Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are Kripke's brainchild. I make no claims to the contrary.

Another Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. I just play one on FanFiction.


For two long seconds, all the world stood still, and it might as well have been an eternity. Dean took in the sight of Sam's leg, every detail hitting him instantaneously, and yet he had the time to analyze each and every one: the red-brown smears of blood drying over the surface of the skin; the puckered, swollen edges of the wounds; the slow ooze of deep, dark red beading up in the heinous tears.

But he had seen all of that already. What stopped him cold were the fine, threadlike streaks of black spreading from the wounds, giving the skin a dry, mottled, grayish appearance as it worked through the capillaries. Nothing had prepared him for that.

Suddenly, he saw the last two hours in simultaneous time-lapse and slow-motion: the monster standing over Sam, ready to claw him to death; the gunshots that struck its back, a fine splatter of dark blood releasing into the air; the gunshot Sam had fired into the thing's chest; the wounds that clotted more quickly than they should have; Sam's steadily increasing pain from that moment to this. In hindsight, Dean should have known from any one of those that there was going to be a problem.

And now, in the afterglow of a shoulder reduction—which should have brought a near-orgasmic release of endorphins—the pain from the wounds was apparently so intense that the body's natural pain relief had no effect at all.

For two long seconds, all the world stood still, and an eternity later, Dean was brought back to the present by a chorus of cursing around him. He knew his mouth hung open, his eyes wide, as he finally looked up at his brother, and he saw what he imagined to be a mirror of his own expression written on Sam's face: shock, surprise, confusion, and panic all rolled up into one.

He forced his mouth to work, even though he didn't know what he was going to say. "B-bobby—"

"Holy water," Bobby finished for him, already hurrying away to get it done.

All Dean could do was swallow and nod, eyes locked on his brother's, thrown back into his memories again: Sam slumping into his arms as the light left his eyes, head lolling over his shoulders as his body gave out. All he could see were the similarities between then and now. He'd failed to keep his brother safe. Again. And he couldn't go back in time to fix it.

So he did what he'd always done. Sam was looking at him with eyes as wide as saucers, watching him, looking to his big brother for direction, and that's what finally kicked Dean out of his own cycle of panic. He might have failed to protect his brother tonight, but that wasn't his only job. He was supposed to make it all better, too; that had been his job—no, his privilege—since the day Sam was born.

Bring Sammy his blanket.

Bring Sammy his pacifier.

Run into the room when Sammy started to cry, just to make sure everything was okay.

Then their lives had been torn apart; and though Dean was just as distraught as Dad, he found solace in taking care of Sam. And he did it so well that John let him take the job.

Mix Sammy his bottle of formula, and warm it up just right.

Gently coax him into taking it, when all he'd ever had was Mom's milk.

Rock him and shush him to sleep, and tell him everything was going to be okay.

Kiss every little bump and bruise as Sam learned to use his feet, and tell him everything was going to be okay.

Make him dinner, promise him that Dad would be back, promise that everything was going to be okay.

And every time he'd said those words, even before Sam could understand what they meant, they'd had the most profound effect.

Because Sam trusted him implicitly, trusted that he meant what he said, trusted that Dean would always make it okay.

That Dean would go to the ends of the earth, fight every threat, kill every monster, sell his soul to a demon, sentence himself to die, just to make everything okay.

Dean had realized a long time ago that having Sam's trust like that was the real privilege. Maybe he'd lost a little of that trust when Sam died, but as far as he was concerned, he'd still kept his promise. Sam was just fine, patched up, good as new, just like he'd said. And it was still a privilege now as much as before to tell his brother that everything would be alright. That he'd make everything alright.

So he stood up from the floor and leaned closer over his brother, letting Sam squeeze his hand in a bone-shattering grip, and he embraced his job—his privilege—as a big brother.

"You're alright, Sam. Deep breaths." He let Sam pull and push against him as he struggled to ride out the pain. "Come on, little brother. Keep breathing."

Sam clenched his eyes, his grip, his teeth even harder as he obeyed, releasing his breath as a low, drawn-out groan. The sweat beading up on his neck and brow started to inch down his skin, a "V" of dampness appearing on his shirt.

Ellen was pulling at the remainder of the bandaging, cutting them apart as quickly as she could with a sharp pair of shears. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," she swore as she revealed the rest of Sam's leg, "you ever seen anything like this?"

Dean briefly glanced down at the wounds again and shook his head. "No. Never."

Sam pulled against Dean's arm again, trying to sit forward in the chair. "De-e-ean..." he shuddered. "What's—oh, God!" he groaned as Ellen finished peeling the bandages away from his thigh, drying blood pulling on the wounds.

"Take it easy, Sammy," Dean said automatically has he pressed his hand into Sam's chest, urging him back into the chair. "Just relax, we're gonna get you fixed up."

Sam panted at the ceiling several times, then swallowed and managed, "What's happening?"

"I don't know, Sammy, but just sit back, let us take care of it."

"What the hell were you boys hunting?" Ellen asked as she began cutting around the leg of Sam's jeans, removing it completely, to give them unrestricted access to the wounds.

Dean looked up at her briefly, then shook his head, at a complete loss for what to tell her. Under his hands, Sam gasped and writhed again. At that moment, Bobby clomped back into the room, two gallon-sized jugs of holy water in hand.

"Alright," he interjected hurriedly, "we gotta get this on the wounds, stop it from spreading anymore."

Dean nodded in agreement. "You think it'll draw it out?"

"Hope so, but that depends on what it is," Bobby said as he uncapped one of the jugs. "What were you hunting? Did he get bit?"

Dean shook his head. "No, he didn't get bit. We don't know what it was. We thought it was a werewolf, but..."

Bobby started unfolding a bath towel. "But it wasn't?" He stooped down to lay the towel on the floor under Sam's leg.

Dean shook his head again. "I swear, I've never seen anything like it before."

Bobby reached for the stack of towels on the table. "Well, what did it look like?"

Sam shifted and shuddered in his chair, another drop of sweat sliding down his temple. "I-it was sort of—human, but—"

"But like a dog, too," Dean finished. "And it's skin, it was—"

"Black," Sam gasped.

"And dry, and creased," Dean continued, "and it didn't have any hair. Like, none at all."

Bobby stood over Sam, unfolding a couple of kitchen towels, glancing between the two of them as they traded off. "And it didn't bite you?"

Sam swallowed and shook his head, eyes pinched closed again. "No," he gasped. "It was going to, but—aargh!"

"But I shot it first," Dean said. "Silver still worked, thank God."

Bobby's hands froze as he was about to lay the towels over Sam's leg. "And it was on you when Dean shot it?" Sam nodded tightly. "Did it bleed on you?"

Sam's eyes flew open, and Dean felt his own widen as he was thrown back into the moment. The thing had been standing directly over Sam—over the gashes in Sam's leg—when it had been shot.

"It's skin," Bobby pressed them urgently, pulling away from Sam's leg again, "did it look anything like this?"

Now that Dean had made the connection, and now that the—venom, infection, whatever the hell it was—had spread even further into Sam's leg, he could see it clearly. The flesh of Sam's leg was clearly becoming that of the monster.

It was turning him.

Nobody needed to say anything else; the dumbstruck silence seemed to do all the talking for them. Without further hesitation, and before Dean could consciously follow the movement, Ellen and Bobby had traded places over Sam. Bobby was shoving the handle of a wooden spoon into Sam's mouth. Ellen was telling them to hold Sam still as she readied the holy water over his leg. Sam's eyes were wide and panicky, his breath hissing around the handle of the spoon, squirming in anticipation as Dean and Bobby arranged their hands on him.

Dean couldn't watch anything other than Sam's face. Words he couldn't hear tumbled from his mouth, intended to soothe his brother even though he knew they wouldn't make a difference. Sam's eyes followed Ellen's every movement, his breath coming harder and faster, a shuddering whine leaving him the instant before the water hit his leg.

Then his whole body seized up, head thrown back, tendons in his neck popping out. And Dean swore he could actually see the scream rattle up Sam's body, bouncing around inside him like a pinball before it clawed up his throat and out around the wooden spoon. It was a heart-wrenching sound that paired horrifically with the violent shaking in his brother's body, a sound he would give his soul all over again to never have to hear.

Sam screamed, loud and long, as the holy water soaked into the towels over his leg, reaching every millimeter of the wounds without rolling straight off. It lasted only four seconds—Dean knew, because his hunter-brain automatically counted—before the sound choked off, lungs devoid of the air necessary to carry the sound. It took two more seconds before Sam's lungs expanded again, drawing in another breath, and in the brief absence of screaming, Dean could hear the hissing, sizzling sound of the holy water touching and reacting with something evil.

Sam's second scream was more ragged, more desperate than the first. His whole body strained forward against Bobby and Dean, then rocked back into the chair, over and over and over again. His right leg kicked out against the linoleum floor. His eyelids fluttered, eyes bugging out for a fraction of a second, then disappearing again behind intense folds of skin. By the time his lungs were out of air the second time, his grip on Dean's hand was beginning to loosen.

"That's it, Sammy," Dean said, leaning closer, giving Sam's arm a little shake. "Just go to sleep."

Sam's eyelids fluttered again, tears escaping down his cheeks as he started pulling in quick breaths, short high-pitched cries leaving him on every exhale. He blinked up at Dean, pleading and unfocused, as if he couldn't comprehend what Dean was saying to him.

"Just let go, Sammy, let go," Dean said again, tears stinging his eyes, urgency rising in his voice. "You don't need to be awake for this. Just let go."

The hissing and sizzling of the holy water was still going strong, and Sam gave one last, shuddering cry of pain before his body began to go lax in the chair.

"That's it," Dean eased, stroking up and down Sam's arm as the last of tendrils of consciousness melted away.


Law of Parsimony: the philosophical or scientific principle, according to which an explanation is made with the fewest possible assumptions.

Also known as Occam's Razor or the Precedence of Simplicity: of two competing theories, the simpler explanation is to be preferred.