A/N: Similar warning as last chapter, but this chapter has the nasty stuff that last chapter warned you about (violence, inpleasant images and language). Seriously, please read with caution. I don't think it's too bad, but then I have a reasonably high tolerance -- well, when I'm writing it, not so much when I'm reading. (wink).
As before, I thank each and every one of
you for the amazing reviews! This chapter has a cliffy, but it's
far less evil than the last one... thus my quick update because, yes,
leaving you all with that last chapter was evil. In my defence,
this one wasn't ready to post. Honest. Truly. (slinks
away, dodging stones).
GUNSLINGER (Chapter Five)
"Brad!" Dean slammed the chains against the cell bars. The sound rang in his ears, made nausea bite the back of his throat, and charred pain through his wrist.
He staggered, his knees buckling. One knee hit the ground and his vision blackened. He wavered there, defying gravity and the threatening pull of unconsciousness. "C'mon, Dean. Suck it up."
"What did… I do?"
Dean's head jerked up and for a blinding instant he thought it was Sam. Thought his brother stood outside the cell. His heart pounded and he bucked upright, desperate to make sure.
But it wasn't.
"What did I do?" Brad said again. He fiddled with the key in his hand and scanned the floor around him. He was shaking. "What happened? What—"
Dean shoved one arm through the bars. "Unlock the cell."
"What did I do?"
"Unlock the fucking cell and get these off me!" He thrust his wrists forward. "Now!"
Creaking reverberated through the building, stressed timber crackling beneath strain.
"Brad, move!"
Brad shifted his weight from side to side, taking shuffling steps. It took an eternity for the door to open, even longer for him to find the right key for the manacles.
Dean fumbled with them, panting now, his hands trembling so badly he could hardly shuck them off.
"Your gun. Where's your gun?"
Brad looked set to cry. His chin trembled and he flapped his hands pathetically. "I… I don't know."
Dean spun him, shoved him against the cell bars and retrieved the weapon tucked in the waistband of the other man's pants. He back-stepped, took a breath to still his shaking hands, and sprinted from the cell and down the hall. He crashed against the door, slammed so hard into it that his shoulder exploded in pain, then he was outside and the sunlight stunned him.
West. The sound had come from the west side. He spun, kicking up dust, and ran.
He reached the corner, rounded it and stopped dead.
Time ceased. Sound ceased. His heart quit pumping.
Sam hung, the noose around his neck, his face red, his eyes bulging, and his tongue, almost oversized, protruded from parted lips.
Two clear feet separated Sam's boots from the ground, and his long legs splayed and sought purchase in the air while one hand clawed fruitlessly at the rope around his neck. The other arm hung listless, the hand jerking spasmodically.
The gallows creaked and groaned with each sudden jerk on the rope. Death throes. Brad had been right, it was like a chicken.
Dean froze. Horrified. He couldn't move, couldn't get his brain to function, his limbs to respond to the mental panic.
That wasn't his brother. His Sam. No way… no!
Instinct kicked in and Dean raised the gun, straightened his arm, aimed and fired. It happened so fast that he didn't think, none of it processed, but somehow he hit the rope, the bullet severed it with surgical precision, and then Sam was down, heaped on the ground in a tangle of long limbs. The rope fell and coiled on Sam's back like a serpent.
Dean panted, his gaze darting to the dead man, then back to Sam. His brother lay where he had fallen, face down, one arm twisted beneath him, his legs turned out behind him.
Dean dropped the gun. It made a dull thud as it hit the desert sand. The two spirits turned to face him, their dark eyes malevolent, shining with hatred and need.
"You shouldn't have done that," Conrad said.
Dean's attention volleyed between the dead gunslingers and his brother. He called to his sibling, but his voice didn't work right, not loud enough and the blood down his throat and in his nose turned Sam's name into a rasped lisp.
The hot desert wind told him that he had failed. That the drop was too far, that Sam was too badly injured and unable to exert the muscular strength to protect his trachea and throat. The rattling chain link on the saloon verandah across the street, the tumbleweed that spiraled topsy-turvy behind the dead men, and the deathly silence all spoke the same message.
As the spirits walked toward Dean, perfectly in sync, their spurs clicking against the rocky desert ground, Dean had no strength to run. He stared at his brother, willing Sam to move. To breathe. To show some sign of life. Anything. Any reason to keep fighting.
Then Sam moved. One hand fisted at the sand and the muscles across his back rippled, subtly shifted the coiled rope. It was all he did, then he fell still again, his body shuddering weakly.
Dean released a breath and raised his arms, his injured wrist throbbing dully. "Come and get me, you sadistic sons of bitches." He turned and sprinted, barreling around the corner and back into the door of the jail. The dead men followed, moving swiftly, faster than Dean.
They caught him at the cell, slammed him against the bars and dropped him to the floor. Blood filled his mouth, burned his nostrils and unconsciousness momentarily blackened his mind.
He shook it off, scraped himself along the floor and grasped the fallen pocket watch. Tom launched a kick to his stomach, and Dean rolled, facing the bars, the watch clutched in his hand.
Another kick, hard into his back, and pain lashed through his kidneys. Dazed, he smashed the watch against the cell bars, cracking the face and distorting the metal. Again, and again. He endured two more kicks to his back before the watch lay in pieces on the cell floor, and he beside it. Brad had retreated to the far corner of the cell, his hands over his face, gibbering stupidly.
The dead men didn't vanish. Didn't disappear in an anti-climactic rush of compressed air. He had guessed as much, but he was desperate and out of time, and… what the hell, it was worth a try.
He grunted as they pulled him upright and half carried, half dragged him back outside. They threw him next to his brother, and Dean reached out to his sibling with a shaky, bloodied hand.
"Sam."
Sam's eyes were open, half slits, his mouth wide, his face discolored. His back shuddered and his eyes widened, glazed and dilated. There was no recognition there, just raw panic
Conrad loosened the noose from Sam's neck, jerked it free and shoved him aside. The action rolled Sam onto his back, his face toward Dean, his eyes open, mouth wide. Tears wet his face. Dean pushed to his knees, swiped Conrad aside and clambered to his brother. He fell beside him.
"Sammy?"
But he knew. He knew without touching. Sam wasn't breathing. He wasn't getting any air. His throat had closed up.
"No! Sam, no!"
Conrad pulled Dean away, and Tom held him as they slipped the noose around his neck. He punched at them, clawed and fought. Still fighting even as they got him upright and started dragging him toward the gallows.
"Sam!"
No response. Nothing. Sam's eyes slipped closed and his body loosened, relaxed.
Dean screamed, lashing out in fury and grief. Conrad let him go. Then Tom. Dean collapsed, unprepared for the sudden release. He landed hard on his knees, and splayed out one hand to protect his injured wrist. Gasping, he watched as the dead men shimmered, hologram-like. Their faces, pale and ghostly, twisted and morphed. They stared at each other, their expressions a mix of horror and relief. Then they vanished. No noise, mess of rotting innards and messy implosions… just gone.
On the ground, where the two men had been, lay two gold watches.
Understanding slammed into him, and he pulled clear of the noose, staggered to his brother and fell beside him. He understood more than he ever wanted to. They had exacted their revenge, killed the man they believed had caused them so much pain. And Sam's death had freed their souls.
He refused to accept it.
Dean rolled his brother, arranged his limbs into the recovery position. His vision faded in and out as Sam's head lolled, his broken arm flopped, and his face, bloodied and swollen, had relaxed. His lips had a blue tint… and the air hung with the smell of urine.
The sphincter muscles relax at the moment of death.
"Sammy, don't do this. Don't. Please."
He caught Sam's uninjured arm, pressed his forefinger to the pulse point and searched for a miracle.
Logically, it was a pointless exercise. The spirits had recognized the moment of Sam's death, and in sensing it, had relinquished their earthly hold.
If Sam's heart had stopped, there was nothing he could do to get him back. CPR would be pointless, though he would try. He would, because he never gave up. Not on Sam. Not ever. But he wasn't an idiot either. Maybe with the proper equipment, with medical help on standby….
Dean slouched over his brother, his fingers holding Sam's wrist, and stared at the buttons on the younger man's shirt. Small ivory colored circles, thread knotted between tiny holes. Each splattered and smeared with blood. Sam's blood. His kid brother, his Sam.
Sensation fluttered against Dean's fingertips. Shocked, Dean pressed harder, confirming the sensation. It made no sense. Sam should be dead. Should be… but wasn't. Not technically. Not yet.
Dean began mouth to mouth, knowing that if he could get Sam's breathing up, he might have a chance. The first set had him stop. Sam's chest didn't rise.
He touched at Sam's throat, felt abrasions and heat. Sam had been conscious when Dean had shot the rope down, which meant his muscles hadn't relaxed. It had been Dean's greatest fear, that Sam would lose consciousness while suspended. The loss of conscious muscle control would leave his airway and arteries vulnerable to massive structural damage as the rope cut into this throat. Very few people survived after suffering a crushed trachea, or if they did, then not for long and definitely not in the desert, miles away from help.
But Sam hadn't lost consciousness, at least not until he was down. Yet, he wasn't breathing. Had his windpipe been crushed after all?
Dean fell back on his heels, helpless and panicked. His hands burned cold, his lungs rattled and grief threatened to strangle the life out of him. He didn't know what to do. Just had no clue and his vision turned to liquid.
A shadow fell over them as Brad dropped to his knees, his arms hugged around himself. He rocked, the picture of misery, evidently knowing he had done this. Dean abruptly stood, crossed to the man and punched him in the face. Brad went down with a sharp cry, his nose spewing blood.
Dean's muscles, iron rods of tortured regret, locked his arms at his sides. He turned stiffly and stared down at his brother.
"You got a knife?" he bit out suddenly.
Brad nursed his bloodied nose and stared stupidly.
"A knife. Switchblade. Razor, something sharp." Dean fell to his brother's side, tipped Sam's head back and felt through the swelling for the corrugated ridges of the younger man's windpipe. "Brad, now!"
Brad fumbled in his pockets and produced a Swiss Army knife. His hand shook as he passed it over.
"Now a pen, tubing, something thin and hollow."
"I don't—"
"Find something!"
"What are you going to do?"
Dean steadied his hands and splayed them, finger wide, on the span of Sam's upper chest. His thumb nudged Sam's pulse point, encouraged to find a weak tremor.
"Hang on, Sammy. Just hang on."
Dean flipped open the blade. His stomach churned and his hand shook. "Brad, don't fucking stand there. Move!"
"I don't have anything."
"Oh yeah you do, or else I'll slice your head from your shoulders and leave your mangled corpse for the buzzards." Dean glanced at the man, his pulse racing. "It needs to be thin, hollow, like a…."
Memory shoved forward, and an image of Brad sucking beer through a straw seared Dean's synapses. His tongue tangled in the haste to communicate. "Straw. Get your fucking straw."
"Straw?"
"The beer you were drinking." Dean jerked a thumb toward the saloon. "In there. Go. Go!"
Brad dithered for a second, then took off, one hand at his nose, the other pumping air. Dust sprang from his heels and then sound thumped as he ran into the saloon.
Dean momentarily closed his eyes, took a deep breath and set the knife, tip edge down, at the dip beneath Sam's Adam's apple. There was no way to sterilize the blade, and no time even if he had a method. Hot desert sand whipped at his face, and toyed with Sam's hair.
"You're going to be okay. Stay with me. Don't give up."
The blade sank in, raising blood in a shallow line. It hit resistance, the plastic-like sheath that formed Sam's windpipe. Dean sucked in a breath and exerted a fraction more pressure. Then a little more until the blade slid through.
Brad catapulted from the saloon, thudded across the verandah and out into the street. He sprinted the distance and presented Dean with a thin blue straw, his face sweaty and red. "Here. Will it… is he?"
"Clam it." Dean withdrew the knife and rested it on Sam's chest. He gripped the straw carefully, maneuvering it to slip into the thin slot he had made. Blood slicked his fingers and his hand shook, but the straw went in.
He expected a response, some immediate indication that he had made a difference. But he got nothing. Sam lay as still and deathly quiet as before. And no breath sounds whistled from the tube.
Dean set to work on breathing for his brother, pushing air through the straw and into Sam's lungs. Brad started pacing, agitatedly kicking up dust and making vague distressed sounds. Muttering as well. Dean tuned him out.
Thirty seconds, forty... fifty. Hope faltered. Unless Sam started breathing on his own, the likelihood of keeping him alive for the sixty mile drive into town….
Sam's hand twitched and his chest rose. Shallow at first, unsteady and unpredictable, but then it evened out. Dean blinked tears, his sinuses clogged. "There you go. That's my boy."
Dean accepted Brad's assistance to get Sam to the Impala, but he didn't trust Brad to drive, and didn't trust him with Sam's life, so he personally multi-tasked. Brad in the back-seat, Sam folded in the front, his head on Dean's thigh, a blanket behind his back to keep his neck level and the tube in place.
He almost drove off the road four times, and Brad squawked from the backseat that he could drive. But Brad had invited them into the desert, separated him from his brother and allowed two dead men to torture Sam and then to lynch him. Brad driving was just not an option, and Dean fought unconsciousness for the entire forty minutes that it took to get back into town.
The hospital accepted Sam's limp body, made comments about the tracheotomy and condemned with their curious eyes. Dean stumbled through the sign-in, screwed up the names, the cards, the insurance, and settled on Winchester and all the cash in his pocket. It was all he could remember, and it wouldn't be enough.
Sam wouldn't die under a stranger's name.
Sam wouldn't die at all.
Dean's teeth chattered and his boots clattered against the linoleum floor. He found a chair in the waiting room and sank into it, buried his face in his hands and gouged the palms into his eye sockets until he no longer saw his brother's face: beaten, bloodied, damaged so badly that it no longer looked like Sam.
He refused treatment and ignored the nurse who apparently had been assigned to the waiting room to keep an eye on him. His lower back cramped and ached, so badly he couldn't sit still, couldn't sit at all. So he kept moving, cradling his throbbing wrist and flaking dried blood all over the linoleum floor.
Brad loitered in the waiting room for over an hour, refused treatment for his nose and crossed several times to the telephone on the wall before he finally lifted it and called someone. Dean stared numbly, listening without hearing, and a while after that Brad left.
The clock ticked. People came and went. Dean waited, and the blood on his clothes dried and flaked, his muscles cramped, his lower back ached so badly that he wanted to scream, and he seriously considered cutting off his wrist just to make the pain stop. But he didn't, he endured it because it was all he could do.
Doctor Parkens, thirty something with a lisp and an odd looking hairstyle that framed her face and made her look like a river bloated mammal corpse, came to see him around an hour later. She gestured for him to sit, but Dean couldn't because it all hurt so badly. Instead, he leaned against the wall and stared sullenly at her.
"You need medical treatment, Mr Winchester."
"How's Sam?"
She sighed, took a seat and started to explain his brother's condition. She spoke gently and in detail, but Dean frosted over it and made a list in his mind: severe and extensive bruising, contusions, fractures to the ribs, right forearm, cheekbone and nose, cerebral edema, peritoneal trauma, hypotension, bruised kidneys, scrotum—
"What?"
The woman's gaze softened. "There's no evidence of sexual trauma, just the bruising. He must have been hit in the groin area. It's not serious."
Dean dug his fingers into his thighs. The room tilted and spun and he tasted blood in his mouth. "Is that all?"
She reached out, a gesture of sympathy and support, but Dean drew the limb back as though burned.
"Is that all?"
"Sam endured a complete hanging, that is, he was suspended with his feet unable to touch the ground."
Dean clenched his jaw, the remembered image threatening to completely undo him. "I… I checked his neck. It wasn't broken."
"No, the height of the drop and force placed on the neck determines how much injury occurs. You said Sam was suspended with one to two feet clearance."
"Yes."
"If he had been dropped from that height, it would asphyxiate, not compromise his spinal cord and skull."
Dean stared down at his hands. They were shaking. "He stopped breathing."
"Yes." She hesitated, then added. "The field tracheotomy restored his respiration. It saved his life."
Dean felt cold. Chilled from the inside out. "But." He looked up and met her gaze. "I hear the 'but'."
She smiled thinly. "Hanging injuries are difficult. The neck is a delicate structure, the placement of the rope, force, angle… the duration of unconsciousness."
"Will he recover?" Dean said harshly. "Or should I have left him out there?"
She winced and shook her head. "No, but we need to be cautious. We don't know his capacity for a full recovery until he wakes."
"Really? The look on your face and your tone say otherwise. Give it to me straight, is he brain damaged?"
"It's too early to say."
"Five days from now, will Sam be conscious, will he be talking? Read the crystal ball, what does it say?"
"Mr Winchester—"
Dean lurched away from the wall, the sudden shift sending his heart into a frantic palpitation. He braced against it, swaying. "Five days. Spell it out. Now."
"You need to sit down."
"No! They beat him, hung him. They… they…."
"Dean, please." She touched his arm.
"He's going to die," Dean said. He backpedaled, banging into chairs, attracting attention. A maniacal laugh erupted from his throat and his vision blurred. "It's why they disappeared. They knew… they knew what they'd done, that there was no hope. They knew."
She was looking at him with the eyes of a sane person dealing with a madman. "Mr Winchester."
Dean backed into the wall, splayed his hands out palm flat against it. Slid down, knees to chin, his limbs trembling. "He's all I got. Don't play with me. I need to know, I need to know now."
"I can't make you any promises. I'm sorry, I just can't."
"Can't, or won't," he said as she shimmered before him, becoming watery and unclear. His sinuses burned and he couldn't breathe right.
"He's in surgery for the abdominal injuries. Once those are repaired, he will be transferred to ICU and later, when he's gained some strength, he'll be scheduled for reconstructive surgery for his face." She paused and her voice softened. "You aren't helping him by refusing treatment for yourself. When he wakes, he will need you."
"I will accept treatment when I know my brother is okay." Dean scrubbed at his face, and raised his head, jostling the pain around in his skull. "Not a moment before. Do you understand me?"
An orderly appeared at the waiting room door. A second nudged up behind him. Doctor Parkens glanced at them, then offered a sympathetic smile. "Without treatment, Dean, you won't be around when your brother wakes."
"Bullshit." Dean jerked upright, pushed off from the wall and started moving again. They watched him, waiting, like a hunter stalking injured prey – waiting for the moment it falls.
"I need to see him."
"You can't. Not yet. When he's in ICU, you'll be allowed to sit with him."
"Then I'll wait outside ICU. Where is it?" He started toward the door, collapsed partway there, pain drilling him into the floor. He groaned, clenched his jaw and struggled to stand. Darkness mocked him, made light of his protectiveness… of his vow to keep Sam safe.
"Let us help you."
The words buzzed and sizzled, scouring through his mind. "No. I need… to save… Sam."
He blacked out, self-disgust hammering him to the floor.
