-1Chapter 10

It's Not Easy To Be Me

Sam was waiting for him when he got back. "Where were you?" the younger man demanded.

"Out," Dean muttered, walking into the room in a daze, not even bothering to try and stand the door back up behind him.

"Out? Out where? Why is there a hole in your shirt? Why are you covered in blood? Dean?"

"Woman almost got shot. I heard her scream," the older man answered, sitting down on his lopsided-bed and staring at the blank TV.

"You didn't."

"I couldn't save her, Sammy. The guy with the gun, he came back and he pushed her. He didn't try to shoot her. He just," he glanced up at his brother with troubled eyes, "pushed her. Why would he do that if he had a gun?"

Sam shrugged. "No idea. But you said you couldn't save her. How is pushing her-?"

"He pushed her into the street. Into a puddle. There was a car."

"Oh." Sam stared at the blood speckling the front of his brother's shirt, his pants, his face. "You should get cleaned up."

"I couldn't save her."

"We can't save 'em all, Dean."

Dean blinked, confusion shining through the bright hazel eyes, eyes so haunted with the things that he'd seen and done that Sam knew there was no hope of them ever being innocent and untainted again, not since the fire that had taken their mother. "But I'm Superman."

o0o0o0o0o0o

Machines beeped and hissed, but for the first time in a month, Ian Masters was all right with that. The machines weren't his. They belonged to his roommate, a young girl who had far worse problems than he ever had.

Not that he was happy about that, mind you. He was simply happy that he was on the road to recovery. He felt sorry for the little girl in the other bed, but the doctors at that particular hospital were miracle workers.

Smiling at his own good fortune, Ian glanced at the door, where a darkly dressed nurse seemed to be slouching in the shadows. The smile faded instantly from his face. "Hello?" he called, his voice echoing weakly off the walls of the small room he shared.

The nurse walked slowly through the door, a syringe held in one large hand. "Gotta change the meds," she wheezed in a gravelly voice, approaching his bedside, her face still hidden by the shadows, and inserting the needle into his IV.

"What are you giving me?" Ian asked.

"Something to help you sleep," she replied, her voice gruffer than he'd expect from any of the nurses at this prestigious hospital, but, then again, it was the nightshift.

Ian nodded, leaning back into his pillows as the medication dripped slowly down the tube and into his veins. The nurse turned and walked out, leaving him alone with his happy thoughts of a full recovery and his roommate.

o0o0o0o0o

"Ian Masters," Dean announced sadly as he walked through the door into the motel room, which seemed so dark and gloomy after being in the startling sunlight of the bright Black Rock morning.

"Who?" Sam asked, looking up from his cereal as milk dribbled down his chin.

Dean tossed the paper to his brother before placing the door carefully back where it was supposed to sit. "I'll tell you after I fix this," he muttered, glaring down at the hinges until the familiar burning sensation came to his eyes and welded the hinges back together.

"You sure we'll be able to open that again?" Sam questioned without looking up from the front page of the morning paper.

"If we can't," Dean remarked, "then I'll just break it again, all right?" He tested the door, and, finding it to work, turned to the table with a satisfied grin. "See, I know what I'm doing."

"You still owe me a pair of shoes," Sam reminded him, setting the paper down on the table. "So, this Ian kid-"

"Was in the hospital with some form of cancer. The doctors operated after a couple of months of unsuccessful treatments and cured him. He was gonna be released early next week."

"But he died?"

Dean nodded. "Late last night. The police suspect fowl play. They found traces of some drug in his system that wasn't supposed to be there."

"What did it do?"

"His body shut down on him. The morning nurse found him while she was doing her rounds. He had a bunch of weird sores, which turned out to be little holes that someone cut into his body after he died. They were bleeding all over. His mouth, nose, eyes, all cut and bleeding."

Sam narrowed his eyes and stared at his brother. "That wasn't in the paper, Dean. The reporter said the cause of death was unknown. How'd you know all that?"

"I might have snuck into the hospital and eavesdropped a little," he muttered, "you know, just to find out what was really going on."

"You find out anything else?"

"His liver was cut out."

"They took his liver?"

"Not the doctors."

"The murderer took the kid's liver?" Sam rephrased.

Dean shrugged. "That's what they said."

"But why?"

"Sick town?"

Sam blinked, looking back down at his breakfast. "Hey, you don't think…?"

Dean shook his head, taking a seat across the table from his brother. "Two totally unrelated murders. One was probably a mugger, the other maybe just wanted to sell the kid's liver on the Black Market. Nothing to do with me."

"A mugger wants money, Dean," Sam pointed out, "so does someone hawking organs. And what about the antique dealer that disappeared?"

"Bad timing?"

"More like villainous. We've gotta keep an eye on that Jen girl. Right now, she's our most likely suspect."

Dean sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. "But we're still not sure. For all we know, it could be Bela. I mean, the kidnapping of the antique dealer might be something she'd do. And you know how money-hungry she is."

"But she's not our friend. How can she go from friend to foe if we don't like her?"

"You got any better ideas?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Fine. You tail Bela, I'll look for our actual suspect."

Dean stood up and headed toward the door. "Fine. Just don't come crying to me when you find out I'm right."

"Dean."

"What?"

"Don't kill her unless you're sure, ok?"

Dean smirked. "Sure thing, dude." He ran off into the horizon, leaving the door to slam into the side of the motel in his wake. Grumbling to himself, Sam crossed the room and shut it, leaning up against it once it was closed and sliding down it until he was sitting on the floor.

He let his eyes slide shut. He knew that they shouldn't have been looking for the villain, if there even was one. They should have headed back out to the storage facility after calling Bobby. They should have burnt the cape before anyone else could get hurt. They should have done a lot of things.

At the same time, he knew that they would never do those things, not if they could avoid it. He knew that his brother hated feeling responsible for the deaths of those innocent people, especially the woman who had been hit by the car, but that guilt was cancelled out by the pure euphoria of being invincible. Sam hadn't seen his brother so happy in a long time, so interested in the world, so willing to live. He wanted to experiment, to play, to have some fun before his final days, and that was fine with Sam.

He smiled to himself. Dean had taken a bullet to the chest and hadn't bled. He hadn't even flinched. He truly was invincible, just as Sam had believed him to be in their younger days. He was Superman. Nothing could hurt him. Nothing could take him away. Not if Sam could help it.