SPN fic: What You Wish For, 2/2. R.
Title: What You Wish For
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Eric Kripke owns the cute boys, and I'm just borrowing them to play.
Rating: R for language.
Pairing: none
Warnings: This is AU from the Pilot episode. I looked up the general requirements of the residency program, but I have never actually been to Stanford University Hospital. I may have taken quite a few liberties with how it looks or how staff actually handles these kinds of situations. I tried to generalize off of the experience I do have, which is based off of the New York State system.
Summary: Sam used to wish that Dean would settle down somewhere close by so they could be a family like all the others. This isn't what he meant.
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997)
What You Wish For
Part One - My Brother's Keeper
Stanford Hospital housed many departments and helped to train many a resident and medical student. H2 was the acute adult inpatient unit, and everything was locked down tight outside of the elevator banks. Sam was acutely out of his element, still smelling of smoke, still feeling vaguely guilty even though he didn't entirely understand why. The secretary at Stanford Law had been entirely too nice to him on the phone, and somehow gave Sam the feeling that he would be accepted anyway. Knowing that the interview was "really just a formality" made him feel as though his life had been plotted out ahead of time, written by someone who hadn't let him in on the joke yet.
Dean was locked away in H2, being called psychotic. The fact that he had stared at Sam with wide eyes that held no recognition hadn't helped. He was wailing about demons, that they were there to kill Sam, that he had to save Sam and it was too late for Jess.
Sam's gut twisted painfully, and he had to press his hand to the wall to keep upright. His world had unraveled, and there was no way to knit it back together again.
They wouldn't let him on the unit right away. There needs to be a staffing, the unit clerk told him in clipped and disapproving tones. Dean would need to be assessed again, a plan would have to be formulated, and the treatment team would then get back to him during visiting hours. Sam would simply have to wait, just like everyone else.
Sam sat in the waiting area by the elevator bank, hands shaking, aware that he probably looked like a psych patient himself. It was a locked unit, he had to remind himself. It wouldn't do him any good to pick the locks and walk right in. It wasn't as if he could simply walk right out with Dean on his arm. Everyone would notice.
Friends eventually got word of the fire, and Sam began fielding phone calls on his cell that afternoon. By evening visiting hours, he had a place to stay and lots of sympathy. He still felt numb, still had trouble comprehending anything as real. By the look of it, Dean was having just as much trouble. There had been codes called overhead during the day, and the nurses told Sam that they were due to Dean. He hadn't wanted to be locked into the unit, of course. He didn't think he was sick. He didn't think there was anything wrong with trying to deck the attending psychiatrist who was leading the interview for the new resident rotating into the unit. Dean had sat there perfectly calm until he snarled and swung, calling the attending a "meat suit" that needed to get the demon beat out of him.
Oh, God. Sam couldn't even contemplate the reaction the team must've had. He didn't even question it. That was so like Dean.
Sam sat by Dean's side the entire time he was allowed to. Dean was still sedated from his earlier bouts of aggression. Not knowing what else to do or where else to go, Sam sat there, staring at his sleeping brother. This had to make sense at some point, right? He had caught something somewhere about how certain symptoms would lend itself well to different diagnoses, and the differences had different prognoses. Something like that. The words from the resident had spilled over his head in a monotone mumble. They couldn't know what this was like, could they? They didn't understand the shock of it. This wasn't Dean. This couldn't be Dean. Something was very, very wrong here.
Days slid together. Dean stopped trying to attack the staff and he stopped mumbling about demons every time he saw someone. He reluctantly admitted to not sleeping or eating well in the weeks prior to his arrival at Stanford. He reluctantly admitted that he thought about death or dying sometimes. Well, sure he felt stressed or down. Sure, he wished he could've done more with his life, or that he was enough for his father or Sam. Sure, he had wanted more out of his life. Who didn't need to settle for what they had? It had always been taken for granted that he would shift about from job to job with his father and take care of Sam. And when Sam was gone and there was no one left to take care of, he was stuck in the same old place, day in and day out. Of course he had wanted more. Of course he would've wanted to settle down. But it wasn't the way fate had treated him, and there was no point to wish for something different. There was no point to any of that.
Around this same time, Sam realized that if he offered to talk with the doctors during the day, he often got a chance to visit Dean in addition to visiting hours. It tended to help calm Dean down when the treatment team was making rounds. He was easily aggravated by the procession of white coats and ties that passed his room every morning. Attendings, residents and medical students would ask how he was doing, did he sleep, did he eat, how did he feel today. Some of them never even looked up from their clipboards, never made eye contact. He was a statistic, a collection of side effects to the antipsychotic and antidepressant du jour.
Major depression with psychosis was the kindest diagnosis Dean could have possibly had. Sam had gathered that straight psychosis had initially seemed more likely, and was still a striking possibility. Things seemed to settle down a bit after the first few rocky days, though Sam couldn't have recounted a single thing that anyone told him in those days. He was numb from the visits to the hospital and Jessica's funeral. He couldn't taste anything he was eating if he even remembered to eat. He couldn't meet anyone's eyes. He stopped caring about law school and his dreams of a perfectly normal life. If this was it, he didn't want it.
Dean was discharged after three weeks in the hospital. He was sent to a partial hospitalization program, where he would spend days in social groups and getting reacquainted with life outside of the hospital. He would then go stay with Sam's friends in the afternoon and evening. The social workers expected it to be a two week period before he was free and clear of all kinds of hospital, though they warned Sam that he would need to make regular clinic visits. Some part of him recoiled at such a thing; they had always shied away from doctors and clinics and anything speaking of regular visits. There had never been a sense of continuity in their formative years, nothing that would allow people to get to know them.
You wanted normal, he told himself fiercely. You wished for normal, for a steady home. Life sucks for regular people, too.
"You should meet Marianne," Dean told Sam over pizza after his first day in the partial program.
Sam looked up, trying to fit the words into something resembling sense. Dean was entirely too calm now. There was a sense of peace instead of panic, and that cocksure grin was gone. Sam didn't realize how much he missed it until it was gone.
Dean didn't have to pretend he was the best anymore. He knew he had been broken to pieces, he knew he was pasted back together with glue. He was some ragged thing, frayed at the edges and trying to hold on by the strength of his fingernails. There was no need for bluster and bravado anymore, and no one to fool.
Sam could feel another part of his heart break every time he looked at Dean. If only I'd stayed, he thought for the thousandth time. He'd never have gotten depressed if not for me. He'd never be like this if not for me. If I never went to Stanford...
"Who's Marianne?"
"Volunteer at the hospital. She made a lot of sense, though. I liked her. She used to be a patient there, you know. At the partial, too, and made it through okay. Now she helps out a lot, and she talks to families. So it's not too weird, you know?"
The pizza tasted like cardboard to Sam. He didn't want to talk to anyone about this. He wanted it to go away. Even his fucked up childhood had made a certain kind of sense. Since when did mental illness?
"Promise me you'll talk to her," Dean insisted. There was a spark of his former intensity there, a hint of who he used to be.
"I'll talk to her," Sam lied.
As it turned out, Marianne found him after a week or so. She had blonde hair, vivid green eyes and was very noticeably pregnant. "Seven months along and feeling pretty good," she told him cheerfully, cornering him in the waiting area. Dean had waved at them, the bastard smiling at the pair of them, and then went inside with the others.
Dean attended groups on socialization and daily planning, job hunting and managing budgets. It was ordinary life skills, but something that he had avoided while on the road and hunting. He had never needed to learn those kinds of things, and he had approached it with awe after the initial condescension. "Dude, there's a point to a checkbook! And actual bank accounts!" he had declared one afternoon. "There might be something to this normalcy shit you were always talking about," he had said with a smile. Sam tried not to feel guilty.
"Ever deal with the system before?" Marianne asked without preamble. Sam shook his head. There was no point in learning before, and Dean was on his second to last day at the partial hospitalization program. He had a follow up appointment at a clinic near Sam's new apartment; the fire had been deemed an electrical one, and a sizable check had been sent to him even though he never had renter's insurance. While Sam knew it was all a lie, the check had been enough to use as a deposit for a new apartment near the hospital.
"It's shitty," Marianne declared. She sipped at her hot chocolate and smiled at Sam's stunned expression. "No, it is. Trust me. I've been in it since I was seventeen. It sucked then and it still sucks now."
Sam blinked. "What do you mean?"
"What do you know about bipolar disorder?"
"Nothing," Sam admitted. "I'm new to this whole thing."
"I've got the bad kind," Marianne said, voice soft. "I get psychotic. Dean told me about his, but it sounds like the doctors nipped it in the bud before it got too bad. Lucky for him, at least. He's got a good chance of never lapsing again if he sticks to his meds."
Oh, God. Medication. Sam hadn't wanted to think about that.
Marianne laughed at Sam's expression, but its bitterness was due to her own experience, not Sam's dawning horror. "It's a struggle, you should know that. There might be days he won't want to take the fucking things. He's on two pills now, and if he does good he'll get downgraded to one. That's lucky. I'm on three when I'm good, five when I'm completely fucked up." She shrugged and sipped at her hot chocolate again. "It's a struggle. I look at my pill box and I wonder if it's worth it to take the damn things." Her smile was bitter as she finished the hot chocolate, and it was uncomfortable to look at.
"Then why do you? You're pregnant."
"Yeah. I know. And that's the struggle, really. It would be so easy to stop it, to say that the lithium is going to give her a risk of heart abnormalities. That the antipsychotics aren't really tested in pregnancy. It would be easy to just stop, to say I'm doing it for her and not for me, that I'm trying to be a good mother." Marianne laughed and put down her empty cup of hot chocolate. "But I know it's a lie."
"What are you talking about? Why are you telling me this?"
"I get psychotic," Marianne said softly. "Oh, not right away. I'd be good until about the birth, I think. The last time I thought I didn't need my meds, it took me two or three months to get manic. I'm textbook when I get manic. I don't need to sleep, I talk up a storm, I do a dozen different things at once and I'm fucking good at them, too. But the thing is, I start believing that that's the way I should be. I start thinking I hear things. The demons in the walls, the voice of God, the whole hyperreligious shebang." She looked at Sam's startled face. "Oh, yeah. Demons are common in mental illness, didn't you know? We all see those. We all hear it. Demons fucking love us." Marianne shrugged. "I hear the voice of God telling me I'm special. I have a purpose. I have to hunt them, I have to show the world where the demons are. I'm the one keeping the darkness at bay. I have to draw the circles and paint the spires and chant the verses that will keep the city safe. I'm important that way, I have a purpose."
"Dean just wanted to keep me safe."
Marianne's smile was sad. "Yeah. That's how it starts, you know. That's how it begins. And it slides deeper as you go, when you fall under your own spell and the weight of the psychosis really kicks in. Lord help the fool that tries to stop you. Then they're infected. They're the ones that are sick. They're the ones that are possessed by demons. They're the ones with the black eyes and the soulless stares that you have to fix."
The numb feeling in Sam's gut was churning now. Why did she have to make sense?
Marianne caught Sam's hand in hers, wrenching him from his inner castigation. "Shit happens, Sam. It does all the time. That doesn't make it any easier, but you're not alone in this. There's a bravery in dealing with it. There's a bravery in making that choice to take those pills every morning, to choose to be well, to fit in and be like everyone else."
"There has to be a better way," Sam choked, feeling guilty again. Did he wish this on Dean? Was this all his fault?
"Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes it's all you can do to muddle along."
"How do you cope, then?" Sam asked, voice breaking. "How do you feel like it's not your fault?"
"It's not your fault, Sam," Marianne said, voice soft and clear. "None of this is your doing. You didn't make him depressed. You didn't make him psychotic. You went away and you came back again and there was a fire. You didn't do any of that. You didn't wish him sick. That's not how it works, even if your heart says that it does. Shit happens. Life happens. You just have to roll with it as it comes. It's not easy, but you can do it. People do it all the time."
"But how? How do you do it?"
"One foot in front of the other," Marianne told him bluntly. She shrugged and stood up to head inside and speak to the patients. "You keep going through the motions, acting as if you know what you're doing. The next thing you know, you do."
"Thank you," Sam told her. Amazingly enough, he meant it.
Her grin was heartbreakingly beautiful. "You're welcome."
Sam painted the apartment with Dean that night, a light cream color in the living room. Dean had gotten a tranquil blue for his room, and Sam opted for a deep forest green. "This is that normalcy shit you were talking about, wasn't it?" Dean asked softly, flecks of cream paint on his sweat shirt and nose. He laughed at Sam's guilty look. "Hey, man, I'm not gonna knock it now. I'm just trying to figure out how you thought it was something Dad would ever go for. I mean, knowing what's out there and all."
What's out there. That phrase sounded so simple, yet it carried so much meaning. Neither brother had been able to really explain that other life to the doctors. How do you explain hunting to someone that thinks it's all a myth? It was better to skirt the issue, though Sam wondered how much of that psychosis was because Dean talked about demons.
No, Sam decided after a moment. There was that real fear in Dean that night in the parking lot, in the hospital. He had decked a cop believing him to be possessed and going after Sam. He had attacked hospital staff thinking they were possessed. That had been real panic, desperation in every strained muscle as he had been pinned down and medicated, restrained to a hospital bed and talked to by psychiatrists. Those psychiatrists might have thought the source of the fear was in religion rather than reality, but it didn't change the fact that Dean attacked ordinary people thinking they were demons. Innocent bystanders might have gotten seriously hurt, and Sam knew that Dean would never want that on his conscience.
"I didn't think of it that way," Sam said slowly, looking up at Dean. "You guys didn't need me in hunting, you know? So if you didn't need me, I could go off and be normal."
Dean snorted, and Sam felt as if he was sixteen again. "Dude, you have no idea how it really went down then, do you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Of course we needed you. And you were plenty good enough, Sam. You did great on that woman in white job with me." Dean shot him a smug look. "I always stuck up for you on that count, at least. I knew you could handle yourself on a job, could keep your head on straight. It's just that Dad didn't want you in on it half the time. A lot of bullshit excuses got thrown around. But I've had time to think about it after you left, trying to figure out why it bothered him so much that you wanted to settle."
"Dean-"
"No, let me finish." Dean's grip on the paintbrush was tight, and Sam couldn't tell if the white on his knuckles was from the paint. "You're all he had left of Mom, you know. He had to protect you and keep you safe. It's my job, too. If something happened to you, then everything else wouldn't matter anymore. It would be like Mom dying all over again."
Sam blinked in surprise. "But you're also..."
"Dude, I look more like Dad. Face it, Sammy. Dad couldn't bear the thought of losing you in a fight. Me, he could lose." Dean didn't face Sam, his eyes fixed on some invisible point on the wall. "I could remember Mom, but I don't look like her. He didn't give a shit about himself apart from fighting the good fight or killing the bad guys. That's what I figured out."
Sam's mouth had gone dry. "I'm sorry, Dean."
"Not your fault, dude. That's just the way it was."
"I wish you told me sooner. You could've come with me."
Dean turned, and Sam could see that same cocksure grin on Dean's face that he had grown up resenting. Dean had always been able to turn on the charm, to get in a girl's pants and just seem so self assured that Sam had never doubted him. "I would've cramped your style."
"You're smart. You just never bothered."
"Why should I? Why learn about European history if I'm going to go digging up bones in a cemetery to torch? What's the point in book learning?"
Sam sighed. "You need to do some researching in hunting."
"That's what you're for," Dean snarked. He turned back to the wall and stepped back to appraise his work. "But yeah. Something's gotta change now, Sammy. Maybe I'll do some kind of classes or something. Body shop, maybe. Gunsmithing. Something."
"You're going to stay here?" Sam asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
Dean turned around, that trademark grin on his face. Sam wished he could see through it, that he could tell what Dean was really thinking. "Dude, I can't leave you alone. Look at what happened the last time I did."
Sam thought of Jessica, burning on the ceiling. He could feel Constance's ghostly hand pushing into his chest. He thought of the painful loneliness when he first arrived at Stanford.
Sam smiled sadly, shaking his head. "You're impossible."
"I'm a god, bitch."
"Jerk."
Dean's smile was infectious, and they finished the first coat in no time at all.
The following day, Dean was saying goodbye to the staff members and other participants in the partial hospitalization program. Sam stood off to the side, outside the locked doors. It was a beautiful, sunny day with a clear blue sky. It was the kind of day he and Jessica would call beach weather, even if they weren't the kind of students to skive off of classes. It was the kind of day that seemed so perfect that nothing could mar it.
Marianne came outside and smiled at Sam. "Ready for the rest of the world to begin?" she asked, her mouth smiling and tone lilting.
Sam laughed, still facing the sky. "On a day like today, I think I am."
Marianne's laughter carried an edge to it. "Oh, days like today should definitely be cherished, Sammy. Take every single one and hoard them like jewels. You never know how long it's going to last."
Something in her tone sent chills down Sam's spine. He looked down, his brows beginning to furrow in concern. "What?"
She faced him, eyes completely black. "Take care of your brother, Sammy. Dean's so very precious and important, don't you know that? Both of you are so important." Her smile was sinister, sending Sam recoiling. "You have to protect each other from the demons, Sammy. You take care of your brother, Sam. Something's not quite right there."
Stunned to silence, Sam couldn't say anything or even move. He simply watched Marianne turn and walk back into the building. Dean greeted her calmly and gave her a fond hug farewell.
Dean had been released into the wide world, given a relatively good bill of mental health. Now Sam was the one doubting his sanity. He was left wondering if this entire time had been nothing more than an elaborate trick.
Despite the heat, Sam shivered. He couldn't tell Dean about this. Not now, not ever.
"I am my brother's keeper," he murmured to himself. The knowledge was heavy and bitter, weighing him down. This was bound to be just the first in a long line of secrets. He wished for normal, and he still wasn't going to get what he wished for.
The End.
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Eric Kripke owns the cute boys, and I'm just borrowing them to play.
Rating: R for language.
Pairing: none
Warnings: This is AU from the Pilot episode. I looked up the general requirements of the residency program, but I have never actually been to Stanford University Hospital. I may have taken quite a few liberties with how it looks or how staff actually handles these kinds of situations. I tried to generalize off of the experience I do have, which is based off of the New York State system.
Summary: Sam used to wish that Dean would settle down somewhere close by so they could be a family like all the others. This isn't what he meant.
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997)
What You Wish For
Part One - My Brother's Keeper
Stanford Hospital housed many departments and helped to train many a resident and medical student. H2 was the acute adult inpatient unit, and everything was locked down tight outside of the elevator banks. Sam was acutely out of his element, still smelling of smoke, still feeling vaguely guilty even though he didn't entirely understand why. The secretary at Stanford Law had been entirely too nice to him on the phone, and somehow gave Sam the feeling that he would be accepted anyway. Knowing that the interview was "really just a formality" made him feel as though his life had been plotted out ahead of time, written by someone who hadn't let him in on the joke yet.
Dean was locked away in H2, being called psychotic. The fact that he had stared at Sam with wide eyes that held no recognition hadn't helped. He was wailing about demons, that they were there to kill Sam, that he had to save Sam and it was too late for Jess.
Sam's gut twisted painfully, and he had to press his hand to the wall to keep upright. His world had unraveled, and there was no way to knit it back together again.
They wouldn't let him on the unit right away. There needs to be a staffing, the unit clerk told him in clipped and disapproving tones. Dean would need to be assessed again, a plan would have to be formulated, and the treatment team would then get back to him during visiting hours. Sam would simply have to wait, just like everyone else.
Sam sat in the waiting area by the elevator bank, hands shaking, aware that he probably looked like a psych patient himself. It was a locked unit, he had to remind himself. It wouldn't do him any good to pick the locks and walk right in. It wasn't as if he could simply walk right out with Dean on his arm. Everyone would notice.
Friends eventually got word of the fire, and Sam began fielding phone calls on his cell that afternoon. By evening visiting hours, he had a place to stay and lots of sympathy. He still felt numb, still had trouble comprehending anything as real. By the look of it, Dean was having just as much trouble. There had been codes called overhead during the day, and the nurses told Sam that they were due to Dean. He hadn't wanted to be locked into the unit, of course. He didn't think he was sick. He didn't think there was anything wrong with trying to deck the attending psychiatrist who was leading the interview for the new resident rotating into the unit. Dean had sat there perfectly calm until he snarled and swung, calling the attending a "meat suit" that needed to get the demon beat out of him.
Oh, God. Sam couldn't even contemplate the reaction the team must've had. He didn't even question it. That was so like Dean.
Sam sat by Dean's side the entire time he was allowed to. Dean was still sedated from his earlier bouts of aggression. Not knowing what else to do or where else to go, Sam sat there, staring at his sleeping brother. This had to make sense at some point, right? He had caught something somewhere about how certain symptoms would lend itself well to different diagnoses, and the differences had different prognoses. Something like that. The words from the resident had spilled over his head in a monotone mumble. They couldn't know what this was like, could they? They didn't understand the shock of it. This wasn't Dean. This couldn't be Dean. Something was very, very wrong here.
Days slid together. Dean stopped trying to attack the staff and he stopped mumbling about demons every time he saw someone. He reluctantly admitted to not sleeping or eating well in the weeks prior to his arrival at Stanford. He reluctantly admitted that he thought about death or dying sometimes. Well, sure he felt stressed or down. Sure, he wished he could've done more with his life, or that he was enough for his father or Sam. Sure, he had wanted more out of his life. Who didn't need to settle for what they had? It had always been taken for granted that he would shift about from job to job with his father and take care of Sam. And when Sam was gone and there was no one left to take care of, he was stuck in the same old place, day in and day out. Of course he had wanted more. Of course he would've wanted to settle down. But it wasn't the way fate had treated him, and there was no point to wish for something different. There was no point to any of that.
Around this same time, Sam realized that if he offered to talk with the doctors during the day, he often got a chance to visit Dean in addition to visiting hours. It tended to help calm Dean down when the treatment team was making rounds. He was easily aggravated by the procession of white coats and ties that passed his room every morning. Attendings, residents and medical students would ask how he was doing, did he sleep, did he eat, how did he feel today. Some of them never even looked up from their clipboards, never made eye contact. He was a statistic, a collection of side effects to the antipsychotic and antidepressant du jour.
Major depression with psychosis was the kindest diagnosis Dean could have possibly had. Sam had gathered that straight psychosis had initially seemed more likely, and was still a striking possibility. Things seemed to settle down a bit after the first few rocky days, though Sam couldn't have recounted a single thing that anyone told him in those days. He was numb from the visits to the hospital and Jessica's funeral. He couldn't taste anything he was eating if he even remembered to eat. He couldn't meet anyone's eyes. He stopped caring about law school and his dreams of a perfectly normal life. If this was it, he didn't want it.
Dean was discharged after three weeks in the hospital. He was sent to a partial hospitalization program, where he would spend days in social groups and getting reacquainted with life outside of the hospital. He would then go stay with Sam's friends in the afternoon and evening. The social workers expected it to be a two week period before he was free and clear of all kinds of hospital, though they warned Sam that he would need to make regular clinic visits. Some part of him recoiled at such a thing; they had always shied away from doctors and clinics and anything speaking of regular visits. There had never been a sense of continuity in their formative years, nothing that would allow people to get to know them.
You wanted normal, he told himself fiercely. You wished for normal, for a steady home. Life sucks for regular people, too.
"You should meet Marianne," Dean told Sam over pizza after his first day in the partial program.
Sam looked up, trying to fit the words into something resembling sense. Dean was entirely too calm now. There was a sense of peace instead of panic, and that cocksure grin was gone. Sam didn't realize how much he missed it until it was gone.
Dean didn't have to pretend he was the best anymore. He knew he had been broken to pieces, he knew he was pasted back together with glue. He was some ragged thing, frayed at the edges and trying to hold on by the strength of his fingernails. There was no need for bluster and bravado anymore, and no one to fool.
Sam could feel another part of his heart break every time he looked at Dean. If only I'd stayed, he thought for the thousandth time. He'd never have gotten depressed if not for me. He'd never be like this if not for me. If I never went to Stanford...
"Who's Marianne?"
"Volunteer at the hospital. She made a lot of sense, though. I liked her. She used to be a patient there, you know. At the partial, too, and made it through okay. Now she helps out a lot, and she talks to families. So it's not too weird, you know?"
The pizza tasted like cardboard to Sam. He didn't want to talk to anyone about this. He wanted it to go away. Even his fucked up childhood had made a certain kind of sense. Since when did mental illness?
"Promise me you'll talk to her," Dean insisted. There was a spark of his former intensity there, a hint of who he used to be.
"I'll talk to her," Sam lied.
As it turned out, Marianne found him after a week or so. She had blonde hair, vivid green eyes and was very noticeably pregnant. "Seven months along and feeling pretty good," she told him cheerfully, cornering him in the waiting area. Dean had waved at them, the bastard smiling at the pair of them, and then went inside with the others.
Dean attended groups on socialization and daily planning, job hunting and managing budgets. It was ordinary life skills, but something that he had avoided while on the road and hunting. He had never needed to learn those kinds of things, and he had approached it with awe after the initial condescension. "Dude, there's a point to a checkbook! And actual bank accounts!" he had declared one afternoon. "There might be something to this normalcy shit you were always talking about," he had said with a smile. Sam tried not to feel guilty.
"Ever deal with the system before?" Marianne asked without preamble. Sam shook his head. There was no point in learning before, and Dean was on his second to last day at the partial hospitalization program. He had a follow up appointment at a clinic near Sam's new apartment; the fire had been deemed an electrical one, and a sizable check had been sent to him even though he never had renter's insurance. While Sam knew it was all a lie, the check had been enough to use as a deposit for a new apartment near the hospital.
"It's shitty," Marianne declared. She sipped at her hot chocolate and smiled at Sam's stunned expression. "No, it is. Trust me. I've been in it since I was seventeen. It sucked then and it still sucks now."
Sam blinked. "What do you mean?"
"What do you know about bipolar disorder?"
"Nothing," Sam admitted. "I'm new to this whole thing."
"I've got the bad kind," Marianne said, voice soft. "I get psychotic. Dean told me about his, but it sounds like the doctors nipped it in the bud before it got too bad. Lucky for him, at least. He's got a good chance of never lapsing again if he sticks to his meds."
Oh, God. Medication. Sam hadn't wanted to think about that.
Marianne laughed at Sam's expression, but its bitterness was due to her own experience, not Sam's dawning horror. "It's a struggle, you should know that. There might be days he won't want to take the fucking things. He's on two pills now, and if he does good he'll get downgraded to one. That's lucky. I'm on three when I'm good, five when I'm completely fucked up." She shrugged and sipped at her hot chocolate again. "It's a struggle. I look at my pill box and I wonder if it's worth it to take the damn things." Her smile was bitter as she finished the hot chocolate, and it was uncomfortable to look at.
"Then why do you? You're pregnant."
"Yeah. I know. And that's the struggle, really. It would be so easy to stop it, to say that the lithium is going to give her a risk of heart abnormalities. That the antipsychotics aren't really tested in pregnancy. It would be easy to just stop, to say I'm doing it for her and not for me, that I'm trying to be a good mother." Marianne laughed and put down her empty cup of hot chocolate. "But I know it's a lie."
"What are you talking about? Why are you telling me this?"
"I get psychotic," Marianne said softly. "Oh, not right away. I'd be good until about the birth, I think. The last time I thought I didn't need my meds, it took me two or three months to get manic. I'm textbook when I get manic. I don't need to sleep, I talk up a storm, I do a dozen different things at once and I'm fucking good at them, too. But the thing is, I start believing that that's the way I should be. I start thinking I hear things. The demons in the walls, the voice of God, the whole hyperreligious shebang." She looked at Sam's startled face. "Oh, yeah. Demons are common in mental illness, didn't you know? We all see those. We all hear it. Demons fucking love us." Marianne shrugged. "I hear the voice of God telling me I'm special. I have a purpose. I have to hunt them, I have to show the world where the demons are. I'm the one keeping the darkness at bay. I have to draw the circles and paint the spires and chant the verses that will keep the city safe. I'm important that way, I have a purpose."
"Dean just wanted to keep me safe."
Marianne's smile was sad. "Yeah. That's how it starts, you know. That's how it begins. And it slides deeper as you go, when you fall under your own spell and the weight of the psychosis really kicks in. Lord help the fool that tries to stop you. Then they're infected. They're the ones that are sick. They're the ones that are possessed by demons. They're the ones with the black eyes and the soulless stares that you have to fix."
The numb feeling in Sam's gut was churning now. Why did she have to make sense?
Marianne caught Sam's hand in hers, wrenching him from his inner castigation. "Shit happens, Sam. It does all the time. That doesn't make it any easier, but you're not alone in this. There's a bravery in dealing with it. There's a bravery in making that choice to take those pills every morning, to choose to be well, to fit in and be like everyone else."
"There has to be a better way," Sam choked, feeling guilty again. Did he wish this on Dean? Was this all his fault?
"Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes it's all you can do to muddle along."
"How do you cope, then?" Sam asked, voice breaking. "How do you feel like it's not your fault?"
"It's not your fault, Sam," Marianne said, voice soft and clear. "None of this is your doing. You didn't make him depressed. You didn't make him psychotic. You went away and you came back again and there was a fire. You didn't do any of that. You didn't wish him sick. That's not how it works, even if your heart says that it does. Shit happens. Life happens. You just have to roll with it as it comes. It's not easy, but you can do it. People do it all the time."
"But how? How do you do it?"
"One foot in front of the other," Marianne told him bluntly. She shrugged and stood up to head inside and speak to the patients. "You keep going through the motions, acting as if you know what you're doing. The next thing you know, you do."
"Thank you," Sam told her. Amazingly enough, he meant it.
Her grin was heartbreakingly beautiful. "You're welcome."
Sam painted the apartment with Dean that night, a light cream color in the living room. Dean had gotten a tranquil blue for his room, and Sam opted for a deep forest green. "This is that normalcy shit you were talking about, wasn't it?" Dean asked softly, flecks of cream paint on his sweat shirt and nose. He laughed at Sam's guilty look. "Hey, man, I'm not gonna knock it now. I'm just trying to figure out how you thought it was something Dad would ever go for. I mean, knowing what's out there and all."
What's out there. That phrase sounded so simple, yet it carried so much meaning. Neither brother had been able to really explain that other life to the doctors. How do you explain hunting to someone that thinks it's all a myth? It was better to skirt the issue, though Sam wondered how much of that psychosis was because Dean talked about demons.
No, Sam decided after a moment. There was that real fear in Dean that night in the parking lot, in the hospital. He had decked a cop believing him to be possessed and going after Sam. He had attacked hospital staff thinking they were possessed. That had been real panic, desperation in every strained muscle as he had been pinned down and medicated, restrained to a hospital bed and talked to by psychiatrists. Those psychiatrists might have thought the source of the fear was in religion rather than reality, but it didn't change the fact that Dean attacked ordinary people thinking they were demons. Innocent bystanders might have gotten seriously hurt, and Sam knew that Dean would never want that on his conscience.
"I didn't think of it that way," Sam said slowly, looking up at Dean. "You guys didn't need me in hunting, you know? So if you didn't need me, I could go off and be normal."
Dean snorted, and Sam felt as if he was sixteen again. "Dude, you have no idea how it really went down then, do you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Of course we needed you. And you were plenty good enough, Sam. You did great on that woman in white job with me." Dean shot him a smug look. "I always stuck up for you on that count, at least. I knew you could handle yourself on a job, could keep your head on straight. It's just that Dad didn't want you in on it half the time. A lot of bullshit excuses got thrown around. But I've had time to think about it after you left, trying to figure out why it bothered him so much that you wanted to settle."
"Dean-"
"No, let me finish." Dean's grip on the paintbrush was tight, and Sam couldn't tell if the white on his knuckles was from the paint. "You're all he had left of Mom, you know. He had to protect you and keep you safe. It's my job, too. If something happened to you, then everything else wouldn't matter anymore. It would be like Mom dying all over again."
Sam blinked in surprise. "But you're also..."
"Dude, I look more like Dad. Face it, Sammy. Dad couldn't bear the thought of losing you in a fight. Me, he could lose." Dean didn't face Sam, his eyes fixed on some invisible point on the wall. "I could remember Mom, but I don't look like her. He didn't give a shit about himself apart from fighting the good fight or killing the bad guys. That's what I figured out."
Sam's mouth had gone dry. "I'm sorry, Dean."
"Not your fault, dude. That's just the way it was."
"I wish you told me sooner. You could've come with me."
Dean turned, and Sam could see that same cocksure grin on Dean's face that he had grown up resenting. Dean had always been able to turn on the charm, to get in a girl's pants and just seem so self assured that Sam had never doubted him. "I would've cramped your style."
"You're smart. You just never bothered."
"Why should I? Why learn about European history if I'm going to go digging up bones in a cemetery to torch? What's the point in book learning?"
Sam sighed. "You need to do some researching in hunting."
"That's what you're for," Dean snarked. He turned back to the wall and stepped back to appraise his work. "But yeah. Something's gotta change now, Sammy. Maybe I'll do some kind of classes or something. Body shop, maybe. Gunsmithing. Something."
"You're going to stay here?" Sam asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
Dean turned around, that trademark grin on his face. Sam wished he could see through it, that he could tell what Dean was really thinking. "Dude, I can't leave you alone. Look at what happened the last time I did."
Sam thought of Jessica, burning on the ceiling. He could feel Constance's ghostly hand pushing into his chest. He thought of the painful loneliness when he first arrived at Stanford.
Sam smiled sadly, shaking his head. "You're impossible."
"I'm a god, bitch."
"Jerk."
Dean's smile was infectious, and they finished the first coat in no time at all.
The following day, Dean was saying goodbye to the staff members and other participants in the partial hospitalization program. Sam stood off to the side, outside the locked doors. It was a beautiful, sunny day with a clear blue sky. It was the kind of day he and Jessica would call beach weather, even if they weren't the kind of students to skive off of classes. It was the kind of day that seemed so perfect that nothing could mar it.
Marianne came outside and smiled at Sam. "Ready for the rest of the world to begin?" she asked, her mouth smiling and tone lilting.
Sam laughed, still facing the sky. "On a day like today, I think I am."
Marianne's laughter carried an edge to it. "Oh, days like today should definitely be cherished, Sammy. Take every single one and hoard them like jewels. You never know how long it's going to last."
Something in her tone sent chills down Sam's spine. He looked down, his brows beginning to furrow in concern. "What?"
She faced him, eyes completely black. "Take care of your brother, Sammy. Dean's so very precious and important, don't you know that? Both of you are so important." Her smile was sinister, sending Sam recoiling. "You have to protect each other from the demons, Sammy. You take care of your brother, Sam. Something's not quite right there."
Stunned to silence, Sam couldn't say anything or even move. He simply watched Marianne turn and walk back into the building. Dean greeted her calmly and gave her a fond hug farewell.
Dean had been released into the wide world, given a relatively good bill of mental health. Now Sam was the one doubting his sanity. He was left wondering if this entire time had been nothing more than an elaborate trick.
Despite the heat, Sam shivered. He couldn't tell Dean about this. Not now, not ever.
"I am my brother's keeper," he murmured to himself. The knowledge was heavy and bitter, weighing him down. This was bound to be just the first in a long line of secrets. He wished for normal, and he still wasn't going to get what he wished for.
The End.