After
Sam hit his limit at seventy four hours. Bobby had gone somewhere, God knows where, Sam wasn’t paying attention nor did he care. Maybe home to change or eat or sleep. Sam hadn’t slept since they’d struggled Dean into the emergency room three days ago, barely breathing, pulse so faint that Sam kept losing it every few minutes the entire frantic ride to the hospital. He wouldn’t let them touch him until Dean was out of surgery. Full twelve hours he’d sat in the waiting room covered in dried blood, head pulsing. Thinking about irrelevant things, stupid things, how Dean was still wearing his tee shirt, how his face had looked, stark white against the scorched ground, how he would be so pissed when he finally woke up and found out one of his eyebrows had burned right off.
They’d had to cut the ring off his finger. One of the nurses had handed it to Sam, still flecked with blood. They didn’t know what to make of him and he couldn’t care less. Bobby had produced some paperwork that showed Sam was Dean’s brother, even thought the names on the cards were different and Sam kept forgetting what his name was supposed to be. Apparently they were both from Arkansas of all places and Bobby was their uncle. It was just stuff to mull over pointlessly while he waited so he wouldn’t scream.
Once Dean was out of surgery, he’d let them do whatever they wanted. Two days later he was wearing scrubs because he refused to leave the hospital and they’d set up a cot for him in Dean’s room, not that he had any intention of sleeping. The copies of his scans sat crumpled in the drawer of Dean’s nightstand. Bobby wouldn’t let him throw them away at first, and afterwards, he’d forgotten all about them. Small TIA, that was all. They gave him blood thinners and he chucked them in the trash when they weren’t looking. How the hell was he supposed to explain that the blood clot which had caused all the damage had been supernatural in nature? And the damage was unimportant anyway. Some memory issues. Coordination and all that crap. It could’ve been worse. He could’ve been dead. He could be lying in the hospital bed like Dean, tubes sticking out of every hole, needles up and down his arms.
Dean would be fine. No matter how many times he asked, they said the same thing. He’d read their charts and progress notes. Bobby had finagled that one too, with more forged paperwork. The arm would heal. Dean’s vision would come back. The internal damage was minimal, just a lot of bruising. It had been touch and go with his kidneys. They had been afraid of brain damage. Which should have been comical in the end because there was nothing wrong with Dean’s brain, it was Sam that came out of this a little slower, the abbreviations on Dean’s med chart dancing in front of his eyes, the words escaping him, some things just hovering right out of reach. He would wake any day now, they’d said, and Sam waited. And waited. And waited.
Somewhere around the seventy four hour mark he finally went under, still in the chair by Dean’s side.
He didn’t dream.
--
He felt the callused finger tips moving across the back of his hand over and over again, exerting no pressure. At first he saw the gates ahead, Dean by his side, Dean’s fingers brushing his. Blinked at the white light and white walls. Frowned. Another thing he would probably have to get used to, these slow and lazy moments of disorientation, his brain simply not running as fast as it used to, not connecting the dots quickly enough. The fingers moved again and he looked down.
Dean smiled. One eye still bandaged but the other clear and green and cautious despite the smile. He’d stuck one arm through the rail, the IV lines pulled tight, and his fingers were brushing Sam’s hand slowly. His lips dry and cracked, the nasal cannula still in place but slightly crooked now that his head was turned to face Sam, his nose red and irritated from the constant blast of oxygen. The bruise on his face had started fading slightly and it looked painful to smile. But he was smiling still and Sam found himself smiling back, all his facial muscles aching.
“Hey,” Dean rasped, voice barely above a whisper.
“Hey,” Sam said back, his throat locking up.
“You’re ok.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, his voice hitching, all his efforts to smooth it out failing miserably,
“You too.”
Dean grunted softly,
“I don’t know man. Pretty sure... there’s a tube up my dick.”
Sam snorted out a painful laugh, his chest quivering, then he was sobbing, clutching Dean’s hand through the rail.
--
He had Bobby help him sit up, even though it felt like all his bones would shatter. He kept his thumb away from the morphine pump and decided to just grind his teeth instead. He’d get his two hits later, when it was time to sleep, but now he wanted his head as clear as it could get.
Sam was asleep finally, ridiculously long legs folded up on the cot, one arm thrown over the edge, reaching towards Dean even in his sleep. He looked like hell, sallow and bruised around the eyes, the bones of his face sharp enough to cut glass. Bobby was quick to explain that they couldn’t get him to sleep or eat the entire time Dean was out. It had made Dean furious, so angry that he’d almost thrown something at the sleeping form, ready to rip him a new asshole for being a fucking idiot. It didn’t last long, the anger.
He straightened out the crumpled forms and scans, despite having memorized every word and image. Bobby had pushed the entire mess at him with an assurance that it wasn’t as bad as they made it sound. And that was a pretty hefty lie. Dean didn’t understand everything; some of those goddamned terms he would need a dictionary for. But the things he understood were cold and clear: balance, coordination, memory, concentration. They were to expect all sorts of things, from emotional outbreaks to unexplainable fatigue and frequent headaches.
“Most of it will go away,” Bobby whispered, “in time.”
What he meant was, be fucking grateful. Be fucking grateful that this is all there is, because he could’ve been dead, he could’ve been lying cold somewhere right now, gone for good. At least Dean understood that much. Watching Sam’s chest rising slowly, his eyelashes trembling, he understood gratitude.
“What happened? After.”
And Bobby told him, his eyes straying to Sam often as if he couldn’t believe the thing he witnessed was lying only a few feet away, fragile and nearly shattered. There wasn’t much to tell. Fire and lightening and earthquake until the dome combusted, an explosion that had sounded like the breaking of the world. Demons maybe dead, maybe loose on the world, impossible to tell. Where the gates had been, nothing but a rubble of stone and melted steel, sealed for good now, no place to insert the key. And Sam walking out of the flames with Dean in his arms, incoherent and bloody, stumbling and tripping, left leg folding on every other step. Mumbling about time and existence and grooves and riverbeds. Bobby had been sure the kid’s head had cracked like a melon in there, his brains permanently scrambled. He’d been happy to be proven wrong.
“I was sure--“ Bobby started and stopped, clearing his throat gruffly.
Dean bit his lip and looked away. That was one thing he’d never say out loud because no one would understand. Because to him, it didn’t really matter. Whatever Sam had been trying to do, whatever his plans had been, whether they succeeded or failed. He’d made his choice in that graveyard and Bobby knew it. He chose Sam. If things had turned out differently, he might have been sitting at Sam’s feet right now, getting his ears scratched while demons overran the world. And he would’ve been content with that too. Bobby could believe whatever helped him sleep at night. But Dean would always know the truth. That he’d been ready to let the world burn for his brother, and that he would do it again, in a heartbeat.
At least it was over now. For both of them. Azazel dead, gates closed for good, and Sam... whatever was left over, they would deal with it together.
Epilogue →