Darkest Side of Black- Chapter 8

[adrenalineshots]

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I ran out of excuses for my horrible, horrible schedule with this story. Once more, this chapter is way overdue, but I hope that, for those brave few still reading, this one answers some questions :))

What has happened so far:

With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper.

Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities.

Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare.


Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels.

The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests.

When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins.

In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal.

Ahtuapu tells Sam about the attacks, how no one ever hears anything, how the victims refuse to tell what has happened to them until the day they kill themselves. Researching older cases, Sam finds out that this isn't the first time it has happen, discovering clusters of young men suicides since 1997 in California.

Dean visits the coroner that did the autopsy on the latest man who killed himself and is told that all victims had the same hormone in their blood work. He also sees the odd growth of cells that the doctor has pulled out of the latest body.

The nature of the attacks the victim had suffered and the similarity between his bruises and Dean's makes him think that the same thing that attacked him, attack the Native American boys at the camp.

Dean finally figures out what the monster is: a mutate Djinn, bent on sodomizing young men until they tell everyone what has been done to them. The African tribe that had first encountered such a thing had called it a Popobawa.

At the camp, Dean acts as bait to kill the Popobawa and lets Sam believe that they are hunting a Succubus.

The monster, stronger than him, breaks Dean's right wrist and is about to attack him once again when Sam, who had been sent on a wild goose chase by his brother, finds the two and distracts the Popobawa long enough for Dean to kill it.

Chief Ahtuapu thanks the Winchesters for their help and gives Sam, as he had promised, the means necessary to break Dean's deal. A powerful spell that will protect Dean from any kind of action that would cause him harm. After it is done, no man, beast or supernatural being can ever break Dean's skin.

Sam drives Dean to a clinic and forces him to have his wrist checked. While waiting on Dean, Sam remembers Dean's previous comments about an evil 'bat-man' when he was drunk and realizes that the monster that they'd just killed couldn't possibly be a succubus as Dean let him believe. Instead of holy-water and a exorcism, Dean had killed the monster with just a knife.

Sam figures that Dean knows more than he's letting on and that the only way for him to have that extra knowledge is if Dean himself had been a victim of thing that had been attacking young men at the Indian camp.

On their way to Bobby's, Sam confronts Dean about his doubts and sends Dean into a brutal flashback that almost kills Dean.

This is what happens next...

THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\EIGHT

Sam's heart was racing like a horse on the final lap of the Kentucky Derby.

He had known that Dean was lying. But his brother's reasoning had actually made sense and, for a second there, Sam had even been tempted to believe Dean.

After all, there was no denying the fact that there was a four year gap in their lives, a hole in Sam's knowledge during which he had little to no idea of what Dean had done. The one thing Sam did know for sure about that time was that he had almost became a respectable lawyer and married the woman of his life while Dean had remained hunting, both with their father and alone.

It was probable that Dean could've stumbled into something similar to the Popobawa during that time; but that only explained why Dean knew how to kill it. Not how he'd known what it was.

Sam hadn't even considered the fact that Dean might've faced one of these things before; Dean was right about that too. In all honesty, Sam didn't really liked to think about all those hunts where he hadn't been there to watch out his brother's back. Too many hunts where no one had been there to watch Dean's back at all.

But the fact remained that none of those reasons explained the bruises on Dean's body; or the spooked look that would take over his face whenever Dean thought no one was paying attention; or the exhaustion in his eyes that had gotten that much worse in the span of a couple of days. And nothing, not one thing that Dean could possibly say, would ever explain what Sam had seen in his eyes when Dean had killed that monster

Sam banged the door of the Impala in anger, mainly to stop himself from doing the same to his brother, which he would if he was forced to stay a single second more inside the car.

Sam's actions from that point on hadn't been planned; it was just about as much excuse as Sam could find for himself in insight. He just knew that he needed some answers and that politely asking Dean was getting him nowhere. After that, he'd lost it and yanked Dean out of the car because the compulsion to beat the answer out of his brother was still there and forcefully removing Dean from his Impala-cocoon was neither here nor there, but it was a step towards moving.

Getting Dean out of the car hadn't done much; in fact, the minute he was out, Dean seemed to be ignoring Sam altogether and that… that was something that Sam would not allow his brother. Not right then.

Not about something so serious. Dean could be hurt, he could be in need of going back to that hospital and the only way Sam would ever find out about was when his brother finally collapsed on the floor. Sam refused that as his only option in this mess. There were important questions that Sam needed answered right away and Dean's pig-headedness wasn't making it easier for either of them.

"What happened in that room when I was away, Dean?" Sam asked, his voice low with barely contained frustration at being deprived of the truth. "What possible half-assed explanation do you have for the line of salt around your bed, for the rumpled sheets, for the frigging smell all over the place? Some really rancid chick you managed to pick up in between unconsciousness and puking your guts out in the bathroom?"

Each question brought him closer and closer to Dean. Sometimes, crowding his brother was the only to get some answers out of Dean, and Sam knew that too well. It was a method far too tested and tried by both Sam and John in the past, and even though Sam wasn't proud of it, the fact that it worked.

It worked because anyone who truly knew Dean, knew how peculiar he was about personal space. Despite his usual brassiness and horny ways, there weren't many people that Dean allowed too close to him.

If Sam was wrong about his suspicions about what had happened and Dean was actually telling the truth, then the worst thing that his next actions could cause was Dean giving him a black-eye for manhandling him against the Impala. But if Sam had been right and Dean was lying...

... whatever Sam had expected to happen, Dean's reaction was one that Sam could have never accounted for.

The sun had hit Dean's eyes in the exact moment that his back slammed against the hood of the car and everything had gone straight to hell from there.

Dean's breath itched inside his chest and his whole body tensed against Sam. Sam pulled back, but it was already too late.

Arms extended by his side and palms opened, trying to look as harmless and un-imposing as he could manage, Sam had taken one step back and watched with growing panic as Dean went from withdraw and distracted to... somewhere else.

Dean wasn't even seeing Sam anymore. His eyes were opened wide, whites too bright, green unfocused and feverish; his nostrils were flaring, panting breaths that were too shallow to be actually pumping any amount of air inside his lungs.

"Dean," Sam tried, keeping his distance and his voice steady, hoping that a familiar sound would help reverse whatever the hell Sam had triggered. "Dean, come on man, it's just me. Breathe."

Dean's paleness was quickly turning into a sickly grey that made Sam's sweat turn cold. They were literally in the middle of nowhere and, if Sam needed to rush Dean somewhere for help, he couldn't even guess where the next hospital or clinic was, except for the one that they'd left hours ago.

Sam's heart skipped a beat when Dean's legs folded and he started to sink to the ground, back sliding against the Impala like it was a slow-motion rollercoaster at the fair and pulling his shirts up as it went along.

As he crunched down next to his brother to support his falling body, Sam realized that the movement hadn't so much been a matter of Dean's legs losing their strength; it had been more like Dean trying to make himself as small as possible.

He had no idea what to do with his hands. Sam clenched and clenched them by his sides, terrified of making the wrong decision. Should he shake Dean out of it? Slap him back to reality? Avoid touching him?

The first two options seemed to only add more violence to whatever Dean was currently experiencing and Sam couldn't bring himself to do that. The third one was a bit pointless now that he'd already done enough damage. But to see Dean trapped inside his mind like he was and not DO anything...

When Dean stopped staring straight-ahead and begun staring at his own chest instead, Sam had honestly hoped that it was over. But he was wrong again.

Dean's panting breaths of before became even faster, something that Sam was sure was impossible. His brother's whole frame became more frantic, like a coiled spring ready to snap, as Dean's hands started to pat his own stomach. The gesture was shy at first, like he was afraid to touch himself, but quickly it turned into violent, stabbing motions.

Sam had no choice but to grab Dean's hands before he could hurt himself.

Dean's shallow breaths stopped altogether, as did his frenetic movement, as if the touch of skin on skin had shut down Dean's brain. Sam found himself holding his own breath, waiting for Dean's next one.

It never came. Whatever nightmarish hallucination Dean was trapped in, it was going to kill him if Dean didn't started to breathe in the next couple of seconds and Sam had no idea of how to make him do that.

Sam's hands moved from Dean's wrists to his shoulders, shaking his brother as hard as he could. "Dean, please," Sam pleaded. "Don't do this to me. You can't do this to me."

Sam had no idea what he was saying. It was just words, sounds to make up for the oppressing silence that only made Dean's not breathing all the more grotesque. It was a desperate call to bring Dean back from inside his head, even if Sam's foolish actions had been the ones to push him too far. Sam didn't care what his mouth said. He just needed Dean to... "Breathe, Dean! Come on!"

What the hell had he been thinking? Why the fuck had he even opened his mouth without knowing more about what was going on with Dean? Of course, Sam could argue with himself, there was nothing to know more about if Dean never told him what had really happened. But still…

The real catch 22 was that now Sam had his answer. In fact, he now had pretty good idea that, whatever had happened, it had been bad enough to cause Dean's current reaction.

Sam watched in panic as Dean struggled to get a breath in and failed every single time. Could someone die from something that was only happening inside their heads?

Because that much was clear to Sam. Something in his actions or words had sent Dean straight into some of the very same memories that Sam had been trying to get Dean to share and that memory alone was killing his brother.

"Good one, Sam," Sam whispered to himself, helplessly watching Dean and having no idea of what to do to make it stop.

Desperate, Sam shook Dean by the shoulders, watching his brother's head loll boneless from side of side, barely registering when Dean's skull collided with the car's frame. "FUCKING BREATHE!"

The sound of Dean pulling a breath in and seeing his chest actually expand as it filled with air was the best thing that Sam had ever experienced. It felt like his own chest was expanding, liberating all the weight that had fallen on him.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry," Sam found himself whispering over and over again, his hands moving from Dean's shoulders to his head, pressing his shaking brother's frame against his own chest, needing to feel Dean's chest expand against his to make sure that his brother was back. "I'm so sorry."

Sam couldn't even tell what he was most sorry about; that something so horrible had happened to Dean while Sam was around and that he hadn't been able to do a thing to stop it or had even taken notice of it; or that his reckless actions had pushed Dean so far that it had almost killed him. Or simply the fact that, one way or the other, there was nothing that Sam could do to easy Dean's pain.

Dean didn't said a word when Sam finally managed to get them both to their feet and back inside the Impala. He didn't say a word as Sam steered him towards the back seat instead of the passenger's seat and gently pushed him down.

They remained in silence, a heavy, laden silence all the way to Bobby's place and it was only five minutes away from getting there that Dean finally replaced his accusing silence with soft snoring.

Sam found himself driving in circles around Singer's Salvage, like a shy shark around a nice piece of meat. He told himself that he was doing it to give Dean some more time to rest, now that he had finally settled into a somewhat peaceful sleep. But Sam knew better than that. He was really doing it for Bobby.

Deep down, Sam knew that he would need time to coach his face into not betraying his feelings and concerns towards Dean the minute they stepped inside Bobby's house.

He had done enough already by forcing Dean into facing something that he far from being ready to face. Sam wasn't about to allow his face to scream out loud Dean's secret the minute they passed Bobby's threshold.

/(O|O)\\

Bobby wasn't home when they got there, something that Dean was grateful for because of the respite it had bought him. When the dog bark had finally awakened him, they were already at the older man's front porch. Dean needed some time alone with Sam before either of them could face Bobby.

Sam, however, seemed to be doing his best to avoid Dean, jumping out of the car the second the engine stopped and moving to the trunk to get their bags without his eyes meeting Dean's even once. By the time Dean had pushed himself into a sitting position, Sam was already opening the door to Bobby's house with their spare key that they usually carried.

"Sam," Dean called out before his brother could disappear up the stairs with their bags. "We need to talk."

Sam stopped on the fourth step, shoulder slumping down like a thief caught right when he was sure his escape was a certainty. His footsteps were heavy as he came back down and set the two green duffel bags on the boarded floor of Bobby's hallway.

Dean was glad Sam kept quiet, leaving him to lead the conversation and not even trying to pretend he didn't knew what Dean wanted to talk with about.

"When Bobby gets here," Dean started, "I don't want you to tell him anything about what happened."

Sam blinked, a slight blush covering his cheeks. It was born out of aggravation more than out of shame. He looked surprised and a bit disappointed that Dean needed to make that point clear. "Dean... I would never tell him anything without your say so," Sam sputtered. "You have to know that."

Dean nodded. He knew that; he also knew that Bobby would look at them for three seconds and guess something was wrong.

"You look like someone ran over you puppy... several times," Dean told Sam, guessing that he probably didn't look much better. "Don't-" Dean stopped Sam before he could say any thing more. "- look... whatever happened, happened and I'-" Dean swallowed the bile pilling up inside his mouth, "I'm dealing with it, okay?"

"I could help," Sam ventured in a low voice.

Dean fought the urge to scream that there was nothing to help about. He bit his lip to stop the angry words from leaving. It wasn't Sam's fault. "I know you could, but I have to do this my way" Dean stated in no uncertain terms. "I don't wanna talk about it, I don't wanna think about it, I don't want to remotely remember it even happened. What I want is for you to stop looking at me like I'm going to break and for Bobby to stay in dark about this. Are we clear?"

"Stay in dark about what?" Bobby's voice cut in, coming from the back door. Framed against the light coming in from the opened door, all they could see was the older hunter's silhouette. "You don't call anymore?"

Dean tried to hide his startled look the best he could, hiding behind a smirk. "Afraid we'll catch you red-handed with one of your girlfriends, Bobby? What was the name of that lady with the crazy hair-do again? Mavis? Tracy?"

Bobby frowned at him, silently warning the younger hunter to drop that particular line of self-amusement. Truth was, Dean was anything but amused; he just hoped that Bobby would be embarrassed or annoyed enough to forget all about wh-

"You didn't answer my question," Bobby reminded him, his grey eyes already looking for answers in the Winchesters faces and stance. His eyes landed like laser beams on Dean's cast. "And what the hell happened to you?"

Sam cleared his throat, distracting Bobby from Dean's 'deer-in-the-headlights' impression. "I dented you're gate," he blurted out. "Dean was hurt in our last hunt and I was driving and… well…" Sam fumbled, his hands cursing through his hair, looking sheepishly and repentant according to the story he was weaving. "We were hoping to get it fixed before you'd noticed."

"Is that so?" Bobby asked in that half annoyed, half digging-for-bull-crap tone of his.

Dean, grateful that Sam had managed to come up with an almost believable lie both for their words and their appearances, jumped on the construction of their fake excuses. "Yeah, you know how Sam's driving is," he piped in. "The only reason he's still breathing is because most of the damage was on your front gate and not on my baby."

The intensity of Bobby's gaze eased up, a sure sign that he was actually buying what they were saying. He moved to drop the bags filled with groceries on his hybrid mix of library/kitchen. "What were you boys hunting?"

Sam exchanged a look with Dean, suddenly worried that they might blurt out two different things.

"Chupacabra," Dean answered, sticking as close to the truth as he could.

Bobby looked at Sam, his eyebrow raising. "That the same Chupacabra you asked me to pass along to another hunter, Sam?"

Sam could only nod. There was no point in denying the phone call he'd had with the older hunter when the hunt at the Cahuilla's camp had come along, and with it the chance to get Dean out of his deal.

"Thought you said that Dean was okay, that you were giving up on that because something else had come along?"

Sam opened his mouth, but nothing was coming out. He couldn't say that something had come along, not without telling Bobby what they had been hunting at the camp. And that would be just too close to the truth for comfort.

"Damn tornado came along, that's what," Dean answered for him. "Nearly blew us both to the Land of Oz, and you know how I feel about wicked witches, don't you Bobby?" he added a wink for effect.

Bobby ignored him, his gaze going back to that analytic state that made Dean feel like he was always guilty of something.

"Besides, I'm fine," Dean added. "It's only a broken wrist… just didn't feel like treading through the hot desert looking for a goat-eating mutant with an itchy-as-hell cast."

/(O|O)\\

Bobby's gaze didn't waver. Sam knew that Dean was perfectly aware of the fact that he looked anything but fine. It didn't take a mirror to know it. 
There were deep shadows under Dean's eyes and a pallor tone to his skin that could have only be caused by deep weariness and pain.

And, even Dean didn't realize it, there was this nervous energy about him that was obvious to everyone else. The air around Dean hummed like his skin was pure electricity, an elastic band stretched too far and ready to snap.

"Look, I'm tired, I'm cranky and I smell like last week's socks," Dean admitted as he made his retreat. "Dibs on the hot water," he called to the other two men as he climbed the stairs.

Sam stood silent, watching Dean disappear in the upper floor. As he bent down to pick up his bags to follow Dean, he found Bobby looking at him, expectantly.

"So," Bobby let out as soon as Sam met his eyes. "What the hell's going on here? And skip the bull crap this time, will ya?"

Sam swallowed the truth that was just begging to burst out of his mouth and took his time putting the bags back on the floor. Not telling Bobby about the events of the past days made him feel like a giant blue whale, trapped inside a tiny barrel where, if he as much as breathed too deep, everything would come spilling out.

He couldn't tell Bobby what the older man was really asking, but there was something that he could tell him. "I found a way to keep Dean out of Hell."

Bobby gave him a long look, the sharp man's eyes probably seeing more than Sam wished to show. When Bobby turned to fetch two cold beers from the fridge, Sam felt like he could finally take a deep breath.

"Let's hear it then," Bobby voiced, fingers twisting the cap of one of the beers before handing it over.

Sam almost sighed in relief at the chance of finally moving to some other topic of conversation other than the big pink elephant in the room.

"It's a bidding sigil," Sam started, taking of sip of the offered drink. It fell like a ton of bricks on his empty stomach. Sam couldn't even remember the last time he or Dean had eaten. "We'll need some stuff to make a special paint for it and the symbols need to be drawn directly on Dean's skin."

Bobby scratched his beard, his voice close to a whisper. "And how the hell are we gonna do that without Dean knowing what the things for and the whole deal with the crossroad's demon getting revoked?"

Sam's smile grew across his face, genuine happiness for the first time since he stopped the Impala on the side of the road. He pulled an orange vial out of his jacket, white pills dancing inside as he shook it. "We use these."

/(O|O)\\

Despite the fact that he was exhausted, Dean was sure he wouldn't be able to close his eyes for long enough to fall asleep without seeing the Popobawa's figure looming over him.

However, the minute his head touched the pillow and he let himself absorb the familiar smells of dust and old books that seemed to permeate Bobby's whole place, Dean slept.

He was in a meadow, tall green grass dancing under the gentle caress of the wind and tickling his bare feet. Despite the fact that Dean couldn't remember ever being there before, he knew exactly where to go.

Left of him, there was a well. A stone built well, looking so old that some of the mold covered stones were cracked and broken.

With the warm sun beating down his neck, Dean figured that he could use a sip of fresh water and, even though he had never been there, even though he had no idea of whom or when that well had been built, Dean knew that inside it was the most fresh and delicious water that he would ever taste.

His mouth already watering at the prospect of the fresh drink, Dean soon realized that getting to the water would be harder than he'd thought.

There was no bucket.

In fact, Dean couldn't see any sort of mechanism to bring the fresh water from the depths of the earth to the surface.

He picked up a stone from the grass filled ground and cleaned it from the fresh soil that clang to it before tossing it inside the well.

He remembered doing that on lakes and ponds, when he and Sam were young kids and they had the time to be young kids.

The 'plop' that the stone should have caused when it hit the water inside the well never came and Dean leaned inside.

"Is there anyone in there?" he found himself asking.

When no answer came, Dean picked another stone and tossed it inside just like he'd done with the first. Again, there was no sound of stone hitting water.

"Why don't you answer?" Dean found himself yelling, leaning over the side of the well, his voice echoing in the cold stone. "I'm thirsty!"

Talking about it only made it worse. Dean could feel the thirst gnawing at his stomach, eating his insides like it was a beast with tiny, sharp teeth.

Before, distracted as he had been with the softness of the grass and the warmth of the sun and the bright color of the sky, the growing need for water had been easy enough to ignore. Now, it was the only thing that he could think of.

Dean threw a third stone, hoping against hope that this would be the time he would hear a hopeful splash. Again, the stone fell silently.

"Why won't you answer me?" Dean yelled in despair.

It wasn't a splash of stone on water that answered Dean's call. It was a wail. Someone crying. A baby crying.

Worried that his stones had hit the kid, Dean leaned over the edge of the well. It was so dark inside that he couldn't see more than a couple of feet down, nowhere near the bottom of the deep well.

He looked around, hoping that some flashlight might materialize out of thin air or maybe a match or a friggin' lighter...

As far down as Dean could see, there was no one inside the well. And no baby, even though the crying went on and on and on until Dean had to use both his hands to cover his ears and stop himself from screaming himself raw to drown the baby's cry.

There was no one else around.

And yet, it was impossible to mistake the clear impression of hands on his back as Dean felt himself being pushed forward, falling inside the well.

All around him, there was nothing but dark walls, rushing past his eyes as he fell faster and faster, deep inside that hole on the ground that seemed to have no bottom.

Dean looked up, a circle of blue sky shrinking at a distance as the opening of the well grew further and further away.

There was someone leaning against the side of well, a sadistic smile on a man's lips.

Before the darkness engulfed him, Dean realized that he was looking at himself.

/(O|O)\\

Dean woke up with a silent gasp, breath trapped inside his chest like a hungry lion inside a cage.

He was alone in the room that Sam usually shared with him when they were staying at Bobby's. Dean was glad for that.

After his little freak out by the side of the road, the last thing that Dean wanted was for Sam to witness his restless sleep. Besides, whatever that had been, Dean was pretty sure that it had nothing to do with what had happened to him. In fact, Dean was pretty sure it had nothing to do with anything.

His stomach rebelled on him, like it had inside the dream, and Dean raced to the bathroom at the end of the hall. The second he was in range of the toilet, his body tried to expel as much bile as it possibly could. It would've been nicer if Dean had had actually something in his stomach to puke out.

The image of the red mass that the coroner had taken out of the Cahuilla kid's dead body came back to Dean's mind. He couldn't help but to assume that there was some kind of connection in between his upset stomach and the possibility that the Popobawa had left the same kind of damage inside his body.

Dean locked the door and stripped his sweat soaked clothes to stand in front of the small mirror in Bobby's bathroom. His body looked the same as always, but Dean felt different. He felt… fuller.

Running a hand across his flat stomach, Dean couldn't help but imagining something growing beneath his skin, bigger and bigger until he could no longer hide from himself that something was wrong.

Standing on his side, Dean looked closer at his reflection. It could be his imagination, but his stomach seemed different, slightly bulging meat where there used to be nothing but toned muscle.

Dean turned his back abruptly on the mirror and turned the showerhead on. He could feel himself breathing faster, shallow intakes of air that did nothing to quiet the surge of panic inside his chest.

He couldn't deal with this now. Not on top of everything else. But he couldn't live with the doubt either, not if this thing could kill him before the deal's deadline was up.

Sam was trying his best to keep Dean alive, to keep him out of Hell. The least Dean could do was give him as much time as he could by staying alive.

Going to some clinic near Bobby's was out of the question. Bobby was well known in town and everyone had seen Sam and Dean with the older man at one point or another. It would be only a matter of time until someone blabbered.

The nearest clinic that Dean felt safe enough to go was an hour's drive away. Dean cranked the music up all the way there.

/(O|O)\\

"So, doc… what's the verdict?" Dean asked in a tone more confident that he could even hope to be.

He felt vulnerable in that doctor's office, without his layers of shirts and with nothing more in between his skin and other people's eyes other than a thin, blue paper gown.

When the nurse had told him to take off his clothes from the waist up and lay down on the gurney for the doctor to examine him, Dean had almost balked and run away.

It was a futile reaction on his part, and one that only served to make Dean angrier with himself. He knew that he needed the doc to tell him whether or not he had something inside him, and he fucking knew that the doctor wouldn't be able to do that just by looking at his admission form. At some point, some form of exam had to happen. Still, Dean's palms kept in getting sweaty, no matter how many times he cleaned them against his blue gown or how many times he told himself that he was being a baby about the whole matter.

Dean felt himself relax a small degree when the doctor turned out to be a woman with kind eyes that kind of reminded him of Ellen.

She'd taken some blood, poked and probed his stomach and announced that she wanted to do a CT scan on him.

From the carefully composed look on her face when she returned with his results, Dean could guess that the news wasn't going to be that good.

"Mr. Singer," she started, her hand inviting him to sit across from her. "I'm afraid the news isn't the best." She paused, grabbing the stack of papers on her desk. From the other side of the table, Dean could read the fake name he'd given her on the top page. "The CT scan confirmed what I had already felt when I examined your abdomen, Mr. Singer, which is the presence of a large mass lodged alongside your stomach.

She stopped again, waiting for her words to sink in. It was a compassionate pause that spoke of too much experience in giving those kind of news and knowing that anything that she tried to rush by would simply go unheard.

However, Dean doubted she'd ever treated someone infected by some mutant Djinn's spawn.

"I would like to operate on you as soon as possible, Mr. Singer," she went on, setting the papers on the table and focusing her green eyes on her newest patient. "In this case, time truly is of essence."

Dean swallowed around his suddenly dry mouth, thrusting his hands inside his jeans to stop them from shaking. A part of him already knew what she would find out; a smaller portion, however, had still been holding on to the hope that this would be the one time in his life when Dean would actually get lucky. He should've known better.

"So," Dean started, his voice coming out hoarse and broken. He stopped, clearing his throat before trying again, "so, what are you saying here? This thing can kill me?"

"We're not there yet, " the doctor said, her voice gentle. "So far, your blood work isn't showing any of the cancer markers, which is good," she paused, flipping through a page filled with rows of numbers. "There is however, a hormone here that I couldn't quite identify, so that has me a little bit worried," she confessed earnestly. Dean was tempted to give her the coroner's phone number, so that the two of them could share their frustration about monster-hormones.

"Either way," she went on, "I won't know for sure the type of tissue growth we're dealing here with until I go in and collect a sample. After that, if we determine it to be benign, it's just a matter of cutting it out."

"And if I choose not to?" Dean asked. His clock was ticking even without that thing inside of him. If this was something that he could just push and stall until after his time was up and then deal with it if he was still around, then it would be better than to risk going into some OR and have the doc pull some monster-alien-bag-pipe out of his stomach.

He could deal with the nausea. He could deal with the extra paunch in his belly. Explaining what that was and how it'd gotten there… that he couldn't.

"I realize that this is a lot to take in on such a short notice, but I assure you, Mr. Singer that however you feel now, it's bound to become worse," the doctor warned him, her sympathetic and yet no nonsense voice cutting through Dean's thoughts. "This thing is currently five inches long and already it's pressing against the surrounding organs. The larger you allow it to grow, benign or not, it will eventually cause your internal organs some major trauma. You're stomach wall will grow more and more sensitive, leading to more vomiting; it will start pressing against your large intestine, your bladder…"

"Okay," Dean stopped her, raising one hand and sinking lower in his chair. Maybe his dream/flashback/vision/whatever the hell it had been by the side of the road, hadn't been that off after all. She was making it sound like he would eventually implode. "I get the picture, I really do."

Dean took a deep breath, resisting the urge to put his hand over his stomach and feel the mass moving. How the hell was he going to explain a major surgery to Bobby or Sam? "When can we do this?"

The doctor gave him a reassuring smile. "Let me check with my assistant."

/(O|O)\\

Two days. That was how fast the doc had managed to get Dean scheduled to be cut into. If her face or her words hadn't been clear enough to let Dean know the seriousness of his condition, the amount of pushing around and bending backwards that she had done to get him in an OR that soon when there were so many others waiting, told Dean more than enough.

Dean was trying not to think too much about the actual procedure, because every time his mind veered towards the prospect of lying naked and unconscious under the bright lights of the operations' room, at the mercy of people he would probably never even meet, was enough to get him panting for breath and his heart pounding against his ribcage like it was trying to get out.

Instead, he was concentrating on what he was going to tell Bobby and Sam to justify the surgery. Or his absence.

Dean had no other choice, he knew that. He told himself that over and over in the drive back to Bobby's place.

He had told Sam that he wanted to be saved, that he didn't want to die; this was just part of keeping that promise.

Dean wondered if he could make up some trip, say he needed some time for himself. That should buy him at least a week… if Sam would ever agree to letting Dean out of his sight this close to the crossroad's deadline.

Telling them the truth meant telling Bobby what had happened to him and further worrying Sam. It was not an option Dean even wanted to consider.

He could, of course, just pack his things and leave. Stay in the hospital under the fake name he'd given at the clinic, muddle through whatever came out on his own.

Sam and Bobby would worry sick about him, but Dean also knew that they would forgive him when he came back.

If Dean came back at all.

If Sam hadn't been able to break that damn deal so far, it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so in the eleventh hour, even if Dean was willing to give his brother every last second that he could manage away from the hellhounds' claws.

Maybe it was best if Dean left and stayed gone.

His decision made, Dean drove the rest of the way to Bobby's in a state that could almost be called happiness. One way or the other, he had one more day to spend with his family and Dean wasn't going to let impending surgeries or imposing memories ruin that for him. He was going to enjoy their company and ignore all else.

/(O|O)\\

Just one more day.

Dean had disappeared for most of the previous day, claiming that he had needed to clear his head; Sam hated the hidden implications in that statement and the reasons why Dean's head needed 'clearing' at all, but the man's absence from Bobby's place had come very much in handy.

It wasn't that the spell was all that hard; but it required a lot of work when only two were trying to reproduce a ceremony that usually involved the whole tribe.

The mix that they needed for the spell was almost ready and things could move a lot faster if Sam and Bobby didn't need to hide what they were doing every time Dean walked in the room.

And for all that Dean had been absent the past day, he was over-present in the current one.

For some reason, Dean seemed to have his mind set on getting them away from Bobby's study, grab a few beers and spending the day by the lake. Granted, it was a beautiful day and the small body of water near Bobby's house had always been one of Dean's favorite spots. But they were busy trying to save Dean's life, even if Dean couldn't know that.

After the third consecutive time that he'd had to tell Dean that they couldn't join him in whatever activity he'd suggested, Sam felt kind of guilty.

Dean was bored and probably trying to avoid being left alone with his thoughts as much as he could; Sam could understand that.

But it was all about priorities and, as much as Sam wanted to say yes to Dean and just abandon what he was doing, he also knew that he couldn't.

Sam had been forced to lie and say that he had promised Bobby to help him with some research for a case and that no, it could not wait a couple of hours because lives were at stake.

Technically, it wasn't a lie. Sam and Bobby had spent part of their day doing research on the Cahuillas' records and trying to figure out how much of the historical events surrounding the tales of incredible warriors that no one could defeat were actual references to the same spell that they were about to try on Dean, or due to sheer human bravery and skill.

And there really were lives at stake, namely, Dean's; as well as Sam and Bobby's ability to live with themselves if this failed.

Still, it hurt to see the abandonment and loneliness in Dean's eyes as he picked a six pack and left them alone.

"We'll make it up to him once we've saved him," Sam said, more to himself than to answer Bobby's questioning eyebrow.

"This is a bad idea," the older man said for the tenth time. "There is no record anywhere of how long this spell lasts and what the hell happened to the men that used it."

Sam sighed. They had already gone over that same point countless times. Bobby was right, of course. They simply didn't had enough information about what they were about to do.

They also didn't have a choice.

"Five months ago," Sam voiced, tired eyes meeting Bobby's and seeing the same weariness there, "I would've agree with you and would've taken the time to dig deeper. But now..." he said, running a hand through his hair and feeling the grime in it. "Now we're running out of time and this is the best chance we have. Whatever happens after... we'll deal with it then."

Bobby nodded heavily, not exactly agreeing with what they were about to do, but certainly agreeing with the level of despair that they had reached. "So, when do you want to do this?"

Sam looked at the spot where Dean had walked out with enough beers to give him a happy buzz. "Tonight... we do this tonight."

TBC

AN: My many, many thanks to greeneyes_fan , who so bravely and effectively took over beta-reading duties for this chapter. Any remaining mistakes are my fault, because I can't leave these things well alone after they've been proof read *g*