Unseen, unheard

Chapter 6

Breathing was really becoming an issue. Dean wondered whether the benefit he got from the oxygen was really worth the intense agony of drawing it into his lungs. He was cold, shuddering irregularly with little chills that assaulted his body. His muscles, starved of blood, refused to respond to his mind's prompting, so even when Michael had untwisted the wire binding his hands – painfully, because it had to be pulled out of the deep ruts it had formed in his skin.

'I'm gonna take you home now…' Michael soothed mockingly, struggling to lift Dean and eventually giving up and dragging him by the arms out the door to a small car. Semi-conscious, Dean barely registered where they were going until Michael stopped and pulled him out again, roughly searching his jacket for his room key.

'Sam…' Dean croaked, uncertainly. Michael grinned at him.

'It's ok, we'll be quiet. We won't wake him up.'

Dean found himself unceremoniously dumped onto a bed which he realised was his own: back in the motel room. The jolt of collapsing onto the soft surface was unbearable; he briefly blacked out. When he came to, Michael was standing some distance away, gazing downwards. Dean twisted his head with great effort, and found Sam's sleeping face directly before his eyes. He cursed Sam's sleeping habits: when he ever got any sleep, you needed a brass band to wake him up again.

Michael carefully cleaned the scarlet blade of his knife on Sam's sheets. Dean choked, trying to protest: he didn't like the psycho with the knife standing so close to his little brother. But Michael just left the weapon beside the sleeping form on the bed, grinned at Dean, and headed for the door. Turning in the doorway, his pale face illuminated dramatically by moonlight, he rested his eyes on Dean, and flicked a hand towards the sleeping Sam.

'I really don't envy him when he wakes up…' he gloated softly. 'Goodbye, Dean. I'll be seeing you, Sam…'

Dean glared at him helplessly as he disappeared behind the heavy door, which slammed with an emphatic thud which rang with finality.

Ok, I just gotta hang on until Sam wakes up, tell him it wasn't him, and get him to take me to hospital…he thought. Easy, right?

The comfortable sheets, the warmth of the room, and the gentle, regular sound of Sam's peaceful breathing relaxed him, and he thought how easy it would be to sleep. He wouldn't have to struggle; breathing just came naturally when you were sleeping, right?

He pushed the thought away, and tried to shift himself into a less comfortable position so that sleep would seem less attractive. The pain still assaulting his chest ensured that no position was really comfortable, but the desire to submit to unconsciousness wouldn't leave him. Blood was still seeping from his chest; he could tell by the way his sheets had changed colour. Each drop that left him robbed him of some energy and feeling. He was starting to go numb, which, in itself, wasn't such a bad thing, but he had enough experience with these things to know that it wasn't good at all: if he wanted to stay awake, he needed to keep some blood inside his body.

He realised, then, with a shock, that he didn't have time to wait for Sam. Despite his brother's typical early rising, it would still be a few hours before he came round, a few hours that Dean didn't have. He was losing strength, not by the hour but by the minute, and in order to save Sam from Michael, he first had to save himself. Which meant help, now.

Slowly, he reached a trembling hand into the pocket which should have held his cell phone. His uncertain fingers explored the pocket carefully before concluding that it was gone: Michael must have taken it when he was unconscious. He swore, or tried to, because oxygen was now so lacking that he couldn't make his lips move around the chosen expletive.

Letting his head flop to the side again, he squinted through the darkness at the nightstand, hoping to find Sam's phone. Nothing. Not even a land line provided by the motel: he cursed himself for choosing accommodation which was this cheap. The only item within his reach was a small lamp.

Dean had always survived by being resourceful, so he was willing to try anything, with whatever materials presented themselves. There was a chance that Sam would be woken by the sudden light if he switched the lamp on. It was a small chance, but it was there, and it was better than nothing.

He stretched out an arm, gritting his teeth against the wave which washed over him in response to the movement. His arm trembled, his muscles struggling now with the simple task of reaching out for a light switch. He stretched blood-soaked fingers toward the little switch. One inch away. Come on, how hard can it be?

Half an inch. He rolled his body to follow the movement of his arm, gasping in desperate anguish as the wound on his chest were crushed against the mattress. The switch was under his finger.

The light flicked on, making Dean's eyes water at the sudden brightness. He fixed his eyes hopefully on Sam.

Nothing.

No response.

He heard himself sob with frustration, and realised with alarm that even this quiet sound was muffled in the blood obstructing his throat.

'Come on, Sam…' he gasped, or tried to, as, although his lips were moving, he couldn't persuade them to make a sound. Rolling over on to his back again, to relieve the agonizing pressure on his chest, his hand collided with the lamp, knocking it off the other side of the table. The light he had taken such pains to produce was immediately extinguished, but the resounding crash it made, hitting the floor, would have woken Sleeping Beauty.

00000000000000000000000000000000

Sam jerked suddenly awake, unsure what had yanked him out of sleep. His heart raced, disoriented, as he tried to work out what was happening, and what had caused him to come so abruptly back to consciousness. Blinking to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the room, he cast his mind back, and recalled his return from the library and urgent, unnatural need for oblivion. Suddenly panicked, he glanced around, scanning the wall and the sheets for any signs of clandestine graffiti, then breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he found none.

He remembered, too, that Dean hadn't been back when he fell asleep, and he turned his head inquisitively to see whether his brother had returned.

There was a body in the bed.

Sam fought off the girlish impulse to scream, swallowing the sound before it could pass his lips and instead choking on it. His eyes were so saturated with the flood of crimson that was before them that they failed to recognise the body as his brother's for some moments.

Even when he realised who he was looking at, he still lacked the power to act, and sat immobilised for several further seconds. It didn't look like Dean. It was too pale, too weak and helpless, too limp, too broken. Too soaked in red.

Shaking almost too much to support himself on his unreliable legs, Sam crept out of bed and approached the body. What could possibly have happened to cause this? Something had gotten into the room while Sam slept, or maybe Dean had been injured on his way home and had made his way back here before collapsing. Guilt washed over Sam, and a hot, sick feeling of uselessness. What use was a brother who lay sleeping while his sibling bled out beside him? Who didn't wake up to hear him gasping for breath? How long had Dean lain here alone, trying not to die?

The corpse opened its eyes. The hazel irises visible through a slit between the eyelids flicked from side to side, as if Dean didn't have the strength to hold them still. With great effort, Dean met his brother's eyes. Pain was written in those irises.

He tried to draw breath to speak with, and found his windpipe choked with blood. All Sam could hear was a hissing of air being sucked laboriously into his brother's mouth.

'Sam,' he tried to say, 'Sam…' He realised he was wasting precious breath on his brother's name, when he had so little to spare for the essential message, but 'Sam' was the first and only word which would come to his lips.

'Shh…' Sam soothed, still baffled and terrified, but putting every effort into a calm façade. 'It's ok, don't try to talk. You're gonna be ok, I'll get help…' His mind was screaming with the question, What happened? but he forced himself not to voice it. It could wait.

Dean seemed to disagree. He was getting more and more agitated, coughing up red spots which decorated Sam's shirt as he leant over his brother. Dean's hand shot out and gripped Sam's wrist with the surprising, desperate strength of the dying.

Sam tried to pull away from it. 'I need to call for help, Dean. I'll be right back. You're gonna be fine, I promise.' He regretted the promise the moment it fell from his tongue. It seemed like tempting fate, like making such a vow made it more likely that he would have to break it.

Dean wouldn't let go. His lips were still trying to shape themselves around words, but in vain. His body was failing him. He had nothing left to fight with: no air, no blood, no strength. Darkness claimed him.

'No, no… Dean stay with me please,' Sam begged, feeling the cold hand go limp and release his forearm, leaving white finger marks on his skin. Swallowing hard, he threw himself across the room and snatched at his cell phone. He was barely coherent, giving the address and details to the operator in a frantic, hurried, breathless voice. Returning to his unconscious brother, he braced himself, and then carefully peeled back the remains of the tattered shirt, and used one of his own t-shirts to mop at the frightening excess of scarlet liquid that painted Dean's chest. The wounds, revealed from their camouflage, looked all the more vivid for the whiteness of the surrounding skin. Rocking back on his heels to take in the severity of the wounds, his eyes refocused, and he realised, slowly and reluctantly, what he was looking at.

Another message, carved with a knife into flesh as the second message had been carved into the flesh of the tree. But, this time, Dean's flesh. The thought was appalling, repulsive. Sam thanked Providence that he hadn't eaten all day, because he felt an overwhelming urge to bring up the contents of his stomach. He stumbled back, away from the evidence that incriminated him with the worst offence imaginable… fratricide.

His mind filled with an abhorrent image: himself, sleepwalking, taking up a knife and wandering over to where his brother lay sleeping. Using his body as a blank canvas for those words, which glowed so vividly scarlet on a pale, clammy background. He imagined Dean waking up at the touch of the knife to find himself immobilised with pain, trapped as the victim of his brother's amateur surgery. Begging him to wake up, and come to his senses. In vain.

The words grew in Sam's eye until they obstructed everything else: reproaching him, mocking him. Forgive me, he had written.

Forgive me, of all things.

Clawing at his skin instinctively in revulsion, he choked out a sob, half laughing at the unbearable irony of those words. Why should Dean forgive me for this? Can I even forgive myself?

He was yanked from his depression by the sound of sirens, and realised, with a painful stab of self-reproach, that he had been sitting useless while his brother continued to bleed. He opened the door for the paramedics, and stood by distractedly, watching them tend to Dean, tearing himself apart with guilt.

How could I?... Even sleeping, I should have some instinct, be able to avoid this… The hideous word returned to him, echoing around his skull, resisting all his attempts to push it away. Fratricide.

The frantic exchange of jargon between the medics sounded distant and strange in his ears, as though he was cut off from the real world and locked inside his own head, in a reality fashioned entirely from guilt. When they carried Dean out, looking paler and weaker than ever, Sam answered none of their urgent questions, but followed them mutely, as if he were still walking in a dream. This time, a nightmare.

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I know, I know, it was extremely angsty – but I think the situation demanded it! Agree, disagree? Either way, let me know! Press the blue/purple/ black/ light blue button. : )