Sam had been walking for an hour, though to his back and arms, it felt like far longer. Around every corner, past each tree or perhaps slinking through brush in the distance, he expected to find something large and warped of its humanity. It had lots of time and plenty of opportunities to overtake them. His arms were weighed down by Dean, though he was admittedly far lighter than Sam expected. He wasn't sure if he'd have enough time to take aim—or if his stiff arms would allow him to do that—but there was nothing else to do, beyond glance backwards for the thousandth time. Which he did, of course. Sam's eyes were constantly glancing around, trying to find the source of his feeling that they were being watched. Maybe the wendigo became lazy once in a while. It had allowed certain investigators to go free while others had been swept up like candy, apparently without a peep. Of course, he couldn't take the chance that luck would be on their side. It never ended up being that easy.
Sam glanced around again, adjusting the weight of his brother as he did so. It was weird carrying Dean like this. Had it been any other situation, he doubted they would have made it very far from the cave while he half-dragged Dean, pulling him by an arm slung over his shoulder and talking to him to keep them both at a good pace. Now, it was silent. Dean had fallen back into unconsciousness since leaving, and if his brother was that banged up, Sam decided his arms could burn for the next few months if it meant letting him be. And burn they would. He could already feel it, and they weren't even halfway back yet.
They needed supplies—they needed a plan for when they returned to face the wendigo, and Sam needed to figure out where the nearest hospital was. It was a lot to think about. So, as the mind often likes to do, it drifted towards settling his gaze on Dean. His brother's face wasn't discernable due to the way he had rested his head against Sam's chest—on the other side of the bruising temple, as Sam had made sure. The splotches that ran along his cheek and forehead were discoloured and tender before they'd left, and he imagined they would sting quite a bit now. His knee was an altogether different story. It looked as if the wendigo had ripped past bandages Dean applied and properly tore out some skin this time, like a reminder. Neither wounds were something a Winchester couldn't handle. But with Dean in his arms, shorter and skinny from just having reached puberty, his short hair betraying the fact that Dean—or possibly their dad, which was weird to think about—had cut it on a whim a couple weeks ago… he looked almost fragile, and Sam felt like kicking himself for having allowed Dean to come out here in the first place. Dean was his own entity. And yet, much like a teenager, he failed to grasp his own limitations. Sam continued down this mental loop with nothing else to do but to glance around and continue walking. Whether it preoccupied his mind from having to think about the people he'd left behind in the cave, or gave him a sense of power for being able to tell Dean off, the thoughts hadn't abated as a flicker of sunlight caught both brothers in the eyes while passing by.
It must have been the light that finally broke through to Dean, because for a second, Dean tried to move, tensing up and pulling his head away from Sam's chest. His walking slowed to naught in the hopes that he won't drop Dean, even as his brother involuntarily shrank in on himself a bit and muttered, "Sam?"
"I'm here, Dean," he said softly, already anticipating the rebuke he'd get for carrying him like this. He didn't care. From the way Dean had recoiled on instinct, he wasn't about to set him down and leave him to his own devices again.
His brother's face was still tilted away. For a second, neither or them moved or made a sound. Sam went through his list of reasons why Dean was in fact the idiot here, why he had to be carried like this, why he had to be brought to a hospital. Then Dean dropped his head back against Sam's chest and, dare he use the word, snuggled into him a bit more to regain a better position. He was tempted to wonder if this was really his brother.
Beyond what must be the veil of major disorentiation, Dean seemed to pick up on Sam's hesitancy, as he always does. Though, his acknowledgement wasn't as graceful—what with it being half-spoken into his shirt. "You're a pain in the ass." It came without much conviction. But there was enough "Dean" nestled in that sentence to ease Sam's worries, and he forced his burning legs to continue moving again. He glanced back the way they'd come, just to make absolutely certain that nothing was following them. With a hint more sass this time, Dean asked, "How much farther?"
"A few hours." His reply had an edge to it, as if Sam thought something was going unspoken, and didn't know what.
That might have been why Dean stayed silent for the rest of the walk back. No complaints, no questions, nothing along the lines of "get your hands off me before I find my gun". At one point he assumed his brother must have drifted off to sleep again. Dusk settled in, birds ceased their song. His arms screamed to be given a rest. But with everything going on, and the minimal amounts of sleep Dean had gotten lately—cursed or burdened with the Mark—there was no way he could bring himself to bother Dean.
Maybe Sam had just been looking for fights.
OOO
Moderate concussion.
That was what the doctor gave as a diagnosis—and it was much better than he'd been hoping for. The brothers were already fairly used to dealing with minor concussions. It was tangible, and they were able to deal with it. But Dean didn't take the news quite as well. He was propped up on a bed in a shared hospital room, appearing alert but dazed, and seeming to feel as much out of place as Sam. They didn't do overnights at the hospital very often. The doctors thought one night to keep tabs on him would be best, considering the risk of nausea, confusion, puking—you name it. He hadn't made an objection. The motel room was about as comfy, and they had no place else to be tonight. Sam knew he'd have to go back out in the morning. His biggest concern was with the amount of victims—and what the hell he'd do with Dean in the meantime.
For his part, Dean had been compliant on the drive to the hospital and resigned himself to the doctors' questions, appearing ready to pass out all the while. They fixed up his leg and gave him ice. Then, just as the brothers were left in a shared hospital room with only a few sleeping elderly folk to account for, his energy seemed to return. Sam had to envy him. The older—younger?—older of the two was seated on a chair beside the bed. It was cold and firm, but he was sure that after today's excitement he'd be able to sleep here just fine. He no longer had half the energy Dean's gaze hinted at as they stared each other down, trying to decipher whether the other wanted to talk—and apparently, neither of them did. But Dean felt obligated to ask. "Were there other people? Did you get… him?"
He didn't understand the vagueness for a moment, then swept a glance over the hospital. No one appeared to be awake, but at the same time, it wasn't worth taking the chance. Talking about dozens of people being strung up for a creature's lunch in the depths of a nature reserve didn't often go over well with the common populace. "I'll take care of it," was all he said, very softly.
His brother's eyebrows pinched as he turned to lay propped up on an elbow. "You mean you left people behind with it still out there?"
"I didn't have a choice." It was the truth. "There were way too many people, and they would have attracted attention." Now, time for a lie. He figured it wouldn't hurt if it put Dean more at ease. "I called someone. I'll have it sorted out by tomorrow." With no world crisis at the moment—and it really was amazing to say that—he was sure finding other available hunters would be easy. Or at least, he hoped.
His reassurance didn't have the greatest effect. "So, what? I'm out of the picture now?"
"You've got a concussion." Sam knew his tone was approaching obnoxious, at least from where Dean might be sitting. It had been a full day of hiking in varying temperatures, running back and forth, fearing what might have happened to his brother and having to haul them both back to the Impala without proper wendigo-killing supplies. He was pretty fried, and he didn't understand how Dean wasn't, either.
"My concussion—" Dean became sheepish. "It's not from today. Look, I'm doing better. If there are people—"
"What?"
His brother's eyes narrowed. "If there are innocent people still out there, I'm coming."
Old clocks ticked down the hall; people were whispering in other rooms, and once in a while there came shuffles from the other beds in the room. Dean was changing the subject. They'd been trying to keep their voices down so that they didn't bother anyone in the dead of night, but his self control was slipping slightly as his brain recounted days prior. His brother wanted to change the subject. The emotional mask that so often covered Dean's face seemed to have returned in full force under the dim light that filtered in from windows. Sam scrutinized this emotionless facade, finding it more difficult now fearing that his brother could literally be thinking anything at all, sensible or no. Goddammit, Dean was trying to change the subject, and he wasn't about to get off so easy when they were dealing with a fucking head injury. "Where'd the concussion come from?"
This managed to make Dean pause. Then, "That's not the problem."
"Sure it is," he shot back, unaware of how his breathing had sharpened or his shoulders had squared. "It was with the mirror, right? You lied to me all last night and this morning." Dean'd said he was fine while Sam watched him take more and more pills to keep the pain at bay. The thing that pissed him off the most was that he should have known. He had known, he just didn't act on it. It was this type of thing that had allowed the Mark to get so bad in the first place. It was because of stupid shit like this that Dean had resorted to staying cursed.
"If you want to get into morals," Dean returned, the sound of his words barely making it over the blood rushing to Sam's head, "Why don't you tell me how you could leave all those people out there? Without any sort of help or head start?"
"I had to get you out. You were in bad shape." He watched as his brother's face hardened. It was a little crack in that facade of his. "Why? Because you're acting stupid. Reckless. I guess that's your signature, no matter what situation we're in." With a toss of his hand, he dismissively motioned to Dean's stature. "I've gotten used to it. But you're being—you're selfish, you know that?"
Feeling himself start to truly get agitated, Sam stood up, letting out some adrenaline by moving and turning away from Dean. But doing this didn't release all his pent-up energy. He mulled the words over, and knew them to be unhelpful right now—but they came out, anyway. "This is taking its toll on everyone, and all you want to do is ignore it. You insist on hunting. You laugh about pointless things over drinks. Then reality comes crashing back down." His eyes closed for a moment, unable to turn back to Dean or even look around the depressing hospital room. "Maybe I like to dwell on stuff too much, but at least I deal with it. And you know what? This is exactly why you're not going back out there."
With that, Sam felt he'd tossed out everything that needed saying into one big heap, and he was too tired to clean it back up right now. Dean rustled in the bed behind him, and it was that movement which spurred him to dart out of the room, away to where his brother couldn't see the stress from recent months racking him with unrest. The hallway acted like a place in which he could pretend that he and his brother were worlds apart. Red flushed his cheeks as it dawned on him about what he'd said. What he'd said—to Dean, who had found ignorance to be his safe spot, who'd just awoken from being beaten by a wendigo and who was probably only looking for the only good news since… forever. Sam wasn't even sure if he had meant everything that tumbled out back there. But some part of it all felt distinctly true—and there was no way he could take it back now, for better or worse.
And that reminded him. He fumbled around in his pocket for a phone, trying to think of which hunter he might be able to call about the case.
OOO
It was a while before he came back into the hospital room, his demeanor tentative and almost rueful since his anger had dissipated. Each of his footfalls was inexplicably softer. It was as if Dean's bed held a terrifying thing to try facing—and maybe to Sam, it really did. Dean was hard to read on a good day. Now he lay on his side, faced away from Sam while he tried to approach. Some people would have assumed his brother was sleeping, while others might expect Dean to be faking it. Sam himself wasn't entirely sure right now. He had a lot of thoughts competing for attention, all of which seemed to be at odds with one another.
Honestly, he was wondering just how exactly he was supposed to take a seat and try talking about it again, or if that would really be such a good idea. He'd probably have to apologize if the subject was brought up again. Whether it deserved an apology, and whether he had the courage to say anything along the lines of apologetic, he wasn't sure. He couldn't just stay silent about it, could he?
"Don't you go waking that boy up, now," an elderly woman cut in from a few feet away. Her bed was next to Dean's, and the curtain had recently been pulled aside to reveal a woman whose greasy grey hair betrayed how long she'd been staying at the hospital so far. She was pale, but the subtle anger coating her face gave her all the liveliness a single person could ever need. "I think he's heard about enough from you already."
Sam's patience had already been tested enough today. With her constricted boney shoulders and no smile from her eyes or lips, he had no kindliness to give in turn. He wasn't even sure where the hell she'd come from. And Dean, who hated for Cas to overhear their conversations sometimes, remained steadfastly angled away, unmoving and without comment on the situation. Sam turned back to the older woman and smiled in a yes-hi-no-thank-you manner. "With all due respect, this is between me and him."
"Like hell it is." There could have been venom coating her chapped lips. "He's been through some horrid accident, and you're yelling at him like he should have all the answers. Oh, don't think I haven't heard your spat." The woman's eyebrows quirked as if of their own volition, jumping almost high enough to leap right off her head. "I'm sure the whole hospital heard you both. You do realize—you're yelling at a child?"
If only it was that simple. "He's not just some kid. He makes his own decisions…" Maybe he smiled, just a bit. "And I get to give him shit over them."
"That boy is going to grow up emotionally traumatized if you don't stop laying all your problems at his feet. What were you doing when this accident occurred? Where's his mother right now?" It was hard to tell if these questions came from a place of motherly worry.
And at that, Sam decided he was thoroughly done with this conversation and stepped around to the other side of the bed. It put some distance between the two of them, and he was finally able to make out Dean's face. His brother's eyes were closed, his mouth open just the slightest bit. Yet it was still obvious that Dean was listening, because his expression had soured just a fraction. He knew his brother well enough for it to be easily apparent. The only thing that threw him off for a second was the innocent nature of it, being attached to such a young face. He glanced up to the old woman's figure, posed at the edge of the bed behind Dean, the moonlight giving her complexion a glow as she continued to face him. If his brother planned on keeping silent, he might as well capitalize on the moment. "I want to help. He doesn't want to talk, and—well, that's fine." It was unsurprisingly difficult to sound nice when he felt like throttling someone again. "But… there's still consequences, and I'm not letting stuff continue like this."
Sam imagined the woman must have huffed and gone on some sort of tangent or another. He couldn't bring himself to care. Dean had finally opened his eyes, saying nothing and betraying even less in his gaze. In fact, he looked eerily like his older self for a minute—the "recent" older self that Sam had been trying to adjust to ever since his brother adopted the Mark—and he wasn't sure if he liked it.
