Title: Recrudescence
Author: ghost4
Disclaimer: Not mine. They are probably glad about that right about now.
Author's notes: I apologize for the lag between posts. It's been… unavoidable. Also, I'm sorry for not responding personally to the reviews. I am a bad person. As always, thanks go to my long-suffering, amazingly talented cyber-sis, Mikiya2200. Thanks, hun. *hugs* All rightness is due to her, all badness is down to me.
All comments, any and all, are welcome.
I was inside looking outside
The millions of faces, but still I'm alone
Waiting, I was ever waiting
Paying a penance, I was longing for home
I'm looking out for the two of us
I hope we'll be here when they're through with us
…I'm a long way from home…
~Foreigner – Long, Long Way From Home
The house seemed to loom to Dean's eye, even bathed in the brilliant, pure light of a Kansas afternoon. The sun kept the shadows small, pushed them into little puddles along the foundation, but that didn't stop the way the place seemed to radiate darkness. It seeped from edges, oozed from the cracks in the siding. Dean eased up the gravel drive, passing into those little, dark pools with a vague sense of dread. The house felt to him the same way that black cats and bad pennies did – an unsettlement, a superstition, something not really as dangerous as it seemed, but always tainted with childhood fears.
The house was Dean's boogieman.
And the fact that Sam was bleeding, dying, inside those walls was…not helping.
The Impala bumped as he pulled around the back of the house, and the doctor shifted uncomfortably, working his shoulders. Dean felt a brief flair of commiseration. He knew from experience that sitting with your hands pinned behind you made your arms and shoulders ache like hell after awhile.
"If you promise not to try anything, I'll take those off," Dean said, nodding at the doctor's hands as he shut the engine down.
The doctor gave him a sardonic look. "You're going to have to do that anyway if you want me to work on somebody."
Dean spent a moment wondering if he more liked the guy for being so snarky in the face of a gun, or wanted to shoot him for being a dick. His hand tried to twitch. Admittedly, his sense of humor was a little blunted at the moment.
Bobby coming out on the back porch and down the steps kind of decided the issue. That, and Dean didn't want to have to go back to town after a replacement. "Move," Dean said, surprised when it came out more of a weary sigh than a command. Bobby pulled open the passenger door, stepping back to let the cuffed man out.
"Who's our guest?" he asked, and his voice was definitely more of a growl than a sigh. Bobby was obviously not pleased.
Tough. He just didn't have enough worry left over to be overly concerned with Bobby's temper at the moment. "You said Sam needed a surgeon, I got him a surgeon."
Bobby had taken charge of the doctor as he stood, and Dean took advantage of the help to get out of the car too, standing in the wedge of space between the door and the body – where he had cover on two sides.
And he might need it, if Bobby's expression was anything to go by. Dean tried to look contrite – as he absently laid his hand on the roof of the Impala, pointing the gun at the doctor who was gazing at the empty road in an appraising sort of way, and muttered, "Stay."
The doc planted his feet.
Which was good, because Dean didn't dare break eye contact with Bobby.
"You kidnapped a doctor?" Bobby half yelled, half growled. But he took the man's arm.
"Sam needs him. I'm not discussing this, Bobby." Dean opened the back door, grabbing the doctor's bags. "Besides, I'll put him back when we're finished."
Bobby glared but didn't argue. Dean felt the relief of that as an unknotting through his shoulders as he watched an exasperated Bobby herd the Doctor into the house. Dean followed with the supplies.
The atmosphere in the house was heavy and smelled of dust and apprehension. The thick, cold eel of anxiety that had lived in Dean's gut since this all started, began to twist again as soon as he entered the dinning room. Sam was lying on the table where Dean had left him; the shirt that was wound around his chest was dripping blood onto the pastel rug underneath. He looked cold and pale and vulnerable, even with an angel literally perched over him, holding him here, in this life. The fear and worry had been quiet while Dean was busy and distracted, but now, seeing Sam so bloody and still and Cas looking even more worn – now it was awake again, squirming through his insides and making it harder to swallow than it should be.
Cas glanced up from his place near Sam's head, meeting his worried gaze – and matching it.
Not good.
The eel twisted tighter.
Bobby still had the doctor's arm, and Dean heard the man hiss, "Sweet God," as he caught sight of Sam.
"Not particularly," Castiel said, and the doctor's eyes flickered over to him.
Dean ignored both the comment and the doctor's obvious confusion. He shed the bags beside the door and went to the doc's side, pulling out the handcuff key. "Can you help him?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
"I won't know until I look at him," the doctor said, and his eyes were both sympathetic and not particularly hopeful. "I promise to try."
Dean let the cuffs snap open. "That's all I can ask."
The doctor pulled his freed hands to the front, rubbing his wrists. Bobby took a step back, giving him room, but Dean could see the watchfulness in the older hunter.
Good. Bobby could watch the doctor; Dean had slightly more important things to deal with. He holstered his pistol and went over to the table to check on his brother.
Sam was still cold, still bleeding, still dyingin slow motion. When Dean touched his hand, the flesh was strangely stiff. Dean fought back panic. "I'm back, Sam," he muttered, more for himself than Sam. "I'm right here. I'm not leaving."
Behind him, the doctor reached for his bags, shooting little nervous glances at them all. Dean didn't want him nervous, he wanted him moving. The expression on his face must have relayed that message, because the doctor quickly pulled out a pair of gloves. "How long has he been bleeding?"
Dean had no idea how to answer that. He glanced at Bobby – who looked equally disconcerted.
The doc glanced up from his supplies, obviously puzzled by the lack of response and the sudden edgy quality of the room. "I'm not trying to pry," he explained nervously. "I just – it would be helpful to know how long ago he was shot."
"Four months," Castiel said. "At least it has been for you. It may have been much longer for him. Time moves differently outside this plane of existence."
The doctor hesitated, staring at Castiel, frozen with both fear and confusion. Dean winced.
"Cas?" he said.
"Yes?"
"Shut the hell up."
Castiel frowned, but refocused on Sam.
"Doc?"
He swallowed and looked over.
"Do your job."
A muscle in the surgeon's face twitched, but he moved.
Dean reluctantly stepped back, giving them both room. The doctor took a deep breath, and then moved aside the shirt that was still wrapped roughly around Sam's chest. He frowned at what was revealed. Dean watched as he searched for a pulse, and yeah, Sam really did look bad enough that Dean didn't fault the doctor for just checking to make sure he wasn't working on a corpse.
"He's alive," Castiel confirmed. "And he will stay that way."
The doctor grimaced.
Then he fussed, checking Sam over, and Dean tried not to watch as he prodded at the wounds – but he couldn't help noting the tightness that appeared around the surgeon's eyes and mouth at what he found. But the man said nothing, pulling out his machine and hooking it up. Running IV lines. Setting out tools. He shot Castiel a pointed look once, as he moved around Sam, but when it became clear that the angel wasn't budging from his place at Sam's head, and that neither Dean or Bobby had any intention of making him move, the doctor swallowed and did his best to work around him.
The man handled the equipment, and his brother, with gentle, practiced hands. He was quick, and he was sure, despite the uneasy glances he kept throwing at them. But Dean was willing to cut him a little slack on that. He was working on a massively injured man surrounded by a room full of crazy people with guns. A little wariness was to be expected.
As soon as the machine was running Degarza glanced at the readings and went pale. He fiddled with it, frowning, but nothing changed. His eyes darted between the numbers and Sam's face, and Dean frowned as he took half a step back.
"Doc?" Dean asked, his tone stuck somewhere between worry and warning.
"He's –" the doctor shook his head. Took a shaky breath, and tried again. "I don't think I can do anything."
"You can," Dean said. It wasn't an argument, it was a command.
The doctor shook his head, "The last thing I want to do is piss you people off, seriously; but I don't know what this is. It doesn't make sense. He shouldn't be breathing. His heart is beating, but it shouldn't be. It's like something is… forcing it to keep working. Forcing his body to function. He's…cold. Too cold. The bleeding is too slow, and too heavy. He's already stiffening. He's…it's not possible for him to be alive, not with this amount of damage. He should be dead. There is no logical reason he's not yet. And if I start cutting, he will be." The doctor glanced up and Dean could read the pity in his gaze, the man's unspoken belief that it would be better if Sam was dead. Dead, and no longer suffering. No longer forced to endure this.
"I will see to it that he continues to live while you work."
Castiel's tone was almost sharp. He'd caught the doctor's reluctance too, and obviously didn't like it. The doctor gave Castiel a long, appraising look. "I'm a doctor. I deal in the facts of a body. The fact is, no one can survive with vitals like this. They just can't. And I don't believe in faith healers."
"Neither do I," the angel responded.
And Sam's breath snagged wetly, and Dean knew his time was running out. He couldn't survive this kind of wounding much longer, even with Castiel's help. "Look!" he snarled at the doctor, "I get that you're confused. But no mater what your numbers and your machines say, possible or not, he's alive. And you have a job to do. Have your existential crisis later. Help him now."
The doctor's eyes darted to Bobby, looking for assistance… but the older hunter was busy polishing his knife.
Which probably didn't help steady the doc's hands as he took a deep breath and picked up a scalpel from his surgical kit.
"Okay," he breathed. "I guess I have no choice. But I don't want to be held responsible when he doesn't survive this."
"So noted," Dean said coolly. "Now do it."
The doctor cut.
Dean tried damned hard not to watch. There was only so much of seeing his brother opened and bleeding that he could take.
So he didn't watch, but he couldn't leave. No way could he leave. Never again. He lingered at the edges of the activities around the table, ignoring the blood that fell, the hurried, almost frantic movement of the doctor. He refused to acknowledge the ever-growing fatigue of Castiel. And when the doctor said 'hold this' or 'hand me that' he did so without allowing himself to focus too closely on what he was holding or handing. And he refused to see the red that was everywhere – simply did not see it, not on the table, not coating Sam's grey skin, not on his own hands; couldn't smell it either, so sharp and so heavy in the air that it was almost a flavor.
A flavor he could not taste, could not – even as he heard rib bone crunch and give way under the doctor's hands while he held the clamp.
Time passed in a broken flow – rushing one second, dragging the next. He had no idea how long it had been before there was a muted thunk as a bit of mashed steel was dropped onto the wooden table.
Almost instantly the bleeding changed, increasing, beginning to flow more naturally, more lively, somehow – and deadly fast.
Castiel inhaled sharply, hands clenching on Sam's skin as he concentrated – while the doctor cursed and grabbed for another clamp.
"Hold this," the doctor snapped, and Dean put his hands where instructed, carefully not looking. Instead, Dean focused on the chunk of metal. So freaking small to have done so much damage.
One of the alarms on the monitor went off. "No, no, no," Degarza muttered, glancing up from the hole in Sam's chest to look at the readings. "We're almost though this, kid. Don't do this now."
The eel in Dean's gut twisted suffocatingly tight. But his fingers stayed steady, exactly where the doctor had put them.
"What do you need?" Bobby asked.
"Uh," the doctor nodded at the bag of supplies without removing his hands from where they were embedded in Sam's open chest. "We need to replace the Ringers again. It's the bag with–"
"I know. I got it." Bobby moved. Of course Bobby knew, they'd all watched the doc swap the empties out a few times now.
The doctor's quick fingers replaced Dean's, and Dean gratefully stepped back. "Can you grab one of those suture kits?" the doc asked him, not looking up.
Dean turned and got the packet, starting to peel it open, leaving bloody fingerprints across the plastic. As he did, he automatically glanced toward Castiel still standing rigidly at Sam's head – his own, and more accurate, form of keeping track of Sam's vitals. But his eyes never made it that far.
"Shit," Dean hissed, almost dropping the suture kit.
Sam's eyes were open – glazed – but open. And aware. He caught Dean's gaze, and held it.
"Jesus Christ." Dean's hands shook as he unconsciously stepped toward his very obviously conscious brother. "He's awake. Cas! He's awake!" Dean didn't care that his voice cracked. His brother was awake while they cut him open and sewed him back up. He was awake, with his chest laid open and his blood dripping from the table and the surgeon's hands inside him, and he should not be awake through this. "Cas!"
"I know," the angel said through gritted teeth. "I can't keep him down. I've been trying, but I don't have the strength, now."
"What?" the doctor glanced up, and flinched, eyes wide. "Oh, holy God."
"Finish it!" Castiel ordered, almost swaying where he stood. "Now."
The doctor moved, snatching the suture kit from Dean's lax grip. Dean didn't care, didn't even notice. He went to Sam, easily catching the hand that was mindlessly groping at the wood of the table. Caught it and held it, like he held Sam's gaze, not so much as daring to blink, trying to keep Sam calm, to give him an anchor, something to hold on to against the pull of the pain….
But it was an anchor Sam didn't seem to need. He was strangely… unaffected by what was being done to him. He obviously felt it. The way his hand twisted in Dean's grip, the way he flinched into the table, the way his gaze flickered as the doctor's hands moved – oh, he was feeling it. But he wasn't reacting to it. He didn't struggle against it, he didn't shiver or cry, and he was utterly, frighteningly, silent. Dean watched, confused, as the agony of the moment flared in his brother's body, reflected in his eyes which glazed with anguish – an anguish that was… ruthlessly suppressed. The pain was hidden away, locked down, almost brutally; and Sam became still again, every sign of suffering vanishing. Even as weak and pain-ridden as Sam had to be, none of it got loose. The eyes that latched onto Dean's were as unreadable – as inanimate – as a statue.
And that sent a whole new spike of fear through Dean's heart.
He tightened his hold on his brother's hand, stroking his arm. "Sam. Sammy. Here. Look at me. You're okay. It's going to be okay. I'm not leaving."
Dean knew he was babbling. He didn't care. Everything he cared about was lying on the table in front of him, bleeding and hurting and so broken that he didn't seem to be able to react to anything.
Dean ignored the burn in his sinuses, clutching almost desperately at his brother. "Sam?"
The flatness of his brother's eyes didn't change. He could see Sam's awareness of his presence, but it was like he couldn't let it be real; Dean's existence was acknowledged, but only wearily. Sam saw him – and it went no farther than that. Dean knew he wasn't reaching his brother; not in the way he needed to. But there was no time to try. The hand under his clawed at the table as the doctor did something else. Pain flickered in the depths of the stagnant gaze; but no emotion rose.
"That's got it," Degarza said, his voice soft with a kind of triumphant relief.
Castiel nodded, taking a big breath. "I feel it. That… helps. His body is functioning more on its own now."
And suddenly an emotion did grace Sam's expression, an almost soft kind of dread that Dean felt all the way to the base of his spine – at least he did until Sam's eyes slid closed.
"I put him out," Castiel explained, a touch of sorrow edging his tone. "His body needs sleep to heal."
Dean nodded dully, not releasing Sam's hand.
"Good," the doctor said, real relief in his voice. "I'm closing, now." Bobby stepped up to assist. Dean couldn't make himself let go of Sam. Not even to do that.
Degarza was efficient. Within moments Sam was stitched closed, the wounds disinfected, and bandaged up.
"Better," the doctor said, studying the monitor. "Not great, but better. His temp is still way below normal."
"That worries you?"
He glanced at Bobby, shrugging. "Maybe. Normally, I'd be seriously alarmed, considering that most of the fluid pumping into him has been warmed and he's still running that cold; but this whole thing has been so freaking not normal, that I just don't know. He can't seem to hold onto the heat, internally. Of course, his blood volume is in the toilet. That could be part of it. And he's shocky, too. That doesn't help." He snapped off his bloody gloves. "We'll just have to see what happens. If his body doesn't begin to regulate itself in a few hours, then we may have a problem."
Dean cleared his throat. "Bobby? There's a couple of blankets in the trunk. Can you…?"
"'Course. Be right back."
As Bobby made his way out, Dean caught Castiel's attention. The angel was still touching Sam's shoulder, but he looked…calmer. Less strained. Though more reluctant to meet Dean's eyes. That stupid eel twined through his stomach again.
"Cas?" Dean asked.
"I can heal him now," the angel muttered, almost guiltily. "The bullets are out. I can heal him. It will take some time. A few hours. If I were stronger, if it hadn't taken quite so much to reach him, or to keep him from death –"
"Cas," Dean almost snapped, afraid, because the angel was almost babbling – something Dean had never seen before. "Cas, man, you're tired. It's okay –"
"It's not," Castiel argued. He was staring at the blood on his hands. And Dean could see something sad and horrible in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders. Something almost shamed. "It is not okay. I don't know… should I have gone into that cage? Should I have done this? Should I have kept him alive when his body ached for death? Should I have fought with my brothers in the first place? Should I have? I don't have orders. I don't have…surety. What should I do?"
"You heal him," Dean ordered. "You finish what you started. You told me you went into the cage because you had to; because you owed him, because it was right."
"But I don't know that it was right. I only felt it was right."
"That's all we have," Dean said. "That's all we ever have. And it has to be enough. It was right, Cas. It was. And whatever happens next, we'll deal with it." And his fingers tightened around the very cold, very real hand he was still holding.
Slowly, Castiel nodded. He brushed at his face with a shaking hand. "Of course. I apologize. It has been a…trying day."
"Understatement." Dean glanced over at the doctor, who was watching them with wide eyes. "Enjoying the show?" he groused, but not completely without humor.
"More like wondering what the hell is going on with you people," the doctor snapped back, folding his arms. "You two are talking about healing like it's an everyday occurrence, and he," Degarza nodded at Sam, "is just…impossible."
"You have no idea," Dean half-whispered, smirking affectionately.
"That's just it, I don't have any idea. I don't have any idea how he could have survived what we did, I don't have any idea how he could have been awake while we did it – and I'm fairly certain that I saw cravings on his ribs." The doctor looked at them both. "Carvings on the bones inside his chest! You want to explain that one to me?"
"Not really," Dean said flatly, feeling the slight amusement draining away. "Look. Don't sweat it. Not any of it. It's not something that will ever be in any of your medical books." He took a breath, watching Sam's bandaged chest rise and fall. "Thanks for your help. You probably helped save my brother's life, and for that I owe you. I'll remember the debt. You can go, now. I'll have Bobby run you back to your clinic." He knew Castiel could erase the doctor's memory. The guy would probably never know where he'd been today, not for the rest of his life. "You'll be back before your receptionist has time to figure out that you didn't just extend the date into an afternoon tryst."
"No you won't."
Dean frowned. "Excuse me?"
Degarza gestured at Sam. "He's my patient now. No matter how twisted this whole thing is – and it has been so very twisted – I'm not abandoning him to bleed to death, or die of infection. You say you can't take him to a real hospital, fine; after what I've seen today, I'm inclined to believe you. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to leave him here like this."
"You don't have a choice, Doc," Dean growled, letting go of Sam for the first time. He didn't reach for the gun, not yet, but his hand drifted that way.
"It's safer for him to have me around," the doctor pointed out. "And, according to you two, he should be healed in a few hours. You can stand to have me around that long."
Dean waffled. Having the doctor around would be better for Sam, just in case Cas was too tired to heal him, or if something happened, and when didn't something happen. But to drag another human into this mess… "You don't want in on this," he told the doctor, "I promise you."
Degarza shrugged. "I'm already here."
"It might get bad. And, honestly, Sam and I… we aren't good people to know. Just saying you helped us could get you killed if you say it to the wrong people. You'd be better off getting out now."
"I've never cared too much about what other people thought about me. And I want answers."
"You won't like them when you get them," Castiel predicted.
Degarza frowned.
Dean closed his eyes, feeling like a coward even as the words came out. "Okay. Stay if you want. Until Sam's good again. But then we get you out of here, and you never knew us, got it?"
"Whatever you say. Can I have my cell back? So I can call my office and keep them from calling the cops?"
Bobby came through the door behind the good doctor, where he'd been listening. He grunted as he handed the man his phone. "Just mind what you say. We don't need the cops out here."
"Yeah. I get that now."
Dean ignored them, taking the blankets Bobby had brought in, and carefully covering Sam.
Sam slept, deeply and heavily. Castiel still hovered, but now his hands were resting against Sam, rather than clutching at him. Sam seemed to be resting quietly. Dean was glad.
Because what Dean had seen when Sam had opened his eyes... It had been unnerving to see his brother so…dead inside. The appropriateness of the phrase caught on something in Dean's chest, burning there. Because that's what had been missing in Sam's eyes: feeling; responsiveness; emotion. What little reaction Sam had managed, seemed to slip away from him as quickly as the heat they kept trying to get back into his veins.
Dean bit his lip, pulled the blankets up a little further, and waited for Degraza to be busy with the phone before he spoke. He kept his voice low, a question meant only for Castiel.
"How bad is he, really, Cas?" Dean finally asked, not looking up. "I mean…inside. Him. Just how torn up is he?"
Castiel closed his eyes. It was the only response Dean received.
And Dean reached under the blankets, with their old, familiar stains. He took his brother's cold hand and hoped to hell that they hadn't come this far, put Sam through all this, only to find out they'd never really gotten him back in the first place.