Fic: Light the Length of August (Supernatural) 7/?

[broken_cinders]

Title: Light the Length of August - Chapter 7: One Thing
Fandom: Supernatural
Character(s): Sam, Cas, Dean
Pairing(s): Gen
Word Count: 4110
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it’s not mine. If you don’t recognize it, it still might not be mine. Any recognizable places or people have been fictionalized. I am not blind. I do not have any immediate acquaintances that are blind. Any mistakes on that front are entirely my own. If you spot an error, let me know. Research can only take me so far.
Summary: Sam thinks of himself as an intelligent guy. He knows life isn’t usually fair. He knows the job they do is dangerous. He knows for them there are no guarantees or ironclad promises. He also knows that time is running out to find his possibly demonic brother and help Cas. He doesn’t have time for another sucker punch from whatever higher power likes toying with him. He still wakes up in the hospital alone and blind.
Note: The quote is from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby if anyone was curious.

Sam fell into a routine over the course of the next few weeks. He rose early to be bullied by Helen, spent a few hours under Rob’s patient guidance, talked about some frankly weird parts of his life with Kevin, then stayed up late practicing everything he had learned. The sooner he mastered the basics, the sooner he could get started on the skills he really needed like learning to navigate his computer or traveling long distances. He was going to run headfirst at these problems until he was on level ground again.

He was just starting his third week at the center when he hit his first real stumbling block.

His day started early. He sprang up in bed, drenched in sweat and panting after a nightmare that had evaporated from his memory nearly as soon as he opened his eyes. He was just left with the sense of having been chased by something huge with many long, vicious teeth. Somehow he still felt like Lucifer had been playing around in his head again. It left him off balance enough that he elected to skip breakfast entirely in favor of taking an extra-long, hot shower to try and loosen his tension and relax enough that he might feel safe in his own skin.

Then Helen showed up with her usual aplomb and hit him with the unexpected right off the bat. They were working in his room today, she wasted no time. Before she was even fully through the door she was talking. “So,” she said. Sam could hear the grin in her voice and knew he wasn’t going to like whatever she was about to say to him. “I’ve got three things for you today. Two questions and a challenge. What would you like first?”

Sam was still trying to shake off the heavy terror of his nightmares and was battling through the fatigue of a restless night. He sank onto his bed. “Questions,” he said without hesitation.

“Okay. Question one is how do you feel about Braille?”

Sam froze. Braille? He almost wanted to smack himself. How had he not thought of it sooner? The more he considered it, the more excited he got. He’d thought reading had been permanently and irrevocably stolen from him. It was one of the things he’d been struggling with the most. He longed to read. Braille wouldn’t be the same exactly, but it might give him some of that freedom back. “I’d like that.”

“Let me see your hands.”

He held them out, palms up. “What are you looking for,” he asked as Helen’s soft fingers grasped his hands and began turning them, feeling over the rough patches of callouses he’d earned in his years as a hunter.

“One of the things the Hallmark movies don’t mention is that Braille can be hard. It’s a lot to remember, and it can be bulky. But more importantly it requires a certain amount of sensitivity in your fingers. That’s something not everyone has.” She turned his hands this way and that. “Do you handle guns regularly?”

“Yeah,” Sam admitted. He had no reason to lie here. It would only slow things down.

“Bows?” She sounded confused as she traced along the inside of his middle finger. “Is that what that’s from? I’ve never seen callouses like this.”

“No,” Sam said. He wracked his brain for what might rub that particular spot in his work. “I know how to use one, but archery isn’t very practical in my line of work. Shovel maybe? I did a lot of knife work too.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Helen said finally. She let his hands drop and stepped back. “I’m a little concerned about the placement of some of those callouses, but we’ll give it a try if you want to. It’ll mean an extra study period with me three times a week in the evenings.”

“Yes,” Sam said with absolute conviction. Helen chuckled at him.

“Good. Then my next question is do you have someone who will be living with you or who will be helping you occasionally?”

Sam frowned unsure where this line of questioning might be headed. “My brother eventually, but he’s out of the country right now. My cousin, Cas, has been staying with me.”

“Ah, good. Tell them they should be here tomorrow if they can.”

“What?” Sam asked alarmed. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“No, Sam. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just the next step in the program. Nobody figures you’re going to be alone and learning to live with other people is just as important as standing on your own two feet. Don’t worry. We won’t have many of these days, but a few are helpful so everyone’s prepared when it’s time to go back into the real world. It’s just time for Cas’s boot camp.”

Sam snorted, but said, “I’ll ask, but you should know that he’s not been feeling well. I’m not sure what he’ll be up for.”

“Is it contagious,” Helen asked, suddenly serious. “We have a handful of residents with compromised immune systems.”

“No, nothing like that,” Sam rushed to assure her. “But he tires easily, and he won’t ask for a break.”

“Can I ask what his condition is without it feeling like I’m prying?”

Sam bit his lip. How did he explain that angels detoxing from stolen grace were every bit as vulnerable and sick as someone with a life threatening illness. Angel flu didn’t sound like the best description to offer up. Eventually he settled for saying, “We don’t know. The doctors haven’t been able to figure out exactly what it is.”

“Ah. Well, I’ll leave it up to you. If you think he’ll be okay, he really should come in. We usually do two or three sessions with a family member present, but it’s not a requirement by any means.”

“I’ll see what he’s up to doing.”

“That’s all I ask,” Helen said with a smile in her voice. “Now up. We’re playing hide and seek today.”

Sam groaned and stood. “And I’m guessing it’s not the fun kind.”

Helen snickered. “Depends. I always have fun. You’re looking for a dropped dollar bill. It’s inside the suite and out in plain view. You know you had it when you got home, but somewhere in the last half hour you dropped it. Let’s see if you can do it in under ten minutes.”

Sam sighed and began to think through the problem.  Helen was good at setting things up so that if he considered what she’d told him, he could typically do whatever task she set him and this wasn’t unlike some of the drills his father had run both boys through. At least this one wouldn’t literally bite him in the ass if he did it wrong.

He had to find dropped money. He could do that. He’d been learning search patterns and sweeping methods since he was in middle school and his suite was tiny compared to an entire forest. It just took some added thinking to apply it to the situation and a few moments to tamp down the embarrassment of grubbing around with his butt in the air when it became apparent it wasn’t on his desk.

It took him eight minutes to make a discovery. He sat up with a crow of triumph when he found the crumpled paper tucked up near the leg of his wardrobe. When he hefted it over his head, Helen tutted. “That’s one you actually lost. Geeze Singer. Why do you like to do this to me?”

Sam smoothed the bill out between his fingers with a frown. “This isn’t it? You’re not just teasing?”

Helen snorted. “Well, for starters that’s a five.”

“But, I didn’t bring any cash with me.” Sam had only had cards on him, having spent the last of his cash at the gas station when they stopped on their way to the center.

“Are you sure?” Helen sounded skeptical. “It could have been in a pocket and fell out when you put your clothes away.”

Sam shrugged. He knew for a fact that he didn’t have any cash.

“Well, congrats. You’re five dollars richer, but you’re timer is still running.”

Sam grumbled. He tucked the bill into his pocket so that he wouldn’t lose it and kept searching. Three more minutes and he found the actual dollar next to the door.  As he sat up onto his knees he said, “I really kind of hate this.”

“You’re working too hard,” Helen reprimanded him. “Remember what I told you. You had it when you came in, and you lost it in the last half hour. In that time did you go into the bathroom or sit at the desk?”

“No,” Sam said.

“So why was the first place you looked the desk?”

“Because I always put my wallet on my desk.”

“Okay. That’s a fair point, but start where you know you’ve been then work from there. You do well with a grid search, but it’s the details that you have to think about.”

Sam sighed. “Okay. Again?”

She chuckled. “You’re getting the gist of this.”

They played the little game for the rest of their allotted time with progressively smaller objects. Each time, Helen offered critiques and advice on how to do it better the next time. When she finally called a halt, Sam was starting to be sick of crawling around on his knees, and his hands felt dusty from the questionable surfaces he’d reached under and behind.

Helen closed out the lesson as she always did, with a round of questions designed to make him think. As he took up his seat on the bed again, she sat down beside him and asked, “What do you think is the point in this exercise?”

Sam slumped down and huffed. These always felt like trick questions. “Finding lost items by searching smarter?”

“Some,” she allowed. “Yes, I want you to learn the best way to search for something you’ve lost, but you’ve actually got the basics down pretty well. Better than most people that come through here. That’s not the only thing though. Why do you think I give you the hints?”

Sam frowned. “It’s not to help?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not here to hand you answers. You won’t have me when you’re living on your own. I told you a likely story. You went shopping. After you paid, you put your change away in your pocket to be sorted later. When you get home, you notice it’s still in your pocket as you get your key out. After putting away your groceries you realize it’s no longer in there. It’s fallen out somewhere between the door and wherever you are when you make the discovery. If you stop and think, you know your path from the time you last remember having it. The most likely place is where?”

“By the door, when I pulled the keys out,” Sam said, having done exactly that a dozen times before.

“Exactly! And if it’s not there what do you do?”

“Retrace my steps into the kitchen.”

“That’s the point,” she said. She clapped her hands for emphasis. “You can’t do that if you don’t stop and think the problem through. You don’t have the luxury of being lazy anymore. It’s your job to keep up with all this information.”

Sam couldn’t help but chew on that last thought for the rest of the day, even as Rob was guiding him through how to cross the street on his own. While he managed not to get run over, his mind was a million miles away during that lesson, enough so that Rob called a halt to their session early and sent him off to get his head on straight before he had to talk to Kevin.

He hardly thought it fair that Helen would accuse him of being lazy. Sam worked his tail off. He had thought he was doing better, but he still hadn’t quite hit his stride yet. Every morning he still woke up expecting to see his room, but was met with the dullness of this new world around him. Every single day he had a dozen people pushing him and prodding him to do more and do it better. He hadn’t expected a lavish retreat, but he had expected to have a little room to breathe, given this all happened hardly a month ago.

In some ways it felt like forever since he’d seen anything other than the world of his dreams. In others it felt like it all happened yesterday. He was making progress. He could get around inside just fine and he was doing more every day, but he still felt timid and wobbly, like a baby taking its first steps.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and forced himself to walk the rest of the way to Kevin’s office.

Kevin was unusually quiet during their session, and it threw Sam off. Sam hadn’t really know what to say at the lack of any sort of prompt. Kevin did finally take mercy on him and asked, “What was it like growing up as a hunter?”

“You know,” he said with a shrug. “It was what it was. My dad was driven, if nothing else. We moved around a lot - never stayed in one place for very long. It meant my brother and I were pretty much as close as you could get. We usually made our own fun.” Sam let himself smile a little. “There was this one time while I was in high school when, believe it or not we didn’t actually go looking for a ghost but we found one anyway.”

Sam paused. Kevin usually liked to ask questions or comment as they talked, but he remained stubbornly quiet. Sam pressed on. “Some people at school kept going on about how there was this creepy house about a mile outside of town. My brother and I overheard them saying they were going to go up there and see if they could see anything. We’d already done some research on the place. It was just an old, abandoned house. Some lady had died in her sleep up there forever ago, but nothing crazy had ever verifiably happened. We figured they’d probably go up, get stoned, and scare themselves silly with stupid stories, you know? Just normal kid stuff. So we went up there and thought it’d be funny to mess with them a little. Just make noises, splash some corn syrup around.”

Sam shrugged. “We hid in the attic before they got there. Only after a few minutes we noticed in was getting really cold. I think we both realized something wasn’t right because we looked at each other, then turned around. There was this little old lady sitting in a rocking chair staring out the window. When she spotted us, she came flying. My brother nearly pushed me down the stairs trying to get away from her.”

“So what did you do,” Kevin asked.

“We hightailed it out of the house, told our father what had happened, and warned the kids that someone overheard them and planned to call the cops.”

“What did your dad do?”

Sam shrugged. “We took care of the spirit.”

Kevin shifted in his seat. He took his time, but finally asked, “What are you not telling me?”

Sam frowned. “Not much. That’s the short of it. Besides, the rest of that story is kind of a downer anyway.”

Across from him, Kevin sighed. It was such an odd reaction that Sam instinctively sat up a little straighter. When Kevin spoke again, he sounded almost frustrated. “Sam, this is something I want to make sure you know. As enlightening as some of our talks are, your job here isn’t to be entertaining or to worry about being a downer. Your job here is to face the things that are troubling you or holding you back.”

“And I get it. I do, but I don’t really know what you want me to say here. Besides, it was a downer because Dad got in trouble and we had to move again, not because anything went wrong with the haunted house.”

“Okay,” Kevin said seriously, leaning forward in his seat. “Normally, I don’t like to force things or be this direct, but I’m going to ask something of you. Before you answer out of hand, I want you to really think about what I’m ask you to do. Can you do that?”

Sam tensed. That sounded serious. “Okay,” he agreed.

“I want you to tell me one thing - any one thing - that you think you can’t share. I swear that anything you say right now will not leave this room. It won’t go to the police. It won’t get you sent to a psychiatric care facility. It won’t go to Dr. Singleton. It stays right here with us.”

“Except if I am a danger to myself or others or -“

“No, Sam. My one condition is that if someone else is in imminent harm I can’t sit by and do nothing, but unless you tell me you are going to go out and off yourself tonight, there’s not much you could tell me that I won’t take to my grave.”

Sam laughed humourlessly at that phrasing.

“I’m serious, Sam. I want to believe you are trying here, but you’ve got to give me something. Trust works both ways. I have to earn yours, but you’ve got to show a little in return to get anything out of this.”

“I thought I was here about my eyes.”

“I get the feeling your eyes are only a tiny piece in a much bigger chain of concerns. So, what do you say? One thing.”

Sam nearly growled. First he had Helen harping on him, now Kevin was picking at him. He just wanted to be left alone. Was that such a hard thing to ask? What exactly was he looking for anyway? Sam didn’t have any dark, hidden trauma. He dealt with his shit and moved on. None of this had ever helped before.

With a huff, he decided if Kevin wanted something heavy he could offer that. “Okay, one thing? Then here’s my one thing. I’ve been committed twice.”

Kevin didn’t respond to that statement. Sam felt himself getting twitchy in the silence that seemed to be stretching throughout this session. “The first time, it was to go undercover to solve a case that was happening in a mental facility. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. And the only thing I had to do to get in was tell the truth.”

“And the second?”

“I was…,” Sam hesitated, not sure how much to say. Ghosts and wendigos were one thing. Angels and apocalypses were another.

“The truth, Sam.”

Sam scowled, tired of this conversation. “I went to Hell on the personal invitation of the devil and his brother. I was stuck in a cage with two very sadistic, very pissed off angels who thought it was great fun to peel my skin from my muscles like you might peel an orange and then play with the raw nerves for days. When I got out, I kept having hallucinations. Something in my brain snapped. I kept thinking I was still there or I would see all the ways they would hurt me. I could feel it. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. The doctors were basically waiting for me to die. I was there for weeks and all anyone could do was shove pills at me and give me concerned looks.”

“I take it they found a treatment?”

Sam scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yes. No. Sort of. It’s so very, very complicated.”

Kevin was quiet for a moment, although whether he was waiting to see if Sam was finished or just processing, Sam wasn’t sure. “Okay,” he said at last. “Thank you for sharing that with me. It helps. It really does.”

“How does that help?” Sam snapped.

“Now I understand a little better why this process seems to be so hard for you. And I understand that you have a bad history with mental health professionals. Both the scenarios you described are quite frankly appalling. I could tell even in our first interview that you were rational. Aside from a very niche set of circumstances, I would have been very suspicious of someone showing up and requesting admittance on the basis of reported delusions.

“I don’t condone the way your case sounds like it was handled the second time either, although I am well aware that sometimes our hands are tied. Interactions with your doctor are the first thing to set the tone for your recovery. Even if things had been going very, very badly, the fact that you knew they were just shoving meds at you shows a certain lack of professional decorum. It also means your treatment was likely doomed before it even began. I am very glad that whatever solution you found helped.”

Sam just nodded. He felt like he’d wrung all the words out of himself just to admit what he had.

“Can I ask a few questions?”

Sam nodded again.

“Have you ever had a history of hallucinations before that?”

“No. I had visions for a while when I was just out of college, but they were completely different.”

“Visions?”

Sam shook his head. “It’s a long story and while related, not really relevant.”

“Okay, have you had any since?”

“No. Or, well not like that. I get flashbacks sometimes.”

“Ah, that’s a little different,” Kevin said with approval. “Did anyone during your second stay come and talk to you or explain what was going on with your treatment?”

“No. Dean told me what the doctors were saying, but the only time I saw anyone who wasn’t a patient was when the nurses handed out medication.”

“Then as a professional, I’d like to apologize on behalf of my colleagues. That was a true disservice to your health and wellbeing.”

“You didn’t do it. And I don’t blame them.”

“Perhaps not. Still, I know trust is earned over time, but I’d like to say this. I will never do anything, not prescribe medication, not take additional steps, nothing that alters this dynamic without full disclosure and a discussion with you. I will always be honest with you about everything that’s going on.”

Sam didn’t know why that made him feel a little better. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that people lied all the time.

“But in the vein of being honest,” Kevin continued. “I will let you know that my practical knowledge of PTSD, while real, is very limited and in no way related to POW types of experiences, both of which it sounds like fit your situation well. One of our other counselors on staff, Linda Bergman, has much more experience with that particular set of issues. If you’d like I can arrange some time to speak with her and see if you feel it would be a better fit.”

Sam shook his head. “No. I’d rather not.”

“Okay. But,” here Sam could hear the smile creeping into his voice. “Don’t think that lets you off the hook here. I can be every bit as demanding as Helen and I expect you to continue to work with me.”

“Yeah,” Sam said thinly. “I think I can live with that.”

“We’ve still got maybe ten minutes, but I think we’re at a stopping point for today. How would you like to wrap things up? Do you need a minute to process?”

Sam sat up and shifted in the deep leather chair. “I know it’s a little odd, but could you maybe just read?”

“Read?”

“Yeah. Like aloud?”

“I can do that. Any requests?”

“I don’t care. Anything.”

There was a scuffle as Kevin got up and moved around his office. He settled back down at his desk after a moment and cleared his throat. “Chapter 1. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since…”

Sam let the words wash over him. It wasn’t as comforting as picking up the book himself, but in that moment he needed the distraction of language. He’d always found solace in hearing words put down by someone else some long time ago. Reading took him far away from the present and let him be someone else for a while. When their time was finally up he left feeling both more drained and more relaxed than he had in a while.

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