A/N: Sorry this has taken forever to post! This site hates me sometimes! Anyway, I'm glad you're all relieved with the way the last chapter turned out. But I could never let things be easy...As always with gratitude to Gem!

Chapter Seventeen

With the Impala still out of commission, Dean knew he was going to need another form of transportation. New Junction was small, but the hospital was far enough away, and Dean didn't want to leave Sam alone any longer than he already had. Plus, hauling his half-sedated, taller brother across town did not seem like something that would be easy or fun.

In the parking lot, he observed the meager smattering of dilapidated cars. It was late, and all the lights were out in the motel, as were the lights in the pizza place across the street and the cafe next door. Without making a sound, Dean went to the closest door, testing its handle.

He smiled.

The handle gave and the door opened with a creak. "Gotta love small towns," he said, sidling into the driver's seat.

He hot-wired the car with relative ease and drove toward the hospital without heed.

He parked outside a side entrance to the hospital, knowing that the nurses and doctors probably wouldn't be too keen on him breaking Sam out in the middle of the night. He stalked soundlessly through the halls, sneaking his way passed the night nurses on the Psych ward. With a careful glance up and down the hallway, he found Sam's room and slipped inside.

Quickly, he moved to his brother's side. "Sammy. Sam, wake up," he said in a rushed whisper, shaking his brother's shoulder.

Sam turned away from him, mumbling something.

Dean threw back the covers. "Come on, Sam."

Not waiting for his brother to reply, Dean began pulling Sam into a sitting position, hoping to wake his brother as he plotted their escape. He muttered a curse as Sam flopped bonelessly against him. Why did they have to sedate him?

Sam's eyes opened to slits and Dean tried to smile. "Time to wake up," he coaxed, propping Sam up against the headboard. "We need to make tracks, bro, before the doctors come back."

Sam fluttered just above sleep. "...Dean...?"

It was more a guess than recognition, but it still made Dean grin. "Yeah, Sammy. You need to wake up now," he said, rummaging around for Sam's shoes.

"...s'posed to sleep...ya told me..."

"Yeah, usually, Sammy," he said, moving to maneuver Sam's feet into the shoes. "But we need to get out of here before I let you rest, okay?"

"...not s'posed to go...," Sam murmured, his head dropping to his chest. "...promised..."

"I know, I know," he muttered. "Of all the times to take an order, Sammy, now isn't it."

With Sam's shoes on his feet, Dean gathered Sam's small bag of things, yanking the camera off the wall and the charm off the window, and shouldered it before returning to Sam. He slid his brother's legs off to the side, taking the weight of Sam's upper body as he did. Sam's head rolled against his shoulder, and Dean whispered into his hair, "Come on, Sammy. Get up for me."

Sam mumbled incoherently and managed to lift his head. "Dean...'sit morning?"

"Not quite, but we've got to get going," Dean coaxed. "Do you think you can stand?"

Sam didn't reply but as Dean pulled him upright, Sam's legs managed to keep him up, though he leaned heavily against his brother.

"Good. Now, we've got to walk, okay?" he said, as he guided Sam toward the door. When they got to the door, Dean paused, peeking through the small window. The hallway was empty. The nighttime staff was substantially smaller than the daytime, and Dean had seen the nurses sweep through Sam's ward just before he snuck in. He figured they had about five minutes to get clear of the hallway, which would be their biggest obstacle.

He glanced at Sam, whose head kept slipping forward and back on his neck. Sam's limbs were clearly sluggish and he wasn't fully coherent, but he seemed to be taking orders pretty well, and his legs still seemed to move him at a decent clip. "We're going to have to be quick, okay? Quick and quiet."

With great effort, Sam turned his head to his brother. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on his brother's face. "...mmmmstealthy?"

"Yeah, Sam," Dean said, rolling his eyes. "Stealthy. Can you handle that?"

"...ssssure," Sam said, just as his head flopped forward again.

Dean sighed. Sam was as ready as he was going to be without giving him another four hours to sleep off the sedative. Checking the hallway one more time, he adjusted his grip around Sam's waist before opening the door.

OOOOOOO

It wasn't until Dean had managed to get Sam back to the motel that Dean realized just how exhausted he was. He had left the car in the same spot he'd found it, and half-dragged Sam back into the motel room. Once inside, he let Sam drop into the bed, and he flopped breathlessly on the other, trying to catch his breath.

Sam fell back to sleep instantly and didn't move, didn't even pull his legs from off the floor.

Dean watched his baby brother and could not help but feeling somewhat relieved. Sam wasn't crazy. Something was after him. He hadn't blamed Sam for his breakdown, but it had scared him. Of all the enemies he had faced, the idea of Sam falling apart emotionally had frightened more than anything else.

With a sigh, he made his way to his brother's bed, repositioning Sam until he was lying more comfortably on the pillows. Sam may not be emotionally unhinged for all the reasons the doctor figured, but he was still in danger.

Sam mumbled during his ministrations, his eyes blinking blearily at his brother. "Dean?"

"Yeah, Sammy. You need to go back to bed."

Sam's eyes drifted slowly open and closed. "...you leavin' 'gain?"

"No, Sam," he said softly. "I'm not going anywhere."

A smile ghosted across Sam's lips and his eyes closed again.

"Yeah, sleep now, kiddo," he soothed. "I'm going to figure this thing out, okay?"

Sam didn't reply, and Dean smoothed his hair gently.

"I'm sorry, Sammy," he said. "I should have believed you all along."

Sam slept on.

"But I'm going to take of it now. I'll make this better."

OOOOOOO

Usually Dean didn't take to intense research. That had always been Sam's preference, and Dean had been more than happy to let him handle that part of the hunt. But, despite Dean's groans, he did know his way around the Internet and a library. His attention span for such things tended to be short and sporadic, punctuated by frequent jokes to whomever he could find. But this time was different. This time the weight of what he was hunting pressed on him and drove him to doggedness. This time it was personal.

Dean had already exhausted his usual resources, but his search had been so broad before, not nearly specific enough. He still didn't know exactly what he was dealing with, but there were a few more clues he could take into consideration.

He pulled out the protection charm he had left on Sam's door. It hadn't deterred whatever it was, but it had certainly affected it.

The charm looked like a simple glass mosaic to the untrained eye, but Dean knew that each uniquely shaped and colored section was designed to focus on different supernatural entities. While Dean knew that, he hated to admit that he couldn't remember which color repelled what, and he needed to figure out which pane had shed light on the thing in Sam's room.

With a sigh, he turned back to his monitoring equipment. Rewinding the footage, he found the spot where he had first noticed that something was off.

He let the images play and watched as Sam slept on in peaceful drugged sleep. It was Sam's breathing that he noticed first, a sudden dramatic increase in the rise and fall of his chest. It was followed by the rapid movement behind Sam's eyelids and the subtle tensing of his body under the sheets.

Then it was there--no more than a blur by Sam's bedside--an inexplicable but clear distortion. Most people would write it off as a glitch in the tape, but Dean knew better. The patch of blurred air was too specific. It lasted only a second before it disappeared and Sam's sleep returned to normal.

Dean hit the rewind button and played the footage again, this time in slow motion.

As the frames slipped by, he noticed the shapes of the light on Sam's body. The charm caught the light and tinted it in patches. Whatever it was, when it walked in the light, its existence was disrupted, its presence brought clearly to visibility.

He paused it as it flashed, catching the image on the screen. He studied it, observed the ray of light that had caught it, the one that had brought it to life.

Picking up the charm, he looked carefully at it. Then he looked again at the image.

The edges of the light on the image were jagged and five pointed--a star.

Dean glanced again at the charm. In one corner as a small star-shaped piece of glass, shaded light blue. "Bingo," Dean muttered. "So what is it about this one that brings you to the light?"

He flipped through the journal, looking for his father's entry on this particular charm he had acquired. He found the diagram and the explanation for each piece.

A Celtic Star: used for centuries to deter demonic entities. The blessed tempered glass comes from the northern regions of Ireland. Often used on church entryways to ward of possessed persons.

Celtic--his mind worked. Sam had mentioned seeing Celtic relics at the pawn shop.

But the pawn shop wasn't real. That much was for sure, even Sam had been convinced on that point. But it was too much of a coincidence. What if whatever it was that was controlling Sam was somehow revealing itself to Sam? Sam had been confident that there was a connection to the relics, and with the charm being of Celtic origin...maybe Sam had been right.

And if Sam was right about one thing, maybe he was right about more than that. Dean thought, trying to remember everything else Sam had pieced together about his attacker.

It moves in and out. It's everywhere.

That's what it wants. It wants to make me crazy.

It's a demon.

Ultimately, Sam had been adamant on that point. Even if Sam wasn't in his right mind about everything, his brother's deductive skills were impeccable. And if the demon was strong enough, old enough, it wouldn't be completely kept out the charm, but would still be effected by it.

Dean recounted Sam's symptoms again. The random and rapid possessions. The hallucinations. Clearly this demon could practice some form of intimate mind control, showing Sam things that no one else could see.

His research had been too wide before, too general. Clearly he was dealing with something very specific and, if Dean guessed right, very powerful. But now he had more to go on, more variables to consider. A non-corporeal demon of Celtic origin. It was still a long shot, but it was definitely something to work with.

Rubbing his eyes, he leaned over the computer and began his search.