Guys, thanks so much for all your encouragement and thoughts so far. I truly appreciate each and every one of your reviews. There is one annonymous reviewer who I wasn't able to reply to in person, but I want very much to respond. You know who you are, but this may apply to other's too. First of all, I take everything everyone writes and suggests to heart. If I'm writing something completely wrong, I hope you all will tell me, so that I can fix it before it gets completely out of hand. That said, please know that I have no intention to make Dean the poster child for disabilities. I do, however, feel that Dean can and will overcome any obstacle in his way, be it something as small and insignificant as a closed door to something as large and life-altering as losing a leg. He may not always be happy about it, and he may not come out of it the same Dean as he once was, and I can absolutely see suicidal thoughts and self-depricating tendancies along the way, but in the end Sam is the most important thing to Dean and he would do just about anything for his little brother. However, I respect the belief's of anyone who thinks differently, and I can only hope that I will manage to do this entire story justice and that, in the end, everyone will be truly satisfied with the result. Please don't hesitate to share your ideas and views with me; it definitely gives me food for thought. Thanks so much for all your wonderful reviews. Enjoy the next chapter...
If you recognize 'em, I don't own 'em.
Anger became Dean's dominant emotion. It was his strongest emotion, and it would last longer than any of the other's. Everything was fair game; nobody was off limits. Sam seemed to get the brunt of it. But he saw it as his punishment for getting Dean into this mess in the first place, and accepted the burden unflinchingly. If only he knew that the frequent and pointed attacks more than likely came out of the fact that Dean trusted him, knew he was safe with little brother no matter how much shit he threw at him. In a way Sam did know that, because he trusted Dean in the same way, but the guilt that flowed through Sam seemed to dominate, and no matter what he did he just couldn't see past that. So Sam vowed to do whatever Dean needed of him, no matter the reason.
Dean wouldn't allow anyone to touch him, except for Sam, which proved problematic on more than one occasion when Sam wasn't there, or when Dean's 'nothing below the belt' rule came into play. He'd gone to the bathroom one day, successfully wheeling himself into the adjoining room and pulling himself to a stand with the aid of the strategically placed grab bars. But his balance was off and he wavered unsteadily on his one leg for several seconds before finally dropping to the floor in a heap, painful daggers shooting through his stump and fogging his mind. No one had been in the room when he'd made his attempt and Dean had had to call out for help. Embarrassment at his weakness reddened his cheeks when Lily ran in to help, and he swatted her away with a growl as her hands went to his armpits to pull him up.
"Get Sam," Dean demanded, shrugging from her assistance.
She had replied calmly, backing off for a minute but only to readjust the wheelchair. "Sam isn't here, Dean. I think he went to the hotel for something. Can I just help you back to bed?"
"I said get Sam!" Dean screamed louder, the redness in his face no longer from embarrassment, but now anger.
"Dean, Sam won't be back for a while," Lily reasoned, crouching down to be at eye level with her irate patient. "You're going to be waiting a long time."
His anger intensified and he pounded his fist hard into the ceramic tiles lining the bathroom floor as his words came out clear and enunciated. "I. Said. Get. My. Fucking. Brother."
Lily had shrugged. It wouldn't exactly hurt him to remain on the floor; she just thought he would be better off in the bed. But the young man would have it his way. "I'll see if I can get in touch with Sam," she soothed, standing and retreating from the room.
It was another twenty minutes before Sam made it to the hospital and he found Dean in the same position Lily had left him in, back against the tub, fly still open, shoulders hunched in defeat.
"Dean, what's going on?" Sam was breathless from his sprint through the parking lot, and mildly irritated at the reason for needing to come running in the first place.
"Just help me up, Sam," Dean growled, avoiding the question and avoiding eye contact.
Sam did as ordered, but continued to demand answers as he pulled Dean back up into the waiting wheelchair. "You could have gotten help from one of the staff," Sam pushed. "Hell, Dean, you probably could have gotten yourself back into this chair. I mean you got in here on your own, didn't you? You're missing a leg, dude; you're not paralyzed."
"My leg hurt, dammit. And I needed your help. Those damn nurses don't know what their doing. Light fairy couldn't pick up a sack of flower, let alone my muscled ass."
Sam snorted. "You called me out here because you didn't trust the nurses to pick you up? That's their job, Dean."
"Look Sam, if you don't want to help me then fine, go back to whatever it was that's more important than your own brother. I'll be fine without you." Dean withdrew into himself, angrily squirming against Sam's hands as they finished dropping him into the chair.
It shut Sam up, the guilt once again eating away at his core and he circled back around to face his stubborn brother. "Look, Dean, I'm sorry. I don't mind being here. I don't mind running to help when you need me. I just didn't understand why–"
"Because I wanted you," Dean spat out, interrupting Sam. "They don't need to be casting their pitying eyes on me. And that's what I see - pity and sympathy. Poor crippled bastard, lost his leg and now he can't get up. I don't need them Sam."
Sam had sighed, unsure how to reply to that. He noticed the open fly at that point and, without thinking, leaned over to fix it.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Dean screamed, slapping Sam's hand away as his little brother stammered out a weak reply. "Just get me back to my bed and get the hell out of here."
Sam had done just that, no longer willing to encourage his brother's tirade. He kept silent, biting his tongue as Dean spewed out insults and curses in the struggle to get him back into bed. Grunting a good-bye, Sam stormed from the room, leaving Dean to stew in his own juices.
Like a ticking time bomb, Dean was so hot and cold he was practically bi-polar. One minute he could be involved in a halfway normal conversation, or calmly watching TV, and then something would be said that set him off and Dean was on a rampage again. Sam now cringed every time Dean asked for help to and from the bathroom, into or out of the wheelchair, or for any other injury related assistance because what normally started out as calm interaction would undoubtedly become an onslaught of anger induced insults and expletives that would leave Sam reeling and desperate for air.
Sam spent less time with Dean, and Missouri and Bobby only came for a couple hours a day - if that. Not that their reduction in visit time came without lack of trying, because for the first few days Sam had refused to budge when Dean's anger got the best of him, coming to the breaking point and beyond as he was subjected to words that Dean never would have said to him before. But it soon became apparent that the more time Dean spent alone, the less time he spent on a tirade, and so Sam had taken to disappearing several times throughout the day just to give his brother time to calm down. He had to admit that the time away worked to his advantage in the research department, and it helped not to need an excuse to disappear. But in reality he would have liked to need that excuse; because it would mean that Dean was Dean again. Snarky, sarcastic, practical jokester Dean; not sullen, mopey angry shell of Dean.
They were banned from the cafeteria after Dean threw a tantrum in there. It started off normally, and Dean had practically begged Sam to take him, because he was 'just so damn tired of staring at the same white walls day in and day out.' And so Sam had broken him out of his room for lunch. But Dean began feeling self-conscious as he looked down at the neatly folded and pinned jeans material that stopped just below his stump, but should have been covering his missing leg, and as they entered the cafeteria he'd immediately convinced himself that everyone was staring. He started off staring back, shooting glare after nasty glare at anyone who dared glance in his direction. And then he got vocal. "What the hell are you staring at?" he screamed at a pregnant woman and her two young children, who had happened to glance in his direction while in search of the juice machine. "What, you've never seen a guy missing a leg before?" he snapped at a teenager whose gaze lingered a half second too long while looking for his girlfriend. "Just turn the fuck away!" he growled to an old man teetering wildly on his cane as he made his way past the boys to the check out line. Sam reprimanded Dean for every ill-spoken word he'd uttered, while shooting apologetic glances to the innocent bystanders who were staring more because of the scene Dean was making then his leg.
But that wasn't the half of it. Once they made it out to the tables Dean just got worse. It was a vicious cycle. His paranoia had him yelling at everyone in sight, and as his voice grew so did the murmurs and stares of those patronizing the cafeteria. And finally Dean had had enough. Sam had been trying unsuccessfully to calm his acrimonious brother and his eyes widened in time to see Dean grab the Styrofoam bowl of chocolate pudding from his tray and launch it halfway across the room. If Sam had been more prepared, or if his reflexes weren't moving sluggishly from lack of sleep, he might have managed to stop the full fledged attack. But instead, he watched helplessly, in horror, as the loaded grenade flew over the heads of several diners before coming to a sloppy rest on the head of a quickly balding teenage cancer patient.
The kid hadn't seen the attack coming, and by sheer chance of fate, happened to be one of the rare few who hadn't been ogling his brother's rampage. Sam quickly slid down in his seat, face reddening, as he made a quick mental calculation of just how stealthily he could sneak his brother from the room. But the loud and simultaneous gasp coming from the multitude of crowd who had witnessed the attack immediately staunched that poorly thought out plan and Sam found himself choosing a different path. After a quick reprimand and glare at his brother, where the expression told the older man that he would deal with him later, Sam was up and out of his seat, rushing to the poor boy who was still sitting, shell-shocked, in his seat, mouth open.
"My God, I am so sorry about this," Sam declared in horrified apology. He quickly grabbed a napkin aiming to began wiping the brown mess from the teens head and gown. The boy's mother was faster, though, and she grabbed Sam's wrist before he could proceed with the cleaning efforts.
"I've got this," she glowered icily. "Just get him out of here."
Sam stood, stumbling over his huge feet as he back-pedaled, continuing to mutter his apologies as he returned to Dean's side.
"I can't believe you just did that," he hissed at his glowering brother as he grabbed the handles of the wheelchair and roughly pushed the man from the room.
They'd had a long talk after that, Dean and Missouri and Bobby and Sam. They had approached Dean with stern looks in their eyes and stances that meant business. But in the end, it seemed that Dean was too wrapped up in his own anger and self-pity to hear anything that his family had to say to him. And it wouldn't take long to discover that the talk meant nothing to the disparaging hunter.
He took to throwing things on an almost daily basis. A vase of flowers, sent from Algonquin's park rangers met it's end in a shattered heap of glass, water, and petals against the opposite wall of Dean's room. Several plastic drink glasses ended up cracked, and more water was spilled when they hit the closed bathroom door. At least part of every meal managed to find its way out into the hallway or on Sam or Bobby or Missouri or one of the nurses until Bobby finally put his foot down and ordered that Dean be hand fed and that no more than a bite of food be placed in his reach at a time. It was a childish response to a childish action, and Dean hated every minute of it, but he wouldn't agree not to throw any more food and so the order stood.
His therapist would no longer enter the room, in direct response to the spew of expletives Dean had launched at him from the minute that poor unsuspecting victim dared to enter the room and suggest he attempt some exercises to strengthen the soon to be deteriorating muscles in what remained of his leg. "I don't need your fuckin' pansy-assed attempts at makin' me get better" he growled to the muscular, mid-thirties Mexican who, heaven help him, had then remained for another twenty minutes before giving up. As he left, a poorly aimed remote control showed him the way out, barely missing his head by an inch and shattering against the door frame instead.
The final straw came when Dean's verbal spews found their way to a five year old girl whose innocent question of 'Hey mistah, how'd you get your owie?' had Dean replying with a 'Fuck off' and a shove to move her out of the way that, while unintended to be harmful, still found the little girl wailing several feet away on the floor. Dean felt worse about that than Sam would ever know, but Sam's reaction to the move was so severe that Dean wasn't given his chance to make any apologies to the little girl.
Sam had back-handed him just seconds after the little girl went down, and although the younger Winchester immediately recoiled and spewed out a barrage of 'I'm so sorry's,' his anger and astonishment at Dean's actions was unmistakable. Sam dropped to his knees beside the little girl and simultaneously pulled her against him while looking around for a parent, a warning glare aimed at Dean still sitting just below the surface. To his surprise, no parents emerged or came running for the girl and Sam found it his job to comfort her when he would much rather have been scolding his brother.
"Sweetheart, are you alright?" he cooed to the sniffling child, rocking her side to side as his arm snaked out to grab the pink teddy bear she'd dropped in her descent. "He didn't mean to scare you. He's just feeling..." Sam hesitated as he glanced up and saw actual remorse in the older hunter's eyes. "...sad."
"Why is he sad?" the little girl questioned, curiosity beginning to override her initial shock at being brushed aside by an adult.
Sam looked up at Dean again, wondering if he preferred to field the question for the child, but Dean was now looking down into his lap, purposefully preventing Sam access to read his expression.
"Well," Sam hedged, choosing his words carefully, "because he got hurt."
The little girl's eye's brightened just a bit more as she looked up at Sam with recognition in her eyes. "My Daddy got hurt," she announced, just enough pride behind her tone to make Sam realize she didn't know just how bad the meaning of that word could be sometimes. "He's asleep right now and he doesn't know he's hurt. My mommy cries a lot 'cause he won't wake up."
Sam nodded in understanding. "That happens sometimes. Some people sleep to let their bodies have lots of time to heal. And sometimes, when they do wake up, they get very angry because they aren't healed enough, yet." He looked pointedly at Dean, hoping his juvenile explanation of the situation might through his thick skull, but his stubborn brother was having none of it.
"Did he sleep?" she asked, looking at Dean with huge, round eyes, awed by the possibility that Dean might have been like her Daddy.
"He did," Sam confirmed.
"How did he get his owie?" the little girl asked innocently.
"Sammm..." Dean growled the warning from his position in the chair. Shut up, Sam. She doesn't need to know my business. Just keep your big fat mouth shut.
Sam chose to ignore his brother, but did change the line of questioning. At some point, he needed to return this little girl to her family and he needed to know her name in order to do that. "Sweetheart, my name is Sam. That's my big brother Dean. What's your name?"
"Emma," she announced proudly, puffing out her overall clad chest and pointing proudly to herself with her thumb.
"That's a very pretty name, Emma," Sam replied. "Is your Daddy somewhere on this floor?"
"Yeah," she supplied, pointing down the hallway. "He's down there. Mommy's with him. She told me to wait out here. How did your brother get his owie?"
Damn the kid was persistent. Sam sighed and looked back to Dean again, wincing at the daggers he was shooting toward them. I thought he liked kids. There was no simple way to explain the injury, especially to a five year old, and he knew Dean would be pissed if he continued too much longer with this conversation. "Emma, why don't we get you back to your mommy and daddy," he tried instead, climbing to his feet and gently steering the little girl down the hall. She braced her legs and held tight, her little body refusing to move forward as she spun on her heel and faced Sam again.
"My daddy fell off a...a...calf holding," she announced, struggling over the word scaffolding. Sam chuckled to himself, and eyed the little girl again.
"He did, did he? That must have hurt."
"He hit his head," she continued, almost fearfully this time. "And now he looks like a mummy. Mummy's are kinda scary."
"Kid, get over it, Mummy's aren't real." Dean finally broke in to the conversation, snapping in irritation that this sniveling brat was holding him up.
Sam glared at Dean, fighting everything in him to keep from slapping the older man across the cheek again and ordering him to snap out of his vicious slump.
Emma's face screwed up in protest, determined to convince Dean that Mummy's were real. "There was a book I read–"
"Kid, just go back to your Daddy and hold his hand. He needs you with him. Get over your stupid fear of Mummy's and be with your Dad."
"Dean!" Sam hissed, eyes darting back and forth between his brother and the little girl. The words were harsh, but the tone was cruel. The ill-spoken pep talk did it's job and the poor thing ran off in tears, crying for her Mommy as Sam turned back to Dean, rage behind his own expression. "That's it, Dean! I've had enough."
Instead of shrinking away as Sam had hoped, Dean sat up straighter, challenging his little brother. Go ahead, Sammy. Kick my ass. Tell me what a horrible person I am. Tell me I didn't deserve to survive.
Sam looked around, conscious of the fact that they were already creating a scene in the courtyard. Despite the fact that he was infuriated, Sam still loved his brother, and he respected Dean too much to embarrass him more in front of a crowd. Sam grabbed the handles of the wheel chair roughly and shoved Dean down the hall back to his room before scolding him.
"This isn't working," Sam growled the minute they were hidden safely behind a closed door. "You're being cruel and completely irrational, and that was so completely uncalled for. I don't even know who you are any more, Dean. What the hell has gotten into you?"
Dean's head shot up fast enough to cause whiplash and he glared at Sam, anger in his voice mixed with sniveling sarcasm. "Well excuse me for not being Little Miss Mary Sunshine while I watch my entire life go down the tubes. Sorry Sam, next time I'll be sure to be a happy cripple."
Arms flailing wildly, Sam glared right back. "That was a little girl for crist sakes! A curious five year old little girl whose Daddy is in a coma down the hall, and you might as well have sliced her head off and run her through with a wooden stake for all the compassion you showed her."
"I think she took it in stride," Dean answered blandly.
"Dean, this can't continue!" Sam's exasperation was becoming more than apparent, and the hunter feared for what he might be capable of if he didn't get through to Dean soon. "I know this sucks, man. Trust me; I get it..."
You don't get it. How could you possibly understand what I'm going through?
"...But you can't take out your anger on every single person who gets in your way..."
Watch me, Sam. Come stop me.
"It's one thing to dump this on me. I'm your brother, and I love you, and I can take it. But you are terrifying little kids now. This just isn't like you, Dean!"
Yeah, but only having one leg isn't like me either. "Tell me what you want me to do, Sam! Tell me who you fucking want me to be, because I'm drowning here, and I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do about it!"
Sam softened when he noticed Dean fighting back tears because damn, he'd never seen his brother so close to tears so often in all their lives. It was unnatural. Synonymous with the twilight zone. "You talk to me, Dean! You tell me what you're feeling and why you're feeling that way. You tell me what you need to feel better, and if you don't know then you tell me that, and trust that we will figure it out together."
Now Sam was close to tears, too, desperately searching to get through to a brother who was just so angry and so far gone that he didn't know if there was any lifeline left to grab onto. But he had to try.
"The thing is, Dean, that...hell...you just can't go off guns blazing destroying everything in your path. Shit, Dean, you're spiraling out of control, man and you're scaring the living daylights out of the people that are trying to help you. They don't deserve that!"
"And I do?" Dean retorted. His voice wavered as he tried to control the emotions that threatened to take over his body. "Did I deserve to have my fucking leg taken off by that damn bear trap? Did I deserve to lose my mother when I was four years old? Did I deserve to spend my entire life hunting that damn fire demon and every other God damn baddie monster that got in our way? Shit, Sam, when have I ever deserved anything that's happened in my life but I deal with it anyway because that's life. So you'll excuse me if I don't feel bad for dumping a little bit of my shit on these people who truly have no idea what the real meaning of 'life sucks' really is?"
So that's what this is about. The reality of this situation finally slammed full frontal into Sam's skull, knocking him off balance as twenty-three years worth of pent up pain and anger and frustration spewed from Dean's mouth. Losing his leg was just the tipping point to all the shit he'd had to deal with in his life, and fuck if it wasn't fair and deserved that Dean had let his entire life be turned upside down and inside out to follow their father on his blind and irrational hunt for vindication. He'd spent his entire life pretending he was fine, normal, peachy. But it was all and act.
Somehow, deep down, Sam had known there was a lot more haunting his brother than he'd ever been willing to admit. But Sam liked sarcastic, over-confident, pain-masked Dean, so he'd never really gone looking for an explanation for how anyone could grow up so totally normal and accepting of such a fucked up crazy world they'd lived in. Now he wished he had.
Dean was shaking. Hands fisted, face red, teeth clenched, and shaking from anger. From pain. From fear.
Sam didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to respond. "Dean...I'm sorry. I had no idea." He spoke softly, the only words that seemed appropriate, and yet...they were so far from fixing things he might as well have been on Pluto.
"Hmmph."
"Dean, please tell me what I can do to help." Sam hated that he was begging. He hated that he was so lost. Dean would know what to do. Dean wouldn't have to ask. But Sam was floundering, so completely out of his league on this thing. Sam wasn't the protector, he'd never been the savior. And he sure as hell wasn't used to being the fixer.
It didn't take long for a reply, but when it came Dean was so weak and timid and...young. Sam's heart broke and he agreed immediately, not considering the consequences.
"Please, Sammy, just get me out of here."