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Thanks to The Lilac Elf of Lothlorien, Scribble2Much, BranchSuper, TinTin11, Colby's girl, Yami Faerie, SandyDee84 and Sparkybunny for the reviews.

And a lot of gratitude to Cheryl for helping me sort this out!

Chapter IV: Salt and Burn

Dean had tried to stop himself. He had. A part of him – a small part, the part the ghost was controlling – had been angry. The ghost had trawled through his mind, using the memory of every argument they had ever had, every bit of anger or resentment Dean had ever felt. Although it went against every fibre, although it flew in the face of all his instincts to take care of Sam, Dean had found himself saying things calculated to hurt.

He felt his own arm pressing into Sam's throat, and he was horrified but he could not make himself back off. He could see Sam slipping, see the light going out in his baby brother's eyes, and he mentally yelled for Sam to do something – to get at the shotgun Dean knew he still had, to use some of that freakish muscle to push Dean off, to do anything other than stand there and let his brother strangle him.

But there was hesitation in Sam's eyes, and the sudden horror Dean felt almost made him lose the tenuous control he had.

Sam wasn't sure.

Bloody freaking hell.

Dean had just said all the most cruel things he could think of and now he was cutting off Sam's air supply, watching impassively as the light faded in Sam's eyes, and his little brother wasn't bloody sure whether or not he was possessed.

Freaking stupid son of a freaking Sasquatch bitch!

"Dean," Sam mumbled, and Dean fought harder for control because damn it this freak of nature wasn't going to get Sammy.

And then there was an explosion of noise and movement: Dean was shoved aside, a gunshot rang out, and his head hit a rock for the second time that night.

Dean came back to consciousness slowly. The first thing he was aware of was pain. His head felt like somebody had decided to start taking his skull apart with a sledgehammer. The second thing he was aware of was that there was no huge hand in his hair or on his ribs, no voice urging him to open his eyes.

Sam wasn't there.

Dean was hurting and Sam wasn't there. That meant –

Memory came back in a flood, memory and damn it all to freaking hell and God Sammy please no.

Dean sat up, ignoring the shooting pain the motion sent through his head. He blinked, trying to clear his fuzzy vision –

And the first thing he saw was Sam stretched out his front a few feet away.

He wasn't moving.

No.

Dean tried to get up but his legs wouldn't hold him, wouldn't even let him stand, leave alone walk. He collapsed into a groaning heap.

No. No no no no no no. Can't do this. Have to get to Sammy.

He managed to get himself to his knees and crawl the short distance to where his little brother lay.

Sam didn't stir, not even when Dean grabbed him under the arms and rolled himonto his back, grunting a little at the weight. The Sasquatch was freaking heavy.

"S-Sammy?" Dean stuttered, shaking him. There was no response. "Sammy," Dean said, more urgently. "Come on, don't do this to me. Wake up." Still nothing. Dean's finger felt for a pulse and found it. "Sam! Wake the hell up!"

No reaction.

This couldn't be – but, no, Sam wasn't having a seizure. He was just unresponsive. Although, with their luck, either Abbie or the ghost they'd been trying to waste had rootled around in Sam's head and managed to knock a crack in the wall.

Right. First things first. Salt and burn the son of a bitch that had possessed him. If Sam didn't wake up after that, go back to the graveyard and salt and burn Abbie's bones. If that didn't work –

If that didn't work, Dean would burn the whole damn graveyard to the ground if that was what it took.

He looked around for the salt.

And then he felt it in his mind again, trying to take over, trying to force him to get the gun in his belt and point it at Sam's head and squeeze the trigger.

It'll all be over. The voice was like a caress, and Dean could feel its allure even though he knew it was the ghost. Think about it. He's ruined everything for you. If it weren't for your younger brother, you would still be with the woman you love. You would be helping her raise her son. Your mother would never have died, and your father would never have turned into a drill sergeant.

Dean snarled for the thing to shut up.

He's a freak. He's always been a freak. Your life would have been perfect if Sam had never been born.

He had to get it the hell out of his head, and that meant burning the bones. Dean gathered the scattered equipment, trying to ignore the voice whispering about how he could go back to Lisa and his apple-pie life.

He started to shake salt over the bones.

You've given up everything for him, and when has he ever been grateful for it? He left you to go to college, turned his back on you so he could have normal. You don't owe him anything.

Dean ignored it. It had been impossible to shake the ghost's hold on him earlier, but it was easy now. Sam was still and unresponsive, maybe having a seizure, maybe having a flashback of hell, maybe bloody dying. Freaking idiot of a freaking hiker getting himself killed and then taking it out on Dean's little brother.

You don't understand. I loved my brother. I did everything I could to make him happy. And he abandoned me here! He let me die and then he just left my body here to rot!

"I'm sorry," Dean said out loud as he poured out the gasoline.

And he was, in a way. He and Sam had had some pretty damn serious problems, but Dean knew now – as he had known then, except that he'd been to angry to think about it – that everything Sam had done had been because somewhere inside that freakish brain of his there was still a four-year-old boy who wanted nothing more than his big brother's approval.

He let me die.

This time the ghost sounded bewildered and sad. Dean almost felt sorry for it. He tried to imagine a situation where Sam, without being possessed or high on demon blood, deliberately did something to harm him, and when he couldn't he really did feel bad for the ghost.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, match in his hand. "I'm sorry you couldn't have a little brother like Sam."

He struck the match and let it fall.

Dean was starting to panic.

Sam was alive. His heartbeat was a steady, comforting rhythm under Dean's hand. When he passed his fingers over Sam's half-parted lips he could feel tiny puffs of breath.

That was the good part.

The bad part was that through being triaged, being half-carried, half-dragged through the forest to the Impala, and finally being manhandled into the front seat and manoeuvred so that he was curled up with his head on Dean's knee, Sam hadn't woken.

Dean was driving hell-for-leather in the direction of the nearest hospital. He knew there would be trouble: Sam was beaten up, Dean's knuckles were bruised; it wouldn't take much for the doctors to put two and two together. But it didn't matter. The worst they or the police could do was put him in a cell until Sam woke up, and while it would suck not to be at his baby brother's side, it was infinitely preferable to having Sam die on him.

He was so intent on the road that it was a moment before he realized Sam was moving.

"Sam!"

Dean cut across two lanes onto the shoulder, thanking his luck that it was the middle of the night and there was no traffic. He braked hard, not even flinching at the protesting squeal or the sound of gravel hitting the underside of the chassis.

"Sam, you with me?"

"Dean?" Sam mumbled, barely audible.

"Yeah, I'm here. You OK?"

"What happened?"

"I don't know," Dean confessed, squeezing Sam's shoulder lightly. "One of the ghosts must've got you."

"Ghosts?" Sam frowned. "Hunt?"

"Yeah. Don't worry about it. I ganked the one in the forest, and we can deal with Abbie later. Don't think she'll be much of a threat now; she might even find her own way into the light now that the other one's gone."

"The other one?" Sam sounded bewildered.

"You remember what happened, right?" Dean asked, alarmed.

"Remember… Not really. Remember you digging up Abbie's grave… And then she showed up. Nothing after that."

Dean let out a sigh of relief. If Sam remembered even a part of the night, it wasn't that bad. It wasn't unusual to forget what had happened immediately before being knocked out.

"OK, kiddo. We can work with that. How're you feeling?" Sam ignored the question and reached up to feel Dean's forehead. Dean pushed his hand back down. "Dude, stop groping me. We're in the middle of the highway."

"You OK?"

"I'm fine, Sam."

"You don't look OK."

Dean was about to make a snarky comment about how it was a miracle he looked as good as he did with a whiny little bitch for a brother, but that was too much like what the ghost had been forcing him to say earlier. He couldn't get his tongue around the words.

Instead, he patted Sam's shoulder and said, "I'm fine, kiddo. You just worry about you. How are you feeling?"

For an answer, Sam started to sit up, flinched, and clutched at his head.

"I don't get it," he said, letting Dean prop him against the passenger door with a rolled-up jacket under his neck. "I thought… Where are we?"

"I'm taking you to the hospital."

"What?" Sam sounded suddenly wide awake. "Dean, no. You can't – how are we going to explain this?" A cracked rib Dean had found in the triage, a bloody lump on the back of Sam's head, and assorted bruises just beginning to form, including the very distinctive signs of having been strangled. "They'll think you did it."

"We've explained stuff before."

"Dean. I'm fine. I don't need a hospital."

"We're not taking risks with a head injury, Sam. Not now, not with you. You were out cold for over half an hour. And you don't even remember what happened!"

"Yeah, but that was just because I got knocked out or Abbie got to me or whatever. It wasn't a flashback."

"I don't care. Don't be ridiculous, Sam! We don't know what might jar the wall –"

"Exactly! We don't know what might jar the wall! If I go to a hospital with a head injury they'll insist on an MRI and a bunch of X-rays. How do you know that won't crack the wall? And what if they want me to talk to a psychiatrist or something? He might ask me something that –"

"Sam," Dean growled.

"I'm just saying. I'm OK, Dean. It's just a bump."

"Sam –"

"Dean, please." There it was, that wheedling tone that annoyed the hell out of Dean but which he could never refuse. "I just… I don't want random strangers touching me right now."

Dean sighed. "Fine. I'll meet you halfway. We'll go to the motel and I'll check you over properly, and then I – I, Sam, not we – will decide if you need to go to a hospital or not."

"But –"

"It's the only deal you're getting, Sam."

Sam huffed out a breath. "Fine."

Dean drove up as close to their motel room door as he could before braking. His head was killing him – he'd hit it twice and had a fratricidal son of a bitch rootling around in it – and he wanted nothing more than to rest, but he couldn't. Not till Sam was taken care of.

He didn't know whether to be worried or relieved that Sam was still so out of it that he hadn't remembered Dean's bumps on the head. He obviously suspected something was wrong, because he kept looking at Dean with an expression halfway between the bitchface and the puppy-dog eyes, like he couldn't decide whether he was annoyed with Dean for not levelling with him or hurt that his big brother would keep him in the dark.

When Dean shut off the engine, Sam opened the passenger door, but a glare from his brother was enough to keep him from trying to get out on his own.

Dean's worry went up a notch.

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