Hey guys, thanks again for all your awesome reviews. I just have a few more notes for you guys. First of all, I know some of you are still feeling confused by this story. It won't change any time soon, hehe. If you're confused that means I'm doing my job correctly, because I'm trying to pull some of Dean's and Sam's confusion and reflect it into you, my readers. I promise you will get all the required answers by the end. Also, I promise this will pick up soon. There's a lot of back story I need to cover before we can get into the nitty gritty guts and gore type stuff. Stick with me!
The revelation had hit Sam like a brass knuckled punch to the gut, uprooting his happy, normal life and flipping it all topsy turvy. How can this even be possible? But how could he have known this stuff otherwise? For several minutes Sam and Laura had done nothing but stare at Dean, scrutinizing him as though he were a specimen under a microscope. Sam wondered if he, himself were dreaming; that maybe he'd fallen asleep and began imagining his brother's ravings as his own. But as he bit the inside of his cheek, testing himself, the painful reply told him that he was very much alive. And that Dean's irrational and illogical proclamations were very much coming true.
At his brother's insistence, Sam had made tracks to the library in search of confirming details from the other cases and encounters Dean had recounted. It was all he and Laura could do to convince Dean that he wasn't well enough to go with Sam, but curiosity had seeped into Laura's mind and she timidly offered her assistance to Sam, explaining that her shift would be ending soon.
Sam looked to his brother for confirmation and Dean nodded. "You can trust her," he assured Sam, relieved when neither of them responded with the peculiar stares they'd become accustomed to shooting in his direction. "And hurry back with the results. I want to know what you find out."
It had taken a while before Sam and Laura managed to figure out how exactly they could find the information they were looking for. They couldn't exactly type in the keywords 'Wendigo' or 'angry spirit' or 'Pagan God scarecrow' and expect to turn up any results. But after scouring back issues of papers linked to the towns Dean claimed these things had occurred in, Sam and Laura had enough information to back up all of Dean's claims, and leave them even more confused than before.
Dean had been right about everything. Hikers and campers really had been going missing in the woods in Lost Creek, Colorado. Roosevelt Asylum did exist in Rockford, Illinois, and for months seemingly sane residents of the town had suddenly gone crazy. Every single location that Dean had referred to panned out. None of the articles were directly related, but knowing what they were looking for meant they were able to connect the dots.
"He's been telling the truth this whole time," Sam rasped, unable to hide his amazement. "I just don't get it."
"It's weird, though," Laura added, leafing through the stack of articles they had printed off. "You said Dean told you all these creatures had been taken care of. That you two hunted them and killed them. But none of these articles gives any indication that the terrors have ended. He didn't get all his facts straight."
Sam shrugged. "This is all so new to me, Laura. But I can only assume that whatever changed the course of Dean's life also changed the outcome of all these supernatural occurrences. If he– we, weren't out there fighting these things maybe nobody is." Oh my God. What the hell am I saying? I can't believe I'm even giving this stuff credence. I sound like a raving lunatic! Sam pulled up a chair, collapsing heavily into the uncomfortable wooden structure. "The bigger question is what do we do with this information. We can't exactly take it to the police."
"I guess we talk to your brother. He seems to know a lot more about this stuff than we give him credit for." Laura continued to flip through the data, her mind working overtime to piece together the puzzle.
It was late when Sam made it back to the hospital, and Dean had long ago fallen asleep. He'd fought his exhaustion with everything he had, but it finally won out despite his anxiety. "Dude, you slept for six and a half weeks. Don't you think that's enough?" Sam teased his unconscious brother, speaking quietly so as not to wake him. There would be plenty of time to talk with Dean in the morning, and right now Sam just needed time to think. He'd parted ways with Laura at the library, assuring her that he would fill her in on anything that was said while she wasn't there.
After easing himself into the chair by the bed, Sam spent several minutes just watching and listening. The steady rise and fall of Deans chest accompanied with the light snoring was comforting to Sam. If he could just drown himself in the monotony and the simplicity of his brother's breathing maybe he could forget about the craziness that Dean had brought into his life. I thought the worst that could happen was the accident itself, but then there was the coma, and his spinal cord injury. But God, out of everything that's been thrown at us in the last month and a half I never dreamed we'd be worrying about...about what? What even is this? What do you call what's going on?
Dropping his head into his hands, Sam heaved audibly. "What on earth do you have against normal that you had to go and twist everything in your life around so bad." For six and a half weeks Sam and his parents had done nothing but agonize over how they would break the news to an extremely active and egocentric Dean that he would never walk again. His parents had poured money into home renovations, making the house wheelchair accessible for the inevitable day that they would bring their oldest son home from the hospital. They had spoken with all the specialists, searching for every available answer to the glaring question. But everyone had given the same answer. A fragmented vertebrae had completely severed his spinal cord, rendering Dean permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Short of a miracle, there was nothing that could be done to reverse the injury. He would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Sam distinctly remembered the day his parents had broken that little tidbit of news to him. Thirty-one days. Dean had been in a coma for thirty-one days before they had finally given up hope. It was the twelfth specialist they'd talked too, and after hearing the exact same answer as they'd gotten from the other eleven John and Mary had finally accepted the inevitable. They arrived in Dean's hospital room to find that Sam hadn't moved from his usual spot beside Dean's bed. He spent the hours of silence studying, preparing himself for the bar exam that he would be taking upon his return to school. As his parents walked hesitantly into the room, Sam had looked up from his book, closing it immediately when he saw their faces. "Mom, Dad, what's wrong?"
It was the first time Sam had allowed himself to cry in the wake of the accident, because it was the first time he'd actually accepted Dean's fate. His mother had pulled him close, her own set of tears mixing with her younger son's. And then John had joined them, embracing his wife and child with his strong arms. And it was at that point, as they joined together to fight the battle, that Sam resolved to stand by his brother through it all, promising to help him with whatever he faced when he woke up. He just hadn't expected Dean would call him to his promise with this half-baked scenario of alternate universes and parallel worlds.
As Sam's thoughts covered the months worth of stories and details Dean had given him he finally allowed himself the succumb to his own exhaustion, falling heavily into a deep, dream-filled sleep. Images of the hunts Dean had described decorated his subconscious mind, cryptic messages and symbols illuminated the intangible walls of his dream world, and, oddly enough, Sam felt comfortable with it all. They weren't nightmare's that plagued his sleep; just dreams. Added confirmations of Dean's convoluted stories.
He slept hard and long, only waking up when the sun was high in the sky and the breakfast carts were rattling around, making their final rounds through the halls. He woke with a jolt, sitting up straight and immediately regretting the quick move as his stiff limbs protested harshly. Sam's confusion subsided immediately as he realized he was sore because he'd fallen asleep in the stiff bedside chair. It's a miracle I didn't fall out of this torture trap last night. Rolling his head across his shoulders, Sam attempted to stretch his aching muscles, stopping abruptly when he sensed the urgency in the air. It wasn't the breakfast carts that had woken him up. It was Dean.
Sam bolted from his seat, ignoring the stiffness that met his body, and hovered over Dean's thrashing body nervously. "Dean, dude wake up," Sam insisted forcefully, grasping his brother's shoulders and shaking them roughly. Dean continued to flail, muttering incomprehensible words under his breath. Pausing for a minute, Sam leaned in closer, listening intently to his brother's words, finally making some of them out.
The dreams had remained minimal when Dean first fell asleep, his enervation far too extreme to make room for little picture shows in his mind. But sleeping began to revive him and the later hours of his sleep opened the opportunity to dream, and dream he did. His subconscious mind was heavily in search of answers to why he'd woken in a different life; how he'd woken in a different life. He replayed the last couple of months in his mind, so far only able to ascertain the start of the problem. Sam's paralysis, his own paralysis; there had to be a connection to it somewhere. The two couldn't be a mere coincidence. His thoughts focused on the final showdown with the brain demon, analyzing every detail of the fight, wondering if somehow it wasn't Sam that had been hurt, but himself. But then he realized that even that wasn't possible. Because it still wouldn't explain this new world, where demon hunting didn't exist. But his mind wouldn't leave that scene, and he became more and more agitated as he watched in slow motion Sam's anguished face and his own panic over his little brother's injuries at the hands of the demon. Sammy, this is no time to be joking. Of course your legs are moving. We're gonna get you out of here. We're gonna get you to a hospital. You're gonna be fine. Don't leave me Sammy. Sammy, stay with me. With each mumbled word Dean became more and more insistent, his cries becoming more frantic.
Listening to Dean's pain wasn't worth it to Sam to hear any more; he had to wake Dean up before he panicked again. "Come on, Dean. You've gotta wake up for me." Sam shook his brother more firmly.
Dean's eyes shot open as he gasped, panting heavily, trying to reorient himself to his surroundings. "Sam? You're okay?" Worry lines snaked around his face as he scanned Sam for any sign of injury.
"I'm fine," Sam assured him, staring straight into Dean's eyes, forcing him to make eye contact. The gesture worked and Dean relaxed visibly. "What were you dreaming about just now?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Sam," Dean replied, breaking the eye contact. "What did you find out last night? Do you finally believe me?"
Sam sighed, returning to his seat while Dean raised the head of the bed. "It opened a whole new set of questions," he replied, purposely avoiding giving a straight answer.
Dean easily read Sam's mind, smirking. This may me a different dimension, but the boy still thinks the same. "Sam, if you're asking why the change, I don't have an answer for you. I just woke up this way, with all these different memories. Remember?"
Leaning his head back against laced fingers, Sam stared at the ceiling. "You just don't get it," Sam explained. "Dean, we're normal. We're a nice, normal family, in a nice, normal town, with a nice, normal existence. We couldn't be more boring if you tried. And then you get in a car accident and wake up claiming that you and I are ghost hunters and Mom's not even supposed to be alive. Can you see where this makes it hard to believe you?"
Dean stared hard at his brother, eyes boring deep into Sam's skull. He paused for a long time before he finally broke the awkward silence. "But you do believe me, don't you."
At first, Sam's head barely moved. He feared what he was about to admit to. There's no going back after this, Sam. I can't change anything from here on out. But his heart finally won out over his logical thinking mind, and he nodded more forcefully. "Yes, Dean. I believe you. Laura does, too."
"I knew she could be trusted here, too," Dean voiced happily. "Damn, I love that girl!"
Sam cocked his head, staring at his brother curiously again, but this time because of his obvious affections toward Laura instead of his reference to another world. "There something you're not telling me bro?"
Dean nodded, unable to wipe ths smitten smile off his face. "We met in the other world, too. She helped me through so much when you were in the hospital there, and we got really close. She was the first girl I ever told about what I– we do– I mean did. And she accepted it."
"Well, oddly enough, she accepts it here, too. But the question now is what do we do about this? Where do we go from here?"
"From here," Dean answered, a sly grin forming. If you looked hard enough you could see the gears turning in his head. "You need to get me out of this hospital. I can't do anything from a bed in this sterile excuse for a residence. Get me a wheelchair and get me the hell out of here."
Shaking his head vigorously, Sam held firm. "No. Absolutely not. You haven't even been out of your coma for a whole day yet, Dean. And you're paralyzed. It's not like you just have a broken foot. You need therapy, and counseling. Even when they check you out of here, you won't be coming home just yet. Mom and Dad have been looking into rehab hospitals."
"I've already been through all of this with you, little brother," Dean scoffed. "I may not have actually experienced everything, but I was there for your rehab. I don't need my own. Just get me out of here."
Sam continued to hesitate. "What do I tell Mom and Dad? They'll kill me." Sam whined, but Dean could tell he was beginning to crack.
"We'll figure it out," Dean insisted. "Damn it, Sam. Just get me out of here, will you?"
It worked. Just as his demands had always been answered in the other world, Sam responded favorably to Dean's demands again. Staring at his feet, Sam mumbled. "Alright. I'll get you out of here. Just give me time to find you a wheelchair."
Dean grinned, satisfied. "That's my boy," he whispered under his breath as Sam disappeared through the door. "You're so predictable."