Day 41: Breakfast

[oftemptation]

Endrance turned his head to look at the intercom, giving it a look that would wither an entire rose garden in an instant. He would never get used to ending up in his room again from somewhere else in the Institute

Comments

[allroadslead]

For a second, Sam didn't say anything. He'd been trying to avoid answering the issue of what Dean had done in general at all, but yeah, he should've known better. It'd be the first thing Dean wanted to know and there was only so much he could evade. He knew Dean wouldn't question it if he gave him a straight answer one way or another.

"You knocked me out," he replied finally.

As long as Dean didn't know how far it'd really gone, he figured he could compromise on that much. Dean would probably feel bad about it, too, but there was a pretty damn big difference between knocking someone out and trying to slit their throat. If Dean thought there had been other possessed patients present at the time, Sam could just blame most of the heavier damage on them instead when it came down to it.

He cast a look at the plate of food and the salt shaker Dean pushed at him. Oh. He kept forgetting that Dean didn't remember, didn't even have, the protection they'd finally decided to get after a bunch of demons had blown out of the gate. Though these days, he was starting to wonder what good it did him when it'd always been far too late to have ever stopped something demonic from getting inside of him.

If Dean didn't know, though, Sam would have to tell him. He didn't need to hide it, really, and while he'd have to come up with another explanation as to how they'd gotten the tattoos, he supposed it didn't matter that much in the long run. Besides, Dean would want to know why Sam had kept this from him if he didn't bring it up now. Was there some way they could do the same to Dean? Other than drawing the devil's trap on him with a Sharpie or something, that was. Dean hadn't been possessed this time, but it would still be a good idea. With Sam targeting so many demons lately, he doubted they'd hesitate much in possessing his brother to screw with him.

He ignored the food. Dean would bitch at him, but he'd eat later, and it always bugged him a little that everyone kept reminding him to eat all the time like skipping a meal because he didn't have much of an appetite at the time meant that he'd suddenly gone on a hunger strike altogether. Even Ruby had shoved her plate of fries at him on occasion.

He bit his lip and pulled down the collar of his shirt instead, revealing the devil's trap he'd gotten tattooed on him. It had felt a bit weird at first to be having a matching tattoo, of all things, with his brother, but being able to not constantly worry about whether or not Dean was actually Dean was a nice reprieve in the face of everything they were dealing with. Not that it'd saved him in the end.

"Bobby's idea," he said. "With the demon count going up, we figured..." He trailed off with a shrug. Bobby had mentioned that demonic possession had multiplied in number before, though his count back then had been next to nothing compared to the number of demons on the loose now.

At any rate, maybe Dean would get distracted by this, at least for a little while. Give Sam a chance to sort out some more where to go from here, how much more he wanted or should tell Dean. If he'd had it his way, he'd just tell him nothing, but the only person who could keep Dean that much in the dark without Dean demanding answers was their dad.

[theroadsofar]

He'd knocked him out.

Dean's posture stiffened. Okay, that wasn't that bad except for the part of he didn't remember it and there was no telling what else he'd done when he'd been prisoner inside his own body, riding bitch with a demon as pilot. What about those injuries? He didn't see this mystery demon just being satisfied with knocking Sammy out and leaving him there. Dean looked ready to demand more details, despite the feeling he probably didn't wanna really know, when Sam changed the subject, dodging the plate of food shoved at him and instead pulling his shirt down. Dean's glance followed the movement. The hunter raised an eyebrow.

Was that a tattoo? Sure looked like it, a black star shape the size of his fist, right over his brother's heart, and looking a lot like a modified devil's trap. Without asking, Dean reached out and ran his fingers over the edge of the protection charm (he assumed that's what it was). Kind of a moot point when the bandages blocked him from feeling anything, but judging by the fact the black lines didn't fade or smudge when he touched them, it did look like an honest to God tattoo. For being so new, it didn't look days old fresh; Sam's skin wasn't even red at all. Huh. Dean knew Bobby had his talents, but he'd never figured him for a skilled tat artist. Dean met his brother's eyes, letting him know silently we still gotta talk...after they discussed this new tattoo.

He dropped his hand away from the tattoo, letting his brother cover up it up with his shirt again. "So that explains why you weren't possessed. You get one of those bad boys on you and it just cockblocks the demons right from the get-go, don't it?"

Better insurance than those charms, not when it couldn't be removed short of cutting it out and that took time. Couldn't forget it, drop it, or get it pulled off you or confiscated. Getting a tattoo like that was something Sammy wouldn't have ever thought about back in Stanford with his friends, with Jessica, but it looked like he hadn't even thought twice about it now. Things had changed, he knew that. Just another reminder. Definitely was a good idea, another check to add to the We Owe Bobby list, with "he didn't tell Sammy about Cold Oak" right there at the top. Dean reached over, snagging a tater tot (well, fumbled, got it on the second try) and popping it in his mouth, chewing it without tasting it much. He swallowed. Took another one, ate it, if only to give him something to do and not just steer the conversation to the painful topic of what he'd done when he'd been possessed.

Dean knew whatever happened, it was over. What mattered this second was identifying the demons, how many there were, and making sure he didn't get jumped a second time; seeing as he was the one without the demonic condom here, he was the one who was the biggest liability to their team right now. It was a risk they couldn't afford, especially now the demons seemed to be upping their ball-game. But...maybe he was being a masochist, but Dean had to know. Wanted to know. He gazed at Sam, still chewing silently on his food, and just watched him without a word, thinking.

[allroadslead]

"That's the idea."

There were more than a few holes in what he'd little he'd told Dean about the tattoo, given the short space of time Dean assumed had passed between them, but Dean didn't prod further. Probably because Dean was mostly still focused on what he'd done while possessed. He hadn't missed the look Dean had given him. If Sam didn't broach the subject now, Dean would eventually bring it up later.

Not that Sam begrudged him for that; he would've done the same. He clearly remembered how pissed he'd gotten at his brother for keeping what he had from him, about what their dad had said, and now-it wasn't that he was suddenly okay with it. It still got to him, that Dean had planned-was still planning-on keeping the fact that he'd sold his soul for so long, though in truth, it was that Dean had so readily damned himself in the first place that ticked him off the most. But it was just...now, he was starting to think maybe he understood. That running the risk of Dean getting angry with him for lying was a better alternative than not even bothering to try to save him from the truth.

He watched Dean fumble with his food, couldn't bring himself to even consider deadpanning something about hand feeding him like he might've if Dean had screwed up his hands some other way on the job. They both got their fair share of injuries, but something like this was more of a problem than most despite being relatively minor in comparison. You lost the use of your hands, you might as well stayed in bed. It was just as well that they didn't have their firearms with them, anyway.

Dean was uncharacteristically silent, as well, which meant the entire possession angle was getting to him. He wanted to distract Dean more by keeping on the topic of the tattoo, suggest they find a way to do something similar for Dean, but Dean would able to spot the diversion for what it was. His brother was beat to hell, but he was alert as ever.

Besides, Sam couldn't leave him completely in the dark, especially since Dean would likely start drawing conclusions on his own and the longer Sam kept quiet, the worst Dean would assume it was. And it had been bad; Sam wasn't gonna deny that. They'd gone through a lot of crap and last night was hardly at the top of the list-nothing quite topped watching your brother get shred to pieces-but it wasn't really at the bottom of it, either.

"It wasn't you," he said. "The one that almost-" He stopped short, decided that almost was possibly not the best word choice. "-the one that tried to kill me, it wasn't you."

None of it had been Dean, obviously, but he knew better than to attempt to persuade him of that. After Meg-it wasn't him, either, who'd put a bullet through Dean and almost killed Jo, but it sure as hell felt like it. Dean didn't remember anything, but that might just end up making it harder for him to make the distinction. The most Sam could do was convince Dean that he hadn't even been the one to have taken the action in the first place.

Sam lifted his eyes, studying Dean steadily as he watched for Dean's reaction. As much as he knew Dean trusted him, he also knew that it was entirely possible for Dean to be aware of what he might be trying to do here. Not telling Dean that he'd been half a second from slitting his brother's throat? It wasn't exactly an unpredictable path to take.

[theroadsofar]

Dean now knew what it felt like to get the "it wasn't you" excuse thrown in your face. Now he knew what it felt like.

Logically, Dean knew perfectly well that there was just no way he could resist a demon invading his body without protection. Sure, he was a hunter, he'd killed a lot of things people couldn't even imagine in their worst nightmares, but end of the day, Dean Winchester was still as much a human as the average, shitting-his-pants civvie. If he got jumped, he got possessed. It wasn't like he could stop whatever happened and it wasn't him attacking his brother. Sure felt like it though. Dean sat there, miserable and trying not to be a pussy and show it, chowing down on the tater tots from the plate between them 'cause he couldn't think of something better to do. Knowing he couldn't have done anything, that technically it wasn't his fault...it didn't make him feel any better.

He chewed angrily, staring off into the distance and knowing this had to be what Sam kept from him. "Explains how you got beat up," Dean said, trying to keep his tone neutral and failing. His eyes traveled to the cleaned up cut on Sam's neck, as effective as a slap in the face. "I did that to you. Demon or not, that bastard was riding around in my body."

Dean knew it hadn't been just knocking Sam out. What he wanted to know why he hadn't remembered any of this. The demon had to know who they were, who Sam was. It should've given him a horrific front row seat to this, but there was a still whole lot of nothing where last night should've been. It still didn't add up. He'd pulled some more info out of Sam, but it still wasn't enough to satisfy him. What had those demons been doing out there? How had Sam escaped? Hell, how come he wasn't still possessed? If he'd been busy trying to attack his own brother, the demon wouldn't have just booked it outta there when it was just starting to get good for it. Dean gave up on the tater tots, jaw working he clenched it, biting his lip and looking from the cafeteria back to same, his face troubled.

The idea of possession had always bothered him. Same with the psychic powers thing. The danger of getting possessed had always been there, sure, but it happened to other people. To civvies. Usually they cleaned up the mess - or bodies, like Meg - afterward. Getting possessed and attacking his brother, after Cold Oak? Dean couldn't help feeling like somehow he should've been more careful. Dammit, why hadn't he just done the smart thing and laid down circles around the bed, or drawn a devil's trap over it? It'd somehow gotten over the salt line (vents?), so obviously he hadn't been as careful as he could've been. It was stupid to beat himself up over something already over. Still didn't make it any easier to stop.

Dean frowned, cleared his throat, and tried not to ask just how much of Sam's injuries had been him personally. How much he'd worked Sammy over with hands that he hadn't been controlling but had still been his. At least not yet.

"How'd you get away? Aren't you worried I could be possessed right now?" Dean asked, though it was more to get more answers from Sammy than anything else. Dean was sure he wasn't possessed anymore...unless that demon was that good at hiding - from what it sounded like, talking to the formerly possessed in the past, you somehow knew a demon was still in you. "I don't remember any exorcisms."

[allroadslead]

Sam frowned. Somehow, he hadn't expected Dean to misinterpret what he meant, to have not taken it literally, but he really should have. Of course Dean would think that that was what Sam was trying to say, and in a way, he was, but-

It felt a little stupid, that it was necessary for him to be clarifying what was basically a complete lie. This kept freaking spiralling. He knew it would, too, he'd known from the start, but if he'd told Dean everything, it would've spiralled just the same, only it would be spinning out of control for both of them. And that was all he had to hold on to, that Dean couldn't know-not just this, but all of it-because it was too late to turn back. He'd done it. He had to make sure that it would actually be worth it now, that it wouldn't all fall apart, anyway.

"No, I meant-it wasn't you, Dean," he said. "It wasn't the one that had you possessed. Not for that."

He didn't bother making clear what he meant by that; Dean wasn't exactly being stealthy about what he was staring at. Sam lifted his hand to touch the cut without really thinking, stopping halfway when he realized what he was doing.

At least with the question of how he got away, he could answer that part honestly. He wasn't sure how it'd happened; it was pretty obvious, given last night, that he hadn't simply blacked out. There was no way he could've survived otherwise-Dean had been half a second from finishing the job. Unless they'd both blacked out at the exact same time, which was possible and a little bit less weird, but it still seemed as if the timing was just too good. He wasn't complaining, of course. Far from it. That didn't change how none of it made sense, though.

"I didn't," he replied. "Everything just-stopped. Before..."

He shrugged, trying to avoid mentioning just how close he'd come to getting killed out loud. He'd nearly died plenty of times, but he knew it wasn't something Dean could just get used to and he also knew that to Dean, Sam had been dead only a few days ago. It was why Dean was hovering so much, more than usual. He could've said something about it to see if Dean would eventually cave and tell him about the deal-a part of him wanted to know how far Dean would go to keep it from him-but he wasn't about to do that to his brother.

Anyway, it wasn't a topic he was willing to bring up any more than Dean was. There was too much surrounding it. It still raised the question of what it meant, too. Sam knew the contract held despite it all. He couldn't see why they'd suddenly get some fantastic miracle where it would magically disappear simply because Dean had died once already. But a part of him needed a way to confirm it, as well, and he couldn't decide if he was holding out a spark of hope or trying to crush it on his own before life got there first.

Sam wanted to say something else, found that he had nothing left. He went back to watching Dean eat, instead. Even if Dean was not, in one of his rare moments, eating for pleasure, it still made him feel better seeing his brother do something so familiar.

"Look," he began to say, brushing his hair out of his face and that was where it ended. For a split second, he absurdly thought that his hair had simply fallen out (and wouldn't that be the icing on top of an excellent morning) but it was pretty clear, from the thick black clump that wound its way around his fingers, that it didn't belong to him. He knew precisely who-or what, rather-it belonged to.

Perfect.

[theroadsofar]

Rate he was going, he was gonna run out of tater tots.

Dean kept chewing as he thought this over, processing it. Tried not to take it personally 'cause even if he'd attacked Sam - or his body had, anyway - it hadn't been him trying to kill him by slitting his damn throat. Another demon, possessing another human. Sam had to remember what these others looked like, right? Other patients? Dean didn't know if they were still possessed, but even if they weren't, maybe they could help him fill in the blanks, find what what the demons were doing out in the field, what happened with Sammy, and anything else. Dean still wasn't sure what to make of Sam's claim it wasn't him: the options were pretty much it really wasn't him, or it was, and Sam was lying to his face about it. Glancing at Sammy, he realized he wasn't entirely sure, for a change. It was small, these tells about his brother he'd pretty much grown up with, but there were little things about him that seemed...different now. It wasn't as easy or automatic to read Sammy.

Trying to look back on it, he started wondering if it'd started around when Sam came back. Dean got he was pissed at Jake - hell, he would've been, in Sam's shoes - but even he'd been privately surprised when Sam looked pretty dead-set on killing the other psychic. Sam could kill, yeah, kinda part and parcel of the job, but Dean hadn't seen him so - so ready to kill a fellow human being, and that was that. Didn't seem to be satisfied with just tossing him to the cops or anything. Dean hadn't thought those four days had been enough to really make a difference. Now he didn't know. It seemed like a lot changed, what with Sam somehow feeling different, the tattoo, these new powers of his brother's...

Sam brought up what saved his life. It wasn't some insanely badass Houdini act, either.

Dean polished off the tater tots, leaving the rest of his breakfast for his little brother. "Like that night with Punk-Ass?" he frowned, understanding what he was getting at. He'd thought that weird, when that "demon" hit them with his telekinesis and the next thing he knew, he was waking up in his bed with only Angel in the room and almost no sign of the exorcism. "Sam, we gotta find the people who were possessed. Ask them some questions, try to figure out what they..." Dean paused, scowling and not wanting to dance around the fact he'd been possessed, "we were up to last night."

Had to be big, if demons were gathering. From what he'd seen of the black-eyed bastards, they tended to prefer running solo, having their own individual fun instead of coming at you in a pack. The last time he'd seen demons gathering, it'd been right before...well, right before Dad died. Dad was gone, had been gone for awhile, but he'd never really felt he'd gotten over it. He'd just had so much thrown onto his plate that he couldn't think about it too much these days, although there were sometimes - maybe in the bathroom brushing his teeth, idling in the Impala waiting for Sammy to zip it up in a gas station's crappy bathroom - that it'd come at him again. Maybe he couldn't bring Dad back. This time with Sam would be different, Dean thought, watching his brother. He wouldn't just go to hell and leave him wondering what happened, like Dad.

Dean had no idea how he'd bring it up, but before this year was out, he'd have to sit Sammy down and just tell him the damn truth.

The kicker was right now, Dean was downright terrified to break it to him. Hunting things, almost getting killed all the time, somehow he could handle it. Telling his brother the truth? Dean didn't have the balls for it.

He was about to ask Sam for more details when Sam suddenly started losing hair. The hair he'd pulled out definitely wasn't his, instead the same long black stuff he'd coughed up earlier. Dean couldn't help himself: he hovered closer, ready in case his brother started choking on that ghost's hair again.

"Sam," Dean's voice was tight as he reached over, took the hair from his brother. Aside from being not Sam's, it looked like normal, if long hair. Seriously, what the hell? What was the ghost doing? Psychological warfare, freak out its victims before moving in for the kill? Or was this a death omen and this was some kind of tripped out warning?

[allroadslead]

In truth, Sam should've known that their spirit problem wasn't over. And it wasn't even that he thought it was over. It'd just slipped his mind between the brainwashing and the getting his ass kicked and the what the hell do I tell Dean.

At least he wasn't hacking the hair up this time. ZEX had mentioned finding hair, not only coughing up hair, which had to make him wonder why it'd taken longer for his to escalate to this point. Or then again, was this an escalation? It didn't feel like it, if they were judging on a scale of creepiness. Finding ghost hair in your own was bizarre, but not as much as spitting out a hairball was.

Dean grabbed the hair out of his hands almost immediately. Sam's first instinct was to take it back so he could examine it for himself because that was what he did when he didn't know what the hell was going on, but logic told him that doing so would be ridiculous. There wasn't going to be a lot of answers found in a handful of hair.

He looked at his brother instead, eyebrows raised slightly as he tilted his head in an expression that suggested that he didn't know what was happening any more than Dean did.

Well, no. He was being haunted. Obviously, But he didn't know why and he didn't know what it meant. For a ghost, this was pretty damn tame. He'd seen the spirit once or twice, but-that was about it. And only in reflective surfaces which was even odder. Spirits showed up in mirrors often, but not always exclusively so. It had to be connected to mirrors somehow, then. Except the hallway where the ghost haunted? It was completely bare. No one had come across her anywhere else, so the most logical conclusion was that that was the place where she'd died or at least a place that had some significance to her. But it was just a hallway. There was nothing there. Certainly no mirrors to potentially trap a spirit's soul within it.

Though it was possible that it used to be a different place and the area had simply undergone major renovations. The building wasn't sparkling new, but it wasn't broken-down old, either, so that wasn't out of the question. The problem was that he didn't know. There was no way to access information on the building. Which irritated him to no end because it should've been easy to do so. Five minutes on Google would've given him what he needed. He'd meant to try and get the information out of a nurse some time yesterday, but there hadn't been a lot of time-dealing with their not-demon patient and then talking with ZEX, and after dinner...well.

Maybe he could do that today. If nothing else went completely wrong, that was.

[allroadslead]

He sighed, glanced back down at the hair Dean was still holding. The picture this image made was absurdly stupid and he didn't know whether to laugh or find something to hit his head against. Yesterday, he'd been vaguely concerned about the possible fatality of this, but now-God. Whatever. He didn't even care anymore. Until he started bleeding or choking to death or something, he was too tired to fret over it.

"I don't know, man. Let's just-we can't do anything during the day. We'll figure it out tonight."

He frowned a little in thought at the plate of food before sawing off a corner of the pancakes. He probably would've left it if they'd been somewhere else, but it wasn't like he could reach into the glove compartment for a Kit Kat or something later on the way he usually could.

"Anyway, they're not here," he said, going back to their previous topic. He couldn't leave that one hanging. "I tried to look for them earlier, I couldn't find them. Dean, they might not even be alive. I mean, demons, they ride their hosts pretty hard before they bail."

Between that and the force of expelling a demon from the body through an exorcism, it was a wonder any of them survived in the first place. Even using his abilities, he hadn't always been able to...and who knew how many more eventually died after they hit the hospital. He hadn't exactly been able to do a follow-up on every single person.

It occurred to him, knowing their luck, that coincidence would have it so that Dean ran across Lelouch or his friend anyway, but if he pointed either of them out, Dean would approach them without question. At least this way, there was a chance that he could keep Dean away from those two. He'd just have to watch Dean in the future, make sure he steered clear. It wasn't going to be that easy considering where they were, but they were the same gender and close enough in age. Institutions didn't tend to physically separate their population using criteria apart from that.

If he could've, he'd have just shoved Dean inside the Impala and driven. Leave it behind, all of it. If he'd thought it were actually possible. But it wasn't and he knew it. This wasn't something they ran away from. And he couldn't help thinking that he'd made it worse by running the way he had back then, fleeing all the way to California without a single look back. There was a part of him that didn't want to regret doing it. And he'd never admit it out loud, either. He'd put too much faith in his decision that it would feel like he'd given up his family for nothing more than a mistake. When he thought about it, though...when he thought about it, that was exactly what it felt like.

[theroadsofar]

Dean hated to admit it, but Sam was right. There was a limit to how much they could move around during the day: their best chance of finding any more info was during the night, when they weren't being monitored by the nurses. Couldn't afford to get sedated. He was already on thin ice already after starting crap with Slappy the shinigami. Dean wrapped the ball of black hair in a napkin, shoving the wad as far away from his brother as possible.

"Hey, I'm alive," Dean said, not willing to give this up. He fixed Sam with a look. "If they're still breathing, we gotta find 'em and get some answers. What'd they look like? We might have a better chance of finding them if we do this together."

There was always the danger they could still be possessed - maybe he'd been the only one exorcised, even if he didn't remember even being hit with the Latin in the first place - and they'd have to wrestle them under M2's devil's trap. That was even assuming they stayed in the same body in the first place. Still, they had to look into this. Dean might be taking it personally now, but so what? What if these other people remembered something he didn't? It seemed pretty friggen stupid to look the other way 'cause they might not be alive. Better to just confirm that for sure before he started writing it off. Dean was honestly surprised at his brother. Sammy knew what was at stake here, maybe even more than he did thanks to that meeting with Bobby, so why did he seem so sure this was a dead end?

Dean didn't get it. He chewed the inside of his cheek, absently picking at the bandages covering his hands as he tried to figure out what they needed to do. There wasn't much he himself could do, not with his memory shot, and every detail about last night dependent on how much Sam was willing to tell him.

"Frustrating" seemed to be the right word to describe this. Dean wished he could remember anything about last night, anything at all that could help them now. It was like it'd never happened, the only proof he'd even left the room were the injuries he didn't even remember getting. Injuries, he was starting to suspect, might've been Sam's handiwork if he'd been defending himself. Dean believed Sam when he said he'd tried to look for him...but it wasn't like he'd had a lot of time to go looking for these fellow patients, and it was crowded. Definitely didn't seem to Dean like enough time to just automatically write them of as a couple of corpses. In his professional opinion, the best thing to do would be to track them down, find out if they were possessed (and if they were, hope they didn't realize off the bat he wasn't anymore) and get some answers. Dean knew there was a ton of crap here that needed hunting, but demons were right up at the top.

They'd started all this. Maybe they'd brought them to Landels, like a Cold Oak Round 2.

[allroadslead]

Yeah, Dean was alive, now, and it seemed everything was insisting on changing that, including Dean himself. But Dean wasn't wrong, if you ignored the fact that his information was...not quite accurate. If there really had been a couple of demons out there on the loose, finding them would be one of their top priorities. Most hunts were pretty routine, but demons were always the unpredictable ones. Shapeshifters and spirits and those things, they all had set patterns in the way they behaved. Demons didn't.

Which meant he couldn't very well shoot Dean down on this.

Then again, if he gave Dean a description without actually pointing Lelouch out, it might give Dean enough of a heads up to be careful in general without running the risk of Dean getting hit with the powers again.

"There were two," he said. "One had brown hair, the other black, both male. They couldn't have been older than twenty. That's all I got, but-" He leaned forward. "-listen, Dean, I don't think you should be poking around too closely at this. It could happen again."

And that-that part wasn't a lie.

Sam knew Dean wouldn't be happy about what he was suggesting, that Dean sit this one out, but whether they were talking about demonic possession or Lelouch's mind control, it didn't change anything-Dean was, out of the two of them, most susceptible to getting attacked with either one. He'd only be able to use that excuse for a short period of time. They'd have to find a way to give Dean a similar kind of protection. This hadn't been a case of possession, but next time?

There wouldn't be a next time, if Sam could help it.

He still hadn't mentioned that he'd been the one who'd given Dean his injuries this morning and he felt like he should. It wasn't anything; he just-he was hiding so much that he felt like whatever could be told, he should tell it. Which was stupid; it wasn't like there was a scale to try to balance or something. But it didn't matter, anyway. He had a feeling Dean would put the pieces together on his own.