The Devil You Know

Chapter Thirteen

Far enough out of town, Sam noticed a mud track leading off the road and swung the wheel recklessly between his hands, sending the Impala into a lurching turn. Lucy bit back a reproach, clinging tightly to Dean in the back seat, trying to cushion him from the uneven movement of the car along the rough track. He murmured a vague protest, barely conscious of his situation. Sam stamped on the brakes, and the car halted raggedly. Lucy glared at the back of Sam's head.

Sam was already out of the car, slamming the door behind him, harder than necessary. Lucy frowned, easing herself from under Dean's limp shoulders and slipping out.

'Sam… I don't know about this. We can't do a blood transfusion on the side of the road…'

'We're going to have to,' he replied flatly. That stubborn sound was back in his voice, that sound she'd heard several times that night, which wouldn't take any argument.

Lucy braced herself. It would be easier to let him have his way, but then - she'd never met men as foolhardy as the Winchesters: she was powerfully convinced that they needed her to keep them from charging, guns blazing, into the jaws of death. Somebody has to be the voice of reason, God knows.

She blinked, hard, not admitting to herself or to Sam that there were tears in her eyes. 'Look at him, Sam…' she choked forcefully. He followed her look, into the open car door. Dean's impassive face, tilted back against the seat. Pale as paper; pale as death. She sighed, shakily, and went on, in a smaller voice. 'He needs a hospital…'

'Why are you saying this now?' he demanded testily. 'This was your idea.' His eyes were wide, accusing. She tried to avoid his glare, but it followed her, painfully intense.

'I just…' She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, looking up at him open eyed through her lashes. She blinked, looked away, scrubbed a shaking hand through her tousled hair, and swung her eyes back to face him. 'You're scaring me.'

He gave her a look which was confused and angry together. Then he sighed, and the sound was raw and strange in his tense throat. 'Look, we need to hurry…'

'I just don't think this is the best way… you're both so ready to… to pour your blood into the other one's arm, so much that you won't - you won't even notice when you start to bleed to death!'

'Lucy, he needs blood,' Sam snapped, rounding on her. He didn't have time for this…

'It's a fucking metaphor!' she snarled back, shocking herself. Sam, too, was nonplussed for a few seconds.

They glared at each other, breathing heavily. Such a conversation seemed out of place in the leaf-dappled sunlight. Sam took a shaky breath, and spoke quietly. 'He'd kill me if I took him to a hospital… and we're not all that popular with the feds, so if I can avoid it, I will. I'm not going to be reckless, alright? But he needs blood, and I can give him that… I can't lose him…' he admitted. He turned apologetic eyes to her.

She nodded, tense-faced. 'I know,' she replied softly, chewing her fingers nervously, avoiding his gaze.

'Help me?' he appealed quietly, tilting her chin to face him with his hand.

She nodded. 'Yes… yes, of course… sorry… I'm just… not, not used to this sort of…'

'Lucy,' he said, attempting a reconciliatory smile, 'nobody's used to this sort of situation.'

She half smiled back, making a noise between a sigh and a weary laugh. 'Not even you?' she asked. 'Sam, what kind of people keep equipment for blood transfusions in their car?' she said, rhetorically.

Sam shrugged, his lips twisting. 'Dean keeps everything in his car.'

She nodded wearily. 'Alright… well, let's… let's save a life.'

They unpacked the first aid kit onto the ground, including the plastic tube and hollow needle which Lucy had been surprised to find there. Sam took his brother by the shoulders and pulled him backwards out of the car while Lucy tried to support Dean's limp body. As they lowered him unevenly onto the ground, Dean's breath caught awkwardly in his throat, and his eyelids contracted sharply. Sam gritted his teeth but said nothing: he hated it when his brother seemed so fragile.

A sound between a whimper and a wheeze rumbled in Dean's throat, and he blinked his eyes open; faded green slits between crusted eyelids. Sam and Lucy exchanged looks. They hadn't counted on his waking up just yet.

'Dean?' Sam muttered, hunching over his brother's prone form. 'You with us?'

'Uh…,' Dean tried, coughing harshly, his face tense and screwed up against the pain brought on by his body's instinctive contraction. 'Yeah,' he whispered, letting his eyes slip closed again in exhaustion. His lashes flickered again, eyebrows drawing together in a frown at the spiky green stalks which brushed his face and prickled his back. 'Dude, I think you're taking… the phrase "field hospital"… a little too literally.'

Sam quirked an eyebrow sheepishly. 'Best I could do at short notice…'

Dean snorted; the derisive laugh turning swiftly into a wet cough and a wince.

Sam chewed his lip, suddenly feeling helpless and childlike. 'Um… I'm going to give you some blood, okay?'

A line appeared between Dean's eyebrows. 'Sam…' he breathed, choking as he tried to articulate his objection.

'Shut up, man. You need it, alright? I got more than I can use anyway…'

Lucy gave him a look, but he couldn't read her expression. She held up the needle. 'Who do I connect first?' she asked, softly, as though hoping Dean couldn't hear her. 'You're the expert.'

'I don't think it matters…' Sam replied, uncertainly. Sure, he'd done this before, but… usually with Dean or his dad to instruct him, and they didn't usually give reasons for their instructions. He hoped it didn't matter. 'Connect me first…' he suggested.

Dean tried to lift his head, managing a few inches before it fell back against the dusty ground. He grunted in frustration, unable to see what Lucy was doing. Sam laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

Lucy was amazed at the steadiness of her own hands. She pressed the needle carefully against Sam's forearm, hoping that the tracery she could see was veins and not – well, ink - and pushed the needle in. Sam winced, but nodded in satisfaction. It looked about right.

'You do know I'm not a doctor, right? All I have is high school biology, and I wasn't listening for most of that,' Lucy muttered, frowning. 'This could so easily go really, really wrong…'

Sam met her eyes. 'You're doing great,' he told her, 'honestly.'

She sighed, and turned to Dean. He frowned when she took his arm into her lap, twisting his neck again, trying to see what she was doing. The squeezing of the needle was barely perceptible compared to the sickly burning in his stomach and the persistent throbbing of his arm, or the crushing ache of his ribs. He winced anyway, murmuring something unintelligible.

Lucy chewed her lip, connecting the plastic tube onto the two needles. Sam fisted and relaxed his hand rhythmically, pulling blood into his arm to fuel the movement. Lucy watched the crimson liquid's slow progress along the tube, transfixed. It was a beautiful colour, it really was: if you disregarded what it was, what it represented… it was beautiful. Nothing else was quite so living, or quite so red.

Dean shifted weakly when the blood seeped into his arm. It hurt, displacing the minimal blood which was already there like the knife, hours ago, had displaced his blood, all over the friggin' town. It felt like an inoculation: he remembered having BCG vaccination jabbed into his arm aged fourteen, and how angry he'd been when he'd reacted and passed out while Sam had been fine. He wondered if Sam remembered.

'How much does he need?' Lucy asked, tearing her eyes away from the scarlet tube. Sam blinked, looking up at her as though he, too, had been temporarily detached from reality.

'I, uh… don't know. Probably more than I can safely give him. But if I give him enough for him to start healing himself… he should be alright.'

Lucy nodded mutely. 'How will we know...?' she murmured, her forehead creasing.

Sam chewed his lip. 'Maybe he'll look… better.' He could hardly look worse. Even after Lucy had cleaned and re-stitched, re-bandaged the wound in Dean's stomach, it looked ugly, the white gauze stained with traces of red, surrounded by the dark, saturated, torn edges of his clothes. Dean's face, again red-speckled, was so white it was near grey, but somehow young-looking and vulnerable, tilted back against the ground, eyes closed, damp lashes merged into spikes and resting against his white cheeks. Under the skin of his forearm, though, a blush of colour seemed to be forming, spreading extremely slowly up his arm. Lucy pressed two fingers against the soft skin below his jaw bone and looked up at Sam.

'His pulse seems a little stronger… maybe,' she said, doubtfully.

Sam shifted carefully closer, anxious not to jostle the needle in his arm.

'Dean?' he asked again, leaning over his brother. 'Still awake?'

Dean frowned and shifted slightly emitting a muffled grunt from his throat. 'Not sure,' he muttered.

'Feeling any better?'

No, said Dean's head, but his lips said 'Hmm,' and curved into a forced smile. If Sam hadn't been hoping so hard for such a response, he should have seen right through it. Dean wished his brother would stop studying his face for any hint that he was improving. It hurt to keep his face smooth. He wondered whether there'd be a good time to remind Sam about his fractured - broken? – ribs. Every breath seemed to aggravate them worse than the previous one. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep up this breathing; it was draining him of every spark of energy he had left. Sam's eagle stare caught his wince.

'Lucy, can you check for painkillers in the first aid box…? I should have thought of that before.'

Lucy nodded and stood, rattling the plastic box loudly as she sought the drugs, and throwing the small bottle to Sam, who caught it neatly with his free hand. Searching the car, Lucy came up with a half-empty water bottle and brought it over. Moving behind his brother, Sam took hold of Dean's shoulders and lifted them so that Dean could take the pills. At the movement, though, Dean gasped, rolling convulsively out of Sam's grip, both arms cradling his ribs. The needle tore out of his arm, dislodged by the violent movement.

Sam jerked back in surprise, staring at Dean's curled form. Lucy exchanged glances with him, confused. Realisation sunk in, slowly. He remembered the sickening crunch when Marianne had thrown Dean against the headstone. He'd forgotten it, in the light of later events. He cursed himself for his thoughtlessness.

'Shit… he's cracked his ribs. I forgot.'

Lucy grimaced sympathetically; looking on helplessly as Sam's gaze swung desperately back to his brother, guilt and horror shining vividly in his eyes. Sam crawled over to Dean's curled form, leaning over him to study the tight line of his compressed lips and his screwed up eyes.

'Dean?' Sam asked, in a strange, high-pitched whisper.

Dean grunted breathlessly, not opening his eyes. 'Hurts, Sammy,' he grated out. The admission cut to Sam's core: they were words Dean just didn't say, no matter how true they became. He chewed his fingers, face twisted in anguish.

'Sorry… I'm so sorry,' he murmured awkwardly.

Dean's head shook very slightly, his tense expression unchanged. 'Not… your fault…'

Sam nodded his head absently, not really hearing. 'Those painkillers still sounding good?' he asked softly, muted guilt still echoing in his voice.

Dean grunted, and rolled laboriously onto his back, nodding. Sam pulled his brother carefully into his lap and propped him up against his own body, taking the nervously proffered water bottle from Lucy's hands. Dean struggled to swallow, but choked down the painkillers eventually, drooping exhausted against his brother.

Sam repaired the transfusion apparatus before attempting to wrap the injured ribs with Lucy's help. It was a slow task, and a painful one. Sam was plagued throughout with doubts, worries, nagging conscience-voices which speculated unhelpfully about the consequences of Dean not seeing a qualified doctor: What if he died, Sam, because you couldn't get him the care he needed? Sam resolutely ignored it, but the thought terrified him.

Over an hour later, Dean had fallen unconscious, but seemed to be looking a little better. Lucy studied Sam, and took in the heavy shadows under his eyes. She reached determinedly for the needle in his arm, but he pulled it away from her.

'What are you doing?'

'You've given him enough, Sam.'

Sam opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again. Resurrecting dead arguments wouldn't help anything. 'He doesn't seem much better,' he objected quietly.

'We've done everything we can. If he can survive, he will,' she said slowly, carefully choosing each word before she used it. 'He's strong.'

'I can't-,'

'Lose him? I know. And he can't lose you. So he'll hold on.' She reached out again, and reluctantly, he held still for her to retract the needle with remarkably steady fingers.

Sam ran a hand nervously through his hair, weary and desperate and feeling painfully helpless. He wasn't sure whether he was helping Lucy, now, or she was helping him. He supposed it didn't matter; they could all guide one another through this morning's reparations, as long as all three of them could get through it alive. Not for the first time, a surreal feeling washed over him: this sun-touched grass seemed a strange place for blood. In the scene before him, life and death were uncomfortably juxtaposed, and now he could do nothing about it, only wait.

0000000000000000000000000000

Hmm… that, ladies (and gentleman, if I have any gentlemen readers) was The Angst Chapter. There's always one. Usually more than one. ; )

Sorry, I was slower than usual. There should be one chapter remaining.