There's No Such Thing As Monsters

A/N: I'm sorry about the lateness of this chapter. Both my kids, and my husband, caught a stomach bug that left us all rather frazzled. I'm still struggling to catch up with everything. But here it is. I hope you all enjoy, and if you have the time, I would love to know what you think. (Also, I kind of rushed through my proof-reading of this, so if there are any glaring mistakes, please feel free to tell me so I can fix them.)

Chapter Seven

Sam lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling as he absently scratched at the bandages on his wrists. Apparently he'd lost the privilege of going to the recreation room, for today at least, but even if he was allowed maybe he would have chosen to stay in his room anyway. His wrists ached and he felt sluggish, and he didn't know what to do next.

It wasn't a Djinn. For a few all too brief moments he'd been in a motel room, not a warehouse, and Dean – the real Dean – had been leaning over him, saying something. Sam couldn't remember what his brother had said or whether he'd said anything in return, and he hadn't been able to see straight. It was like his eyes and mouth were foreign objects, not tuned to the right settings. Like he was out of practice at being him.

Then the next thing he was aware of was hurried voices and lights swinging past above him, neat rows of stitches on the inside of his wrists and Dean was gone like he'd never been. Sam tried to think. If he could figure out what Dean had said maybe there would be an answer in there, instructions, explanations, anything, but it was like trying to remember a dream, so real one moment but faded and disjointed the next.

He could almost put the glimpse of his old life down to delirious hallucinations from blood loss but it wasn't. He knew it wasn't. Muffled and ephemeral as those few moments in the motel room were, they had made more sense than the last few days, had struck something deep inside him, beyond the scope of rational thinking, that murmured 'real' far more truthfully than anything else he'd seen.

Sam just had to figure out how to get back there.

Footsteps hesitated outside his room, followed by the soft slide of a key-card in the lock. Sam looked away from the ceiling as the door opened and revealed Dean. Not his Dean because this Dean looked scared and small and guilty and his Dean never looked like that, except when Dad died.

Sam looked back at the ceiling.

He heard Dean shuffling closer, the barely there creak of the door as it closed. There was no click so it must have been left ajar.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean said quietly.

"Hi," Sam answered dully. No need to be rude, right? Even if he wasn't real.

Dean hovered at the end of the bed. It kind of astounded Sam that he would sense this Dean's presence as well as he could the real one. In the real world, they were both trained to wake from the slightest noise but had long since learned to sleep through each other's early morning racket. Sam would rise to half-awareness if Dean was moving around the motel room, then sink back into sleep when his senses assured him that it was his brother, without ever opening his eyes or really waking fully. He knew it was the same for Dean when the situation was reversed. He felt an unexpected surge of resentment at this pretend Dean for trying to take his real brother's place.

Fake Dean cleared his throat. "So, uh... Mum's gonna come in tomorrow and, uh, I think Dad the day after that. Your, um, your doctor said we shouldn't all come at once 'cause it might overwhelm you or something."

Sam kind of laughed at that. "I'm fine," he said, although actually, the thought of seeing his fake family all together was a little overwhelming.

"Sam..." Dean awkwardly perched himself on the edge of Sam's bed. His eyes kept flickering to the bandages, then jerking away. "You're not fine. God, Sammy, you're not fine at all. Look what you've done to yourself." Dean bit his lip anxiously. Sam had to admit that he had the real Dean's mannerisms perfect, the same tone of voice and nervous habits. "Mum's a wreck, Sammy, and Dad... even Dad..."

Sam rolled his eyes. He was tired and in pain and he didn't want to do this, didn't want to talk to this reflection of Dean. He wanted to go to sleep and wake up where he was supposed to be. "You're not real. Mum and Dad aren't real. They're dead so save the guilt trip, okay?"

Dean looked away but Sam saw his face crumple. Really, it wasn't fair that even a pretend Dean managed to make him feel bad, for something that he'd done that wasn't even real (even if it felt real. Why the hell did it feel real?)

"Damn it, Sam," Dean said, but there was no heat to his words. "All this... hunting monsters and demons killing everyone... Come on, Sammy, you're like a frikkin' genius, why can't you see that that doesn't make sense? You've seen Mum, she's not dead. Dad's not dead. Think about it, man. Monsters and demons, they're not real."

"No, this isn't real!" Sam sat up, slamming a fist down on the mattress, feeling the stitches jolt and tug. As drained as he felt, the anger overrode it and Dean actually stepped back. The real Dean would never step back. "Damn it, this isn't real! I wish it was, okay? This would be better. You think I want Mum and Dad to be dead? To be hunted by this demon that kills everyone I care about? I wish it was all in my head! But it's not. It's not."

Dean rubbed at his jaw anxiously and there was an interminably long moment of silence, before he let out a sigh. "Jesus, Sammy," he said quietly. "I'm trying here, I really am. But I don't know how to help you."

Sam shook his head. This Dean couldn't help him. "Don't... just don't bother, Dean. There's nothing you can do."

He lay back down and turned his gaze to the ceiling.

XXX

"It's not a Djinn," Sam said as he pulled up a chair next to Rosalie.

Rosalie nodded vaguely, drawing as usual. Sam didn't think he'd ever actually seen her without a pen or a bit of paper in hand.

"I saw your brother yesterday," she said, using her pen to scratch at her wrist.

"Yeah, me too," Sam said dismissively. "He's not going to help us."

Rosalie frowned. "He said he'd help me."

Sam paused, his train of thought about other possible explanations derailing. "You talked to him?"

"He came into my room," Rosalie said factually, as though other patients family members dropping into her room was a usual occurrence. "He was pretending to be my cousin."

Sam felt something jolt inside him. Could it... was the real Dean here? It definitely sounded like a cover story to gain access to the ward, but why would Dean talk to Rosalie and not him? None of this made any sense.

He'd been sure that it was a Djinn. It was the only logical conclusion that he could think of. But that wasn't right. He hadn't woken up, shackled in an old warehouse or factory, there was no tattooed monster draining the life out of him. There was a motel room and Dean. And Rosalie, she fit somehow. There answers were in figuring her out.

Sam put a hand on her wrist, halting her pens progression. "Rosalie, what did my brother say to you?"

Rosalie looked down at his hand on her arm, then her picture of... someone lying on a bed, maybe? She can't have been working on it for long, it was only outlines. Then back again.

"He was looking for you, but you're not real," she said finally. "He's not real. He's not my cousin either."

"What did you tell him?" Sam asked, leaning forward but trying hard to stay calm. He needed to know what Dean was doing, what Dean knew, whether Dean had figured out hot to get him away from this place.

Rosalie rolled her eyes. "I told him that you're not real and he said you were, but he would say that because he's not real either, not if he knows you." She kind of laughed. "My imaginary friends have their own imaginary friends. That's funny." She shook her head. "My meds aren't working. They used to work but then you came."

Sam couldn't help but tighten his grip on her arm. "Rosalie, this is serious. I'm real and I'm not supposed to be here. I need to know what Dean said to you."

Rosalie pulled her arm out of his grasp and went back to drawing intently, head bent over her picture.

"Rosalie..."

She slammed her pen down. "Damn it, I'm not supposed to talk to you!" she hissed. "After what you made me do. I'm not supposed to listen. You're a... a symptom, okay? That's all."

This whole thing kind of reminded Sam of the conversations he used to have with Jess and Brady. College was good for contemplating existence, he'd found, and Brady especially had enjoyed teasing him with 'What if?' questions. Things like, what would you do if you found out that nothing you did was the product of your own choices? What would you do if your whole life was just the dream of a higher being?

Sam remembered saying that sometimes he wished it was (because then he wouldn't have to take responsibility for all the times he'd messed up). But Rosalie wasn't a higher being. She was a girl in a psychiatric ward and Sam wasn't a hallucination.

"What did I...?" he frowned at Rosalie's words. What did he make her do? But he changed track quickly. Got to stay focussed. God, his head hurt. Maybe it was a side effect of the drugs they kept giving him. "Rosalie, please. Just tell me what he said."

Rosalie huffed irritably. She wouldn't look at him now and when she spoke it almost seemed as if she was talking to her drawing. "He said he was going to get me out, okay? I guess he meant you too, seeing as you're in my head."

"Rosalie, I'm not in your head." Sam rubbed his temple in frustration.

Rosalie laughed to herself. "Even my hallucinations think I'm crazy."

Sam sighed. So maybe he couldn't convince her that he was real. Maybe it didn't matter. "Did he say when he was going to get you out?"

Rosalie shrugged.

Maybe Sam would just have to wait.

XXX

Rosalie was going to be an artist.

That had been her plan, at least, while she was in school, surrounded by the other girls and boys who'd blabbered on about being actresses and sports stars or going into their family's business when they grew up. Rosalie had listened from her space, always a few feet and a few wrong moves away from the rest of her peers, and wondered if things were supposed to magically get better when you grew up and turned into a film star or whatever. It was easy to decide that she was going to be an artist, because then all she'd have to do was draw and she wouldn't have to talk to anyone.

She imagined rooms full of paper and paints and proper sketching pencils. She could wear floaty clothes and always have dabs of paint on her face and she'd be thought of as mystical and eccentric and not just that weird girl in the corner.

Then she turned seventeen and her plans went awry when she drank a little too much and smoked a bit too much pot, maybe talked back a bit and took the whole teenage rebellion thing a tad too far, and her Aunty threw her out of the house.

She stayed at her boyfriend's house at first, a guy five years older than her, with a car and a tiny flat on the other side of town, but he'd gotten bored of her pretty quickly when she became a full-time girlfriend and had announced their relationships demise by putting her bag of clothes and older of paintings out on the doorstep with a note that said, 'Sorry, Rose, it just ain't working out.'

Rosalie hated being called Rose.

She didn't have many friends and she outstayed her welcome on the couches of those she had managed to find. People thought she was strange because she didn't talk much and she watched.

She watched people in the park and at the library, friends chatting and couples kissing. She watched children and animals and men in suits and women drinking coffee, and wondered what it was about life that they all understood and she couldn't wrap her head around. What was she doing wrong?

Later, Rosalie watched the pictures in her head and talked to people that no one else could see and she drew until her pens ran dry and then she would steal more from the little corner shop that didn't ask for ID when she wanted cigarettes or wine. Sometimes she drew with ash.

She was on the streets before she's even realized that there was no one left for her to turn to, and committed shortly after by people who seemed nice and said that they cared but later she figured out that it was just their job that make them say that.

She'd been in and out since then, mostly in because she didn't like the way her pills made it hard for her to see the pictures in her head, and then one time when she was out, the people kept yelling and yelling and all her pens were dry and she didn't know how to make them stop so she found a lot of liquor and a little alleyway and drank until they sighed and went away and then she went away and she thought she was happy about that until she woke up back at the hospital and figured out that going away was the same as dying.

Rosalie didn't want to die. She wanted to be normal.

She'd been doing well in the unit, this time around. She took her medication when the nurses told her to and the people she'd been talking to went back to doing whatever it was they did when they weren't busy being delusions. Doctor Harper had even switched her pills so they didn't make it so hard for her to draw, and she was starting to think that maybe she'd be let out soon and this time she wouldn't mess everything up.

Then the man came, and shortly after him, Sam.

She didn't tell anyone about the man. She drew pictures of Sam and his brother and their car, and placed them all carefully on top of her drawing of the man. She didn't like the way his yellow eyes stared at her.

XXX

Rosalie didn't bother to look up when she heard the familiar swipe of a key-card outside her door – she'd learnt how to keep her eyes to herself because people were less likely to think you were crazy if you didn't look at things that weren't there – but she did wonder.

She'd already taken her medication, right on schedule, with no fuss because look where that got her last time (That was Sam's fault anyway). It must have been late because the room lights were out and had been for a while. When the door opened she saw that the hallway lights were out too, which was odd. The hall lights were never turned off.

Someone was screaming down the hall, which wasn't unusual, and briefly Rosalie wondered what she'd done that was so bad that she had to live in a place where screams were more normal than lights going out, then she forgot about that when the man who said he was her cousin but was actually Sam's brother, who was actually a figment of her imagination slipped into her room.

Apparently he was also a nurse because he'd lost the jeans and leather jacket he'd worn when she last saw him and was now dressed in light purple scrubs. Something inside Rosalie wanted to laugh and, though Sam was gone wherever he went when she was in charge, it was like his leftover essence was murmuring that Dean would never wear purple, but she just stared.

"Hey, Rosalie," he said, taking a small step forward. He was crouched kind of low, leaning a little away from her. Rosalie had been in enough nut wards to recognise someone who was afraid she might suddenly turn and bite him.

An echo of Sam muttered that often things did turn and bit them.

"You remember me?" Dean asked. Dean, Sam's brother, but Sam wasn't real. But none of the voices had ever been this tangible before.

Rosalie nodded. She sat up and fisted her hands in the sheets. He wasn't real. Not real.

Dean glanced back at the door quickly, head cocked as if he was listening intently. "You wanna get out of here?"

Rosalie chewed her lip. She wasn't supposed to do what they said. She wasn't supposed to listen because they made her do crazy things like slit her wrists to get away from make-believe monsters, but Sam was in her head and Dean said he would get him out and at worst, wouldn't she just wake up back in the ward? Hallucinations never got her anywhere.

"You gonna fix me?" she asked cautiously.

Dean hesitated. Of course, he was here for Sam, not really for her.

"I'm going to help you," he rephrased her words carefully, which really meant that he was going to help Sam, but if he could just get Sam out of her head...

"Okay." She nodded, clambering up from the bed.

Dean looked relieved, deeply so, as though he had expected her to put up more of a fight. "Okay, good." He stepped back and glanced out into the hallway. "Now, I need you to do exactly what I say, and don't make a sound, okay? You gotta be quiet.

Rosalie nodded. She was good at being quiet.

She followed Dean from the room and down the hallway, copying the way he stuck close to the wall, stepping softly. Rosalie's bare feet were silent on the floor. The screams had died down and a murmur of voices tripped along behind them. She thought they came from Kristina's room, near the end of the corridor. Kristina liked screaming, liked having all the nurses rush to her aide. Rosalie didn't understand that. She only wanted to be left alone.

They got to the rec room, eerie in it's darkness – Rosalie had never liked shadows. They were nearly at the door when the swish of the ranch slider that led out to the smoking area had Dean's hand clamping down on her wrist.

Dean tugged and Rosalie followed, an awkward half-dive behind the nurses station, with only the barest thud as they hit the floor. Dean's hand moved to her back and pushed lightly, carrying on their roll until they were both crammed into the space under the desk. She felt like a monster waiting to leap out at someone unsuspecting, or a child playing hide and seek. She was almost sitting in Dean's lap, sharing his body heat, his mouth close to her ear.

"Shh," he breathed, no more than the slightest breeze.

Rosalie held her breath. Sam stirred somewhere beneath the surface but she squeezed her eyes shut and clamped him down as hard as she could.

She listened to Dean's heart beating, a lot calmer than she imagined hers was, as footsteps laced with second-hand smoke approached the desk. They wandered off to the side and she heard a switch being flicked a few times experimentally. There was a long pause, filled with the steady beating in Dean's chest (Were hallucinations supposed to have heartbeats? Or was it kind of comforting that her hallucinations weren't zombies?), then the footsteps meandered down the hallway they'd just left.

"What's wrong with the lights?" She heard a male voice question, and she was trying to figure out whether it was Michael or Tom when Dean levered them both out from under the desk and, keeping a hand on her head so that she was crouched as low as he was, pushed her towards the exit.

The swipe of the card sounded like a hiss and Rosalie cringed away but Dean's hand was tight around her forearm and when he pushed the door open he pushed her with it.

Rosalie thought that stepping out that door should feel important. A moment of achievement and triumph and freedom that should sing to her in a voice she liked to pretend was her mothers, bit she was over the threshold before the moment really registered and all that came with it was the sound of their scrubs swishing and their footsteps muffled by carpet as they ran.

TBC