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Many, many thanks to Death-Muncher, Anora, carocali, Mellaithwen, Lili Martinez, PissedOffEskimo, Cupido, Kaewi, SilverKitsune1, sugarquill4ron, Annibal, Harrigan, PadfootObsessed329, Faye Dartmouth, mtee1958, roxy071288, MistyEyes, Dean's Girl, Onari, sasha2002 and the Cat's Whiskers for reviewing chapter 6. I am overwhelmed by all your kindness. I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint!
----
"We'll keep looking," Jim assured him, getting up from the table. "Oh, and Dean?"
"Yeah," Dean said, trying to rub the gritty feeling away from his eyes.
"Is there anything else you're not telling me?"
Dean hesitated. My brother's an alcoholic. But it's OK, I'm fixing it. I'm really freakin great at fixing things, you've noticed that, right? "No."
"OK," Jim said, and Dean wondered whether he should have told him.
He would have wondered it again when he entered the bedroom to find Sam convulsing on the floor, but he was too terrified to think.
But for the Grace, Chapter 7
Jolt.
Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.
Dean was on his knees next to Sam, trying to immobilise him, stop his limbs from thrashing. He didn't know how he had got there. He didn't really know anything, because his brain seemed to have turned into an echoing void rushing with fear, and reality seemed to be coming and going in these jerky, jolting bursts of sound and images that didn't connect, like stop-motion photography or whatever.
Jolt.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
And wasn't that just typical of his brain, to collapse into uselessness just when Dean needed it most? On the other hand, his body seemed to be doing pretty well without it, and the single part of his consciousness that seemed to be entirely unaffected by the whole situation (but was just as useless as the rest of his brain, seeing as all it seemed to be doing was going off on mental tangents that really weren't doing anyone any good) noted that he was really fucking glad that Jim had moved all the furniture to the edges of the room, because Sam's flailing body was pretty much taking up the entire floor space, and at least this way it was relatively easy to stop him from hurting himself on anything.
Jolt.
Goddamn running out of decent curse-words.
He must have yelled something, though he didn't remember doing it, because Jim was behind him suddenly, asking him a question which Dean couldn't hear through the roaring sound in his ears, and couldn't answer anyway because the part of his mind that controlled his lips and tongue seemed to be one of the bits that had just been erased, and he wondered vaguely if all of these mental faculties that he remembered having once would ever come back.
Why the hell don't I just stop rambling on and do something?
Jolt.
Then Sam had stilled, well, kind of stilled, he was still shaking pretty hard but it wasn't the crazy jerking of a moment earlier, the kind that made him look like some kid had snuck into the puppet-master's office and decided to mess with the strings. He blinked up at Dean, his eyes kind of unfocussed. A blood vessel had burst in one of them.
"I'm calling an ambulance," said Jim, and Dean realised he could hear again, which was definitely going to come in handy in the future. A second later, he noticed that Sam's hand had shot out past him and grabbed Jim's wrist, and despite the pathetic kitten-weakness he'd been displaying earlier, and the fact that he'd just had a freakin seizure for Christ's sake, his grip was obviously strong enough to stop Jim from leaving the room.
"No hospital," he said hoarsely.
"Sam..." Dean started, because he freakin hated hospitals but he wasn't too goddamn keen on Sam's head exploding either.
"No," Sam said. "No hospital."
Sam's eyelids slipped half-closed, his teeth chattering. Jim put his hand on Dean's shoulder and said does this always happen?
For a moment, Dean couldn't understand what he meant. Then he realised Jim thought that this was a part of the psychic thing. And oh Jesus Christ, thank God it's not. But he had to tell Jim. Should have told him before.
"He's, uh..." Dean cleared his throat. "He's going cold turkey."
He felt Jim tense behind him. "Cold turkey from what?"
Dean looked down. Sam's eyes were still half-open, but he didn't seem to be paying attention to what was going on around him. "Booze," he said. My little brother's a drunk. Guess Dad did leave him something other than the Impala.
Jim cursed softly behind him, and that was definitely not the priest voice. "How long?" he asked.
"Uh..." Dean thought about it, but the anxiety in Jim's voice was booking his own fear on a freakin comback tour. When had Sam last had any alcohol? Yesterday? Tequila on his breath... vodka in his tea... Sam's shaking started to get worse, and that was pretty much all that was required to make Dean's brain shut down again. Goddamn useless brain.
Jolt.
Jim had said something and left the room, and Dean didn't understand what he said, but he caught the urgency in his tone, even though it wasn't really freakin necessary to communicate urgency to Dean any more because Sam's body suddenly stiffened and started to jerk again and that was pretty much like the most urgent urgency that ever urged (OK, so the part of Dean's mind that still seemed to keep working even in... uh... urgent situations was pretty much totally lame). Dean didn't know what the hell to do, didn't know what was going on, but he grabbed Sam's arms by the inside of his elbows and tried to hold him down, covering Sam's body with his as much as he could and getting a good few bruises in the process from thrashing limbs. It was kind of like being in a bar fight on Sam's side. It was kind of like his entire life over the last few days.
Jolt.
Jim was back in the room, and Sam's convulsing was downgrading to twitching, and Dean was pretty sure that he was going to need to throw up pretty soon, which would be two for two with Winchesters and vomit that day. Now all they needed to do was feed Jim some bad shellfish and they'd have a hat-trick. Reality jolted again, then Jim was pulling him off Sam and lifting Sam's head, tipping a cup against his lips. Sam swallowed convulsively and sort of choked, but Jim made a nonsensical soothing noise and Sam drank some more. Dean just blinked and stared, not even trying to work out what was going on. He felt like he hadn't slept in ten years.
When the cup was empty, Jim turned and said help me, would you? and Dean shuffled forward on his ass (because dignity was pretty much overrated when your sort-of brother had just had two seizures in front of you) and held Sam's head up, and then Jim was handing him the cup and it was full again, full of something dark and purple-red, and Dean put it to Sam's lips and before he registered the oaky smell.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered, and really, he'd intended to yell, but it seemed like his freakin vocal chords were about as useful as the rest of his body right now, and making any noise at all seemed to take more effort than lifting a freakin ten-ton truck with his bare hands (not that he actually knew how much effort that would take, but he figured it was probably pretty much a lot). "You've got to be shitting me. You're giving him wine?" He almost threw the cup across the room, but it turned out that whole ten-ton truck thing applied to his arms as well.
"Dean," Jim said, taking the cup from him but not trying to make Sam drink, which was good because if he had Dean might have had to find out what it was like to punch a priest, and he was fairly sure that was pretty much a one-way ticket to hell. "Alcohol's not like other drugs. You can't just stop using it. It can be fatal."
Jolt.
Fatal.
Jim hadn't stopped talking, though. "It unbalances your brain chemistry. They have drugs to help with detoxing, but for the time being we have to give Sam something to keep him stable until we can get him some help. You can't let him do this again, Dean."
Fatal. Let him.
Dean felt his fists clench hard under Sam's body, and it hurt where his nails dug into his skin, but he figured he pretty much deserved that. Let Sam do it. Yeah, that was a joke. He hadn't let Sam do anything, he had made him do it, cut him off without even doing any research on the subject, and he had almost managed to freakin kill his little brother. Dean was beginning to think that maybe he should just do the opposite of whatever he decided from now on, because goddamn if every single decision he had made in the last few days hadn't freakin blown up in his face. Oh yeah, he was the go-to guy for bad choices all right.
Jim was feeding Sam the wine again, and Sam was sort of semi-conscious now, his eyelids hanging heavy, but he wasn't protesting. Well, that made sense. The little bastard was getting what he'd been begging for all day, and Dean was helping to give it to him. And wasn't that just a kick in the head, because yesterday Dean had sworn that he wasn't ever letting his brother near alcohol again, and today he was practically shoving it down his throat.
Oh yeah, Dean was all about keeping his promises.
But Sam was alive, Sam was breathing and swallowing and sort of conscious, and his eyes weren't rolling in his head the way they had been moments before. And if it took all the booze in the world to do that, then Dean would go and knock over a liquor store right now.
When the hell did his life get so completely screwed up?
After Sam had managed to swallow two and a half cups of wine, Jim was satisfied. "Dean, we need to talk," he said softly. "Outside."
Dean shook his head. He wasn't ready, not yet, not for this. "Just give me a little while, OK, Jim? I want to make sure he's OK."
Jim frowned, but nodded and left the room. Dean just sat, watching Sam, who was kind of staring groggily at the ceiling like – well, kind of like someone who'd just had two seizures and half a bottle of wine. The room was quiet as the freakin grave, and Dean could hear Sam's ragged breathing (or maybe it was his own, who the hell could freakin tell any more?).
"Christ, Sam," Dean muttered after a while. "You scared the crap out of me."
He hadn't really expected Sam to answer, thought he was still pretty much out of it, but Sam turned his head a bit and coughed, and said, "I wasn't exactly having an awesome time myself."
Dean snorted. "Yeah, well, don't do it again, you hear?"
"Whatever," Sam muttered. He stared at the ceiling for a bit more, then said, "What'd Jim give me, anyway?"
Dean reached over for the bottle, examining the label and remembering that he'd locked all the booze in the house into the trunk of the car, then grinned. "Communion wine," he said.
Sam started laughing, a rough, sandpapery sound sure, but goddammit, it was an actual real laugh, showing up at maybe the most inappropriate time ever but sounding damn good to Dean all the same. "Jesus saves, right?"
----
Sam fell asleep soon after, his shaking back down to trembling now, and Dean awkwardly did his best to tuck him into the sleeping bag, then sighed. He was going to have face Jim eventually. That was going to suck. Jim's voice came back to him, just repeating one word over and over. Fatal. Fatal. Fatal.
Oh, for Christ's sake Jim, shut up.
Jim was reading when Dean entered the kitchen, and he looked up when Dean came in and composed his features. Damn, there was a priest face to go with the priest voice. Now Dean knew he was in deep shit.
"How is he?"
Dean shrugged. "Sleeping." Could have died.
Jim looked him up and down carefully, and Dean couldn't be bothered to try and look like anything he wasn't any more. He was a worn-out twenty-six year old who'd been hunting evil half his life and somehow had managed to get stuck in a broken reality while both his actual brother and his brother's freaky alternate counterpart (who was also his brother, kind of) needed help he couldn't provide. He felt like crap. And he was pretty sure he looked it, too.
Jim clearly thought so. "I'd offer you a drink, but I can't seem to find any of my whisky," he said.
Dean smirked slightly at that. "It's in the trunk of my... of Sam's car." He tossed Jim the keys and flopped down at the table.
There was a stack of leaflets sitting there on the scratched wood, colourful and shiny like goddamn candy or whatever, and Dean glanced at the top one. It had a picture of a woman smiling like she'd just won the lottery or fucked Brad Pitt or something, and a caption that read Oakridge Clinic. We're here to help you through.
Dean growled, and started going through the pile. Three different rehab clinics, all with pictures of people who looked like they'd just been given some really good drugs rather than come off them. It was like freakin Stepford Wives or something. Dean was pretty sure he'd rather go in those places reciting Latin and throwing salt than send Sam in there alone.
The bottom two leaflets were different. No crazy grinning zombies, for one thing. The first read Living with alcoholism, and the second just said Guide to Delirium Tremens. Dean thought about it for a minute, then pocketed the first. The second he opened, thinking vaguely that the Latin term on the front might mean that it was something to do with hunting (and really, that was a pretty goddamn genius thing to think, because since when had hunters ever produced shiny leaflets, with or without zombie chicks on them? He could see it now: Living with Poltergeists. Ten steps to surviving demonic possession. Lycanthropy: a self-help guide.)
Anyway, the leaflet turned out not to be about hunting after all (no big surprise there, right?), and as Dean read down the symptoms it listed and recognised more and more of them, he began to feel pretty fucking terrible (well, he had felt pretty fucking terrible already, but hey, there was always further to fall, right?). At the bottom of the list, under seizures and psychosis, was the word death.
Dean kind of stared at that word, looking so short and innocent next to all the other fancy medical terms, and willed it to turn into something else. But it didn't, just seemed to stare back at him from the page, like it was goddamn accusing him of something, and then Jim came back carrying a bottle of whisky and Dean shoved the leaflet in his pocket and pretended to be examining his fingernails.
"I talked to Bobby," Jim said once they both had a glass in front of them and he was settled at the table. "He said it sounds like you could be being affected by a souped-up version of a spell medieval witches used to visit the devil."
Dean stared. "Uh, I hate to break it to you, Jim, but, OK, Blue Earth ain't exactly Vegas, but it ain't hell either."
Jim snorted into his whisky. "It's a transfer spell, Dean. Bobby's never heard about it being used to transfer to a whole different reality rather than just onto another plane, but he says he doesn't see why not, if the caster had enough power."
Dean thought about this. Almost all his life he'd been aware of the supernatural, of there being places – other planes or whatever – that humans couldn't see or touch, where everything was probably freaky and fucked up and kind of like being in Salt Lake City on a bad day. That was not a problem. On the other hand, this whole alternate reality thing sounded like some hokey plot from a bad sci-fi movie, and that was more difficult to believe, because come on, OK, heaven and hell and all that crap was fine, but freakin string theory and quantum physics? Could those guys be any less credible?
And yet, here he was, and Sam was having visions about... uh... Sam, and there was really no other explanation that even made that amount of sense. So Dean guessed he was pretty much resigned to being stuck in a freakin low-rent version of Star Wars.
And then there was the witchcraft thing. Dean freakin hated witchcraft. Spells and mumbo-jumbo and posers dressed up in black like they invented the goddamn colour, plus all that goddamn Harry Potter shit. Seriously. Harry Potter and Star Wars put together? Someone upstairs was definitely having some fun at Dean's expense.
"So how do we break it?"
"We can't," Jim said, and when Dean stared at him in horror he said, "the spell's already over, its influence has dissipated. We need to cast another one to get you back where you belong."
Well, that's just freakin great. Just put me in a dress and call me Dumbledore. "So, know any decent witches?"
"Anyone can do the spell, Dean," Jim said. "It's pretty simple, really. Seven herbs, fat of a goat, blood of a bat, the usual stuff. But we need the power, and we need to be very careful, because you could wind up anywhere if we don't do it right."
Dean stared. "Seriously? A bat? That's gross."
Jim sighed. "We also need a way to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said, ignoring Dean's remark, and really, it was pretty much exactly like having a conversation with the other Jim. "There's no point sending you back if whoever sent you here in the first place is just going to do it again. We need you to be protected."
Dean sat back and took a gulp of whisky. "OK, we need power and we need some freaky mojo to make me immune to Harry and his buddies," he said. "Care to tell me where we're going to get it?"
Jim didn't look the slightest bit phased by his reference, and Dean had a sudden vision of the old priest reading kids' books under the blankets at night when no-one was watching. "I don't know yet, but give me a while to research and I hope I'll have an answer for you."
"OK," Dean said, getting up and stretching out his shoulders. Man, he felt crappy. "You got the internet?"
"Sit down," said Jim quietly. "We're not done talking."
Why is nobody ever freakin done talking in this freakin reality? Dean swallowed a retort and sat again. He was pretty sure he knew what this was going to be about.
"You need to decide what to do about Sam," said Jim. He gestured at the leaflets. "There are some good clinics in Minnesota."
"Neither of us has the money for that," Dean said, shifting uncomfortably. He wasn't about to mention that he could scam the cash pretty easily. Those goddamn zombies were still grinning at him from the leaflets.
"I could help you out, get you special rates," Jim said, and he was using the priest voice again, goddamn, couldn't he just stop with that shit? "If Sam wants to get clean, he needs help to do it."
If Sam wants to get clean. And what if he didn't? What if it was just Dean who wanted Sam to get clean, because Sam didn't seem to give two goddamn shits about his life, and that freaked Dean out more than any number of monsters under the bed?
Jim misinterpreted his silence. "It would only have to be for a month or so. Then he could go into outpatient care."
And that made Dean's mind up. A month. In a month, Dean would be gone, back to his own dimension or whatever, and Sam would come out of the clinic and he would have no-one. And Dean was pretty sure he knew exactly what the first thing Sam would do then would be.
"No," he said, more harshly than he'd intended to, but it got the message across.
"Dean," Jim started, but Dean wasn't about to have this argument, not now, not when he felt like he'd been hit by a freakin emotional truck today.
"No, Jim," he said firmly. "Sam's my family. He's not like other people, and they can't help him in there. He's coming with me."
Jim watched him for a moment (again with the watching, Jesus), and then sighed. "If you take him to the hospital, they're going to want him in a programme before they prescribe him detox drugs. If you don't get him the drugs, you'll have to let him drink enough to keep his brain chemistry stable."
And that would have sounded pretty much like the worst idea ever to Dean, except that the idea of sending his unbelievably emo brother off to rehab with a bunch of crazy zombie strangers and then never seeing him again had already taken that prize, so he just nodded and said again, "So, you got the internet?"
Jim shook his head. "I think you need to get some rest, Dean."
And Dean was not about to argue with that.
----
The next morning, Dean was up early, feeling not exactly rested, but not like he'd just climbed out of a goddamn shallow grave any more, either. Jim looked like he'd been up all night, but he had good news. Kinda.
"Objects of power are few and far between on this side of the Atlantic, Dean," he said, and Dean settled down for a lecture and tried to look like he was listening. He'd long since perfected the art of thinking about other stuff (cars, girls, chick-flicks – no, wait) while letting his brain pick out the salient points of whatever geeky crap Sam was blathering on about. This time he kind of heard private collection and ancient artefact and Spokane, and then Jim stopped talking and looked at him expectantly, and Dean grinned and said
"OK, you got a picture of this thing?" like he'd been all ears the whole time.
Jim showed him the picture, and Dean examined it carefully, along with the reports of the break-in several months earlier that Jim had pulled off the web. The object – Dean wasn't even sure what it was, it was kind of squat and stubby and looked maybe like a novelty cell-phone holder or something, though Jim said it was nearly a thousand years old so Dean supposed that probably wasn't what it had originally been meant to be – didn't look like much.
"So that's gonna send me back, huh?" Dean said doubtfully. Doesn't look like it could send anything, except maybe a freakin text message.
"Let's hope so," said Jim, and frankly, Dean had been hoping for something a little more reassuring than that, but right now he would take what he could get. Two days of sitting around reading books by people who didn't know how to write written for people who didn't know how to read (or at least read decent stuff, like comics and skin mags) was beginning to feel like a life sentence, and he was more than happy to hit the road.
Time to wake Sam.
----
Sam groaned and muttered something as Dean prodded him in the shoulder, finally rolling over and swatting the hand away.
"Dude, what is your problem," he growled.
"Rise and shine, princess," Dean said. "We got stuff to do."
"We do?" Sam sat up, wincing slightly, and looked suspicious. "What stuff?"
"Gotta see a man about some magic beans," Dean said, handing him a cup. Sam sniffed it and looked at him in surprise. "Yeah, and that's all you're getting, so you better enjoy it while you can," Dean noted, and tried not to feel nauseous at giving his brother wine in the morning like it was freakin breakfast juice.
Sam frowned, but took a sip anyway. "Magic beans," he said slowly.
"Yeah," said Dean. "Get dressed. We're hitting the road in fifteen."
"Where are we going?" Sam asked as Dean left the room, because he really did not want to watch his brother drink that goddamn wine, blessed by freakin Jesus or no.
"Washington state," Dean said, and when Sam gaped he grinned. "Magic beans grow best in the Pacific North-West," he said, like it was some goddamn advertising jingle or something, and Sam rolled his eyes, and for some reason that made Dean feel better.
----
They were about an hour west of Blue Earth when Dean pulled over next to a grocery store in the middle of nowhere. He figured Sam couldn't exactly find a bar out here. "Stay in the car," he said, and pocketed the keys. Sam gave him an exasperated look, and Dean knew that he was still smarting over not being allowed to drive. But it's my freakin car, he had yelled, and Dean had been uncomfortably reminded of his own annoyance a few days earlier, but that hadn't increased his sympathy one bit. Shoulda thought of that before you decided that 'drunk' was a good look this season, shouldn't ya?
And eventually, Sam had had to agree, because his options were going with Dean or going to the hospital, and Sam had already made it pretty damn clear that he would rather kiss a freakin rawhead than take door number two, which Dean could kind of understand, because God knew hospitals were pretty much below wendigo-lairs and open graves on his list of places he didn't want to be, but kind of couldn't, because Sam was so freakin adamant, and Dean didn't know what it was that had made his brother so frightened of playing doctor. Well, whatever, Dean was driving anyway, and Sam was going to like it or shut the hell up about it.
Sam looked up from the book he was reading when Dean came back and dumped a six-pack in the trunk. "Beer?" he asked.
"Damn straight," said Dean. "You're not getting any of that hard liquor shit any more. And we're not going to any more bars, you hear? This face is too pretty to get messed up with a pool cue."
Sam was watching him. "Uh," he said, sounding kind of confused. "I thought... I mean, what about..."
Dena sighed. They hadn't really talked yet, mainly because Dean had a headache and, much as he was glad to be on the road and doing something again, discussing his brother's alcoholism and the freakin fucked up way he was planning on dealing with it was just not something he was into right now. "Look," he said. "Jim says you gotta have some, otherwise your brain's gonna go haywire."
Sam frowned.
"Yeah, I know," Dean snorted. "I told him your brain was pretty much a lost cause, but, you know, priests." He shrugged and changed the subject. "Whatcha readin, geek boy?"
Sam shifted in his seat. "Do you always talk to me like this?"
"Hell, no," Dean said, starting the car. "Sometimes I'm rude."
Sam's lips twitched, and he looked like he was fighting a smile. Dean grinned, pulling out of the parking lot, and Sam sort of snorted and hid his mouth in his hand.
"So, you gonna answer the question or what?"
Sam glanced down at the book in his lap, face suddenly serious. "You said the thing that killed my mom and dad, and... you said it was..."
"A demon," said Dean taking pity on Sam's stuttering and to be honest, not really wanting him to rehash the whole thing. "Yeah. We don't know much about it yet."
Sam shrugged. "It's a book about them. Demons. I wanted to know."
Dean's eyes narrowed. "Did Jim give that to you?" The book looked kind of old, and Dean knew just how protective Jim was of his library.
Sam shrugged. "I borrowed it. I'll give it back."
Right. Dean added light fingers to the list of this Sam's traits that made him kind of uncomfortable. The list was getting pretty long. Maybe he should start writing this shit down.
Maybe he should just salt and burn the freakin list and pretend that this Sam wasn't any different from the real one.
"Hey," said Sam, frowning at the page in front of him, "can we stop at a book store at the next town we come to?"
Dean glanced carefully over. "You gonna buy something or rip it off?"
Sam looked up, his confused frown darkening with realisation. "I said I would give it back. God, Dean, you're not exactly entitled to the moral high ground where breaking the law's concerned."
That's right, I never get the moral high ground because you're always freakin stomping all over it, Dean thought, but really that was kind of unfair to this Sam, since it wasn't him that Dean was thinking of. "Forget I said anything."
But when they stopped at the bookstore, Dean watched Sam the whole time, and it wasn't just because he was afraid that Sam would make a break for the nearest bar.
----
Sam bought a Latin dictionary and a grammar book, and was occupied for the rest of the day, muttering to himself and scribbling occasional notes in the margins. Dean managed to find a radio station that played the classics and turned it up loud. When Sam's hands started trembling ever so slightly at around three, Dean let him have a beer. They drove, and it was almost like home.
Dean figured it would take them twenty-four hours or so to drive to Spokane, and he was pretty happy to just go on straight through the night, because he was feeling kind of antsy about Sam's vision from the day before. Of course, when push came to shove and Sam doubled over on the forecourt of a gas station at eight-thirty, clutching his head and seeing things that weren't there, it didn't take long for Dean to decide that they needed a motel, now. The concerned glances of the other customers as he asked the clerk where he could find one didn't bother Dean, but the nagging worry at the back of his mind that helping this Sam could cost his own Sam did, and he stood for a moment, torn, before Sam lifted his face and Dean saw the pain and exhaustion there and hoped, hoped that his Sam was safe for the moment.
"What did you see?" he asked, trying to keep his voice low for the sake of Sam's head as they pulled out.
"Nothing," said Sam.
Oh, Dean was so not in the mood for this. "Don't freakin lie to me, Sam. You saw something yesterday. Was it the same?"
"I don't know," Sam muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Maybe I didn't really see anything yesterday."
Dean cursed, spotting the motel the clerk had mentioned and steering towards it. "For fuck's sake, Sam. You told me you saw my brother."
"I could have been delirious," Sam said mutinously.
"Jesus!" Dean said, ramming on the brake as they hit the motel parking lot and turning to stare at Sam, all attempts at quiet forgotten. "Sam, don't freakin lie to me about this, so help me, this is my goddamn brother."
A muscle tightened in Sam's jaw. "Are you gonna check in, or what?"
"Fuck," growled Dean, but he got out of the car and headed for the reception, and it was only when he heard the Impala's engine turn over that he realised he'd left the keys in the ignition, and of course by then it was too late, and Dean was left standing on a motel forecourt with no car and no Sam.
And all he could think was back to fucking square one.
But it wasn't the same this time, because after three hours of waiting and tearing his hair out and swearing that this time, he was seriously going to kick Sam's ass, Sam appeared at the door of the room he had reluctantly booked with blood running down his face and his shirt-front ripped, stinking of smoke and with a look on his face like he was five years old. And he looked at Dean and the angry words died on Dean's lips, and he just said, what? What is it, Sam?
And Sam staggered into the room and collapsed on the bed with his head in his hands and said, I came with you because I thought they would send me back. Because I thought I was going crazy.
Dean stared. This conversation was only two lines old, and already he was beginning to feel out of his depth. "Sam..." he started, but the look Sam gave him made him stutter to a halt.
"They told me I was," Sam said, and sort of snorted. "They told me I was, and I believed them. And now I don't know who to believe."
Dean crouched down so he could look up into Sam's face. His brother's hands were clenched so hard in his lap that the knuckles were white. "Who told you, Sam?" he said carefully, still not sure what Sam was talking about, but sure it was important.
"The doctors," Sam said. "They didn't believe me."
"What didn't they believe?" Dean asked, feeling the sense of unease in his stomach start to grow.
Sam looked lost. "That I saw my father die," he whispered. "That I watched him burn on the ceiling."