Don't own the boys. Don't own the show. Only own the story. Enjoy.
Hi guys! Once again, thanks so much for all the awesome reviews. I hope you are fully satisfied. I'm loving writing this story. Keep reviewing. Here's the next installment.
Dean didn't know how long he'd kept his eyes shut, waiting to feel something, waiting for a reaction that didn't come. And then Sam's hand was on his shoulder, gently pulling him from the still bleeding creature.
"Dean–" Sam prompted, sympathy resonating from his voice.
He looked up hopefully, but his face soon fell as Dean realized that nothing had changed. "I guess it didn't work, did it," he asked, dejection overtaking the confidence that had controlled his very being just minutes before.
Sam shook his head. "I guess not," he replied, apologetically. "Come on, lets head back. We can look over the notes and try something else."
"There is nothing else," Dean answered, allowing himself to be lifted back into the wheelchair without any struggle. "This was it. This was all I had." He stared at the blood mixing together in the wound on his arm, still praying that it would magically spring to action if he just continued to wait. But still nothing happened, and aside from feeling a little woozy from the blood loss, Dean didn't feel any different.
Soon, Laura was by his side, ripping a piece from his shirt and wrapping it tightly around Dean's bleeding arm. He made no indication of recognizing her presence, or Sam's for that matter. His mind was still consumed by the pages and pages of information he had found on the Pathuma. He'd spent the entire ride reading over the pages, memorizing the passages, the myths, the facts. He knew the information backwards and forwards, but he still couldn't shake the doubts. There was something he'd missed; something that was the key to the whole transformation. He just had to figure out what.
Relief, that's what Laura felt, but she was the only one. As she'd watched Dean combine his blood with the demon, she prayed that it wouldn't work. And now, she wanted nothing more than to throw herself at the man, embrace him in a hug and tell him she was glad he was still here. But he didn't even seem to care that she existed anymore. His glazed eyes, focusing only on what was written on the walls of his mind, made it clear that the only thing he cared about was finding a way to get back. He wanted to get away. From this dimension, from the wheelchair, from her. She fought back the tears as she'd seen Dean do countless times in the last week. He didn't know that she knew. He had no idea that she could already read him so well that she knew when he was putting on a front, desperately fighting a barrage of tears that he would never allow anyone to see. And now she reciprocated, selflessly fighting off emotions that threatened to provide Dean guilt. Because she loved him enough to let him go. She loved him enough to help him go.
Sam pushed the wheelchair out of the mineshaft, still shocked that Dean was allowing it so willingly. But as they came into the moonlight, Dean finally seemed to reawaken his senses and an arm reached out to the side, palm flat, as he indicated for Sam to stop. "We can't leave yet," he ordered firmly. "Just give me a minute to think."
Words filled his mind in endless streams, jumbled, out of order. They didn't make sense, but he still played them over and over, waiting for something to strike a chord. And then finally it did. Something he'd said, reading from one of the many pages at the library. He'd read the passage and then summarized it. The emotion has to come from the heart. But that wasn't what the sentence had really said. He pulled the words into his mind, rearranging the passage until he had a carbon copy staring him directly in the eyes. The pathuma is said to have transference powers when a wish is made from the victims heart.
It still didn't make sense, but Dean continued to question it, mouthing the words silently over and over. Wish is made from the victims heart. The victim's heart. And then it finally hit him, and he spoke his realization out loud as though Sam and Laura had actually been a part of his entire thought process and would understand where he was coming from. "It wasn't a wish with heartfelt emotion," he exclaimed, "It was a wish made when the Pathuma pierced the heart. The victims...everyone of them was killed from three stab wounds to the heart. By making a wish as they were stabbed, the victims could alter their own outcomes. I didn't put myself here...Sam put me here."
"So what does that mean?" Sam asked, wide eyed, wondering how this could shock him even after the craziness that had controlled his life for over a week. "You're saying that a wish your Sam made as he was dying put you here? I don't get it. Why wouldn't he have been the one to transfer worlds?"
Dean alternated between pride and anger as the realization struck him, and he glanced between Laura and Sam, offering his solution. "He put me first," Dean answered, as though it were the most obvious answer. Dammit, Sammy, why the hell did you have to put me first. You should have taken care of yourself. And what the hell did you wish specifically that put me in this godforsaken world?
Wishes were tricky, and Dean knew all too well how screwing up a wish could so easily change the outcome. Hell, apparently he was living proof. Sam couldn't have wished this for him, could he have? All of it? The family, he got. Laura, he got. His friends, he got. He even got the education and the damn sports obsession. But could Sam honestly have lain on that ground, dying from a wound to the chest, and wished for Dean to wake up paralyzed, just as he had been? There was no way, and because Dean had that much faith in his brother, he knew his wish back into his dimension had to be dead on. But how?
Although he'd answered Sam's question in his head, Dean never verbalized it, and he brushed it aside without another thought as he gripped the wheels and shoved himself back towards the shaft. "I know what I have to do," he said determinedly.
The force with which Sam stopped the chair rocked Dean forward, and he had to brace his arms painfully against the armrests to keep from falling out. "Sam, what the hell?" he cried, twisting around to stare him angrily in the eye.
"I think you're missing a few key points, bro," Sam spat back, still refusing to let go of the chair. "The most obvious one being that you already killed the thing. And even if it was still alive, to make your wish you HAVE TO BE STABBED IN THE HEART!" Sam's voice rose rapidly, hoping his voice of reason would be enough to make Dean back down. He was wrong.
Dean smiled evilly back at him, flashes of fearless abandon in his eyes. "I'll figure something out. If I have to stab myself with its claws, I'll make this thing happen."
Sam opened his mouth to protest, utterly appalled by Dean's resolution, but he found no words would come out. The scheme was just too completely idiotic to grace with any kind of response, and as he stood there, stunned, Dean took the opportunity to pull from Sam's grasp. He tore back into the cave before Sam could recover and grab him again, but what he saw when he reentered is what actually made him stop dead in his tracks.
"Oh my God, where'd it go?" Laura hissed, almost running into the back of Dean's chair in her panic as she and Sam joined him.
"I wish I knew," Dean whispered back, eyes widened.. The three of them stared fearfully at the spot where the Pathuma had lain, dead, minutes before. But now, it was gone, and with it, the blood that had spilled from its own and Dean's bodies. The floor was clean, as though no struggle had ever taken place.
"I think we should get out of here," came Sam's quavering voice, as he backed up cautiously.
But Dean refused to leave. He checked the gun in his lap, assuring himself there were still bullets in it, and then moved forward instead of back. "It must still be alive somewhere," he voiced unnecessarily, not caring if Sam and Laura joined him or not. Now that he knew his only way to go back was to die, he greeted the idea of meeting the creature willingly, almost hopefully.
What Dean hadn't banked on was that the Pathuma wouldn't attack him first. As he moved further into the tunnels, he assumed the creature was somewhere within, laying in wait for him. Laura's pained screams and the frantic sound of bullets ricocheting off of stone walls were the first indication that anything was wrong. He spun around, waging a war against his own arms as he fought to make it back to where Sam and Laura were, still in the mouth of the mine shaft.
Seeing the Pathuma on top of Laura, its teeth tearing at her arm, Dean flung himself from the wheelchair and landed on top of the creature, pulling it from her. They wrestled on the ground for several seconds, the demon on top and Dean on the bottom, his motionless legs unable to give him the leverage to flip. Dean punched at the thing, suddenly unwilling to just give in and let it kill him for fear of what it would do to Sam and Laura once he was dead. He didn't know if his wish would protect them when he returned to the other dimension, and he couldn't just leave them to fight the Pathuma on their own.
The beast fought savagely, teeth and claws flying left and right, and Dean had to use all his strength to maintain a safe distance between its teeth and his shoulder. And then Dean heard Sam cry out, and he looked up just long enough to see the boy's eyes focusing on the source of his anguish. It wasn't for Laura's torn shoulder, and it wasn't for himself, it was for Dean. Straining arms still fending off the creature, Dean looked to where Sam's eyes lay and cringed at the sight. The claws on the Pathuma's left hind paw, all six inches of them, had sliced into Dean's leg. They remained tightly embedded, lifting and lowering Dean's leg into the air each time the foot made the same motions. But Dean hadn't cringed because of the pain, he had cringed because there was none. His leg was literally torn to shreds, being flapped around like a marionette, and he couldn't feel a thing.
He didn't dwell on the thought, realizing he needed to turn his attention back to fighting the beast, and he pulled an arm back, landing a momentous smack against the creature's jowls. It pulled back a bit, howling in anger, and Dean took the opportunity to reach for his gun which had landed just a few feet away. He groped for it, his outstretched fingers just barely touching the barrel, and he tried to pull himself closer.
As if sensing his intentions, the Pathuma removed itself painlessly from his mangled leg and leapt for the weapon, batting it out of the way with its paw and then turning back to its prey, but pouncing this time on Sam, deciding it had done enough with Dean for the time being. Dean had to give the boy credit; for having never faced a supernatural creature before, Sam certainly seemed to have the instinct ingrained in him. He fought the thing off with every ounce of strength he had, mimicking Dean's efforts of pushing at the mouth and front claws to keep them from embedding themselves into his body.
Dean was finally able to flip himself over, and began the strenuous process of pulling himself towards the struggle with his forearms, stopping first to grab the gun. He left a trail of blood behind him as he went, mindful of the pain that should have been wracking his body, and actually grateful for the lack of feeling. Sam kept up the struggle triumphantly, but relief flooded his terrified features as Dean appeared, once again punching at the snarling beast with his right hand while leveraging himself with the left.
Forgetting about Sam, the Pathuma turned once again on Dean, and Dean spent just enough energy on throwing the gun in Sam's direction before returning wholeheartedly to the fight at hand. He screamed orders at Sam that brought tears to the boys eyes and sent Laura to the wall, huddled, devastated. But Sam listened intently, doing exactly as Dean had told him. He aimed the gun, waiting until the right moment, and as the Pathuma's claws dug themselves deep into Dean's heart Sam fired. He emptied the gun, ensuring that every single bullet lodged itself inside the creature's chest cavity. And then he dropped the gun, grabbed Laura, and ran. And the world went dark.
Yeah, so you guys didn't ACTUALLY think it would be as easy as it was in the last chapter, did you? Haha, yeah, right. Suuuuure. Anyway, hope you enjoyed. We're winding down. I think the next chapter will be the last. So thanks so much for reading!