Shockhom Prologue and Chapter 1
Title: Shockholm
Summary: Tag to 8.23 "Sacrifice." The angels have fallen. Cas has vanished. Sam is dying. The lengths Dean will go to save him scares even him. AU.
Author's Note: This is a multi-chapter that I wrote this summer before the start of season 9. It's mostly told from a perspective of another character. I absolutely love it. I hope you do too!
Prologue
There were two things that Dean Winchester knew with unwavering, rock-solid certainty: no matter how bad things were, they could always get worse and somehow life would always lead to him holding his stricken brother in the mud.
Angels fell like burning rain, streaking through the sky in plumes of silver and gold, and crash-landed like rogue meteors. But Dean didn't care about angels or Heaven or even a half-cured King of Hades chained up in the derelict church. All that mattered was Sam, his jeans splattered with mud, his skin a silvery white, his eyes bulging from pain. Even in the low light, Dean could see Sam's pulse throbbing in his neck, feel his lungs stutter over shallow, puny breaths. Minutes ago, Sam had been arguing for his own death, and it looked bleakly obvious that his macabre wish may be answered.
Dean was sickened by the thought, and the fact that his brother was once again suffering because he thought sacrificing himself would make him worthy and pure.
He took Sam's hand and pressed it against his own stampeding heart. Because Dean had power of his own. It wasn't forged by demons or God's librarian, but by blood and family and love. Sam would live even if powered by Dean alone. "Just breathe, Sam. Like me, okay?" Dean urged. "You have to let it go, and just breathe. For me."
Sam's hand spasmed before it dug into Dean's chest, hard enough to bruise and maybe even bleed. His shoulders ground back against the car, back arching as he tried to inhale. The resulting sound was an ugly, dragging wheeze that pried open Sam's mouth and corded his neck. "You're doing great, Sam, just…a few more…"
An angel slammed into the ground a mere feet away, the Impala shuddered on its shocks from the impact. Dean shielded Sam as mud and tree branches and sparks shot out around them like divine shrapnel. "Time to bail, dude."
The back door opened with a fling and glide, and he heaved his hulk of a brother up and in the passenger seat of the Impala, and out of the rain. Sam was soaked and dirty and shaking, but he was still breathing. Dean stuffed his long legs in the footwell. "You keep it up, Sam, nice and easy. I'm going to fix this, little brother."
The steady grumble of the Impala's engine was a welcome comfort.
Instincts and desperation had him squatting in an abandoned motel miles from the nearest hospital. He settled Sam on the saggy mattress, bundling him in a sleeping bag. Sam's breathing was better, and the pain had seemingly minimalized, his brother was still half-conscious, colorless and whimpering. Dean threw the cobwebbed pillows on the floor and sat on the bed. Sam needed more help than he could give him; Dean needed supplies at the very least. "Sammy, hey..." he called, shaking him firmly. Sam's eyes barely opened, but they found Dean with unerring precision. "I need to go get you help, okay? I know you're tired and you feel like crap, but I need you to stay awake. Do you hear me, Sam? You have to stay here."
His brother's lips moved, forming words without sound. Dean pressed his ear against them, and his resolve crumbled when he heard the cracked, raw plea. "...hurry...Dean...I can't...it's in me...'n can't fight it..."
He tucked Sam's cell phone in the grip of his fingers, gnarled by pain, and gently coaxed a few belts of whisky into him. "I promise I'll bring back better medicine than rotgut," he smiled.
His face twisted and this throat burned he realized that the last image of his brother could be of him curled up in a dirty motel room, whimpering out his agony. He cupped his cheek, bending down to press his forehead to Sam's. "Wherever you go, kid, just remember that I'm followin'. You can do this, Sammy. I need you to do this for me."
Leaving him was gut-wrenching, but Dean scrubbed his face clean. He had work to do.
There was nothing more dangerous or more effective than Dean Winchester who stood to lose everything. While the falling angels made for a troublesome commute to the hospital, the chaos and injuries they'd caused were the perfect diversion. Within twenty minutes, he'd liberated a trunkful of gear from an unsupervised ambulance. Even as he loaded everything from vials of morphine to suture kits to the portable defibrillator into the car, he knew it wasn't enough. The power of the trials was tearing Sam apart at the molecular level, according to Cas, and a few fancy band-aids wouldn't remedy that. Unsettled and anxious, Dean lapped the hospital.
A dark idea dawned as he stopped at the crosswalk to let a group of nurses dart across in the rain.
He drove slowly as the idea moved from crazy and reckless to crucial and doable, especially when a lone nurse ventured down a different path towards the bar. She was petite, wearing a magenta hoodie over her navy blue scrubs. She flipped the hood over her long, wavy hair before ducking into an alley and into a bar.
Dean parked, gripping the wheel for a beat before climbing out into the rain. "Forgive me," he said as he stepped into the rain.
It was a twisted comfort knowing his prayer would go unheard.
Chapter 1: Sorry For Snatching
Adele Wade never trusted anything that seemed too good to be true.
When she was awarded a prestigious medical fellowship in Chicago, that niggling little voice in the back of her head set off alarm bells that it would dissolve into a disaster. And it had. In just her first month, she'd been kicked twice, bitten once, her apartment had flooded before she'd gotten renter's insurance was finalized, and the fellowship's funds ran out in six months leaving her jobless with an apartment fill of brand new, mildewing furniture.
So when a man so gorgeous he looked like he'd fallen off a Paris runway offered to buy her a drink, sirens blared.
But his dazzling smile, ridiculous cheekbones and eyes that hummed green immediately silenced them.
Her bought her a drink, admired her scrubs and called her currently flailing medical career "awesome," even though she was working the split-shifts at a near barren hospital in Sioux Falls.
His name was Dean, and he had come to the Dakotas to fly-fish.
Flirting snowballed into touching, and as they left the bar together, Dean twirling her into a dark alcove. He kissed her, luridly and deftly, hands roaming. The lust made everything dreamy and smeared and sticky, and Adele forgot about the freak meteor shower, forgot that she'd been in the town's only bar waiting to be paged back to work drinking colas because she was so palpably lonely.
His hands cupped the curve of her bottom before moving up, sweeping the inside of her sweater. Without warning, he tore away from her, dropping something and smashing it with a violent stomp of his a booted foot. Adele swept her hair out of her face and licked her lips, bewildered. Her subconscious "I told you so" kicked in a beat later when she stared at her demolished Spiderman iPhone and case, and his beautiful face, those lips that tasted like peaches and whisky, twisted into something brutal and ugly. Adele's tennis shoes skidded against the rain slicked ground and her legs were rubbery with terror, but she bolted into the night.
The sky was still awash with meteors, and she had never been more grateful because they illuminated the path out of the darkened narrowed slip between the bar and the hardware store in strobing pulses.
Another flash highlighted a massive car, glittering black and chrome, conveniently parked to block the exit a second before she collided into it, smashing her hand and knee as she thwacked into a fender and window. The pain was unimportant as she tried to skirt around it. When the damp ground didn't offer much traction, Adele, attempted to climb over the hood. A calloused hand clamped over her mouth and another arm snaked around her mid-section lifting her off her feet. Her muffled screams were lost in the now pouring rain and plummeting meteors.
He shook her like rag doll and adjusted his grip so that her nose was covered completely. The lack of oxygen drained her fight within seconds and she fell limp, lungs burningly tight, head spinning. Something cold locked around her wrist and he pressed her against the smooth windows of the car, an elbow pressed firmly against her neck kept Adele from struggling as her arms were handcuffed behind her. She was prideful and stubborn and held onto her fraying composure with the rabid fervor of a junkyard dog until he threaded something that smelled musty and sour over her face; it felt a bit like worn flannel and smelled a lot like a sewer. A dizzying second later, she out of the rain and inside the car, the engine rumbling to life like a nightmare.
Soft, musty vinyl cradled her cheek and her right shoulder ached as she lay at an awkward angle, wet, terrified and kidnapped. Before she could even think about fighting to avoid whatever horrors this monster had in store for her, she heard the tell-tale click of a gun and felt its barrel nudging her side. Terror ping-ponged through her like lightning, and she nearly wet her pants.
When he spoke, his voice was soft and earnest, belying that of a kidnapper. "Baby, I don't want to hurt you. I just need your healin' powers, all right? M'brother's sick...I can't take him to a hospital, so I need you to help him. You're a big fancy doctor, right, you got that job in Chicago."
Heart thundering in her ears, Adele began to sob. "I have m-money...you can have it...just let me go."
She jerked at a popping sound before realizing that he was snapping his fingers by her left ear. "Honey, focus. I don't want to harm a hair on your pretty head. I just need you to help my brother...relax, all right?"
Her thoughts were jagged and untrackable, like bees buzzing over garbage. Panic made people stupid, and after twenty years of schooling and studying, Adele knew she was anything but. She drew in a deep breathing, ignoring the shift of the gun in her side. "I'm supposed to be back at work soon...p-people are going to look for me when I'm not there," Adele said, voice trembling. He didn't need to know that she didn't have any people.
"Well, they won't find you, sweetheart." The words were served up as honey but tasted like poison.
As the car speed away from home, freedom and safety, Adele could only hope she'd escape alive.
-S-
The trundling car lurched off the smooth plane of highway, based on the speeds, and onto a bumpy room that had her tumbling around the footwell. A beat later, the car stopped, rain splattered against the roof. Adele jerked away as a hand touched her arm.
"Relax," he barked. He touched her again, gripping her upper arms with both has to lift her out of the footwell and into the seat. After a sharp tug of her damp and frizzed hair, the blindfold fell away.
Adele blinked tearfully into the mottled moonlit interior of the car, trembling even harder as she saw the open landscape of half-dead trees and sun-bleached fields. It was the perfect place for a murder.
Dean sighed next to her before he nudged up the heat. "Look at me, Adele."
She stared straight ahead and wondered if he would kill her there...and what he'd do to her before he did. The years spent in medicine had taught her in graphic detail just how heinous humans could be.
"I'm putting the gun away, okay. Just..look at me."
She turned her head in his direction, gaze lifting as high as his chin.
"I'm sorry for the snatch-n-grab. I needed help, and 'No' wasn't an option."
Ire flashed brighter than the fear. "You're s-sorry for kidnapping me?" Her voice was reed-thin and shaky, but the incredulity was there.
"I need you to patch up my brother, and I didn't have time to talk you into it. Kidnapping is such a harsh word." His smile was mischievous, disarming and not remotely threatening despite how efficiently he'd abducted her and that he was holding a gun.
"What...what's happened to your brother?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Dean's expression darkened. "Look...there's nothing in the world...in this universe that's more important than my brother, and he's really, really sick and he might die thinking that I don't even..." He paused before continued. "I just need you to help him, and I'll bring you right back. I know you think I'm some twisted freak, and I hate that, but I need you to help me."
Adele swallowed, knowing that she wasn't the only one seized by desperation and unparalleled fear. "...if he...has a GSW he needs the ER, I won't be able to help him." Criminals avoided the ER because gunshot wounds had to be reported to the police by law.
Dean's face twisted in a dark configuration that seemed worse than dread and anxiety, and even grief. "He's not shot."
A streak of brilliant gold lit up the sky followed by another, and Dean began driving again, eyes tracking the meteors as they burned through the sky. "Believe it or not, you might be safer with me."
Dean was a personification of contradictions in a handsome and violent package. He'd abducted her with the precision of a secret agent in an action film, but made sure she was warm and comfortable. He handcuffed her for the walk from the car to a derelict motel that Adele suspected was abandoned, but held a coat over her head so she wouldn't get soaked by the storm and escorted her around broken glass and chunks of shattered asphalt in a gentlemanly manner.
"It's just in here," he said, leading her through the door. "Sammy! The cavalry's here, man!"
Adele squinted into the light, her eyes panning the miserable motel room that was all sun-faded moth-eaten bedclothes, cracked windows that spittled the matted, moldering carpet with rain, and a sagging bed tucked into the corner. She could see the broad back of a figure curled on the sagging bed.
Dean uncuffed one wrist and grabbed her biceps, leading her to the foot of the bed. He left her to tending to his brother, rubbing a hand along the bunched broad back, and sweeping back his dark, shaggy hair with the cloth that had been left there. From where Adele stood, she could hear his rapid, spongy breathing and tell that he was in a fair amount of pain, his body was curled around a pillow, the grip tight enough to white-cap his knuckles and cord his muscles. She smelled blood, too, before she ever noticed the stained bandages on his forearm and hand.
Dean was speaking softly to his brother, trying to coax out a response. "Dr. Adele's going to take care of you, man. Just remember what I said. You gotta let it go. We'll figure this out when you're better."
He waved her over and handed her a huge medical bag she recognized as one of the EMT packs with a sheepish shrug. Adele was perversely impressed. Dean had thought of everything.
As soon as Adele got her first glimpse at Sam, she almost understood why Dean had committed felonies to get him care. He was a waxy gray she'd only associated with cadavers, except for his eyes which were sunken and shadowed in dark crimson. He had that haunted look that dogged cancer patients, all blunted cheekbones and husked out posture. Whatever had happened to him, it hadn't been quick. She didn't even have to touch him to know that his fever was dangerously high. But she did anyway, digging into a bag for her stethoscope, thermometer and BP cuff. "Sam...hey, can you hear me? Open your eyes, Sam." When he didn't respond, she grated her knuckles over his sternum. He turned his head away, cracked lips parting to chuff out discomfort. A dozen diagnoses swirled in her mind, and for the first time in hours, Adele wasn't scared. She was enthralled at the mystery and excited to puzzle it out. With a fever of 104.2 and a BP that was in the toilet, she didn't have much time.
She tore open at the buttons of his shirt. "We need to get this off of him. Do you have any ice...we need to get his fever down before he seizes."
Dean flinched. "W-what?"
"He's going to have a seizure if he don't get his fever down."
Adele worked to angle limp arms out of dirty flannel. She felt a tug on her wrist and saw that Dean had locked the other end of the handcuffs to the bed frame and then moved to tug off Sam's boots. She barely paused, struggling with Sam's enormous body. "Get ice...now. I need three packs."
"I have a tub full, we could dunk him in that. It worked before."
Adele shook her head, her dark hair falling into her face. "That could stop his heart. Three packs now, Dean."
A second later, Dean had three plastic sacks stuffed with ice. Adele tried to gesture with her left arm, but the cuff pulled tight. "Put...put one under his arm and behind his head."
She did the same, never pausing to imagine how unpleasant it would be for her fevered patient. Sam made a guttural sound, his body snapping to life as she folding his limp arm over the first pack. She swore she heard a sizzle and saw tendril of steam. "Sam, you're fever's too high, we're just cooling you down. Just try to rest." Sliding into her authoritative work persona made her feel in control and comforted even though this motel was about as far from her sterile ER as she could possibly get.
Sam wiggled on the bed and vocalizing his discomfort. Dean shushed him quietly, sitting on the bed and grabbing his hands to keep the ice packs in place. Adele couldn't help but notice how he obeyed Dean, his weak scrabbling movements ceasing to involuntary shudder of fever. She started an IV, the squeak of latex putting her oddly at ease. Sam's left arm was littered in track marks, sloppy raised ones that were just beginning to bloom in plumes in red and violet. She glared at Dean. "Why didn't you tell me that he's a junkie?"
Anger flash through Dean's face. "Don't you ever..."
Both of them jumped when Sam grabbed Adele's arm and pinned with her glassy, fever-bright eyes and resounding, muddy blue conviction. "I'm...clean..." he rasped. "...m'finally pure."
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She didn't know what it meant, if it were the ramblings of a delirious, possible stoned patient or if it was something far more important. But it was meaningful to Sam, so she humored him. "Go t it. That's really good, Sam."
Sam's lips turned up in the barest of smiles. Adele leaned forward to examine his pupils. If he was an addict, they would be dilated. And they were.
A moment later, she noticed some dried blood on the hand that had braced Sam's lolling head. Gently, she raked her fingers through his long, dirty hair and felt a large knot, crusted over with blood. A concussion would explain his symptoms, too.
Dean stood, bouncing on the balls of his feet with restless anxiety. "I need to...um, make sure we're safe. You need anything you'll holler, right?"
Adele tugged at her shackled wrist. "It's not like I can go anywhere."
Once they were alone, Adele tried to ignore how epically the night had spiraled into chaos on focus on Sam. The sooner she got him stabilized, the sooner, she could leave. She struggled a bit with the cuff, digging into her bag with her right hand to retrieve her medical scissors. She sheared through Sam's soaked undershirt, nipping it at the shoulders to work it completely off. She hadn't expected to find the dark bruises, abrasions and dried blood striping his ribs and disappearing over his back. Trauma over of sickness. "What on earth happened to you?"
Gently, she grabbed his hot forearm, ignoring the stained bandage and heaved him on his left side. Bracing his limp body with her own, she leaned over to examine his back. A quick examination proved that the bruising was mostly superficial, but she worried about a darkened patch low on this right side. It could be a cracked or broken rib or it could be a sign of internal bleeding, which was far worse.
Her patient's eyes fluttered open again, a tear streaming out. Adele took him in, not as a means to her safety or a dirty, drug-addicted patient or a collection of blood and muscle and tissue, but a person with a soul and a heart and family. She sat on the bed, thoughts racing. He'd been beaten or thrown, bitten, possibly drugged and his hand was deeply sliced. The fever could be the result of an unchecked infection from any one of those or something else entirely. She'd seen similar injuries in assault victims. If Dean had abducted her just to get his brother help, what would he do to keep Sam in line? She bent over him to whisper in his ear, the primal instinct to escape choking her. "Sam, I want to help you. But I have to know what happened. Did Dean do this to you?"
"'course not. He's m'brother." Sam whispered.
"You can tell me, it's okay. Maybe we can find a way out together."
Sam regarded her with the same heavy, piercing gaze. "There's never a way out…There's always dying and falling and then it resets...and starts all over again. With the loss and the torture…Jess's gone and Amelia's gone and Bobby's gone…" Sam rambled with the candidness of the delirious, and Adele felt her heart break at the pain etched into every word.
She gingerly began cleaning the bite on Sam's arm, talking as she worked because it kept Sam quiet and calm. As a doctor, Adele could detach with near surgical precision, but everything about this night was rooted in the throes of overwhelming emotion. "I lost someone too, Sam. He was…well, he was my best friend for as long as I could remember. I loved him...a lot. I never had the courage to tell him just how much, and before I could he was gone. I know how lonely it can be. I know how devastating it can be to go on when they never will. But you can't stop living, no matter how much you want to self-destruct."
With the wound treated and dressed, she focused on the nasty laceration on his hand. Suturing it would be difficult while handcuffed, but the wound was too old to do close anyway. She'd just have to clean and bandage it as thoroughly as she could.
"I'm so tired," Sam said, coughing a little. "Tired of it all."
Adele nodded and ignored the lump in her throat. She knew how that felt too.
Summary: Tag to 8.23 "Sacrifice." The angels have fallen. Cas has vanished. Sam is dying. The lengths Dean will go to save him scares even him. AU.
Author's Note: This is a multi-chapter that I wrote this summer before the start of season 9. It's mostly told from a perspective of another character. I absolutely love it. I hope you do too!
Prologue
There were two things that Dean Winchester knew with unwavering, rock-solid certainty: no matter how bad things were, they could always get worse and somehow life would always lead to him holding his stricken brother in the mud.
Angels fell like burning rain, streaking through the sky in plumes of silver and gold, and crash-landed like rogue meteors. But Dean didn't care about angels or Heaven or even a half-cured King of Hades chained up in the derelict church. All that mattered was Sam, his jeans splattered with mud, his skin a silvery white, his eyes bulging from pain. Even in the low light, Dean could see Sam's pulse throbbing in his neck, feel his lungs stutter over shallow, puny breaths. Minutes ago, Sam had been arguing for his own death, and it looked bleakly obvious that his macabre wish may be answered.
Dean was sickened by the thought, and the fact that his brother was once again suffering because he thought sacrificing himself would make him worthy and pure.
He took Sam's hand and pressed it against his own stampeding heart. Because Dean had power of his own. It wasn't forged by demons or God's librarian, but by blood and family and love. Sam would live even if powered by Dean alone. "Just breathe, Sam. Like me, okay?" Dean urged. "You have to let it go, and just breathe. For me."
Sam's hand spasmed before it dug into Dean's chest, hard enough to bruise and maybe even bleed. His shoulders ground back against the car, back arching as he tried to inhale. The resulting sound was an ugly, dragging wheeze that pried open Sam's mouth and corded his neck. "You're doing great, Sam, just…a few more…"
An angel slammed into the ground a mere feet away, the Impala shuddered on its shocks from the impact. Dean shielded Sam as mud and tree branches and sparks shot out around them like divine shrapnel. "Time to bail, dude."
The back door opened with a fling and glide, and he heaved his hulk of a brother up and in the passenger seat of the Impala, and out of the rain. Sam was soaked and dirty and shaking, but he was still breathing. Dean stuffed his long legs in the footwell. "You keep it up, Sam, nice and easy. I'm going to fix this, little brother."
The steady grumble of the Impala's engine was a welcome comfort.
Instincts and desperation had him squatting in an abandoned motel miles from the nearest hospital. He settled Sam on the saggy mattress, bundling him in a sleeping bag. Sam's breathing was better, and the pain had seemingly minimalized, his brother was still half-conscious, colorless and whimpering. Dean threw the cobwebbed pillows on the floor and sat on the bed. Sam needed more help than he could give him; Dean needed supplies at the very least. "Sammy, hey..." he called, shaking him firmly. Sam's eyes barely opened, but they found Dean with unerring precision. "I need to go get you help, okay? I know you're tired and you feel like crap, but I need you to stay awake. Do you hear me, Sam? You have to stay here."
His brother's lips moved, forming words without sound. Dean pressed his ear against them, and his resolve crumbled when he heard the cracked, raw plea. "...hurry...Dean...I can't...it's in me...'n can't fight it..."
He tucked Sam's cell phone in the grip of his fingers, gnarled by pain, and gently coaxed a few belts of whisky into him. "I promise I'll bring back better medicine than rotgut," he smiled.
His face twisted and this throat burned he realized that the last image of his brother could be of him curled up in a dirty motel room, whimpering out his agony. He cupped his cheek, bending down to press his forehead to Sam's. "Wherever you go, kid, just remember that I'm followin'. You can do this, Sammy. I need you to do this for me."
Leaving him was gut-wrenching, but Dean scrubbed his face clean. He had work to do.
There was nothing more dangerous or more effective than Dean Winchester who stood to lose everything. While the falling angels made for a troublesome commute to the hospital, the chaos and injuries they'd caused were the perfect diversion. Within twenty minutes, he'd liberated a trunkful of gear from an unsupervised ambulance. Even as he loaded everything from vials of morphine to suture kits to the portable defibrillator into the car, he knew it wasn't enough. The power of the trials was tearing Sam apart at the molecular level, according to Cas, and a few fancy band-aids wouldn't remedy that. Unsettled and anxious, Dean lapped the hospital.
A dark idea dawned as he stopped at the crosswalk to let a group of nurses dart across in the rain.
He drove slowly as the idea moved from crazy and reckless to crucial and doable, especially when a lone nurse ventured down a different path towards the bar. She was petite, wearing a magenta hoodie over her navy blue scrubs. She flipped the hood over her long, wavy hair before ducking into an alley and into a bar.
Dean parked, gripping the wheel for a beat before climbing out into the rain. "Forgive me," he said as he stepped into the rain.
It was a twisted comfort knowing his prayer would go unheard.
Chapter 1: Sorry For Snatching
Adele Wade never trusted anything that seemed too good to be true.
When she was awarded a prestigious medical fellowship in Chicago, that niggling little voice in the back of her head set off alarm bells that it would dissolve into a disaster. And it had. In just her first month, she'd been kicked twice, bitten once, her apartment had flooded before she'd gotten renter's insurance was finalized, and the fellowship's funds ran out in six months leaving her jobless with an apartment fill of brand new, mildewing furniture.
So when a man so gorgeous he looked like he'd fallen off a Paris runway offered to buy her a drink, sirens blared.
But his dazzling smile, ridiculous cheekbones and eyes that hummed green immediately silenced them.
Her bought her a drink, admired her scrubs and called her currently flailing medical career "awesome," even though she was working the split-shifts at a near barren hospital in Sioux Falls.
His name was Dean, and he had come to the Dakotas to fly-fish.
Flirting snowballed into touching, and as they left the bar together, Dean twirling her into a dark alcove. He kissed her, luridly and deftly, hands roaming. The lust made everything dreamy and smeared and sticky, and Adele forgot about the freak meteor shower, forgot that she'd been in the town's only bar waiting to be paged back to work drinking colas because she was so palpably lonely.
His hands cupped the curve of her bottom before moving up, sweeping the inside of her sweater. Without warning, he tore away from her, dropping something and smashing it with a violent stomp of his a booted foot. Adele swept her hair out of her face and licked her lips, bewildered. Her subconscious "I told you so" kicked in a beat later when she stared at her demolished Spiderman iPhone and case, and his beautiful face, those lips that tasted like peaches and whisky, twisted into something brutal and ugly. Adele's tennis shoes skidded against the rain slicked ground and her legs were rubbery with terror, but she bolted into the night.
The sky was still awash with meteors, and she had never been more grateful because they illuminated the path out of the darkened narrowed slip between the bar and the hardware store in strobing pulses.
Another flash highlighted a massive car, glittering black and chrome, conveniently parked to block the exit a second before she collided into it, smashing her hand and knee as she thwacked into a fender and window. The pain was unimportant as she tried to skirt around it. When the damp ground didn't offer much traction, Adele, attempted to climb over the hood. A calloused hand clamped over her mouth and another arm snaked around her mid-section lifting her off her feet. Her muffled screams were lost in the now pouring rain and plummeting meteors.
He shook her like rag doll and adjusted his grip so that her nose was covered completely. The lack of oxygen drained her fight within seconds and she fell limp, lungs burningly tight, head spinning. Something cold locked around her wrist and he pressed her against the smooth windows of the car, an elbow pressed firmly against her neck kept Adele from struggling as her arms were handcuffed behind her. She was prideful and stubborn and held onto her fraying composure with the rabid fervor of a junkyard dog until he threaded something that smelled musty and sour over her face; it felt a bit like worn flannel and smelled a lot like a sewer. A dizzying second later, she out of the rain and inside the car, the engine rumbling to life like a nightmare.
Soft, musty vinyl cradled her cheek and her right shoulder ached as she lay at an awkward angle, wet, terrified and kidnapped. Before she could even think about fighting to avoid whatever horrors this monster had in store for her, she heard the tell-tale click of a gun and felt its barrel nudging her side. Terror ping-ponged through her like lightning, and she nearly wet her pants.
When he spoke, his voice was soft and earnest, belying that of a kidnapper. "Baby, I don't want to hurt you. I just need your healin' powers, all right? M'brother's sick...I can't take him to a hospital, so I need you to help him. You're a big fancy doctor, right, you got that job in Chicago."
Heart thundering in her ears, Adele began to sob. "I have m-money...you can have it...just let me go."
She jerked at a popping sound before realizing that he was snapping his fingers by her left ear. "Honey, focus. I don't want to harm a hair on your pretty head. I just need you to help my brother...relax, all right?"
Her thoughts were jagged and untrackable, like bees buzzing over garbage. Panic made people stupid, and after twenty years of schooling and studying, Adele knew she was anything but. She drew in a deep breathing, ignoring the shift of the gun in her side. "I'm supposed to be back at work soon...p-people are going to look for me when I'm not there," Adele said, voice trembling. He didn't need to know that she didn't have any people.
"Well, they won't find you, sweetheart." The words were served up as honey but tasted like poison.
As the car speed away from home, freedom and safety, Adele could only hope she'd escape alive.
-S-
The trundling car lurched off the smooth plane of highway, based on the speeds, and onto a bumpy room that had her tumbling around the footwell. A beat later, the car stopped, rain splattered against the roof. Adele jerked away as a hand touched her arm.
"Relax," he barked. He touched her again, gripping her upper arms with both has to lift her out of the footwell and into the seat. After a sharp tug of her damp and frizzed hair, the blindfold fell away.
Adele blinked tearfully into the mottled moonlit interior of the car, trembling even harder as she saw the open landscape of half-dead trees and sun-bleached fields. It was the perfect place for a murder.
Dean sighed next to her before he nudged up the heat. "Look at me, Adele."
She stared straight ahead and wondered if he would kill her there...and what he'd do to her before he did. The years spent in medicine had taught her in graphic detail just how heinous humans could be.
"I'm putting the gun away, okay. Just..look at me."
She turned her head in his direction, gaze lifting as high as his chin.
"I'm sorry for the snatch-n-grab. I needed help, and 'No' wasn't an option."
Ire flashed brighter than the fear. "You're s-sorry for kidnapping me?" Her voice was reed-thin and shaky, but the incredulity was there.
"I need you to patch up my brother, and I didn't have time to talk you into it. Kidnapping is such a harsh word." His smile was mischievous, disarming and not remotely threatening despite how efficiently he'd abducted her and that he was holding a gun.
"What...what's happened to your brother?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Dean's expression darkened. "Look...there's nothing in the world...in this universe that's more important than my brother, and he's really, really sick and he might die thinking that I don't even..." He paused before continued. "I just need you to help him, and I'll bring you right back. I know you think I'm some twisted freak, and I hate that, but I need you to help me."
Adele swallowed, knowing that she wasn't the only one seized by desperation and unparalleled fear. "...if he...has a GSW he needs the ER, I won't be able to help him." Criminals avoided the ER because gunshot wounds had to be reported to the police by law.
Dean's face twisted in a dark configuration that seemed worse than dread and anxiety, and even grief. "He's not shot."
A streak of brilliant gold lit up the sky followed by another, and Dean began driving again, eyes tracking the meteors as they burned through the sky. "Believe it or not, you might be safer with me."
Dean was a personification of contradictions in a handsome and violent package. He'd abducted her with the precision of a secret agent in an action film, but made sure she was warm and comfortable. He handcuffed her for the walk from the car to a derelict motel that Adele suspected was abandoned, but held a coat over her head so she wouldn't get soaked by the storm and escorted her around broken glass and chunks of shattered asphalt in a gentlemanly manner.
"It's just in here," he said, leading her through the door. "Sammy! The cavalry's here, man!"
Adele squinted into the light, her eyes panning the miserable motel room that was all sun-faded moth-eaten bedclothes, cracked windows that spittled the matted, moldering carpet with rain, and a sagging bed tucked into the corner. She could see the broad back of a figure curled on the sagging bed.
Dean uncuffed one wrist and grabbed her biceps, leading her to the foot of the bed. He left her to tending to his brother, rubbing a hand along the bunched broad back, and sweeping back his dark, shaggy hair with the cloth that had been left there. From where Adele stood, she could hear his rapid, spongy breathing and tell that he was in a fair amount of pain, his body was curled around a pillow, the grip tight enough to white-cap his knuckles and cord his muscles. She smelled blood, too, before she ever noticed the stained bandages on his forearm and hand.
Dean was speaking softly to his brother, trying to coax out a response. "Dr. Adele's going to take care of you, man. Just remember what I said. You gotta let it go. We'll figure this out when you're better."
He waved her over and handed her a huge medical bag she recognized as one of the EMT packs with a sheepish shrug. Adele was perversely impressed. Dean had thought of everything.
As soon as Adele got her first glimpse at Sam, she almost understood why Dean had committed felonies to get him care. He was a waxy gray she'd only associated with cadavers, except for his eyes which were sunken and shadowed in dark crimson. He had that haunted look that dogged cancer patients, all blunted cheekbones and husked out posture. Whatever had happened to him, it hadn't been quick. She didn't even have to touch him to know that his fever was dangerously high. But she did anyway, digging into a bag for her stethoscope, thermometer and BP cuff. "Sam...hey, can you hear me? Open your eyes, Sam." When he didn't respond, she grated her knuckles over his sternum. He turned his head away, cracked lips parting to chuff out discomfort. A dozen diagnoses swirled in her mind, and for the first time in hours, Adele wasn't scared. She was enthralled at the mystery and excited to puzzle it out. With a fever of 104.2 and a BP that was in the toilet, she didn't have much time.
She tore open at the buttons of his shirt. "We need to get this off of him. Do you have any ice...we need to get his fever down before he seizes."
Dean flinched. "W-what?"
"He's going to have a seizure if he don't get his fever down."
Adele worked to angle limp arms out of dirty flannel. She felt a tug on her wrist and saw that Dean had locked the other end of the handcuffs to the bed frame and then moved to tug off Sam's boots. She barely paused, struggling with Sam's enormous body. "Get ice...now. I need three packs."
"I have a tub full, we could dunk him in that. It worked before."
Adele shook her head, her dark hair falling into her face. "That could stop his heart. Three packs now, Dean."
A second later, Dean had three plastic sacks stuffed with ice. Adele tried to gesture with her left arm, but the cuff pulled tight. "Put...put one under his arm and behind his head."
She did the same, never pausing to imagine how unpleasant it would be for her fevered patient. Sam made a guttural sound, his body snapping to life as she folding his limp arm over the first pack. She swore she heard a sizzle and saw tendril of steam. "Sam, you're fever's too high, we're just cooling you down. Just try to rest." Sliding into her authoritative work persona made her feel in control and comforted even though this motel was about as far from her sterile ER as she could possibly get.
Sam wiggled on the bed and vocalizing his discomfort. Dean shushed him quietly, sitting on the bed and grabbing his hands to keep the ice packs in place. Adele couldn't help but notice how he obeyed Dean, his weak scrabbling movements ceasing to involuntary shudder of fever. She started an IV, the squeak of latex putting her oddly at ease. Sam's left arm was littered in track marks, sloppy raised ones that were just beginning to bloom in plumes in red and violet. She glared at Dean. "Why didn't you tell me that he's a junkie?"
Anger flash through Dean's face. "Don't you ever..."
Both of them jumped when Sam grabbed Adele's arm and pinned with her glassy, fever-bright eyes and resounding, muddy blue conviction. "I'm...clean..." he rasped. "...m'finally pure."
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She didn't know what it meant, if it were the ramblings of a delirious, possible stoned patient or if it was something far more important. But it was meaningful to Sam, so she humored him. "Go t it. That's really good, Sam."
Sam's lips turned up in the barest of smiles. Adele leaned forward to examine his pupils. If he was an addict, they would be dilated. And they were.
A moment later, she noticed some dried blood on the hand that had braced Sam's lolling head. Gently, she raked her fingers through his long, dirty hair and felt a large knot, crusted over with blood. A concussion would explain his symptoms, too.
Dean stood, bouncing on the balls of his feet with restless anxiety. "I need to...um, make sure we're safe. You need anything you'll holler, right?"
Adele tugged at her shackled wrist. "It's not like I can go anywhere."
Once they were alone, Adele tried to ignore how epically the night had spiraled into chaos on focus on Sam. The sooner she got him stabilized, the sooner, she could leave. She struggled a bit with the cuff, digging into her bag with her right hand to retrieve her medical scissors. She sheared through Sam's soaked undershirt, nipping it at the shoulders to work it completely off. She hadn't expected to find the dark bruises, abrasions and dried blood striping his ribs and disappearing over his back. Trauma over of sickness. "What on earth happened to you?"
Gently, she grabbed his hot forearm, ignoring the stained bandage and heaved him on his left side. Bracing his limp body with her own, she leaned over to examine his back. A quick examination proved that the bruising was mostly superficial, but she worried about a darkened patch low on this right side. It could be a cracked or broken rib or it could be a sign of internal bleeding, which was far worse.
Her patient's eyes fluttered open again, a tear streaming out. Adele took him in, not as a means to her safety or a dirty, drug-addicted patient or a collection of blood and muscle and tissue, but a person with a soul and a heart and family. She sat on the bed, thoughts racing. He'd been beaten or thrown, bitten, possibly drugged and his hand was deeply sliced. The fever could be the result of an unchecked infection from any one of those or something else entirely. She'd seen similar injuries in assault victims. If Dean had abducted her just to get his brother help, what would he do to keep Sam in line? She bent over him to whisper in his ear, the primal instinct to escape choking her. "Sam, I want to help you. But I have to know what happened. Did Dean do this to you?"
"'course not. He's m'brother." Sam whispered.
"You can tell me, it's okay. Maybe we can find a way out together."
Sam regarded her with the same heavy, piercing gaze. "There's never a way out…There's always dying and falling and then it resets...and starts all over again. With the loss and the torture…Jess's gone and Amelia's gone and Bobby's gone…" Sam rambled with the candidness of the delirious, and Adele felt her heart break at the pain etched into every word.
She gingerly began cleaning the bite on Sam's arm, talking as she worked because it kept Sam quiet and calm. As a doctor, Adele could detach with near surgical precision, but everything about this night was rooted in the throes of overwhelming emotion. "I lost someone too, Sam. He was…well, he was my best friend for as long as I could remember. I loved him...a lot. I never had the courage to tell him just how much, and before I could he was gone. I know how lonely it can be. I know how devastating it can be to go on when they never will. But you can't stop living, no matter how much you want to self-destruct."
With the wound treated and dressed, she focused on the nasty laceration on his hand. Suturing it would be difficult while handcuffed, but the wound was too old to do close anyway. She'd just have to clean and bandage it as thoroughly as she could.
"I'm so tired," Sam said, coughing a little. "Tired of it all."
Adele nodded and ignored the lump in her throat. She knew how that felt too.