Simpson's Sky
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
With a little bit of imagination, it wouldn't be too hard to picture the smoke coming out of Bobby's ears. The red face and the back and forth pacing didn't help either.
Sam steadied himself and prepared for the onslaught of choice words and insults that he knew he was about to get from the older man. Straightening his large shoulders, Sam drew to his full height and walked over to Bobby. He had dealt with John Winchester for 18 years. Bobby was a little lamb in comparison. Well... maybe a ferocious, sharp teethed lamb.
It wasn't like Sam had done anything wrong. Well, except for the small fact that he had kind of promised Bobby that he would wait for him and had then promptly done the opposite.
Bobby tended to hold a grudge over that kind of stuff, but Sam couldn't bring himself to feel guilty over what he'd done. One single decision microscopically different and Dean would be dead by now. Probably. Still hanging naked from that bridge, surely.
Sam shivered as that image came back to haunt him. He had to give credit to Dean for that one, but yeah, demons he could understand- people were just crazy. And vicious. And downright evil.
When Bobby moved to meet him, Sam almost flinched back, stopping himself at the last minute when he realized that the older man wasn't moving to attack him but to actually-
"Nice to see you too, Bobby" Sam whispered sincerely around the arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders, warmed by the large hand smoothing his back. The human contact felt good. After three weeks of living an isolated life that wasn't his own, followed by some of the most stressful hours of his life, touching a familiar body was like a long delayed 'welcome home'. A welcome home that would quickly turn very sour if Bobby even dreamt about how sappy Sam's thoughts were being.
When the older man finally let him go, Sam looked at Bobby's red face, close enough now to actually see the beads of sweat in his forehead and neck. At this distance, Sam was realizing that the color wasn't a result of boiling anger, but from worry and obvious exertion in the rush of getting to the hospital as fast as he could.
Bobby had been mad on the phone, there was no mistaking that. When Sam had called earlier, after handing Dean over to the ER doctors' care, he had been met by a very, very pissed off Bobby.
The older man had actually managed to arrive earlier, driving straight to Ruiz' home, the address having finally come through. When he had tried to call Sam to warn him of this, he was met with a pre-recorded message telling him that the number he was trying to call was out of reach. Bobby didn't have to take two guesses to know what Sam was doing.
After that, it was just a matter of sitting on his thumbs, like a damn prom date, waiting for the doorbell to ring. Or, in his case, his phone.
The news that Dean was alive had served to somewhat appease Bobby's wrath. It didn't escape his notice though, that Sam had said 'alive' and not 'alive and well'.
Still, Sam was in urgent need of someone to go over to the place where he'd found Dean and clean up the mess that they had left behind. He didn't care much for the bodies of the hunters, imagining that the cops would eventually figure that they'd killed each other for one reason or another. It was the clothes and rope with Dean's DNA on them that worried Sam. For two guys who were officially dead, it would be weird to have traces of one of them showing up out of the blue now. At a mass murder scene, no less.
Despite his anger, this was something that Bobby understood. He'd spend the last hours making sure that the Winchesters remained dead and buried as far as the authorities were aware.
"How's he doing?" Bobby asked removing the ever-present cap and using it to clean his sweaty, balding head.
Sam sighed. He felt like he had just done this dance not that long ago. In fact, he had done this dance so many times before that the whole thing was starting to lose its meaning. At least this time Dean hadn't needed a ventilator and there had been no night spent worried about possible brain damage from oxygen deprivation.
No, this time it had been just the broken bones, both in his leg and his nose, the pain-induced shock, the water in Dean's lungs, the hard to explain scrapes in awkward places and all the hand-shape bruises. Even Sam had flushed at the mention of those, knowing how hard his brother would've fought against those dumbasses and how personal and invasive they had to get to keep him subdued.
They weren't exactly wounds that were easy to explain and most of them looked exactly what they were: signs of torture. The kind of wounds that raise too many eyebrows and suspicions in hospital staff.
Upon arrival, the best Sam had come up with was a very feeble story about a dare gone wrong and nasty tumbles down a slope that ended in an even nastier and impromptu dive into the lake. The doctor had raised the expected eyebrow, not quite buying Sam's story, but one look at his despair and genuine worry and the medic had deemed him harmless and mostly innocent in whatever had happened to his patient. He had also declared them both idiots for pulling such a stunt, wisely advising Sam that the TV show was called Jackass for a good reason.
Sam was sure that, later, when they had time to see the rope burn on Dean's ankle and the cuff marks on his wrists, someone would no doubt call the cops. Heck, the finger marks alone would be enough reason for that. Sam planned to have his brother out of there long before that.
"They took him to surgery a couple of hours ago," Sam told Bobby. "Doctor figured that, if all goes as planned, his broken leg should heal up in no time and without any lingering limp. The right knee it's just a badly sprained ligament, so they're not ev-"
"Limp?" Bobby cut in, the concern clear in his face. Theirs were dangerous lives in which every hunt could be their last, but circumstances of work were so extreme that they expected to either live or die. Any thing in between, any permanent damage that left them alive and parading the results of their failure was not something that any hunter worth his salt faced lightly.
"They said they could fix it… Dean's leg, because of the way it was broken, actually extended a couple of inches... He's gonna be pissed for not being awake to enjoy his brief time as the taller Winchester once again," Sam tried to joke. It came out flat and lifeless.
"What the hell happened out there?" Bobby asked in a whisper, watching as a couple of nurses walked by them in the corridor. "T'hell were you thinking going against five guys all by yourself?"
Sam nodded to the waiting room to their left. They didn't need any more ears listening to their conversation, especially one that involved five dead guys and supernatural beings. "I didn't kill them, Bobby."
Bobby's eyes clenched. Sam could tell that the older man didn't wanted to call him a liar flat out, but he was clearly not buying the crap he was peddling. "Sure didn't look like they died of old age, Sam."
With a sigh, Sam sat on one of the blue plastic chairs that adorned the depressing pale yellow room.
"They were all dead when I got there, Bobby… I wouldn't have made a move on them otherwise," Sam lied, his eyes meeting the old man's, unflinching. "Tigermman, Ruiz and the black man were on the ground when I got to Dean. He was… I found him hanging upside down from that bridge. From the looks of things, they tied that rope to his leg and just… just threw him over."
Bobby cursed. He had figured as much when he saw the rope dangling from the bridge's frame. "What about the bodies of the woman and guy near the cars?"
"Never saw the man by the cars," Sam lied once more, the twisted truth leaving his mouth like it belonged there. It was bad enough that Dean might've seen what he had done to Tigermman's brother. He wasn't about to tell Bobby that he had literally killed a soul. "The woman was possessed… I saw the demon take off before I even got there."
Bobby's intake of air was cavernous as he landed on his ass on one of the chairs of the otherwise empty waiting room. The shock of learning that there'd been a demon involved wasn't as gut-wrenching as watching Sam so blatantly and calmly lie to him. Bobby had mention five bodies before and Sam hadn't even blinked. The three guys and possessed woman that he claimed to be already dead when Sam got there only made for four. It wasn't that hard of a math problem. Sam was lying through his teeth.
And there was the small fact that, search as he might, Bobby hadn't been able to figure how the guy by the truck had died. Unlike the others, there was no bullet wound anywhere on his body. No wounds at all. It was like the man had just decided to die and toppled over where he's stood.
"A demon?!" Bobby finally said, so low that he must've scratched his throat. "What was a demon doing with that bunch? What t'hell did they want with your brother anyway?"
It was a fair question. It was a question that Sam had expected from the older hunter, practical man that he was. Sam just wasn't sure how much of this whole mess he wanted to share with Bobby.
Bobby was family; there was no question in Sam's heart about that. But he was also an opinionated man who would act according to what he thought was right and not how Sam and Dean wanted him to act. The question was, how to explain to him just how involved he and Dean were in this whole apocalyptic stuff?
"I don't know… Dean was pretty much out of it when I got to him," Sam explained, which wasn't exactly a lie. All he'd learned he had heard from a man whom he supposedly never met or killed. "But it looked like that demon saved Dean… I just got there in time to collect the pieces."
"Why the heck would a demon help your brother?" Bobby asked. "They hate his guts."
Sam would love to know the answer to that question himself.
"Got this from Tigermman," he said, remembering the GPS receiver that he had in fact taken from one of the Tigermman brothers, just not the one Bobby was certainly thinking. He took the small device out of his jacket pocket. The screen was showing two static red dots, one in the outskirts of the city and the other right on top of the St. Vicent Charity Hospital. "What the hell?"
Bobby took a peek at the device in Sam's hand. "St. Vicent? Isn't that where we're at?"
Sam nodded as he got up, discreetly walking to the outside corridor and checking how safe they were in there. Other than hospital staff and a few patients walking around, the place was deserted of suspicious faces. On a hunch, Sam took his brand new cell phone from his pocket and walked to an opened window.
The view outside was to the hospital's back lot, some industrial trashcans and a few parked cars decorating the grey cement. Pulling his arm back, Sam threw the phone as far as he could, watching as it bounced on the far wall before falling to the ground in several pieces.
One of the red dots in the device in his hand moved an inch to the side before disappearing altogether. "The fuckers!"
Sam could feel the anger growing inside him. That phone, along with everything else that had been a part of their lives for the last several weeks, had been provided by Zachariah, Castiel's boss. Angels.
How could a simple group of hunters get their hands on a GPS tracker that was following his and, Sam could guess, Dean's cell phone, if the only beings that knew where Sam and Dean were had been angels?
"Sam?" Bobby called, coming behind the younger man.
"They had a tracker, Bobby." Sam said handing Bobby the device. "That's how they managed to finds us so easily." Running a hand through his hair, air blowing out of clenched jaws in exasperation, Sam realized quietly that Ruby was right after all. They had to beware of the damn angels.
Bobby was silent, slowly turning the device over in his hands, like the answers to his questions were somehow hidden in there. He had tried locating the brothers by using the GPS signal in their cell phones too, but all he had gotten was a pissy phone operator and a disconnected signal. "How? What for?"
Sam never got to answer that. An older man with wire glasses and a quickly receding hairline, dressed in light blue scrubs and a white coat walked toward them, stealing a look at the clipboard on his hands before looking up to meet their eyes. "Dean Medlocke's family?"
Both men jumped to attention, eyes glued to the doctor, trying to gather any information they could from the man's stance and mood only. The relaxed older man turned gentle eyes on them and smile. "Dean is going to be fine," he said, knowing that at this point the family probably wanted it short and simple. "He's being moved to recovery as we speak, but you can see him as soon as he get him set up, ok?"
Strangely enough, the news sent Sam's heart plunging to his feet, which was pretty much the reaction that he would've expected had the news been bad. However, the main difference between what he was feeling now and all the other times that he had indeed received bad news, was that now he couldn't care less where his heart was.
Dean was going to be ok and, as soon as Sam could determine just how much his brother had seen in that forest and as soon as he could explain himself to Dean, they too would be ok.
Sam would deal with the angels later.
0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o0
There was a child crying loudly somewhere in the distance, a continuous wail that would've grated on his nerves had it not been for the feelings of sadness and helplessness that the pitiful sound evoked in him. Dean opened his eyes lazily.
"Hello Dean," a slurring voice greeted him.
Dean recoiled when he recognized both the voice and the presence. "Alistair."
"I've been waiting to meet you for a very long time," the demon hisses as he moves closer, one hand trailing down the length of Dean's arm, past his clenched hand, mapping the flesh all the way to his thigh. His fingers feel cold, like the touch of a blade and Dean can't escape their touch.
The first time Alistair had come to him, it had been hot. It was always hot where he was, but that demon had burned with a particular hot blaze. He was hideous too, not this human version that Dean was looking at now.
There had been very little to resemble a human back there. The basics were there, but they looked wrong, displaced.
There were two eyes, cold and flickery, like quicksilver, pressed closer together than any human ever could have without being a Cyclops. There were hands, but there were too many hands, reaching too many different places at once, causing too much pain for it to be just ten digits.
And the mouth… mouth and neck were a single entity, like those of a snake, with teeth just as sharp and a forked tongue that never stopped talking. "We've all been waiting for you," it hissed at him now.
The last time Dean had seen Alistair he was wearing some poor undertaker's meat-suit with pale eyes and a blood smeared beard.
"You… you're dead," Dean whispered, panic growing like a balloon of rusty iron inside his chest when he realizes that he cannot move. The pain in his leg increases tenfold when Alistair's fingers move past skin and dig deep into his flesh.
The demon's voice is nothing but a wisp of air against Dean's ear. "You should know… nothing really stays dead, Dean."
The voice holds a smile in its tone but Dean's eyes are closed too tightly for him to actually see the smirk in the demon's lips.
"Oh, by the way," Alistair goes on, the intrusive touch inside Dean's leg twisting and expanding until Dean's no longer sure that his leg is even attached to his body anymore. "Lilith sends her regards."
Dean's gasping, but there's no air reaching his lungs. He opens his eyes in panic, consciousness threatening to seep away, and Alistair is no longer alone.
Uriel is smiling, standing right next to him. "I warned you, mud monkey… but you were just too stubborn to listen, weren't you?"
"Warned me about what?" Dean rasped out, his throat dry and sore. Where was he and why wasn't anyone coming to help him?
He couldn't move, he couldn't breath and Uriel was standing just as close as Alistair. Dean struggled against his own body, willing it to move, begging it to take him away from there.
That kid would not stop crying and Dean felt an immense urge to join him in his despair.
"Take it easy, Dean."
Finally, a familiar, safe voice. Dean opened his eyes and looked at the foot of the bed, the same bed where he was trapped by angels and demons on either side and looked at his brother. Sam looked bigger than ever, dark bangs of hair hiding his eyes from sight. He was smiling though, a comforting smile that never failed to lift Dean's spirits.
"Sam… Sammy, I can't move," Dean said, like that fact wasn't obvious from the way he was trapped between the two bodies.
Sam's smile never faltered as he extended his right hand. "It's ok… everything's gonna be ok."
The whole room was swallowed in a flash of bright light and in the back, Lilith laughed on, and on, and on…
0o0o0o0o0o0
There was a child crying loudly somewhere in the distance, a continuous wail that would've grated on his nerves had it not been for the feelings of sadness and helplessness that the pitiful sound evoked in him. It sounded less like a child and more like the wind, running through the trees, trying to escape the inevitable.
"Dean... you must wake up."
Dean opened his eyes, the order impossible to disregard or ignore. He was sitting in the Impala, Castiel comfortably perched on the passenger seat. "Where am I?" Dean asked, confused. He couldn't help but look down and make sure that Alistair's finger wasn't still stuck inside his leg.
"This is your car," the angel said, sounding surprise that Dean hadn't realized that immediately.
"Funny," Dean snarled, leaning forward to look outside. He couldn't see a thing past the white fog. There was no way he was driving his baby in those conditions. "Where's Sam?"
The memory was as smoggy as the weather outside, but Dean could still remember the feeling of utter loss when he sensed, more than saw, another part of Sam's humanity, of Sam's soul, wasting away as he destroyed another soul. As Sam killed a human using his powers.
It had all been a dream, a pain induced hallucination, a distorted memory from all the times the demons had used his brother's face to torment him. Sam had assured him that his powers only worked on demons… Sam would not turn against his own kind so easily.
"You're only fooling yourself, Dean… this is, after all, your mind," Castiel cut in, easily responding to the words Dean had not dared to speak.
Castiel was right. The mist outside had grown more turbulent, a prelude to a storm. "Why didn't you tell me," Dean murmured, the sound barely a sound at all. He knew the angel would listen even if he only said it in his head. "Why didn't you warn me?"
"We didn't know. Things have been… uneasy amongst our contingent," the angel confessed, sounding weary.
"That why you didn't show your face the whole time me and Sam were playing Joe-normal?" Dean threw back, for the first time realizing that he had actually felt betrayed and alone to know that 'his' angel had abandoned him to his fate.
"I was under orders."
"Orders to hide from me?" Dean said, cringing when the words came out sounding infantile and petulant even to his ears.
"Orders to find those amidst my brethren whom Uriel managed to convince to disobey, those guilty of blasphemy and who turned against our Father's will… those who conspired against you once again."
Dean felt the angel's pain as if it were its own. He knew know that pain would eventually be his; there would be no escaping that. "Did you find him? Did you find the angel who set Tigermman up?"
"I did."
"What happened?" Dean asked, knowing the answer to his own question but needing to hear the words coming from Castiel's mouth.
"I did as I was ordered… I did what was necessary to assure the survival of all," the angel replied, crestfallen. "It is not obedience that troubles me… it is the fact that each brother and sister's death that is delivered by my hands feels like-"
"Like death itself for you too," Dean finished for him, realizing now that it was no longer a choice between killing or saving Sam. It was a choice between killing humanity by allowing Sam to go on his way to become whatever it was he was becoming or saving whatever was left of Dean's sanity. It was a choice between saving humanity or keeping his own.
Outside the Impala, the storm had turned everything black and tumultuous, wind blowing against the car's frame and threatening to turn it upside down. Inside, Dean was crying, tears falling like they belonged on his face.
"I don't really have a choice, do I? I never had a choice," Dean said softly, gazing at the angry rain outside. "Even Lilith is protecting me, making sure that I do my part, whatever that may be."
"There is always a choice, Dean," Castiel said confidently, his piercing blue eyes on Dean, even if the man refused to look at him. "But more often than not, it is not the choice that we'd wished for."
"And the demons?" Dean asked with unease.
"They know as little or less than us," Castiel confessed, honest in his humbleness.
Dean used one hand to wipe the tear tracks off his face, a gesture that was becoming too familiar for him. "I need you to promise me something," he said, finally turning to meet the angel's gaze. He didn't wait for Castiel's answer. Dean knew that the angel would not deny him this. "When the time comes, IF the time comes, after I… I don't want to die indoors ever again. Promise me that, however things come to happen, you will take me someplace where I can see the sun or the stars… anything but four walls and a ceiling over my head."
"Dean…"
"Promise me!" Dean said with more strength and power than he had ever used his whole life. If there was a single thing that he felt he could demand, this was it. He was tired of dying away from a breeze in his face, away from the warmth of the sun, away from the kiss of the rain. He wanted to be surrounded by life when his final time came.
Outside, the clouds started to collide with one another, thunder and lightning casting white stripes of light and noise that seemed to engulf the whole car and its occupants.
"It is promised," Castiel simply stated.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
There was a child crying loudly somewhere in the distance, a continuous wail that grated on his nerves. Sam clenched Dean's hand inside his and willed his brother to wake up. To just open his eyes and look at Sam.
One look and Sam was sure he would be able to tell how much damage to their relation the latest development in Sam's powers had caused.
Now that the worry about Dean's health and physical condition had been somewhat pacified, Sam had nothing else to think about other than to contemplate whether or not Dean had been coherent enough to realize what Sam had done in order to save him and, if indeed he had seen Sam kill that man, what the odds were of him not freaking out.
Sam sighed. He knew Dean would react badly to it. After the fit he threw at seeing Sam exorcise a demon with his mind, of course Dean would raise hell at seeing Sam do the same with a soul. Might even throw a couple of punches again.
In all honesty, the incident had left Sam a little rattled, as well. He had no idea that the added power of Ruby's blood would actually make him strong enough to pull a human soul out of its body, but truth was, some humans were just as bad as demons. And that one had hurt his brother. That one was ready to kill them both because an angel had told him to.
Sam wondered if this new side of his ability would work on a angel as well? Because Dean would never admit it himself, but he needed protection from both demons and angels now... and Sam was the only one standing between his brother and harm.
His gaze fell on the man sleeping on the hospital bed. Dean seemed troubled even in his sleep, brows pushed together in a pained expression. Sam looked at the IV hanging beside Dean's bed, checking if the painkiller was running as it should.
With his eyes closed and his nose scrunched up, like there was a particularly foul smell in the air, Dean too young. He looked fragile and breakable. Dean was fragile and he was so breakable that he had in fact been broken, Sam reminded himself. It was just that an alert and cocky Dean helped Sam forget about that sometimes.
Maybe it was another of his nightmares, the ones from which Dean woke up gasping with a silent scream trapped in his throat, the ones he denied and never talked about.
Sam didn't like to wait like this. Especially like this, when all he had to distract him was the sight of his brother unconscious twitching and choking on unchecked gasps, as he lay trapped in some nightmarish review of his life.
Taking advantage of his unconscious state, Sam placed his other hand over Dean's forehead, pushing away the usually spiky hair that had turned soft with the lack of grooming. Dean's face pushed unconsciously against the gesture, the openness and freedom that came with the absence of rational thought allowing him to seek the warmth and comfort of the gesture.
Seeing his brother beginning to stir awake, Sam quickly removed his hand from his face, self-conscious of the fact that this wasn't who he was. This wasn't who they were. He kept his other hand around Dean's. A small sign of rebellion against their self-imposed rules.
Dean opened his eyes lazily, taking in his surroundings like he was searching for something that wasn't there.
"Welcome back," Sam said with a smile as soon as Dean's gaze landed on him. "We're in the hospital... how're you feeling?"
Dean looked up, green eyes slowly focusing and becoming more and more alert. And there was the look Sam was searching for.
Sam had dedicated most of his adult life to reading Dean's eyes. Unlike the rest of him, which he could manipulate and force to do as he wanted, Dean's eyes were out of his control, always open, always showing even the things that Dean tried to hide.
There was no recrimination, there was no hate or even a flinch of uncertainty when Dean looked at Sam and lazily squeezed his hand back.
"I'm ok… you big girl," he said, untangling his hand from Sam's.
The smile was fake, but Sam didn't notice that.
"Good, 'cause your doctor has been giving me weird looks for the last half hour and I'm guessing that the cops will be here real soon," Sam said, one hand dialing the new disposable phone and the other already pushing away the bed clothes from Dean's bed. He let the phone ring once and snapped it closed, turning to get the wheelchair that had been strategically stashed in the room earlier.
Five seconds later, the fire alarm was blaring with all its might, drowning away the child's cries at last.
"Let's go… Bobby's waiting downstairs," Sam said, nimble fingers detaching electric leads and blood pressure cuff from his brother and carefully maneuvering Dean out of his bed.
Dean felt like he couldn't push a kitten away, the room spinning wildly sideways and backwards. He gripped Sam's arms tighter and bit his lips to stop himself from screaming in pain the second his leg went from comfortably numb to wrong!wrong!wrong!
"Just take it easy, Dean," Sam kept on whispering, "It's ok… everything's gonna be ok."
And if the words were meant to sooth him or Dean, neither knew. They weren't working, either way.
Like before, every hiss of pain that escaped Dean's clenched teeth felt like a slap on Sam's face. But they could not afford to spend any more time in there and, even if Sam would give his right nut to allow Dean the rest and healing that he needed and deserved, he knew that that rest and healing could no longer be in the hospital. They could not afford to be caught. Not now, of all times.
0o0o0o0o0o0o
Two weeks later, just like the doctors had said, Dean was back on his feet. It still hurt to be up for long periods of time and it would take a while for that leg to be able to sustain any kind of physical strain, but he was up and moving the second it was able to support his weight. He would go stir-crazy if he had to stay trapped on Bobby's couch for one more day.
Two weeks later, Bobby knew where the boys had spent the three weeks prior to Dean's kidnap and why that had happen. The looks he kept giving Dean after that were the main reason why Dean wanted to escape his couch as soon as possible.
Two weeks later Sam was already itching to get back on the job and hunt Lilith. He never said that he has done with wasting time, but the feeling was there all the same.
The end
AN: This has been a wonderful, wonderful ride. I very much enjoyed my time in DeanWhumpage land and I expect to be visiting again soon. To all my wonderful reviewers a big, bear hug. You guys are awesome and made me feel like I was writing for someone other than just myself.
To Jackfan2 a ginormous (Sam sized) thank you for everything that she contributed for this story. See you all soon!
