A/N: Thanks for the reviews/faves/follows. Glad I'm still keeping you involved. Now! Dean is locked in a monkey cage in the pirate lair at the Daffodil monkey track, breathing his last breath...

The Pompatus Box (Chapter 20: In His Hour of Need) by frostygossamer

Whack! Smack! Bang, crash, wallop! Aaaargh! Thump.

Dean is shocked awake by the sound of a commotion in the corridor outside. His brain is spinning and it takes him a second to focus and remember where he is. Oh yeah. Naked on the floor of a room full of frightened, chattering capuchins.

Bang bang! Boom, crash, wallop! Aaaargh! Thump thump.

Someone is getting hurt outside, more than one someone. In actual fact, it sounds like a whole bunch of pirate crew are getting the crap kicked out of them right beyond the door to the monkey room. There are flashes of lightning too, discharges of projectile and plasma weapons and cries of pain followed by the heavy thuds of bodies hitting the floor. It seems to Dean like a minor war has broken out.

Suddenly his prison door is flung back crashing on its hinges, and Dean is dimly aware of a tidal wave entering the room. Even the capuchins fall silent, cringing in the back of their enclosures. Something that seems like a giant octopus flies to Dean's cage, handsy and grabby. It starts pawing at the thing and manhandling him through its rattling bars, tugging at his neck chain. Dean pulls back defensively, on reflex, but it doesn't stop.

"Damn it! Keys! Uh, hang tight. Be back with you in ONE second."

Before it leaves the room, Dean notices the shape has a bloody sword in one hand and a smoking gun in the other. Moment's later it returns carrying a bolt cutter, its weapons stuck in its belt.

"Found the freakin' keys."

Hissing with concentration, it proceeds to free Dean, cutting the padlock off of his cage and the chain attached to the collar around his neck with two quick snaps.

"C'mon, man. We gotta get outta here. Stat!"

It reaches in the cage and drags him up from the floor. Something familiar about its voice finally works its way into Dean's woozy brain.

"S-Sam?"

His throat is dry and croaky. Sam? Here? Didn't he tell the big doofus to stay put?

"Nah, it's the Sugar Plum Fairy. Yeah, it's Sam, you jerk. Who did you think it was?"

And it IS Sam. Snarky and gaspy and desperate but definitely Sam. Dean tries a weak smile, but it's sad. Nice try, buddy, but no banana. He flops back onto the ground.

"Too late, Sam. You gotta go. Too late for me. I'm outta time."

Sam fervently shakes his head. "Never too late, Dean. You think I'd come here empty-handed?"

He pulls a black bag from his back pocket. "Got your poison right here."

Dean stutters, unable to comprehend this unexpected aversion of fate. "Y-you got my..."

"I CAN count to 24, Dean. Lemme do the honours and then we can get the hell outta here."

Dean can barely feel the prick of the needle on his skin, but he can't help smiling as the warm familiar sensation floods his body. It stimulates his every nerve and recharges his vital organs. The YED brings him back to life. Stumbling to his feet, he allows Sam to get a shoulder under his arm and they flee from that place together.

In the hall outside, butchered bodies lie all around in crimson pools of blood. No Benny. No one stops them.

When they are safely gone, the stunned capuchins start their alarm cry.

Sam hails a Daffodil Yellow cab.

=O=

Back aboard Baby, Dean heads the ship out into space before letting Sam half carry him into the Auto-Decontaminator suite and help him up onto the treatment table. Dean's energy reserves are so depleted that he falls into a dead sleep almost immediately and Sam reluctantly leaves the machine to take care of him for a while.

The YED will heal Dean, but the battering he took this time has done way more damage to his body than the superficial cuts Sam saw it heal before. Dean came DAMN close to the cut-off point. It could take the YED several hours to finish the job on its own.

Sam's nerves are tingling. He might have spend years at military college and graduated head of his year but he has never seen actual combat before. It's so much MORE than he ever imagined. He's finding it a little harder to wind down than he expected. And, on top of that, he's WIRED that he managed to find Dean and get him back alive.

He cleans up and replaces his chosen weapons, the sabre and pistol he grabbed from Dean's arsenal before sallying forth to find him or die trying.

Dean is a lucky guy. Sam waited alone on Baby for HOURS until he made up his mind that something BAD had gone down and Dean OBVIOUSLY needed him. Everything in his romantic make-up told him that he HAD to go save the day and snatch his Dean back from the hands of who-freakin'-ever had gotten their murderous paws on him.

Sam found the monkey track by complete chance. Who even knew that Dean had a transponder sewn under the skin right above his hip, and that it allows Baby to keep track of him when he goes planet-side? Not Sam. But Baby let him know.

He was attempting to search Dean's activity log, to find some hint of where the hell the jerk had gotten stalled, when a random display from the transponder popped up. A flashing red star indicated the racetrack as his current location. When Sam couldn't find any trace of Dean in the public part of the building he KNEW he had been right to come after him.

The military training his grandfather insisted every prince be obliged to undertake suddenly kicked in. He SLASHED and BLASTED his way through the crowd of armed dirtbags that tried to keep him from Dean, so possessed he suffered only nicks and scratches. When he found Dean alive his heart almost burst with joy.

And Sam needs to be with him right this second.

He hastily strips down, trashes his bloody clothing and opens the door to the Auto-Decontaminator suite. He ignores the warning bells that object to his breaking the airtight seal. Dean is lying on the table bared by the machines, his naked skin a patchwork of blue, black and red. One green eye is swollen shut, the other watery and unfocused, his cheeks bruised and puffy, his once perfect lips swollen, cut and bloody.

Sam flies straight to his side and pulls his battered body into his arms. He unbuckles the tight collar from around Dean's neck with trembling fingers and flings it aside, pressing his lips to the wheal it has left on the flesh of his neck. Dean protests, but only vaguely, as Sam hugs him tight against his bare chest.

"Dude, don't you freakin' squish me, you big ape."

He makes no attempt to pull away. It feels nice to be held, very nice. No one has held Dean that way since he lost his dad. And it has been too long.

Ridiculously, Sam can only sob, "I saved you, man. Dean, I saved you."

TBC

A/N: That's an understatement. Sam has the potential to save more than Dean's skin. But does Dean agree? More soon.