Supernatural/Paprika Fusion: While I Lay Dreaming (1/?)
Series: While I Lay Dreaming
Chapter Title: I close my eyes/every night/and i dream...
Author: felicia_angel
Fandom: Supernatural, Paprika (movie)
Characters: (this chapter) - Bobby, Rufus, Doctor Chiba, Tokita, Dean, Sam and Adam (mentioned)
Series Summary: AU from "Swan Song" and "Jus in Bello" - Dean checked into the Institute because of insomnia. Now, his family must attempt to piece together a way to save him and the world from something dangerous.
Chapter Summary: Bobby and Rufus learn of Dean's fate.
AO3 Link
I close my eyes/every night/and I dream…
/They fill us full of lies/
-Day After Tomorrow
April, 2011
Bobby Singer told himself, for the thousandth and a half time, that he wouldn’t visit Cicero, despite its closeness to a job that Rufus had pulled him into. He told himself that if he did, he’d end up having to explain why he was in the area. He’d have to tell Dean about the odd dreams, the lack of sleep, and the general vibe of unease that was surrounding the Somnia Psychiatric Institute and how a bunch of Scientologists (who claimed not to be but Bobby wasn’t buying it) had said it was just more proof of the evils of psychology. He’d have to explain how it couldn’t be Dream Root or anything else they’d encountered because none of it acted like this at all, and how a few Green and good witches he’d run into were also baffled, confused, and otherwise very, very worried. He also knew he’d have to talk Dean out of joining him, remind him that it was Sam’s final wish.
All while knowing Sam was alive. Was alive and with the Campbells, and Adam, the group huntin’ things while Sam said his brother needed to live a normal, apple-pie life for once. Even Adam had agreed, and he’d hardly known anything about Dean before the whole Apocalypse thing. Bobby had to agree with them, of course. Dean had gotten only four years of happiness and relative peace from the evils of the world, and even less after he’d gone to Hell. The boy needed to rest, not be throwing himself at the next big hunt.
Big hunts it was, to the point where Bobby would go for an old-fashioned haunting right now. The aftermath of Heaven and Hell gearing up for the Apocalypse, only to have it fail on them…well, that left a lot of stuff out. High demons were out and all around, being usual assholes, while angels of various stripes were also out. Bobby had heard of a few that spoke to Hunters, either to get them to leave them the Hell alone, or to ask if they needed help. He knew a few had accepted it, in their own special way, and others who wouldn’t go near the Angels, except to banish them or to try and force them out of their Vessels.
Bobby hadn’t heard from Castiel, though, and he’d avoided Angels on principle. With all the other crazy bullshit going on, he doesn’t think that Castiel would really understand why they cut all contact off with Dean, why Dean is left alone and in hopeful relative safety of suburbia and the normal life. Why none of them, besides Sam the one time, had even bothered to check on him and make sure he was ok.
Rufus gave him a light smack to bring him back as they walked up to the house of Doctor Atsuko Chiba, who worked at the Somnia Institute and who had been hounded by some of the not-Scientologists. Because there was an FBI presence, due to some high-profile killer or something (the bastards were keeping it under wraps) that Rufus hit on the idea of bloggers or something. Bobby wanted to try for at least reporters or something, and both were still arguing about it as they rang the doorbell for the third time, a soft cough getting them to turn and look over at the woman who stood nearby. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and she looked pale and a bit sleepy, her arms crossed and her suit practical. Behind her was a man that Bobby guessed was used to eating far too much, considering how large he was, and seemed a bit worried.
“You are?” the woman asked, her accented English telling Bobby to screw the plan and go straight for what he knew.
“Chiba Atsuko-san?” he asked, his Japanese flawless as Rufus muttered something about Bobby being a ‘damned showoff’. Chiba blinked at him as Bobby explained their cover story, handed over the fake card, and waited. She looked at it, sighed, then answered in English. “Come inside. I suppose I should talk to someone.”
“At-chan, are you sure about this?” the large man asked, showing his childlike attitude so quickly and easily that Bobby suddenly remembered the few times Dean had acted his age, and not like an old man.
“I am. And don’t call me At-chan. I told you that before.”
The group made their way in, the large man going to take out some stuff from the fridge before retreating to another room as Chiba said, “Don’t mind Tokita. He’s been worried about one of the patients.”
“Can you talk about it?” Rufus asked, pulling out a recorder and a pad of paper as Chiba went to make tea.
“I can’t give details. We’re not sure what happened ourselves. However, the patient was suffering nightmares and asked to be placed on an experimental program, which has since been scrapped.”
Bobby frowned as he sat. “Any reason why?”
“Internal problems, as well as what happened to the patient. He’s currently in a coma, and is brain activity is deteriorating at a rate that is far from healthy. I suspect he has maybe three months left to live, but that’s…being optimistic.” She sighed, looking down. “I can’t help but think I failed him in some ways.”
“Can you talk about the internal problems, then?” Rufus asked.
“No. The FBI and police have it as an ongoing investigation. It’s also something of a scandal, and I’d rather not go into theories.”
Bobby made a mental note to check before asking, “You were close the patient?”
“Not particularly,” she told him, stopping to get the kettle off and start the tea, “but his dreams and delusions were, from a psychiatric viewpoint, intriguing. I and Doctor Shima were close to him.” She fell silent. “He was upset, with what happened to Doctor Shima, and even more so as the whole event played out. I fear he may have heard about it, and…” she stopped, letting out a breath before offering them tea and some snacks. Rufus decline, as did Bobby, before they asked for a bit more. She explained what she could - they were focused mostly on dreams and images created in those dreams, as they related to someone and any problems they were having. A machine had been created to look at those dreams, or at least at the images and dream-like sequence they came in when addressing those problems, but various problems had come up and the whole thing was ultimately scrapped. Tokita was currently on leave during the investigation, and it had not helped his eating or her attempts to get him to lose weight. The patient was in a coma, and would probably die in three months.
Bobby and Rufus thanked her for the time and headed outside, Bobby frowning when he stepped out and-
“the hell?” he muttered, looking around. This was his house, and not only that, he could smell Karen’s cooking inside, knew this was a day or so before he’d told her…
He started to go in, only to find himself in the front yard of someone else’s house, a large tree that was blackened by fire suddenly tipping him off to where he was.
But how the hell had he--.
“b-bobby?” the voice made him start, looking over to see Dean kneeling on the sidewalk, bleeding from various cuts and wounds on him, his hair matted with blood, his clothing instead a pair of scrubs that were caked in dirt and who-knows-what-else. “h-how…wh-what happened? Why…why are you…” Dean suddenly shook his head. “n-no, bo-bobby, get outta here.”
Bobby started to move forward when he heard something stirring, like it was moving out of the ground, and he stopped on the last step, looking at the tree. It…it felt unnatural. “Dean…Dean, get over here.”
“c-can’t. gotta finish this.”
“Dean--.”
“gotta…make…” Dean managed to shakily stand, looked at the tree, and back to Bobby. His eyes were too bright, and filled with tears as the tree suddenly uprooted itself with a wrenching, screaming sound, like how Dean had described Castiel’s true voice-
--a sharp slap woke Bobby, so much that Rufus had to take a fist to the jaw before Bobby calmed down, looking around to find himself on the couch, Chiba sitting to one side with some tea and medical supplies as Rufus barely managed to hold in a curse. Chiba looked at the two silently before letting out a breath. “You both should leave.”
“The hell we are--.”
“If you remain, Bobby Singer,” she told him in Japanese, getting him to freeze, and Rufus to do so as well when she mentioned his real name, “you could easily give something dangerous a way to escape. Do you want that?”
“The hell do you mean? Tell me or we’re staying,” he growled back, angry and afraid. The hell had he just seen? Dean wasn’t here, he was--.
“Dean Winchester will be dead in less than three months, and with him, a portal to insanity will close.” The harsh pronunciation made him freeze, his heart clenching in a way that even Dean’s first death hadn’t. “We attempted to stop it from spreading, but were too late to realize who was behind it, or the full extent of what was being released. Dean sacrificed himself to stop it. What you saw was the echo of Dean Winchester’s mind, as it fragments and dies with each fight.”
“You’re telling me that…that you’re letting him die?”
“I’m telling you that he gave us no choice,” she told him harshly, coldly, “the…thing spread to his dreams. With each spread, it takes the person, and their memories and dreams, with them. Dean Winchester was dying anyway. He simply decided to fight back, rather than let another be tormented by his memories.” She stood, her eyes as cold as her pronouncement. “If you attempt to wake him, or save him, or anything else…you will not get Dean back. His mind is too broken for him to ever be fixed, or conscious, or useful beyond a study subject. And, you will unleash a powerful and dangerous horror into this world. Do you want that?”
Bobby felt himself shake with rage and grief. Dean was supposed to be…this wasn’t supposed to…. “You…you damned…”
“Dean chose to do this. We were fully prepared to fight, and Dean instead did this. I’ve lost enough people to this work - two are dead, and two are hopelessly insane and dangers to themselves. If they were dogs, they would’ve been shot by now.” She straightened a bit, and glared at him. “If you’d thought to call him once, you might have known about this. Since you didn’t, you have no right to yell at me, or call me anything. I was with him the last ten months. I was his friend. Where were you?”
Bobby wanted to say so many things, but words failed him, in all the languages he knew, written and spoken, and Chiba pointed again to the door. “Get out. Leave this town, or I’ll call the police.”
“We’re going,” Rufus told her, moving Bobby out of the house and into the waiting car before they drove away and out of town. They hadn’t even checked into the hotel..
--
They were halfway back to Bobby’s when Rufus got them a hotel and decided to wait out the night. His reasoning, which Bobby agreed with, was that if Bobby had a freaky-ass dream again, they could go back to Chiba and DEMAND to be seen, on account that whatever was affecting Dean was now affecting Bobby.
Meantime, they had to do research. A quick internet search turned up a few things about the Institute as well as some of the scandal mentioned. Right before September, there had been some major breakthrough in an experimental dream-therapy machine, but the prototype was stolen. All the rumors and signs pointed to a massive internal problem.
Then one of the men, Harris, was found dead and in a pretty gruesome way. Next thing they knew, all sorts of ideas about him being in some sort of gay relationship with the much older and far creepier Chairman surfaced after the Chairman was found dead in his own house, with one of the stolen prototypes.
Bobby was pretty sure the “psycho killer” that demanded FBI presence was Dean. He was worried, though, that said FBI was the agent that had given him so much trouble, before Dean’s trip to Hell. He recalled how morose and down Dean had been, after the Raising of the Witnesses, and also recalled that Dean seemed particularly unhappy about the return of one of the ghosts, that Sam had identified as FBI Special Agent Reidy.
Before he went to bed that night, Bobby prayed. He prayed to Castiel, explaining what happened, and how sorry he was for not keeping in touch, how he wanted to know Dean would be safe, alright.
He had no dreams that night, and there was no Angel waiting for him the next day.
Chapter Title: I close my eyes/every night/and i dream...
Author: felicia_angel
Fandom: Supernatural, Paprika (movie)
Characters: (this chapter) - Bobby, Rufus, Doctor Chiba, Tokita, Dean, Sam and Adam (mentioned)
Series Summary: AU from "Swan Song" and "Jus in Bello" - Dean checked into the Institute because of insomnia. Now, his family must attempt to piece together a way to save him and the world from something dangerous.
Chapter Summary: Bobby and Rufus learn of Dean's fate.
AO3 Link
I close my eyes/every night/and I dream…
/They fill us full of lies/
-Day After Tomorrow
April, 2011
Bobby Singer told himself, for the thousandth and a half time, that he wouldn’t visit Cicero, despite its closeness to a job that Rufus had pulled him into. He told himself that if he did, he’d end up having to explain why he was in the area. He’d have to tell Dean about the odd dreams, the lack of sleep, and the general vibe of unease that was surrounding the Somnia Psychiatric Institute and how a bunch of Scientologists (who claimed not to be but Bobby wasn’t buying it) had said it was just more proof of the evils of psychology. He’d have to explain how it couldn’t be Dream Root or anything else they’d encountered because none of it acted like this at all, and how a few Green and good witches he’d run into were also baffled, confused, and otherwise very, very worried. He also knew he’d have to talk Dean out of joining him, remind him that it was Sam’s final wish.
All while knowing Sam was alive. Was alive and with the Campbells, and Adam, the group huntin’ things while Sam said his brother needed to live a normal, apple-pie life for once. Even Adam had agreed, and he’d hardly known anything about Dean before the whole Apocalypse thing. Bobby had to agree with them, of course. Dean had gotten only four years of happiness and relative peace from the evils of the world, and even less after he’d gone to Hell. The boy needed to rest, not be throwing himself at the next big hunt.
Big hunts it was, to the point where Bobby would go for an old-fashioned haunting right now. The aftermath of Heaven and Hell gearing up for the Apocalypse, only to have it fail on them…well, that left a lot of stuff out. High demons were out and all around, being usual assholes, while angels of various stripes were also out. Bobby had heard of a few that spoke to Hunters, either to get them to leave them the Hell alone, or to ask if they needed help. He knew a few had accepted it, in their own special way, and others who wouldn’t go near the Angels, except to banish them or to try and force them out of their Vessels.
Bobby hadn’t heard from Castiel, though, and he’d avoided Angels on principle. With all the other crazy bullshit going on, he doesn’t think that Castiel would really understand why they cut all contact off with Dean, why Dean is left alone and in hopeful relative safety of suburbia and the normal life. Why none of them, besides Sam the one time, had even bothered to check on him and make sure he was ok.
Rufus gave him a light smack to bring him back as they walked up to the house of Doctor Atsuko Chiba, who worked at the Somnia Institute and who had been hounded by some of the not-Scientologists. Because there was an FBI presence, due to some high-profile killer or something (the bastards were keeping it under wraps) that Rufus hit on the idea of bloggers or something. Bobby wanted to try for at least reporters or something, and both were still arguing about it as they rang the doorbell for the third time, a soft cough getting them to turn and look over at the woman who stood nearby. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and she looked pale and a bit sleepy, her arms crossed and her suit practical. Behind her was a man that Bobby guessed was used to eating far too much, considering how large he was, and seemed a bit worried.
“You are?” the woman asked, her accented English telling Bobby to screw the plan and go straight for what he knew.
“Chiba Atsuko-san?” he asked, his Japanese flawless as Rufus muttered something about Bobby being a ‘damned showoff’. Chiba blinked at him as Bobby explained their cover story, handed over the fake card, and waited. She looked at it, sighed, then answered in English. “Come inside. I suppose I should talk to someone.”
“At-chan, are you sure about this?” the large man asked, showing his childlike attitude so quickly and easily that Bobby suddenly remembered the few times Dean had acted his age, and not like an old man.
“I am. And don’t call me At-chan. I told you that before.”
The group made their way in, the large man going to take out some stuff from the fridge before retreating to another room as Chiba said, “Don’t mind Tokita. He’s been worried about one of the patients.”
“Can you talk about it?” Rufus asked, pulling out a recorder and a pad of paper as Chiba went to make tea.
“I can’t give details. We’re not sure what happened ourselves. However, the patient was suffering nightmares and asked to be placed on an experimental program, which has since been scrapped.”
Bobby frowned as he sat. “Any reason why?”
“Internal problems, as well as what happened to the patient. He’s currently in a coma, and is brain activity is deteriorating at a rate that is far from healthy. I suspect he has maybe three months left to live, but that’s…being optimistic.” She sighed, looking down. “I can’t help but think I failed him in some ways.”
“Can you talk about the internal problems, then?” Rufus asked.
“No. The FBI and police have it as an ongoing investigation. It’s also something of a scandal, and I’d rather not go into theories.”
Bobby made a mental note to check before asking, “You were close the patient?”
“Not particularly,” she told him, stopping to get the kettle off and start the tea, “but his dreams and delusions were, from a psychiatric viewpoint, intriguing. I and Doctor Shima were close to him.” She fell silent. “He was upset, with what happened to Doctor Shima, and even more so as the whole event played out. I fear he may have heard about it, and…” she stopped, letting out a breath before offering them tea and some snacks. Rufus decline, as did Bobby, before they asked for a bit more. She explained what she could - they were focused mostly on dreams and images created in those dreams, as they related to someone and any problems they were having. A machine had been created to look at those dreams, or at least at the images and dream-like sequence they came in when addressing those problems, but various problems had come up and the whole thing was ultimately scrapped. Tokita was currently on leave during the investigation, and it had not helped his eating or her attempts to get him to lose weight. The patient was in a coma, and would probably die in three months.
Bobby and Rufus thanked her for the time and headed outside, Bobby frowning when he stepped out and-
“the hell?” he muttered, looking around. This was his house, and not only that, he could smell Karen’s cooking inside, knew this was a day or so before he’d told her…
He started to go in, only to find himself in the front yard of someone else’s house, a large tree that was blackened by fire suddenly tipping him off to where he was.
But how the hell had he--.
“b-bobby?” the voice made him start, looking over to see Dean kneeling on the sidewalk, bleeding from various cuts and wounds on him, his hair matted with blood, his clothing instead a pair of scrubs that were caked in dirt and who-knows-what-else. “h-how…wh-what happened? Why…why are you…” Dean suddenly shook his head. “n-no, bo-bobby, get outta here.”
Bobby started to move forward when he heard something stirring, like it was moving out of the ground, and he stopped on the last step, looking at the tree. It…it felt unnatural. “Dean…Dean, get over here.”
“c-can’t. gotta finish this.”
“Dean--.”
“gotta…make…” Dean managed to shakily stand, looked at the tree, and back to Bobby. His eyes were too bright, and filled with tears as the tree suddenly uprooted itself with a wrenching, screaming sound, like how Dean had described Castiel’s true voice-
--a sharp slap woke Bobby, so much that Rufus had to take a fist to the jaw before Bobby calmed down, looking around to find himself on the couch, Chiba sitting to one side with some tea and medical supplies as Rufus barely managed to hold in a curse. Chiba looked at the two silently before letting out a breath. “You both should leave.”
“The hell we are--.”
“If you remain, Bobby Singer,” she told him in Japanese, getting him to freeze, and Rufus to do so as well when she mentioned his real name, “you could easily give something dangerous a way to escape. Do you want that?”
“The hell do you mean? Tell me or we’re staying,” he growled back, angry and afraid. The hell had he just seen? Dean wasn’t here, he was--.
“Dean Winchester will be dead in less than three months, and with him, a portal to insanity will close.” The harsh pronunciation made him freeze, his heart clenching in a way that even Dean’s first death hadn’t. “We attempted to stop it from spreading, but were too late to realize who was behind it, or the full extent of what was being released. Dean sacrificed himself to stop it. What you saw was the echo of Dean Winchester’s mind, as it fragments and dies with each fight.”
“You’re telling me that…that you’re letting him die?”
“I’m telling you that he gave us no choice,” she told him harshly, coldly, “the…thing spread to his dreams. With each spread, it takes the person, and their memories and dreams, with them. Dean Winchester was dying anyway. He simply decided to fight back, rather than let another be tormented by his memories.” She stood, her eyes as cold as her pronouncement. “If you attempt to wake him, or save him, or anything else…you will not get Dean back. His mind is too broken for him to ever be fixed, or conscious, or useful beyond a study subject. And, you will unleash a powerful and dangerous horror into this world. Do you want that?”
Bobby felt himself shake with rage and grief. Dean was supposed to be…this wasn’t supposed to…. “You…you damned…”
“Dean chose to do this. We were fully prepared to fight, and Dean instead did this. I’ve lost enough people to this work - two are dead, and two are hopelessly insane and dangers to themselves. If they were dogs, they would’ve been shot by now.” She straightened a bit, and glared at him. “If you’d thought to call him once, you might have known about this. Since you didn’t, you have no right to yell at me, or call me anything. I was with him the last ten months. I was his friend. Where were you?”
Bobby wanted to say so many things, but words failed him, in all the languages he knew, written and spoken, and Chiba pointed again to the door. “Get out. Leave this town, or I’ll call the police.”
“We’re going,” Rufus told her, moving Bobby out of the house and into the waiting car before they drove away and out of town. They hadn’t even checked into the hotel..
--
They were halfway back to Bobby’s when Rufus got them a hotel and decided to wait out the night. His reasoning, which Bobby agreed with, was that if Bobby had a freaky-ass dream again, they could go back to Chiba and DEMAND to be seen, on account that whatever was affecting Dean was now affecting Bobby.
Meantime, they had to do research. A quick internet search turned up a few things about the Institute as well as some of the scandal mentioned. Right before September, there had been some major breakthrough in an experimental dream-therapy machine, but the prototype was stolen. All the rumors and signs pointed to a massive internal problem.
Then one of the men, Harris, was found dead and in a pretty gruesome way. Next thing they knew, all sorts of ideas about him being in some sort of gay relationship with the much older and far creepier Chairman surfaced after the Chairman was found dead in his own house, with one of the stolen prototypes.
Bobby was pretty sure the “psycho killer” that demanded FBI presence was Dean. He was worried, though, that said FBI was the agent that had given him so much trouble, before Dean’s trip to Hell. He recalled how morose and down Dean had been, after the Raising of the Witnesses, and also recalled that Dean seemed particularly unhappy about the return of one of the ghosts, that Sam had identified as FBI Special Agent Reidy.
Before he went to bed that night, Bobby prayed. He prayed to Castiel, explaining what happened, and how sorry he was for not keeping in touch, how he wanted to know Dean would be safe, alright.
He had no dreams that night, and there was no Angel waiting for him the next day.