A/N: In this chapter, Dean struggles through his horrible injuries and to take care of Sam.

If You Dare Challenge - #652 (Food)

Are You Crazy Enough To Do It Challenge - #144 (scarlet red)

Disclaimer: This all belongs to the wonderful writers of SPN.

When he awoke again, he was even colder; he didn't know that was possible. He could barely feel his fingers, which scared him, but he was too preoccupied with the pain spiking through his body to think too much about it. A muffled, high-pitched sound disturbed his silence; he wished someone would turn it off. As the sound washed over him, he realized it was an alarm. The truth dawned on him; something had hit him so hard had crashed straight through a window. The screeching sound ringing in his ears was actually the burglar alarm.

Dean struggled to sit up. Every move he made was incredibly painful; he was surprised he could manage to lift his head. As he tried to straighten his back, a wave of nausea and agony overwhelmed him and he keeled over, spitting acid from his empty stomach. He could faintly hear sirens in the distance; a gruff voice in the back of his mind told him he had to get out before anyone found him. So, he spotted the loaf of a bread lying a few feet away and reached for it. Oddly enough, it remained unharmed; it must have slipped from his hand when the car hit him.

Dean had never found any task as difficult as walking back to the motel. Standing in itself was agonizing; he could barely put any weight on his right side and was constantly collapsing, disoriented and violently shaking. The cold helped to a degree, for it numbed the surface pain. The small cuts and scrapes made by the glass barely caused him suffering. His back, however, was on fire.

He staggered forth, stumbling through the parking lot to their second floor motel room. "Sa-Sam," he choked out, his left hand slapping against the door. "Sammy!"

A tired, squeaky voice answered him. "Dean?"

"Yeah," he gasped, relief washing over him. "I-it's m-m-me. Let me—" He coughed into his frozen fingers. "Let m-me in."

"What's the password?" he called out.

Dean could barely keep himself conscious, let alone remember the stupid password they had come up with earlier that night. Sam usually made his passwords around his favorite TV shows… "Opti-Opti-t-timus...P-P-Prime," he rasped.

Sam laughed. "No, silly!"

It was becoming dangerously difficult for Dean to think. "T-t-turtles… rat?"

"No…" his little brother said, his voice growing increasingly concerned. "Dean, are you… Are you okay?"

Instead of waiting for him to correctly guess the password, Sam unlocked the door and swung it open. Dean had been using the door to hold himself up, so he fell with it, collapsing before Sam's terrified eyes onto the motel room floor in an ugly pile of frigid, broken limbs.

"Dean?" Sam's voice was shaking, more frightened than he'd ever heard it. "Dean!" A hand gripped his shoulder, and icy white pain spiked through the area. "Dean, wake up!" It was so hard to breathe… "Dean, please!"

Dean forced his eyelids open, his hazy vision focusing on his little brother. "S'mmy…"

"What—what happened?" Sam's face was wet, covered in tears. "You were supposed to be back ages ago! And you… You…"

Dean gave him a weak smile, trying not to display the amount of pain he was in. "Sor-sorry… I—I g-got you…" His fingers trembled around the plastic bag containing the loaf of bread.

Sam's face lit up at the sight of food. "Bread!" he cried, and Dean winced. "Thanks, Dean!" He took it from his older brother and tore open the plastic.

At the moment, Dean didn't mind at all; he was glad because it kept Sam alive, happy, and quiet. He pulled the other food items from the inside of his jacket. "He-here," he said, tossing them in the direction of his brother.

"Crackers?" Sam cried, ecstatic. "Juice? Wow! How'd we have enough?"

Dean touched the throbbing side of his head in response. "I-I-I…" He pulled his numb extremities before his face and discovered that they were covered in blood. He must have hit his head pretty hard… Something pinched him painfully on the back of his head, and he moaned, squeezing his eyes shut…

"Dean? Dean!" He was on the ground again, twisting to protect his injuries. "Dean!"

Suddenly aware of Sam's words, he opened his eyes, trying to compose himself, and struggled to his feet and said, "I'm g-go-gonna…t-take a b-bath…"

"You gotta eat first," Sam said.

His brother shook his head, shivering. "I-I d-d-di—" He could barely get a word out. "Al-alread-d-dy ate."

Sam, too young to recognize the lie, replied, "Okay," and bit into a peanut butter cracker. As a caring younger sibling, Sam was frightened for his brother's health, but it was not the first (and would certainly not be the last) time Dean had come back to the motel injured. Dean was an easy target for vengeful spirits and monsters, so he often returned from hunts bleeding and bruised. Sam had slowly become desensitized to the sight of his broken, hurting brother.

Holding his wounded arm to his chest and dragging his right leg like dead weight, entered the bathroom and promptly collapsed once he closed the door behind him. With his good arm, he plugged the drain up and turned on the hot water. Shivering fiercely, he stripped down and eased into the bathtub with what composure he had left. As the water lapped against his back, he whimpered; scarlet red twisted and contorted beneath the surface of the bathwater. The car had struck mostly his right side, and he traced his injuries with his fingertips, determining their respective graveness and closing his eyes whenever it seemed to be too much.

The rightmost area of his torso was swollen and red, tender to the touch. His right leg was the same, except it was deformed in a grotesque way that shocked him. His leg contained one of the worst wounds; there was a jagged gash running from his knee to his upper thigh. He followed the laceration with his hand to another one curling around his side in mimicry of the delicate arc of a rib. It ended abruptly in a deep, serrated wound with something— Dean's hand brushed against something smooth and sharp, and blood blossomed over his palm. Undeterred by the trivial pain, he grasped the object, and as he did so, he pricked his hand again. He gasped, closed his eyes, and then pulled it out in one swift motion.

Glass. He had pulled a piece of glass from his back. When he had been thrown through the window, he must have fallen onto it. He tossed it aside, and it clattered to the floor. He couldn't see the wound, but he could feel hot liquid trickling from it.

He wasn't cold anymore—the water had warmed him tremendously—but he still couldn't feel two of the fingers on his left hand, as well as one on his right. He pressed them together gingerly—still nothing. They were an odd, dark color; he didn't understand why he had lost all sensation there. However, he hardly let it bother him. He wanted to slip beneath the water and sleep for a long, long time…

He coughed, and the action pained his entire chest, sending ripples of discomfort through him. Why did everything hurt so much?

Once he could hear Sammy's soft snores from the other side of the door, he allowed himself to cry.

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