I may have underestimated how much work biology labs on top of honors classes are...oh well, moving right along, thanks to everyone, again and as always, for sticking with this through the random update schedule. We're nearing the end of the story, trying to keep things moving right along!
Huge, gigantic thank you to ThornsHaveRoses, VegasGranny, Guest, TXKimsonFan, DearHart, tyrsibs, mak2018, 19agbrown, and ImpalaLove for your reviews and support. This chapter, 100k words in, got the same amount of feedback as the first chapter, and I am so grateful that this far in people still leave comments. I keep them in my email until I post the next chapter, just for the days when writer's block or school stress has got me down, they're reminders to keep doing what I'm doing because at least a few people would like to see it finished. Thank you :)
A week and a half until season 14. If I owned the show, we'd have more than a 30 second trailer, but I don't run things, unfortunately. But I do have to say, Jensen in his 'Peaky Blinders' outfit already has me super hyped.
It took two more days before Sam was able to get around the room without getting too winded. The doctor had said that it was normal with smoke inhalation injuries, it would take some time for things to get back to normal, and that Sam should go easy in that time. Sam wasn't too keen on taking it easy though, not with Dean stuck in a room in a separate area of the hospital and he hadn't yet been in to see him.
The last scan had come back worse, and over the past few days Dean still hadn't shown signs of waking. Cas was trying to be hopeful, as was everyone else, but Sam could tell it was fading…ever so slightly, but the diminishment was still visible. Somewhere in his head, Sam figured if he could just get in there and talk to Dean, things would right themselves. Even though it made no logical sense, he knew he was getting in there sooner or later. The only problem there was that he hadn't been allowed to visit Dean yet on account of his lungs not being able to propel him around the room enough times to warrant going outside, down the hall, up an elevator, and down another hall.
He understood the implications behind it, he really did, and he was being a hypocrite considering how many times he'd chastised Dean for not listening to a doctor's orders, but sue him, he was worried and Dean's life was on the line.
"Cas?" he finally voiced halfway through the day. His throat was still raw, but it had improved. It would take a while to get the smoke out of his nose though, even though he knew that none still resided.
Cas turned from the television on the wall they had been watching to pass the time. "Yes, Sam?" He looked tired. Going between two hospitalized family members would probably do that to a person, and Sam vastly appreciated the updates he couldn't get himself.
"Need to see Dean," Sam cut right to the chase. Cas only sighed and shook his head. They'd been through it a few times already, but Sam hadn't been this determined before, it had been long enough.
"You know what the staff advised, Sam, I can go check on him again if they'll allow," the angel offered and then it was Sam's turn to shake his head.
"Thanks…but I need to see him myself. I just…" he didn't have a better explanation. They'd been over all this before.
With a sigh, Cas finally nodded his head. "I understand," he acquiesced, and got closer to the bed so he could give Sam a hand in getting up. He had been able to help with the burns in a mild capacity, but Sam's arms and hands were still wrapped in gauze to ensure they healed properly.
The angel had just reached down to give Sam a hand up when Monica walked into the room, clipboard in hand, and caught them like two children with their hands in a cookie jar.
She checked her watch, as if she had been wrong about something, and looked at them, a bit confused. "It's not time for PT yet, Sam, mind me asking where you two are headed?"
"Change of scenery," Sam tried, while Cas remained silent in front of him. Chances were, Monica knew exactly where they had been headed, but she didn't quite let on.
"You're not supposed to be mobile without supervision, not with your levels still recovering. And you're especially not supposed to be visiting patients in other floors without approval."
Sam opened his mouth to explain, but she only sighed and muttered something to herself before she put the clipboard down on the bed. "Don't go anywhere, alright?" she said, obviously expecting to be listened to, and walked out of the room.
"I assume she is…coming back shortly?" Cas surmised after a few seconds had passed, and Sam nodded as such. Sure enough, a few minutes later Monica came back, pushing an empty wheelchair in front of her.
Sam didn't like the look of it, not one bit, being pushed around, injured, having no control, it was like a combination of everything he didn't like about a given situation. But before he could say he was fine, that he could manage, Monica held up a hand.
"Policy, this or nothing." She was a kind young woman, but Sam could tell just from her expression that when the safety of her patients was concerned, she wasn't moving. He slowly nodded, not putting up any argument (vaguely wondering how Dean would have reacted in the scenario, he hated the wheeled contraptions even more than Sam), and was eventually seated in said chair.
Monica pushed him out of the room, Cas following behind, and down another hallway where she pushed the button for the elevator and waited for it to arrive.
"I don't want you to think I don't get it," she eventually said once they were inside and the doors had closed. Sam couldn't see her, given their position, but still listened. "Because I do. If Masie were hurt…I'd want to see her. But I also know that she'd tell me to keep my butt in bed and heal before I worried about her. From what Cas has said, I imagine Dean would say a similar thing."
Sam smiled vaguely at the thought. "Probably with a bit more colorful language," he agreed before the elevator doors opened and she took them both to Dean's room. But Sam also knew that Dean, ever the hypocrite, wouldn't take his own advice whenever Sam was involved. Where health was concerned, it should have been a two-way street, but Dean was as stubborn and protective as they came, and it was probably partly the reason why Sam was awake and alive to even check on Dean. If only he'd wake up so Sam could say thanks and his older brother could berate him for starting another chick flick moment inside a freaking hospital of all places.
"I'll give you a few minutes, you're really not supposed to strain yourself, Sam, and infection is not on the list of things you want right now," Monica reminded as she stopped the chair next to his brother's bed.
Dean waking up and being alright would be at the top of that list if he had one.
"I hear you," he replied honestly because he did. He didn't want to make their jobs even more hell on them, but this was something he needed to do.
"Hit the call button if you need anything," Monica pointed to it, making sure Cas saw it also, and left the room.
"Would you like a minute?" Cas asked after the room had quieted, save for the monitors and other machines. All it took was a slight nod from Sam and the angel had left, saying something about going to get a coffee, which he didn't drink and at the moment Sam couldn't have. At least his excuses were getting better.
And Dean…he was getting really tired of seeing him in hospital beds. These past few months Dean had spent more time in a hospital bed than in the rest of his life combined, which was saying something, all the one night trips and early morning break-outs combined. Though, motel room triages probably took the top spot for most used medical care area.
"You've gotta stop doing this, man," it came out quiet and hoarse, even though his voice had been improving over the past few days. "There's no record for most amount of comas in the shortest time span." He's trying to lighten the situation, he pleaded with Dean last time only to have them end up in the same situation over again. Now, he's not sure what to say.
Awh, come on, you don't know that for sure, Sam. You were always more of an academic reader, would it kill you to pick up a world records book and actually check your facts?
He could almost hear Dean's mocking tone, but it didn't bring a smile to his face. He knew the statistics, he'd heard about the results, about the decrease in brain activity, and again he was helpless to do anything about it other than sit back and watch. Actual healers were minuscule in number, and on the off chance that any were angels with a grudge to settle, Sam didn't want to send up the bat signal. Plus, if it went anything like the first time, Dean would actually kill him.
But Dean, being the self-sacrificing, protective, couldn't kill him until he actually woke up first, and if he didn't wake up because again he'd been stepping into help Sam…he didn't know if he'd be able to play through.
"I swear, the second we get out of the hospital, I'm sending Cas for bubble wrap."
Even as a joke, Sammy, that's lame. You gonna wrap me up like a freaking ball and pop all the little bubbles like some demented form of stress relief? Pass.
Sam sighed, the movement strained. "The universe isn't about to end…and still, here we are." The Winchesters, breaks just weren't a part of their lives so it seemed. "But you got through it once, you'll get through it again, and we'll fix it just like we did last time."
Fixing it would definitely mean no hunts, actually making sure everyone got their rest, making sure Dean felt like he was really doing something, keeping them occupied…they'd figure it out. If Dean's condition ended up meaning he really couldn't hunt again, they'd take it in stride and he'd eventually convince Dean to more or less accept it.
Sam must have been thinking and talking longer than he thought, because soon after, Cas came in, not with coffee, but with a plastic cup and lid.
"They advised that tea may be a good substitute until you are back to one hundred percent," he explained, and passed off the drink when Sam reached up for it and smiled.
"Thanks, Cas," Sam said, and took a sip. It wasn't as good as coffee, mind you, but it was a good change. "Just feels like we're back to square one, you know? All the memories, all the explaining, and here we are again," he answered Cas' unsaid question.
"You have a habit of getting into…sticky situations, as you would say, but yes. The unfortunate repetition is a lot to handle," the angel sighed in a similar fashion.
Sam nodded silently in agreement, his eyes still trained on Dean, whose head was once again in a bandage, and hands still wrapped similar to Sam's own. "I know you can't heal, but can you, I don't know, sense anything?" Sam tried. Anything that may give them a clue to bringing Dean back around, or helping in some small fashion.
Cas didn't say anything. He took a step closer to the bed, closed his eyes, and pressed two fingers to Dean's head. The angel was still for a moment before his eyes screwed ever so slightly.
"Cas?" Sam sat up a bit straighter in the chair, unsure if the movement was for something good or bad.
"Something is…different," he started quietly, and released his fingers and opened his eyes to look back at Sam. "I'm not sure what, but something has transpired, his mind is not in the same state it was before."
"And that's good, bad, what?" Sam pressed, but it was clear to him that even Cas was confused, struggling to put what he had sensed into terms that they could both understand.
Before he could do so, something physical shifted and the beeps on the heart monitor began to speed up. They only had a few seconds before Dean's body on the bed began to convulse and Sam found himself yelling for help.
The screaming and the pain stopped almost as soon as Dean opened his eyes again. The first thing that struck him was that he was sitting at a table. Okay, not him him, but some version of him. He was watching himself, and other events transpire, from outside himself. It was freaky, no question about it, and he was immediately confused. The hell was this? Billie had done her little thing, and he had expected to wake up. Looking at himself, stuffing pizza into his face, that definitely wasn't the case, not at all.
Cas was at the end of the table, playing one of those folded paper choosing games with a redhead. It took Dean a moment to place her as Charlie, and when he did, he felt a pang in his chest. This was different than the nightmare he had of her weeks ago. This was clear, sharp, he was watching himself in it. This was a memory, and he was watching it play out.
His other self seemed to be having a pretty good time, watching as Cas and Charlie went about their business. Sam was seated next to her, smiling through it, but it was obvious to Dean that there was something more going on behind his brother's poorly put up facade. So the situation wasn't quite as happy as it looked to be. Right, that fit the picture with their lives pretty damn perfectly.
"Not much with you guys is what it seems to be."
Dean spun around, certain no one at the table had said it, since it was a memory and it certainly wouldn't make sense for the memory to be answering his internal thoughts.
"Think of it as half memory, half your subconscious, both of them starting to kick around all sorts of dust."
There was no one behind him, and just to be sure, he ducked into the furthest hallway. Nope, no one. But when he turned back to the table, Sam and Cas were gone. Charlie was still sitting there, toying with the paper device, but then she looked up and made direct eye contact with him.
Nope, not a memory.
"Hey, Dean," she greeted with a smile, and gestured for him to sit down.
Dean, however, stood stock still at the edge of the kitchen. "The hell is this?" he was honestly getting tired of his mind throwing random crap at him and this, some…talk from a woman he didn't even know-
"But you do know me, Dean. Down to my tattoos." Her smile faded abruptly as she tried to cover it up. "Not like that, gosh not like that, I meant in a descriptive sense with the Princess Leia and the Comic-Con and the dice and the…you remember."
Dean was about to open his mouth to say, no, he most certainly did not, but it filtered back to him, like looking through a window that had been frosted over. "I was drunk, it was Comic-Con." And the phone conversation that had come with it. It was right there for him. Sure, it was odd to try and get a handle on, but it was there.
"What Billie did…it worked?" he said slowly, and took a few steps over to her.
"Mhm," Charlie hummed. "But it's not tossing you back out into a sea with just your memories and no life preserver, your brain would probably fry more than it already had, literally, from the info dump you would get."
Okay, that made sense, Billie had said as much. But then why-
"Am I here, coaching you through it?"
"Would you stop doing that? The finishing my thoughts thing, super weird," Dean cut in before she could say anything else.
Charlie looked down at the table sheepishly. But it wasn't even Charlie, it was some of Dean's weird subconscious giving him a lesson on how to deal with what Billie had let loose. He was essentially talking to himself. Yeah, no, totally normal.
"Sorry. It's just when you're made up of the same stuff, hard not to finish other thoughts. Of course, I'm your subconscious' projection of what you remember me to be, though why I'm here and somebody else isn't, I have no idea," she shrugged.
"So why this memory lead-in, what's up with that?" He finally took a seat across from Charlie and she looked at him, a bit amused.
Charlie tapped her head. "It's all up here, genius, you've just gotta look for it. It helps to have a prompt or something so you know what to look for, the rest should come back gradually, hopefully not like a tidal wave, imagine that in your head, no thank you."
Dean had only slightly tuned her out to do what she had instructed. It was more of a feeling this time, since the memory had already been provided. A sense that for the moment things were alright, but something was brewing and about to turn very bad. Underneath it all was a thrumming anger, and he found himself looking at his right arm out of instinctual habit, which triggered something else.
The Mark, it was when he had the Mark, and it was before Sam gave the book to Rowena, before they tried to get the Mark off, before the Steins, before Charlie…
Even inside his own head, pain started building in it.
"Told ya not to go searching for too much at once. Brain feel fried yet?"
"Getting there," Dean muttered, and let the fragments slip away from his fingers, but he still retained them, somewhere deep down.
She waited until he had gained some sense of composure before she continued. "Bad things always happen, Dean, you know that a lot better than like ninety-five percent of people. But you and Sam and Castiel, you guys save people from the bad things, and eventually good times come along too. Little things, like drinking beer and watching movies and answering Cas' questions about said movies."
"This another lesson in letting stuff go that I'll soon remember is already gone?" he raised an eyebrow, to which she nodded. Even then, sitting in front of her, talking to her, it was comforting in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on.
"Pretty much. A lot of people are gone, but a lot are alive because of what you guys do. And for those of us that are gone…it wasn't all bad, getting to know you boys."
"But it's not you saying that, how…?"
Charlie shrugged a little. "Deep down, you knew. Most past it, onto the next adventure, right? Han Solo didn't give up after he'd been stuck in carbonite, he got back up and helped kick the Empire's ass," she said, looking fairly proud of herself and determined in her reference, so much so that Dean let out a breathy chuckle.
"Right," he said, faint smirk on his lips.
"Now," Charlie leaned forward onto her elbows, "go save the galaxy, just don't fly too fast."