Mad World

Chapter Four: I find it hard to take

In the end, Sam listened to that inner little brother voice - the one that never truly left his subconscious - and decided to just not tell Dean that he was going to see Hallie again.

Because, the way he and that little voice figured it, these visions were his. His concern, his burden, and he was the one who needed to get information about them. Whatever he learned from this girl, he'd share it with Dean when he got back.

So, flawless logic in place, he'd waited until later that night, when he was positive Dean was asleep. He'd climbed out of bed, making sure not to ruffle the sheets and blanket, knowing the most minute sound would wake the slumbering man. He'd tugged on a jacket, and treaded to the front door lightly, grabbing his shoes to put on once he got outside.

He'd shut the motel door as silently as humanly possibly, sneaking one last glance at his big brother before he did so. Little did he know that that would be the last time he'd look at Dean and take his existence for granted.

Little did he know... Hallie Morgan would take that last bit of innocence away from him.

She was waiting for him when he got there. His watch read 3:33, when he glanced at it before knocking on her door, noting absently that the screen door was still propped up where Dean had left it.

She answered almost immediately and for a couple seconds they just stood there, staring at each other; her gray eyes filled to the brim with sadness. It was a completely different look than he'd gotten hours before with his brother, and Sam wished he could come up with a different word for it. But he couldn't. She just looked sad.

He raised his eyebrow then, getting confused, irritated and fed up with the situation as a whole. "You mind-raped me." He spoke first - probably not the best choice of words, but hey, he was truly Dean's brother.

She half smiled at him and opened the door invitingly. Sam entered after only a moment of hesitation, following her; he couldn't help but notice the inside of her home didn't seem to fare any better against the years than the outside.

They walked, and Sam took in peeling wallpaper, stacks of rotting newspapers and magazines, clothes strewn about all over. The overhead lights were dim, and the little light they did offer painted eerie shadows throughout the two main rooms they crossed in order to get to the kitchen.

Oddly cleaner than the rest of the house, the kitchen looked merely shabby, with out-of-date, yellow and green cabinets and a tiny wooden table squeezed in-between the counter and the swinging door. And un-level chairs, Sam noticed as he took a seat at one, following her unspoken invitation.

"You want some tea?" She asked, not yet taking a seat herself.

"You can read my mind," his words tinged with sarcasm, but lacked anger. "You tell me."

She sighed, finally plopping down into one of the four chairs that filled up the sides of the table. "Your fear's blocking almost everything," she said it calmly, as if reading someone's mind was the most normal thing in the world. And in Sam's world, the sad truth, was that it pretty much was.

"Tell me what you know about my visions." He ordered, not wanting to play any games.

"Why didn't you bring your brother?"

Sam sighed heavily then, realizing that she was holding all the cards, that she could make this conversation go at any pace she damn well pleased. That she had what Sam wanted and he'd have to play along to get it. "I thought you didn't want me to bring him. You said... I mean, your little message had singular pro-nouns only."

"But you wish he was here," she tilted her head. "You regret not telling him. You know you were being stubborn."

Damn, she was good, Sam thought wistfully. He hadn't even admitted those thoughts to himself yet. What he said aloud though, was, "Stay outta my head."

"Fine," she agreed, and although he hadn't noticed it before, at her words, a certain pressure lifted from him.

"Hey," he balked. "You were actually in..."

At those words, he felt the pressure return. It was a dull, hazy feeling that didn't really affect him, but now that he was looking for it, he could most defiantly sense. Then it was gone again, and he thought that perhaps its swift return had been a knee-jerk reaction on Hallie's part.

"Sorry," she mumbled, but Sam wasn't paying attention. His mind had drifted away, far away; to Missouri Moseley, in fact. The entire time he'd been in the presence of the older psychic, back in Kansas nearly a year ago, he'd felt that same feeling. That faded feeling of invasion.

It was there - now that he had knowledge of it, and could search his memories - other times as well. Like with that demon on the airplane, and the demon when it had possessed his father, and bloody Mary when his guilt over the nightmares had almost killed him. It was a stroke of something like revelation...That he could identify it now.

"Sam," she raised her voice, trying to get his attention back.

"That's... I could feel it." He confided in her. "I could feel you in my head."

"I know," she said, sounding not at all surprised. "You have a gift, Sam. A psychic ability, you should be able to sense it when other people like you are around."

"I don't exactly have a lot of practice with this," he admitted, starting to feel a certain bond with her that most certainly wasn't there hours - hell, seconds -earlier. "Do you?"

"My whole life, Sam," she sighed. "I've had my power my whole life."

"So you can help me," he was hopeful now, borderline excited, even. "You can tell me about my visions? About the demon and the other children?"

Her eyebrows shot to her hairline and Sam's heart plummeted. "What demon?"

"The one that has plans for people like us," he explained automatically, so used to telling this story that it was almost sad. "Your mom died in a fire when you were a baby, didn't she?"

Hallie's face remained baffled. "No, Sam." She said it slowly. "She didn't. She died of a brain tumor, when I was nine."

"A brain tumor?"

Hallie nodded, eyes sad again. "She was twenty-eight. My Aunt, her sister, died the same way when I was twelve. She was twenty-two. That's what I can tell you about Sam. That's why you're here."

"I don't..." Sam's mind scrambled fruitlessly, trying to keep up. "I don't understand. What do they...what does that have to do with the demon? With me?"

"They both had visions, Sam," And at those words, the earth stood still.

An eternity later, "They had visions just like you."

"I..."

"It skips a generation in my family," Hallie explained, taking no notice of Sam's faraway gaze. "My mom and her sister, my great-grandma. It's why I refuse to ever have kids, they'd have it, and they'd die."

"Have it?" Sam croaked. Not wanting to hear it, but absorbing it nonetheless.

"The burden of sight, second sight, premonitions." She listed different names for abilities - his abilities. "Seeing death before death happens. Driven by some higher force to act on that vision and trying to stop it from happening before it does. Putting yourself in danger every goddamn time."

"But I thought..." his eyes were unfocused, he was staring at a chip in the table, his vision blurring around it. "I thought the demon gave me, gave others, these powers. I thought..."

"I don't know anything about any demon," she continued with her explanation when it became obvious Sam wasn't going to finish his thought. "Maybe that's where you got it, maybe it's not; what I know about, though, are the visions themselves."

Sam didn't say anything, so she kept going. "My great-grandma cheated on her husband, and, you know, back then, that was like next to murder in their big ol' book of sins."

The youngest Winchester snorted half-heartedly.

"She got pregnant from the other guy, and her husband left her. She started having visions of him after my grandma was born. Apparently, he wasn't such a good guy. My great-grandma thought it was a curse from God. She turned her back on her own husband, and that drove him to rape and murder other women. And of course, it was all her fault." She bit the last bit sarcastically. "But she had a kid, and as messed up as the whole thing was, she still had to warn her about what would happen to her. The family curse."

"Only it didn't." Sam ventured, so lost in this long-ago world Hallie was creating that he could almost believe it was something that didn't affect him personally.

"No, my grandma had powers, only they were like mine. Not harmful."

"Harmful?"

"No one knows how my great-grandma died. Not officially. Medical technology not being what it is now, but it's not that hard to figure out." Hallie seemed tired; she rubbed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "My grandma didn't know, I mean, how could she? She died right after my Aunt Lilly turned eighteen; my mom was still living at home with them. Their visions had already started."

"I'm sorry about your mom," his voice was a little dazed, "And your Aunt. But I still don't understand what any of this-"

"Has to do with you?" She cut in and he nodded, feeling selfish.

"Because my mom and my Aunt refused to believe that they were alone. I mean, my grandma helped them, taught them what she could, but she didn't understand, ya know? She didn't have to deal with the pain of a vision, didn't have to see... And she died before they were old enough to really try and go figure it out." she shook her head, seemingly clearing it of certain thoughts, Sam imagined. "They were both having visions, and they both went hunting the things they saw. Paranormal things, Sam. I grew up with the occult, just like you. Only they didn't know what it all meant, what it was about, what their overall goal was. They didn't have a roadmap. They were fighting blindly. So they went looking for other psychics. And they found them. A lot of them, all over the world. But only a handful that had visions."

She took a deep breath. "You know what they all had in common, Sam?"

The youngest Winchester shook his head; the ball of dread sitting soundly in the pit of his stomach was growing steadily.

"They all died of a brain tumor."

They sat in echoing silence for what felt like a lifetime or more. A clock ticked in the background, Sam smelled old coffee and Hallie just waited, her eyes calm now that she'd gotten her story out.

"I...I don't have a brain tumor." He said it questioningly, pleadingly - the lost time between that statement and her death sentence, be it moments or hours, never acknowledged. "I can't have a...a friggin' brain tumor."

"I wish I could tell you something else, Sam. But that's the truth." Hallie sighed heavily. "That's what you came here for, isn't? The truth. And the truth is, you're going to die. And there's nothing you can do to stop it."

He was struck then with an undeniable sense of deja-vu, and wanted so badly to say watch me. But somehow, he knew that wouldn't be as effective now as it had been with Dean. Oh God...Dean.

"Our father just died." He blurted to Hallie, or rather, the blurred version of Hallie that he couldn't quite focus on. "Our dad just died. I can't die. Dean...Dean would be all alone and... I can't die."

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I know it's horrible, but you should tell your brother. Tell Dean,"

Even the thought of Dean finding out about this had Sam pushing his chair away from the table. Away from Hallie, away from the idea of death, away from the truth. He was shaking his head back and forth slowly, in shock.

You have a brain tumor.

You're gonna die.

Dean's gonna be alone.

"No," Sam decided. "You're wrong. You're just...you're wrong."

If Hallie Morgan said anything else, Sam didn't hear it. He got up and bolted from the kitchen, from her whole house, as fast as he possibly could.

He ran all the way back to the motel he was sharing with his brother, focused on nothing except his pounding heart and rushing blood. Nothing else existed.

Because he couldn't be dying. After everything, after everyone...he could not be fucking dying.

Only he was.

He let it stew in the back of his mind all night - didn't sleep a wink, didn't even undress after he got back from Hallie's. Got out of bed at six and paced until Dean woke up. They went back to her crappy little house, per Dean's insistence, and found that the young woman was gone.

"Ah," Dean shrugged, "She didn't seem like she'd be much help anyway." His brother misinterpreted his silence and nudged his shoulder softly, "Don't worry 'bout it, Sammy. We'll figure this thing out."

And Sam just nodded.

He was going to die.

They went back to the motel after that. It was still early, so Sam volunteered to go get breakfast while Dean looked for their next gig.

"'Kay," his brother mumbled, falling back onto the bed, apparently having gotten up too early.

Sam's mind stayed unfocused, blurry with half-finished thoughts and unaccepted truths.

Then he'd passed a sign for a hospital and took the turn without thinking. He presented the lady at the front desk with the fake I.D. he happened to have on him and told her briefly what he wanted done.

Two hours later, he was sitting in that exam room talking to that pretty doctor, and he asked that inevitable question.

"Am I gonna die?"

She looked at him sadly. An eternity, his whole life, and thousands of others weaved together in her gaze. Dean's grief, innocent deaths, Sam's broken heart, even some relief, swam together and blended almost mystically in her blue-green eyes. A window to the soul, they said, and her soul was almost as sad as Hallie's had been.

"I'm sorry, Sam, but...yes, this diagnosis is terminal."

"Even if the tumor is benign?" He couldn't help but cover all his bases - all his chances - it was just his nature.

"Even if it is," she sighed. "It's in such a bad location-"

And Sam held up a hand to silence her then, because he didn't need to hear anymore.

"Would you like me to call someone now?" She asked.

"Just...can I have a moment?" He asked, sounding as pathetic as he could manage - as he felt.

She nodded, whispered, "Of course," and left the room immediately.

Sam did exactly what he told her he would do. He took exactly one moment and thought, I'm going to die.

Far from accepting it though, he simply pushed it away. He knew it was there, he did. He just didn't want it to be - so it wasn't.

He took his moment, then got up and left. Shrugged on his jacket and walked right out of the hospital. He didn't make eye contact with anyone, and no one stopped him, no one even noticed.

By the time he made it back to the Impala, he was an entirely different person.

A/N: Okay, the next chapter will pick back up with where the show was after the vision episode. I know exactly where this is going now, and it should only last another three or four chapters - roughly. Angst is waiting just around the bend.