths mean something. The burdens of society should have some grater purpose. What's more meaningful than donating their wasted organs to people who actually deserve to live?"

Dean looked at him them, face blank, staring at the expectant expression of the man standing in front of him. This guy really, honestly, believed that what he was doing was for the good of the world. He thought he was helping.

"You're one twisted mother fucker, you know that?"

Dr. Kabala's face changed, and Dean was sure he would have said something more to defend his reasons. To convince Dean that his cause was worthwhile and true.

That perhaps, that honest and unwavering dedication to something so horrible, that he believed in so passionately, was what stopped Dean from hesitating in his next movements.

The gun was already level - all Dean had to do was pull the trigger.

And he did.

The bullet went straight through the fucker's heart, and for a brief, somewhat illogical, moment, Dean was scared that it wouldn't work. How could you shoot that didn't have a heart, and expect it to die?

But after Dr. Kabala collapsed to the ground - eyes still opened, displaying disbelief clearly - Dean knew that he had done it. He had killed a man. Another living, breathing, human being, was now dead, no longer living and breathing, because Dean had pulled the trigger.

Never before, in twenty some years of hunting, had that happened. And never did he think that he would be able to kill someone and feel absolutely no guilt over it, whatsoever.

Because all that he felt right now - after firing a gun and watching Kabala die instantly - was a fierce desire to run to his brother's side and get him as far away from this place as absoleulty possible.

So that's exactly what he did.


Sam heard all the words - the entire exchange.

His brother had killed Dr. Kabala. While that information was there, it was his and he knew it, it was also lost. Somewhere in this dimension that was slowly becoming more and more real.

At least, he felt more pain. His right arm throbbed, his side was still bleeding, his headache was a close rival to the one he had first had when he arrived in the other world, and his grip on reality was frighteningly steady.

He knew exactly what was going on, he could look back on everything and pinpoint what had been caused by what - he could recall it all - he just couldn't make himself move properly in the moment, all he could do with any certainty was think.

He could feel himself being moved - but by whom or to where he didn't know - so he did his best to resist. In his little dimensional world, he thrashed about as much as he could, but it was still so black, so unreal, he didn't even know if he was moving.

He could feel himself in only the vaguest of ways - he knew he was there, so he tried to move. He knew he existed, so he felt the pain of his injuries. But it was all just second hand knowledge - he was still surrounded by the darkness.

Fear. He thought dully. I'm scared.

"Sam," Dean's voice was softer than it had been before, different, lower and closer to him. Sam listened - he finally trusted that this was his brother. It was ending. "You gotta calm down, buddy, okay? Let me get you outta here, Sam. Relax."

Sam did as he was told and stopped resisting. He focused again on the feelings around him.

He knew he was panicked and confused - it was all around him in this place - he just couldn't feel it inside himself. He knew he wanted his brother; he wanted to go back to Jessica. The real version of her. The one he loved and would do anything for.

He knew of his wants - his crushing desires to go back to his mom and his normal family. He knew that he couldn't, that he was back with Dean. He knew he wanted to open his eyes and tell his brother that he wasn't mad. But Dean seemed so far away, cracking an eyelid seemed an impossibly difficult thing to do - it would take him so far away.

"I'm here, Sammy." Dean's voice echoed again, and Sam thought maybe that he hadn't stopped struggling. "Sam, listen to me." His tone was firm and Sam didn't want to hear it - didn't want to go back - didn't want to be taken away again.

The knowledge of everything, every fear and insecurity, every belief and disbeleif, every fight... It was all around him, and he didn't want to listen. He just wanted to get lost.

Yet he had very little choice in the matter. "Sammy," Dean repeated, "It's over. It's all over. You're safe, I'm here and you're safe. We're gonna give you something, Sammy. Real medicine. It's gonna knock you out completly, don't fight it, okay? When you wake up, it's be okay again. Everything will be okay."

Sam wanted to ask him what 'okay' meant. He wanted to know what was happening to him, but he seemingly lost all ability to connect physically to the real world, because moments later he felt something change, and he knew Dean had acted without his consent.

Then everything was falling away. All the pain, the tabgible darkness...it was all falling away. Only he was falling with it. It was finally over, finally completly gone.

His mind couldn't take in much more than that. The knowledge of relief came to him...but then he knew no more, and time was gone.


Dean had Sam airlifted by an F.B.I. helicopter, to a hospital almost a thousand miles away from Grandville. It was the farthest the doctor said it was safe to take him, and Dean still thought it was too close to the place that had almost killed his kid brother.

But New York was pretty freaking far away, and that was the best he could right now.

Sam had been knocked out on the helicopter ride over, the trip had taken the better part of forty-five minutes, and Sam was still unconscious.

They had landed on the roof, and Dean had taken all of thirty seconds to examine the pristine snow - looking deceivingly peaceful - covering everything around them, before focusing on Sam's movement to the top floor of the hospital.

Sam still hadn't woken up.

He'd been given his own room -compliments of the government. The same government who had ruled Dean's murdering Dr. Kabala as self-defence and assured him that he could take care of the official paperwork and court dealings once his brother was recovered.

Dean had barely acknowledged Lisa Gibson when she informed him of this, he'd simply held on tightly to Sam's hand and told the paramedic that as long as none of Sam's injuries were life threatening - and they weren't - that he didn't care how long it took, just get them far, far away from there.

It was two days later, and Sam still hadn't woken up, which the doctor's said was normal - to be expected - from the amount of trauma he'd been through. They'd assumed that his coma-like state was the result of something Dr.Kabala had done.

And since Dean really couldn't say, 'Oh no, it was the crazy, demonic hell bitch that did that part.' he let them believe that. After all, what diffrence did it really make?

Sam was still unconscious, facing God knows what in his mind, and there was nothing anyone could do. Except wait for him to wake up in his own.

Dean hated waiting.


It was four and a half hours away from being three days since Sam had arrived at New York University hospital. Almost three days since Dean had gotten him out of Grandville and away from the crazy doctor.

Almost three days since Dean had become a murderer. Three days since he'd felt absolutely no guilt. Three days since he'd slept on anything except a cushioned hospital chair, or washed himself using anything except the sink in Sam's small private bathroom.

Three days...and Sam hadn't opened his eyes yet. Three days...and Dean could barely stand it.

It had been three days...and Sam finally decided to give his brother a break.

Waking up hadn't been a decision, he hadn't even been aware of it for several long moments. He'd figured, that when he'd opened his eyes - cracked them just enough to be blinded by light and see the outline of Dean pacing at the foot of his bed - that it was just another dream.

He'd been having them for...well, he really didn't know how long. Since the black world had disappeared and he'd been knocked out. When he'd first opened his eyes, he'd thought he was back in the fake world - the normal world - but then his mother had started shouting, Dean wouldn't look at him and one of his sons had started a fire in his hospital room.

That when he figured he was having a nightmare. Only it was so real, every time he got trapped in one, he thought it was real again.

So when he finally woke up for real, he thought it for only a moment or two, then decided that it was another dream. He sat quietly, letting his eyes adjust to the light, and waited for Dean to turn around and fix him with an evil, black-eyed, stare. To do something demonic, to sing that song.

When Dean finally turned around, Sam was a little surprised to see that his eyes were to same hazel color they had been his whole life. And when Dean kept staring, not with anger or anything at all evil, but with genuine concern and a little shock, Sam was skeptical.

And when Dean slowly, but surely, walked around the foot of the bed and positioned himself right in his line of viosion, Sam started to feel real pain, the actual remnants of his injuries.

And when Dean reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing tightly, and Sam saw the tears glittering in his eyes, and knew, finally, that he was home.

"Hey," Sam tried to make the word casual, but having not spoken in days, his voice was raspy, and he winced after using it.

"Welcome back, little brother." Dean's voice was just as raspy as Sam's, but the youngest Winchester thought that that had something to do with his still pooling tears and quivering chin.

Sam gripped the hand that Dean was holding, and shut is eyes tightly. "Dean," he called, tone as light as could be, as sobs welled up in his own throat.

His brother answered with a quiet, "Yeah?" and by tightening the grip on his hand slightly. I'm here, he was saying silently.

Sam indulged himself in a, if only slightly delusional, half-smile. "I'm really starting to hate hospitals."

End.


A/N: Okay, this isn't actually the end, end. It's the end of the story...technically, but there's an epilouge in sight. A long, drawn out, angst-y, smarmy epilouge that has all the brotherly drama and interactions that I've more or less veered away from throughout this entire fic.

This epilouge will be out shortly...in the meantime, what did you think? I'll take anything at this point. Thoughts? Complaints?