Title: "Fell in Love with a Girl"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing: Sam, Dean/OFC
Spoiler: "Salvation"
Length: Part IV: A of IV
Summary: When Dean falls in love, Sam gets a life.
Disclaimer: I own only Lily. If you'd like to borrow her, let me know and we'll negotiate.
Author's Note: Again, this part started getting away from itself, so I've split up the chapters again. Depending on how long Part B turns out, there may even be an epilogue! Thank you again, to everyone, for your continued support and feedback. It means the world to me. Enjoy.
---
"All love is fleeting…"
You wish you'd never heard the name Daniel Elkins. He's a stranger to you, a faceless name, but he wreaks destruction all the same. You read his obituary in the morning paper three days after your showdown with Lily, after rejecting her story about some woman who fell ten thousand feet from a plane in Iowa and survived. Dean thinks the name sounds vaguely familiar, and he thumbs through your father's journal until he finds Elkins' phone number and a Colorado area code and all three of you pile into the Impala for the long trek back west.
You don't think Dean knows about your moment of weakness and the night you almost blew everything to hell. He hasn't said anything, and Lily has gone out of her way not to treat you differently, and you hope he never, ever, finds out. You love your brother and you would die for him, but there are some things you need to keep to yourself. It's not the secrets you hate, but the pain. He's happy, truly happy, and you don't need to ruin it for him, not now, not ever.
Elkins' place is a total disaster when you finally find it and Dean cracks a series of bad jokes while you sort through the rubble and search for anything useful. Dean finds the scratches in the floorboards and you interpret what they mean and Lily tracks down the post office address, and you're back in the Impala and heading out before you realize what an effortless team the three of you make.
Dean picks the lock and you swipe the sole letter and Lily reads it in the feeble overhead light. There are references to your father, which you ignore, and a mention of a mythical gun Elkins claims can kill anything. You exchange a look with Dean, and Lily's eyes are wide as she says what you and your brother are to chicken to say out loud. "This gun, if it's real, do you think it could kill it?" You don't need to clarify to know what she's talking about.
"Yeah," Dean says after a long moment that keeps you and him paralyzed in place. "I think it could."
"So where is it?" you ask when you find your own voice.
"I don't know," he responds. "But how hard can it be to find out?"
As you learn, not all that hard. You track down the vampires, and Dean laughs every time you mention them, and Lily does a quick internet search and reads about something called dead man's blood while you and your brother talk strategy. Dean steals the stuff while you sharpen the machetes, and Lily comes up with the plan to kidnap the ringleader's girlfriend and trade her for the Colt. Kate's a bitch, but you get the gun, and you're surprised when your fingers wrap around handle and your entire destiny is wrapped up in it and it's practically weightless in the palm of your hand. Then one of the underlings makes a grab for Lily and Dean sinks a bullet between his eyes, and you all three watch in awe as a flash of light cracks through the air and what used to be a vampire splinters into nothing. It all goes down beautifully, perfectly, just like you planned, and you can't complain when things actually go your way, but it all feels too easy. There's an eerie ache in your gut because something isn't right, but you don't want to be the one to bring it up.
In her own way, Lily does it for you. She's quiet all the way back to the motel, and you're surprised, because it was all her idea and her plan, and instead of bragging she's sulking in the backseat. You're the one with the Colt burning through the skin of your jeans and Dean keeps glancing at it every five seconds and you're a little worried he might send the Impala headfirst into a tree if he doesn't keep his eyes on the road, but Lily seems to be taking it the worst. She still isn't talking when you pull up in front of the motel, but Dean is too distracted by the Colt to notice, so you're the one to pull her out of her reverie and into the harsh truth of reality.
"Lily," you ask tentatively, because she's picked up at lot of your brother during these long weeks on the road, and she's holding her shoulders just like Dean, so tight you think she might crack in half if you touch her. Not that you want to touch her, at least not like that, not anymore. "Are you okay?"
Dean finally snaps out of it and stops staring at the Colt long enough to notice the dazed expression on her face. She looks nervous, totally unlike herself, and you flash back to that night in Phoenix when Cassie tried to reclaim Dean and Lily fell apart beside you. For a moment your breath clutches in your chest because you think she's going to tell him and ruin everything when it's thisclose to perfect, but she surprises you, again, when she reaches into her purse and pulls out a leather bound journal not unlike your father's. She flips open the pages and you're surprised, yet again, to find them filled with notes and diagrams, drawings and descriptions, and in the course of two months she has put together an entire guide to demon hunting, Winchester style.
"I've been tracking him – it," she corrects herself. "That demon." She looks at you pointedly. "I don't read the paper for fun, you know. I mean, I like to know what's going on in the world, but it's more than that." She beckons you close and Dean sits on her left and you sit on her right, and you peer at the meticulously transcribed notes. "I didn't want to say anything until I was sure, and I am now." She turns the page, and there's a map, clearly drawn, traveling the full course of the forty-eight states. "It starts in Arizona, then New Jersey, California – houses are burning down to the ground. It's going after families…just like it went after yours."
It's on the tip of your tongue, but Dean's the one to say it when you hear him mumble "ours" under his breath. If Lily hears, she doesn't say anything, just tightens her grip on the journal until her knuckles turn white. "There's signs. Look, it took me a while to see a pattern, but in the days before these fires, signs crop up in an area – cattle deaths, temperature flares, electrical storms." She pauses, closes her eyes briefly. "I looked this morning, I found another sign. We need to get to Salvation, Iowa as fast as we can."
"Why didn't you say anything earlier?" Dean doesn't sound happy and Lily winces.
"Lily?" you ask, because you want to know too, how she could waste so much time on Daniel Elkins' death while knowing people were on the verge of dying three states away.
"I didn't know what to do," she whispers and you can hear the tears in her voice, devoid of confidence, on the verge of breaking. "You need that gun to kill the demon, to avenge you mother…" She looks at you and her eyes are staring right into yours, and she says her name for the very first time. "To avenge Jess." And it feels right. She pauses again, closes her eyes. "I didn't know how to choose."
Dean wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her against his chest and her face disappears into the crook of his neck. "You did good, baby," he croons. "You made the right choice."
You don't want to admit it, but he's right. You're a day behind and you may never be able to save that family, but you can save yourselves. You can take back your life, Dean's life, give Lily a real shot at a life with him. They don't need you, so you leave them be and study the map instead, plot out a route to Salvation, hope you make it there on time.
---
You get there with time to spare, thanks to the voices in your head, and track down the family Lily believes is next on it's hit list. You sit in the car and you wait and wait and wait, and you think and think and think, ignore that eerie ache in your gut because it's all going to end tonight. You wonder what it will feel like when you plant a bullet between that thing's death soaked eyes; if Jess will stop talking to you in your dreams; if your mother will finally be at peace. You wonder if you'll have your life, the life you were intended to have, when the lightning stops flashing and the air stops crackling and the it's finally over.
This time, it doesn't go down as planned. The husband accosts you on the first floor and Dean tangles with him and yells for you and Lily to get the baby. You don't know where the mother is, if she even exists, but you find the baby snuggly and asleep in her crib, and you reach in to grab her while Lily keeps a look out, the rock salt loaded shotgun propped against her hip. You hear her scream and when you look up, the baby clasped in your arms, that thing is watching you with laughing golden eyes.
Because Lily is pressed up against the ceiling, mouth splayed wide, that same shriek of horror you hear in your dreams filling the room. You stand, trapped in place, and it drips hot and wet onto the baby's head, blood as deeply red as Lily's hair.
Dean gets there right on time and the shot fills the air, and he misses, or the thing vanishes, but it doesn't really matter because Lily slips from the ceiling and lands in a mangled heap at your feet.
---
You don't remember running after Dean, or dropping the baby into her terrified father's arms without a second glance, because the only thing you can see is Dean ripping open Lily's over shirt, because the white tank beneath is stained with blood, a wide red arc spreading across her abdomen. You cry out, because you've seen this before, Jess pinned to the ceiling, bleeding and gasping and dying before your eyes. Lily is alive, but she's pale, paler than you've ever seen her, so pale the freckles stand out like lanterns against her steadily bleaching skin.
"Sammy," Dean says, and his voice comes out strangled, like he's talking underwater. "Get the car."
You bolt for the Impala so quickly you don't feel the wet grass slide beneath the soles of your sneakers, and when you pull up in front of the burning house Dean's holding Lily in his arms and sliding into the backseat before you're finished slamming on the breaks. The hospital is only ten minutes away and you know the route, but the car seems to crawl down the highway, and you can practically hear Lily's life seeping out of her with every second of that endless ride.
One of her CDs is in the player, the one Dean refused to listen to, and you're grateful for something to focus on, anything to focus on, besides Lily dying in the backseat.
"Remember the weight of the world is a sound we used to buy. "
The car passes under a streetlight and you catch Dean and Lily in the rearview mirror. Her face is so pale you can see every vein, every blood vessel, pressing against the paper thinness of her skin, and she's slumped against Dean's chest, her hair trailing over his shoulder like a river of blood. His hands are clasped over her stomach, stained a deep, vibrant red you haven't seen since the night Jess died, and it trickles over Dean's fingers as they lock over her torn skin, twisting in the cloth of her tank top, like if he holds her close enough and presses hard enough, he can keep her from falling apart in his arms.
"Can't you go any faster?" Dean he asks and you can no longer hear the shallow rasp of Lily's breathing.
"I'm going as fast as I can," you say and press your foot harder on the gas, but the car is forty-years-old and there's only so much you can do.
"And now this little girl, she says will we make it at all? "
You suck in a breath, because you can't think like that – won't think like that – that you could actually lose Lily, not after all you've been through, all you've lost before her.
"Sammy," Dean whispers from behind you, low and terrified. "Turn the fucking music off."
You switch off the radio as you pull up in front of the ER, and Dean's got Lily and is kicking the door open before the car has stopped moving. You run in behind them and there's a trail of her blood on the cracked linoleum, like breadcrumbs on the path, and you follow it into hell.
---
You find your brother standing in front of a plexi-glass window, bloodstained hands pressed palms down and staining the glass, watching Lily fight for her life. You can't see her face, but you can see her red hair spilling over the side of the gurney, and it's bright against the white, white sheets, like a beacon of hope. You put a hand on your brother's shoulder, and he stiffens but doesn't look away from Lily. "I should be in there with her," he says and you tighten your fingers, give his shoulder a squeeze, just to let him know you're there.
"Whatever the doctors need to do, we let them do," you tell him. "That's what's important, Dean, making sure she lives."
He shrugs off your hand but doesn't look at you. "You think she won't make it?" he growls and you take a step back, because you're not sure what he'll do next. "Don't talk like that, Sammy. Don't you ever talk like that."
You pause, count to ten, remind yourself that Dean is suffering and isn't quite himself, because you can't believe he thinks that you think Lily could die.
"Dean, she's going to be okay," you say and make your voice sound hopeful and full of promise, because you can't take your eyes off the blood pooling on the floor, and you won't let your mind contemplate a life without Lily. You've already lost your mother and Jess; you don't know if your father is even alive, and sometimes, you're not sure you care. But Lily means something to you. Lily matters to you. She's everything to you, and she's more than everything to Dean. You know what it's like to lose the person you love, the person you want to have by your side forever – you can't watch your brother go through the same pain. Not again, not ever. So you repeat it, and you'll keep repeating it until you believe it. "Dean, she's going to be okay."
He doesn't respond for a long moment, just stays at the window, Lily's blood smeared across the panes like a macabre Pollock. "Sammy, look," he says, his voice a guttural whisper. His forearms are trembling from the tension of standing upright, and his shoulders are strained so tight you think they might snap in half. "The three of us, that's all we have. And that's all I have." He finally looks at you and there are tears in his eyes and his lip is trembling like a little boy and he looks so lost, so unlike Dean, that you're tempted to pull him into your arms and hold him the way he held you all those years your father left him to raise you. "I feel like I'm barely holdin' it together, man," he whispers and the tears actually fall and this time you do pull him into your arms and hold him tight, hold him up, the way he's always done for you.
You don't know how long you hold him, and when you break apart a doctor is emerging from the trauma room and telling you that they've done as much as they could and that it's touch and go from now on. Dean says nothing, so you thank the doctor and ask if you can see Lily. The doctor's eyes shift from you, to your bloodstained brother, and he smiles at Dean the way you wish your father would have. "Sure," he says. "As soon as we transfer her to the ICU, you can go see her."
You wait with Dean until the doctors tell you it's okay and walk him to her room. Lily is lying in the bed and her skin is so pale that her hair is the only color in the room. Even her lips are a pale shade of near death, and her chest rises and falls with the beeping of the monitors. The sheets are pulled up nearly to her neck, hiding the stitches and bandages holding her together, keeping her alive. You have to look away, because she looks about two steps away from a corpse, and you can't think that way. You refuse to think that way, because you won't survive losing another person you care about. Dean moves with a stealth you don't recognize and slips into the chair next to her bed. He takes her hand in his and traces the lines of her veins with his thumb, like he can pump the blood for her, heal her with just the touch of his skin on hers. He's stopped crying and his face is locked in his usual nonchalant Dean mask, but his shoulders are still wound tight enough to cut glass and you're not sure what to do. You try to think back, to those agonizing days when you lost Jess, and it hurts and stings and makes it hard to breathe, but you do it anyway because you're doing it for your brother. Because you'll do anything for your brother, the way he'll do anything for you.
"Dean, do you need anything?" you ask, but he ignores you, or doesn't hear you, but doesn't respond either way, so you tiptoe out of the room and take care of business. You provide insurance information for the nurse on duty, and you're no longer surprised when the fake name slides off your tongue like it's been yours your entire life, and a story about a gardening accident gone wrong pours naturally from your mouth when the police ask questions. You dig Lily's purse out of the backseat, eyes averted from the blood staining the leather, and pull her cellphone out of the bag of crap.
You don't want to do it, and basing your experience on your own father, don't really think anyone will pick up, but you scroll through the phone book and stop when the cursor lands on "mom." Lily's mother picks up on the first ring, and her voice is worried and breathless because Lily always calls home every Sunday at six to check in and let her mother know she's okay, and it's Wednesday at 3:00 and the first words out of Mimi Darling's mouth are, "Lily? Lily? What's wrong? Are you okay?"
You pause, contemplate hanging up, because this is the worst call of your life, but you let Dean call Jess' parents and break the news, and she was dead, and Lily is still alive, and the least you can do is give her mother the chance to say goodbye.
"No," you start and hear the gasp from the other end of the line. "This is Sam Winchester. I'm a friend of Lily's. I – there's been an accident." You wait for her to say something, but there's just heavy breathing coming through the line. "It's bad, really bad. You should get her as soon as you can." She barely responds, just tells you she'll be there on the next flight, and you curse yourself for breaking the news in the worst way possible, but have to praise yourself a tiny bit because at least you did it.
You're sitting with Dean when Mimi Darling shows up, just watching him from your perch on the other side of the room, and your back hurts and your legs are cramped, but as long as Dean sits there you will too. He needs you, even if he can't say it – you know it, because last November you needed him too.
Mimi is nothing like her daughter. She's short, with dark hair and olive skin, and it's not until you see her up close and note the green flecks in her blue eyes that you see any resemblance to Lily. She looks tired and haggard when she appears in the doorway, and she cries out at the sight of her daughter, and when Dean jumps out of his chair at the sound of her, it's the first time you've seen him move in almost twenty-four hours. She sinks to her knees beside the bed and presses kisses to Lily's hand, and Dean watches and watches and he's still wearing his Dean mask and his shoulders are set with military precision, but inside you know the guilt is eating him alive. You know it because you felt it too.
You expect her to blow up at you or maybe slap Dean, but definitely blame you both for stealing Lily's life, and you get the shock of your life when she pushes herself to her feet and takes each of your hands in hers. She looks at your brother, and smiles the same serene Lily smile you've come to love, "You must be Dean." He manages a nod, and you see her wince through her smile when his fingers tighten around hers. She doesn't protest, and turns to you, looks from your head to your toes, and smiles again. "Lily told me you were taller. You must be Sam." You're still waiting for her to lose it, but she keeps smiling, keeps holding your hands, even though there are tears running down her cheeks. "I should hate you," she whispers and the mask is slowly falling from Dean's face. She glances at her daughter and the machines keeping her alive, and turns back to you and Dean. "I should hate you, but I don't. How can I hate you when Lily loves you so much?" She looks pointedly at you. "When she loves you both so much."
The mask is gone, for both of you, and before the minute is over she has an arm around each of your waists, and you've long stopped caring that your tears are staining the silk of her shirt. The machines beep again, loudly, and Dean is dry-eyed when he turns back to Lily, but his shoulders are trembling and he doesn't seem to be able to let go of Mimi's hand.
---
You spend the next week looking after them, making sure they eat and making sure they sleep, and every few hours, making sure they stretch their legs. You make yourself sleep too, because someone has to look after them, the way Dean looks after you and Lily would look after you if she could, and when you close your eyes you still hear Jess' screams and feel her blood on your skin, and you see Lily pinned to the ceiling and that thing just laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. You wake up shaking and gasping and wishing you could end it all, but you push through because you're the only one left. You look at the broken versions of your brother and Mimi sitting next to Lily's bed, and know someone has to be whole when she opens her eyes. You know she will, because she isn't Jess, she'll never be Jess, and just because Jess died doesn't mean she has to. You won't let history repeat itself, not this time.
At 2:30 on the sixth day, you make Dean get up for half an hour to get some feeling back in his legs, and Mimi asks you to take his seat while he paces in the hallway. You feel weird sitting next to her, your long legs folded awkwardly in the hospital issue chair, like you're taking up too much space, hogging all the air, keeping Lily hooked up to those machines.
"What's on your mind, Sam?" Mimi asks, and her voice is casual, like she's talking about the weather, but you know from the Deanesque slant of her shoulders that inside she's anything but okay.
You wonder if she's for real, asking how you feel, when she knows how you feel. Her daughter is dying on the outside and your brother is dying on the inside, and that's barely half of it. Of course you're not okay. So you lie, an art form you've perfected over the last year. "I'm fine," you insist. "Worried, but fine."
She turns her eyes on you – Lily's eyes – and they're warm and bright and clever in her concerned face. "Talk to me, Sam. You need to talk to someone."
She looks nothing like her daughter, but she sounds so much like her you practically break down on the spot and let it all come pouring out, about your mom and Jess and how you've fallen in love with Lily so completely you can't imagine your life without her. Not in that way, but in the only way that matters, the only way you need. "I –" you start, but you stop in mid-sentence, because there's a chance Mimi Darling's daughter could die and she doesn't need to be afraid of the dark too.
"Lily told me," she assures you. "She told me everything, all about the demons and vampires and things you boys hunt." For the millionth time a Darling woman manages to shock you, and your head snaps up. "You're not the only ones of your kind, you know. There's a reason Lily wears that charm."
You think back to that first afternoon, the Maryland sun glinting off the silver hand around Lily's neck, and the nod of approval Dean sent her way when he realized what it was. The guilt doesn't ease, but at least you understand it. "She knew?" you ask. "All this time, she knew?"
Mimi shakes her head, and a faraway smile crests over her face. "Did she tell you about her father?" You nod, unsure where this story is going, but wanting to hear it to the end. "Before we had her, Daniel and I…we weren't so unlike you Winchesters. Only difference is, we settled down when Lily was born. She didn't lie to you," she assures you. "She never knew. But I made sure she was safe, just in case." She leans over, keeps those eyes trained on you, and you can feel the tension ease out of your body just the tiniest bit. "It's not your fault, Sam."
You close your eyes and look away, because she shouldn't be looking at you right now, not that way. "It is my fault," you whisper. "It's always my fault. My mom, Jess, now Lily…" you can't say the words out loud, so you don't. "It's all because of me."
"We all make your own choices, Sam," she says. "I know my daughter. After she met your brother, a pack of hellhounds couldn't have kept her away."
You want to believe her, you do, you want to believe what she tells you and what Lily told you, but you can't. You can't forgive because you can't forget, because Jess is dead and she's not coming back and when you were nearly ready to move past it Lily is nearly dead too. The monitors beep, once, loudly, and Dean's boots thunder against the floor as he bursts into the room, and Lily opens her eyes.
Her voice sounds like dry leaves and she can barely lift her tongue, but she manages to smile through it all. "Dean," she whispers and he's at her side in half a second, clasping her hand and staring at her, just staring at her, not entirely whole but completely alive.
"Hey, baby," he whispers and he's holding her hand and stepping back so Mimi can press a gentle kiss to her daughter's forehead.
"You scared a lot of people," she says and Lily lets out a strangled laugh. "I love you," she says and you think your brother would say the same thing, and will say the same thing, when he and Lily are finally alone. You also think you should call a doctor, or at least a nurse, make sure Lily's definitely okay, but not before she notices you too.
"Hey, Sammy," she manages to say, and even better, smiles at you. "I came back." If she had the energy, you think she'd wink too. "I always come back."
You drop to your knees, because you want her to hear what you have to say, and you're only a few inches below eye level when you straighten up and look her dead in the eye, finding comfort in the specks of green looking back at you. "I'm sorry," you say, because you could never say it to Jess, and Jess is never coming back but you're sure Lily is going to stay, and you'll say it to her because you couldn't say it to Jess. She looks at you expectantly, and you press on, bite your lip against the pain. "It's not my fault," you whisper and you know Dean is looking at you strangely because he has no idea what you're talking about or why you're doing this now, but you have to say it, because it's been too long and now it's time.
It's time to let go.
---
Crib Notes: The song featured during the trip to the hospital is Spoon's "I Summon You," which is one of my all time favorite songs. Everyone should own their album "Gimme Fiction" – it's incredible.
---
Writers live for feedback – please leave some if you have the time.