On The Wings of Fury, part 2
Previous Part
The weak, battery-powered overhead light was on, and Dean was on his back, bare arms working in little tweaks and twists, the console disemboweled and wires tangled everywhere like, like.
Sam did not think about Max Miller and his emergency field surgery and things spraying and Neosporin.
Dean didn’t look away from whatever he was doing with wire-stripping pliers and his pocketknife. “What’s going on out there, Sammy?”
Sam sank down to sit next to the console, knees bent close and one foot between Dean’s thighs because there wasn’t enough room in here for him to put his parts anywhere else. “I think,” he said, staring at Dean staring at his hands, “we crashed the Impala.”
Dean scowled, and the next twist of his wrist was especially vicious. “Tell me about it.”
“I think the sandstorm buried us,” Sam added, and he felt Dean’s leg stiffen under his. He held up his fingers and tried to keep track of the things Dean needed to know. “The lieutenant? The blond one? Is Ellen’s daughter, and she probably has a concussion. The old guy, Chief Singer, got a tent stake through the thigh, but he seems fine otherwise. Ava, the other woman, isn’t hurt, and she’s helping Andy-the-medic-in-training patch up Max because a huge piece of our plane in stuck in his stomach.” He took a deep breath. “And the tail’s ripped off and two people haven’t been accounted for.”
Dean was still too tense, but his face had smoothed into the waxy mask he wore whenever he was considering their options and not finding many. He worked for half a second, then huffed and let his hands fall out of the Impala’s insides.
“Radio’s down,” he said. “I can fix it, but not instantly or anything.”
Sam stared up at the low-wattage light that they should turn off, probably, conserve energy for when they needed it, just in case.
“You should go out there,” Sam advised. “The commanding officer can’t take control, because she’s hurt, and everyone’s distracted taking care of each other for now but they’ll need someone to give them directions, and right now the closest any of them are to that is Ava, and she’s a private, she’ll defer to any one of them even if they don’t have a plan.”
Dean slithered out from under the console, and they rearranged themselves so that Dean was curled up across from Sam and their legs were tangled together in the middle. “I don’t have a plan, either,” he admitted.
Sam didn’t tell Dean how much Sam really, really needed his big brother to have a plan right now.
Dean grinned, and asked, “How d’you know all this? About the social rules in disaster situations?”
Sam shrugged, self-conscious, because this was still a touchy subject, even three years since he left the place. “College was good for something.”
Dean’s grin faded, and he rubbed his fingers into his scalp, and he ground the heels of his palms into his eyes, and he gave Sam a level, flat, neutral look. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
He stood up, and Sam got up to stand behind him, and Sam didn’t tell him that this was something Dean had to do alone, Sam couldn’t help at all, much.
Dean stayed at the front of the cabin, and locked up for a second as he saw Ava holding the light and Max’s bright, desperate eyes as he bit back screams and Andy, wrist-deep in Max’s insides, twisting and tweaking to get everything lined up right. Jo was sitting up on her own, and Singer had moved to sit with her and Ellen. The two others were still not around.
Dean cleared his throat, and went to the closest group of three. He crouched down next to Ellen and started talking, low, hands moving sometimes, indicating up and then the sand where part of the plane should be.
Whatever he said, Ellen made a sound that didn’t seemed pleased but she nodded, and Singer probably knew that Dean was trying to assert himself as an authority figure but he agreed, too, and after some coaxing Jo focused and nodded and asked a whispered question and nodded again.
Dean grinned reassuringly at all of them and rolled up from his toes to his feet and ignored Sam as he picked his way over to the others. When he spoke, Sam crept in until he heard it, too.
“Hey, I’m Dean, the pilot. I’m going to get the radio up. It’ll take a day, maybe two, and then the signal will go out and we’ll have to wait. When you’re done here,” he indicated the red smears up to Andy’s forearms and the latex gloves and Ava holding the wound open wide enough for Andy to fiddle around inside, “we’re going to have to dig ourselves out, probably. Ava, right?” he checked, and Ava blinked at him with wide, clear, brown eyes and nodded.
Dean moved like he was going to set a hand on her shoulder, but that would jar her and Max was already making short, strangled, wet noises every time Andy’s hands twitched. Dean set his hand back on his knee and rubbed it, a tell that only Sam could pick up.
“Ava, you’re not hurt, are you?”
“No.”
“Okay, that’s good to know. You good, Andy?”
Andy was so focused that he didn’t notice the sweat beading on his nose. He spared enough attention to say, “Yeah.”
At Dean’s feet, Max’s mouth opened and closed like a fish gulping too much air, and his voice was raw and breathy and small. “I’m hurt,” he gasped, and Andy’s jaw tightened and Ava flinched.
Dean said, “You’ll be resting.”
And then he said, “You guys get back to it, and tell me when you’re done. I’ll be in the cockpit, probably.”
He stood and ignored Sam again as he walked toward the front, nodding at Singer in the dark. The shadows moved like Singer was nodding back.
Dean paused under one of the emergency exits, installed in the ceiling like a school bus had, in case the plane rolled on its side.
He looked at Sam, toward the flashlight’s glow so Sam saw it reflected in his eyes, and tilted his head. Think it’s worth a try? he asked, with the weird brother telepathy that came from having the same conversation a hundred times.
Sam shrugged. If it isn’t rusted shut.
So Dean grabbed one of the uprooted chairs, heaved it under the square covering, and wrenched at the latch that held it in place. He had to shove it a few times, but the covering popped out of place and rained sand down on him.
“Gah, my eyes,” Dean grouched, and wobbled when he brought his hands up to rub them.
Sam set a hand on Dean’s elbow to help him down, and he was already climbing up himself when Dean ordered, “Get it open.”
Sam ducked his head and pushed, and the sand cascaded down the neck of his shirt as the cabin filled with too-white sunlight. The covering slid easily onto the sand up there, and Sam gave an experimental jump, grabbed at the edge.
Yeah, he could haul himself up if he had to. But that was maybe just because Sam was so tall; Dean might not manage it, and they had to work on Dean looking In Control to everyone else.
Sam hopped off the chair and said, “I’ll give you a boost.”
Dean’s boot pulled painfully on the skin of his clasped fingers, but it was only for a second; then he clambered up, heavy footfalls echoing from the metal in the empty tube of the cabin.
There wasn’t any noise from up there, but Sam could read his brother’s silences, too; this one said, Oh, shit, Sam, you should see this and reflect upon our screwedness with me.
Sam climbed onto the chair again, and saw Ellen and Singer looking at him, washed out and pale in the thin, blinding sunlight. He shrugged and said, “Be right back.”
Then he was scrabbling for a handhold in shifting sand, and Dean’s hand seized his wrist and hauled straight up, and he was standing on top of a hill that was not so high as the dunes around them, so that the entire horizon in every direction was filled with the ponderous swell of heavy, orange waves, layered on top of each other, bleached out of depth perception by the sun.
There was nothing. Not even mountains in the distance. Sam knew the Syrian desert’s topography, that was part of his job as copilot, but there was no way to know where they were if he didn’t have even one point of reference.
Under their feet, the Impala wasn’t completely buried; just mounds of sand piled against the side and front and back. Compared to the rest of their little valley’s floor, it wasn’t a lot to deal with.
Dean was staring at his boots, or the battered and dented metal roof of his baby. He said, “Sammy.”
That was an I-don’t-know-what-to-do tone, and. Sam just couldn’t let him pull that.
Sam leaned his shoulder into Dean’s, and spoke quietly into his ear so that no one could hear even if they were listening for it.
“It’s a good plan. Let them have something to do, take their minds off this. We’ll dig ourselves out and then we’ll have to take a measure of what supplies we have left, how much of the cargo did or didn’t fall out of the back.”
Dean pursed his lips thoughtfully, making a sour face at the squeal and grind of sand as he redistributed his weight. He lifted his head and squinted up at the sun, fierce and hard, and then he said, “Water’s top of the list. Half-rations, I guess, for the time being. Got to make it stretch far as long as it can. Wonder if the cargo brought any MREs.”
Sam smiled, felt his skin stretch too tight and unfamiliar. “MREs and manual labor. Just like home.”
“Never thought I’d miss Dad’s crazy Survival Weekends,” Dean agreed, chuckling.
They laughed for a minute, half-silent and furtive, guilty for humor when it was so palpably inappropriate.
Dean coughed to break himself off before it turned hysterical. “We got any shovels down there?”
Sam scratched his head. His hair was already thick and oily, two days in the heat without a shower. It would only get worse from here. “Probably. I’ll poke around.”
They stayed motionless for two minutes more, shoulders touching, hands in pockets, staring out at nothing, nothing, nothing out there but dry and death.
Then, Dean turned around to look in a new direction and said, “C’mon. Inside.”
And, yes, now Dean was getting it. If he was going to take charge of everyone, he needed to order Sam around, too, and expect Sam to obey. And Sam, for his part, had to obey, or else.
Well.
Or else he’d sabotage the plan he himself thought up. And then they’d all have no chance at all.
So Sam lowered himself down as smoothly as he could, careful not to wrench his shoulders. He couldn’t afford to be injured. His toes brushed the upturned chair and he dropped his weight, then he pushed the chair out of the way and called, “Ready!”
Dean had apparently been considering his options here, and he kept his elbows close to his body and dropped nearly easily, controlling it so that Sam could catch his weight for the couple of seconds it took for Dean to situate himself and land on the deck.
Sam glanced around, and, uh.
“Hi,” a guy said casually, and he had a mullet. He was sitting in the first row of seats, chewing on a protein bar, wrapper shiny in his hand.
Dean said, “Who are you?” and then, “Stop eating that!” He swiped the bar away and folded the wrapper around the remains, tossed it down on a clear seat.
The guy with the mullet - either Ash or Scott, Sam’s mind supplied, and oh, good, he probably wasn’t bleeding in the brain - held up his hands, lax and vague. “Dude. Chill.”
And, oh. He sounded stoned. How was that even possible?
Dean repeated, “Who are you,” no question in it, just demand.
“Ash. Hi. You?” Ash was skinny and proportioned oddly, elbows too prominent and belly carrying too much pudge.
Dean was tense, arms hanging away from his body like he was ready for a fight, weight shifting belligerently and looking for a good balance to start a fight. “Dean Winchester.”
Jo could stand without assistance, now. Her voice was hoarse as she said, “He’s the pilot,” from behind Ash. Ellen and Singer were there, too, flanking their CO just in case.
Sam looked past their cluster, to the flashlight-lit surgery still going on. Andy was sewing Max up, and Max had mercifully passed out, and Ava’s hand shook the light she held.
Ash’s eyebrows shot up, and he made a show of glancing around the ruined cabin. Then, he raised both hands and put some unnecessary force into two-thumbs-up. “Hey, man, good job.”
Dean didn’t say anything. Sam thought maybe he was seriously weighing the consequences of punching Ash in the mouth.
Sam set his hand at the small of his brother’s back, a small thing but hopefully enough to ground Dean in the In Control charade they were trying to put on.
Dean took a deep, silent breath - Sam felt his back very deliberately loosen up - and said, “Do not take rations again until we have a better sense of how far they’ll have to stretch.” And then his tone lighten up and he looked up at Jo. “Lieutenant Harvelle?”
“Yeah?” her eyes were clear and focused, and she couldn’t be more than a year out of West Point. She stood straight, shoulders back, blond hair fallen down around her shoulders, dirty and creased from the tight braid she’d worn when they’d loaded up.
Dean grinned. “Can I call you Jo?”
Ellen scowled at him, but Jo smiled back. “Sure.”
“How are you feeling, Jo?”
She winced and touched the back of her head. “Better, in a queasy hangover way.”
“Listen,” and, oh God, Dean cocked his head in that way that meant; even though he had a girl in every port, this time would be special and amazing. “You know the supplies you packed up, right? Could you take a look around and see what we still have and what we lost?”
Sam held his breath, because this was Jo’s chance to assert herself and pull the leadership role out from under Dean. If she did as she was told, she always would; if she didn’t, this could get complicated.
But Jo was Sam’s age and Dean was an older, handsome man, looking at her like that and asking a favor. She nodded, stopped, held her head, and just said, “Yeah, I can.”
“Okay, then,” Dean nodded, and then didn’t look at Sam as he added, “See what you can do about shovels, Sam.”
So, yeah. Sam got to work.
In the end, he found two shovels in a military-issue field kit - “For digging shitholes,” Singer explained, right before he told Sam to call him Bobby.
So, he grabbed two large pieces of metal and ignored the twisted, ripped edges and told Ellen and Bobby to push the sand out from the inside, and made sure Ava and Andy understood the concept because they would have to help once they got Max hooked up in the right places.
He would have explained it to Ash, too, if the fucker hadn’t disappeared somewhere in the half-light of the cabin. He would have been furious enough to let Dean kill the bastard, except Ash reappeared just in time to join in the digging with white-faced Andy and tired Ava.
He and Dean climbed back up through the emergency exit and got to work with the shovels, moving half a ton of sand one shovelful at a time in the blazing sun.
They didn’t talk at all. Now was not the time for complaining about the heat just for the sake of complaining.
When all the sand was cleared away, they set up one of the army-issue tents up over the open end of the Impala, heavy green canvas keeping out the gritty, parched wind when they went inside. It also trapped whatever heat made it in, which meant that the metal-oven effect became even worse during the day.
They all drank half a gallon of water each and ate cold MREs, because the chemical heating packets required water as a catalyst and no one needed their food hot badly enough to make that sacrifice.
And then it was nighttime, and as soon as the sun was gone it was cold as fuck in comparison. Everyone threw their bedding together in one cleared-out corner of the cabin and opened up the tent’s canvas door to let the wind and cold in to air out the too-stifling-for-words heat inside.
Dean couldn’t pile in with everyone else for warmth, though, because leaders were distant and not one of the guys. So, without discussing it with Dean, Sam pulled out the tattered sleeping bags they kept up front just in case they had to sleep in the Impala because there weren’t any free rooms or something, and he made up a different bed for the two of them in the cockpit. There was even nearly enough room for both of them.
But they crawled into it and curled up together, like they used to when Dad and his copilot Caleb had to pull an all-night flight and there wasn’t anyone to watch the boys so they came along and mostly slept.
And Sam kept his voice as low as he could, murmured their plans right into Dean’s ear - you can’t do anything with Jo, okay, don’t lead her on like that, and nine people, half a gallon, four and a half gallons a day, we have enough for fifteen days and maybe a week more if we push it, and good idea, letting Jo rest and take inventory instead of working today, and we can’t let people know I’m giving you advice like this.
And Dean whispered back, tired, they were both tired, and they smelled like work and sweat and desert dust, gamey and wild. Dean said, just stay with me on this, Sammy, and I need you to trust me, and go to sleep.
So.
That was the first day.
---
Sam woke up with his nose buried in Dean’s neck, and it smelled like gross and B.O. and more gross and man, and it was already too hot to touch, so he wasn’t even allowed the illusion that it was all a dream.
Sam pushed out of the bed, which they’d already mostly kicked into a scattered pile of blankets. He was a little embarrassed about clinging like that in his sleep, because he wasn’t a six-year-old being bullied in school anymore.
“Dean,” he croaked. He was already thirsty, but he swallowed it down - Dad taught him better than that.
Dean curled his arm up where Sam used to be, squeezed his eyes shut, and rubbed his hands over his face. “Dude, Sammy, fucking fuck fuck.” When he opened his eyes, the dirty light from the windshield picked up the gold flecks in the green, and his freckles stood out more than Sam could ever remember.
Sam wanted to cut through the preliminary stuff. “So. Hi, Dean. We crashed the Impala.”
“Yeah,” Dean groaned, dropped his head back down, “and we discovered that you’re secretly a criminal mastermind.”
“Let’s see if I can mastermind us up some delicious egg breakfasts.”
“If you’re referring to the yellow jello goo MRE, Sammy, as actual food, I’ll give you a Charlie horse.” Dean tapped his fist, middle knuckle pushed out further than the rest, against the tendon tying Sam’s thigh muscle to his knee.
Sam chuckled, and then when he was quiet he heard movement from the cabin and huffed out a sigh. “Come on. Your kingdom awaits.” He staggered to his feet, shoulders tight and achey from yesterday’s work.
Dean grunted and stuck his hand out for Sam to help him stand.
---
Max was still alive.
He didn’t rise with the sun, but he wasn’t feverish or overheating any more than everyone else was in the cooking body of the plane. The skin held together by the tough thread was pink and raw and a little swollen, and Andy pulled Dean aside and spoke through his teeth and made a worn, worried face and shook his head.
When Dean came back, he told Sam immediately anyway, but it was good that Andy recognized power. “He doesn’t know. If the kid’ll.”
Sam nodded, and asked, “D’you want to ask a couple of people to take the shovels and dig a more permanent toilet at the edge of the farthest dune?”
Dean contemplated the bleached-white sky and his lips twisted. “Yes,” he said carefully. “Yes, that is what I want you to organize. Make it so, Number One.” He said it with the full Patrick Stewart accent, even.
Sam snickered and knocked his shoulder into Dean’s. He gave a salute that would have made Dad wince, and drawled, “At least Troi’s hot, man.”
Dean smiled and let it drop dead and stared at the reflective metal of the Impala, with very-obviously-not-on-purpose wrinkles and crunches in the outer panels. “I’ll get on that radio.”
---
When Andy relieved him for a turn with the shovel, Sam found himself gravitating back to the shade of the tent and the low, soft mound of sand and stiff canvas that made up Max’s sickbed.
Ava was there already, hair tied back and eyes warm chocolate and lips cracked and gouged, blowing air across the peppered sweat on Max’s forehead. Her hand tightened in his, and she curled her upper body around to see Sam.
“Hi, Sam The Copilot,” she hummed, low in case she woke up the patient.
“Hello, Private Wilson,” Sam said, with the stern severity that was just a touch too overacted. He knew it came across as joking, because he recognized it as how he flirted.
He also recognized that he should probably really, really not do that.
She smiled at him, sweet and simple, and couldn’t she feel the heat and the silent slide of sand that was already rising up the sides of the plane like a singularly dehydrated tide, how could anyone smile after everything, the closest Sam had come was with Dean and that didn’t count because he could always smile around Dean.
Sam was tired. But he mustered the bare minimum of a smile and crouched down next to her. “How is he?”
“He’s. Well, he doesn’t have most of your plane stuck in him anymore, but.” She wiped the back of her hand through the sticky damp of her forehead, and on over the nape of her neck. “He hasn’t woken up since.”
“He will,” Sam said, even though, well.
She nodded, and touched her stomach through her dirty, sweat-stained undershirt. “I told you to call me Ava,” she said thoughtfully.
“Ava,” Sam echoed dutifully.
“I mean, I hope I can be on a first-name basis with a guy that saved my life.”
He frowned at her hand, wrapped tight around Max’s. “I didn’t.”
“I figure, not many people survive a plane crash, right?”
And Sam couldn’t say things like so do you think we’ll survive this one? to her, so instead he asked, “Are you and Max, um.”
She blinked, stared, and giggled. “Oh, God, no. He asked me a couple of times, but, y’know,” she held up her hand, and in the gloom of the tent the diamond did its job and collected enough light to shine. It was on the right ring finger.
“Engaged?”
“He asked me right before I shipped out for this tour.”
Sam had the feeling that his brain might be melting out his ears, but the sun had that effect most of the time, and he didn’t know what he could do to stop it. “Been together long?”
“Six months, before he asked me, and another three long-distance, you know how it is.”
Sam hadn’t tried to keep contact with anyone but Dean since leaving Stanford, but, uh, sure. “Yeah. So.” And now the lying part. “You looking forward to seeing him?”
Ava’s smile froze solid for a second, and her voice was strong, harder, determined. “Yep. You bet your ass, Sam.”
Sam nodded, yes, this was the attitude she needed. Had to keep morale up.
And, deep down, Sam knew that he was falling back on what he’d learned so that he wouldn’t think about what he felt, but. They all had different ways of coping.
He went to the cockpit, where Dean was flat on his back and buried up to his elbows in wires again.
“How’s the radio?” Sam asked, and put his back to the wall and slid down and let their legs tangle together in the middle of the floor.
“It’s not.” He tugged and arranged the bundles of wires with thinly-veiled frustration. “Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Nearly time for dinner,” Sam observed, which was smaller than breakfast; half their ration of water and half an MRE, sharing it between two people. Breakfast was a whole MRE. Oh, the life of luxury was hard.
“How goes the mind control part?”
“Like herding cats sometimes,” Sam admitted. “Ellen and Bobby don’t want to listen to me, which makes Jo start to clue in on the part where she’s still technically their CO. But they all listened to you, so I’m not worried about it. I just can’t keep relaying your orders like I had to today.”
Dean grunted, which might have been agreement or might have been an expression of his hatred for radios.
Sam bit his chapped bottom lip, and stewed in his own sweaty grossness for a minute, and said, “Ash concerns me.”
“Is he making trouble?” Dean pulled himself out from under the console and stood up and gave a full-body stretch, rubbing one shoulder with the opposite hand.
“It’s not that.” Sam frowned at his boots, the laces knotted too-tight closed to try to keep the desert out. “He just. He disappears just long enough that I can’t give him an order, and then joins in with everyone when they actually get to work. He pretty much just pisses me off.”
Dean shrugged, and knocked their knees together. “Dinner, right?”
“Really. How’s the radio coming?”
He glanced guiltily at the disemboweled console. “It’s coming. Maybe tomorrow.”
When they crawled exhausted and salty and dirty into bed that night, Dean said it again.
Maybe tomorrow, tomorrow, go to sleep, Sammy.
---
Max woke up on the third day, twisting his mouth down and insisting nothing hurt and trying to refuse the water Jo brought to his bed. Andy checked him over and said he had a slight fever, maybe, but it was hard to tell for sure in the heat.
“And, to be honest, I’m not really,” Andy started, and Dean shook his head and told him that his best was enough.
Then everyone settled in to wait out the sun and then go back to sleep, while Dean went back to the cockpit to fix the radio.
---
Next Part
The weak, battery-powered overhead light was on, and Dean was on his back, bare arms working in little tweaks and twists, the console disemboweled and wires tangled everywhere like, like.
Sam did not think about Max Miller and his emergency field surgery and things spraying and Neosporin.
Dean didn’t look away from whatever he was doing with wire-stripping pliers and his pocketknife. “What’s going on out there, Sammy?”
Sam sank down to sit next to the console, knees bent close and one foot between Dean’s thighs because there wasn’t enough room in here for him to put his parts anywhere else. “I think,” he said, staring at Dean staring at his hands, “we crashed the Impala.”
Dean scowled, and the next twist of his wrist was especially vicious. “Tell me about it.”
“I think the sandstorm buried us,” Sam added, and he felt Dean’s leg stiffen under his. He held up his fingers and tried to keep track of the things Dean needed to know. “The lieutenant? The blond one? Is Ellen’s daughter, and she probably has a concussion. The old guy, Chief Singer, got a tent stake through the thigh, but he seems fine otherwise. Ava, the other woman, isn’t hurt, and she’s helping Andy-the-medic-in-training patch up Max because a huge piece of our plane in stuck in his stomach.” He took a deep breath. “And the tail’s ripped off and two people haven’t been accounted for.”
Dean was still too tense, but his face had smoothed into the waxy mask he wore whenever he was considering their options and not finding many. He worked for half a second, then huffed and let his hands fall out of the Impala’s insides.
“Radio’s down,” he said. “I can fix it, but not instantly or anything.”
Sam stared up at the low-wattage light that they should turn off, probably, conserve energy for when they needed it, just in case.
“You should go out there,” Sam advised. “The commanding officer can’t take control, because she’s hurt, and everyone’s distracted taking care of each other for now but they’ll need someone to give them directions, and right now the closest any of them are to that is Ava, and she’s a private, she’ll defer to any one of them even if they don’t have a plan.”
Dean slithered out from under the console, and they rearranged themselves so that Dean was curled up across from Sam and their legs were tangled together in the middle. “I don’t have a plan, either,” he admitted.
Sam didn’t tell Dean how much Sam really, really needed his big brother to have a plan right now.
Dean grinned, and asked, “How d’you know all this? About the social rules in disaster situations?”
Sam shrugged, self-conscious, because this was still a touchy subject, even three years since he left the place. “College was good for something.”
Dean’s grin faded, and he rubbed his fingers into his scalp, and he ground the heels of his palms into his eyes, and he gave Sam a level, flat, neutral look. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
He stood up, and Sam got up to stand behind him, and Sam didn’t tell him that this was something Dean had to do alone, Sam couldn’t help at all, much.
Dean stayed at the front of the cabin, and locked up for a second as he saw Ava holding the light and Max’s bright, desperate eyes as he bit back screams and Andy, wrist-deep in Max’s insides, twisting and tweaking to get everything lined up right. Jo was sitting up on her own, and Singer had moved to sit with her and Ellen. The two others were still not around.
Dean cleared his throat, and went to the closest group of three. He crouched down next to Ellen and started talking, low, hands moving sometimes, indicating up and then the sand where part of the plane should be.
Whatever he said, Ellen made a sound that didn’t seemed pleased but she nodded, and Singer probably knew that Dean was trying to assert himself as an authority figure but he agreed, too, and after some coaxing Jo focused and nodded and asked a whispered question and nodded again.
Dean grinned reassuringly at all of them and rolled up from his toes to his feet and ignored Sam as he picked his way over to the others. When he spoke, Sam crept in until he heard it, too.
“Hey, I’m Dean, the pilot. I’m going to get the radio up. It’ll take a day, maybe two, and then the signal will go out and we’ll have to wait. When you’re done here,” he indicated the red smears up to Andy’s forearms and the latex gloves and Ava holding the wound open wide enough for Andy to fiddle around inside, “we’re going to have to dig ourselves out, probably. Ava, right?” he checked, and Ava blinked at him with wide, clear, brown eyes and nodded.
Dean moved like he was going to set a hand on her shoulder, but that would jar her and Max was already making short, strangled, wet noises every time Andy’s hands twitched. Dean set his hand back on his knee and rubbed it, a tell that only Sam could pick up.
“Ava, you’re not hurt, are you?”
“No.”
“Okay, that’s good to know. You good, Andy?”
Andy was so focused that he didn’t notice the sweat beading on his nose. He spared enough attention to say, “Yeah.”
At Dean’s feet, Max’s mouth opened and closed like a fish gulping too much air, and his voice was raw and breathy and small. “I’m hurt,” he gasped, and Andy’s jaw tightened and Ava flinched.
Dean said, “You’ll be resting.”
And then he said, “You guys get back to it, and tell me when you’re done. I’ll be in the cockpit, probably.”
He stood and ignored Sam again as he walked toward the front, nodding at Singer in the dark. The shadows moved like Singer was nodding back.
Dean paused under one of the emergency exits, installed in the ceiling like a school bus had, in case the plane rolled on its side.
He looked at Sam, toward the flashlight’s glow so Sam saw it reflected in his eyes, and tilted his head. Think it’s worth a try? he asked, with the weird brother telepathy that came from having the same conversation a hundred times.
Sam shrugged. If it isn’t rusted shut.
So Dean grabbed one of the uprooted chairs, heaved it under the square covering, and wrenched at the latch that held it in place. He had to shove it a few times, but the covering popped out of place and rained sand down on him.
“Gah, my eyes,” Dean grouched, and wobbled when he brought his hands up to rub them.
Sam set a hand on Dean’s elbow to help him down, and he was already climbing up himself when Dean ordered, “Get it open.”
Sam ducked his head and pushed, and the sand cascaded down the neck of his shirt as the cabin filled with too-white sunlight. The covering slid easily onto the sand up there, and Sam gave an experimental jump, grabbed at the edge.
Yeah, he could haul himself up if he had to. But that was maybe just because Sam was so tall; Dean might not manage it, and they had to work on Dean looking In Control to everyone else.
Sam hopped off the chair and said, “I’ll give you a boost.”
Dean’s boot pulled painfully on the skin of his clasped fingers, but it was only for a second; then he clambered up, heavy footfalls echoing from the metal in the empty tube of the cabin.
There wasn’t any noise from up there, but Sam could read his brother’s silences, too; this one said, Oh, shit, Sam, you should see this and reflect upon our screwedness with me.
Sam climbed onto the chair again, and saw Ellen and Singer looking at him, washed out and pale in the thin, blinding sunlight. He shrugged and said, “Be right back.”
Then he was scrabbling for a handhold in shifting sand, and Dean’s hand seized his wrist and hauled straight up, and he was standing on top of a hill that was not so high as the dunes around them, so that the entire horizon in every direction was filled with the ponderous swell of heavy, orange waves, layered on top of each other, bleached out of depth perception by the sun.
There was nothing. Not even mountains in the distance. Sam knew the Syrian desert’s topography, that was part of his job as copilot, but there was no way to know where they were if he didn’t have even one point of reference.
Under their feet, the Impala wasn’t completely buried; just mounds of sand piled against the side and front and back. Compared to the rest of their little valley’s floor, it wasn’t a lot to deal with.
Dean was staring at his boots, or the battered and dented metal roof of his baby. He said, “Sammy.”
That was an I-don’t-know-what-to-do tone, and. Sam just couldn’t let him pull that.
Sam leaned his shoulder into Dean’s, and spoke quietly into his ear so that no one could hear even if they were listening for it.
“It’s a good plan. Let them have something to do, take their minds off this. We’ll dig ourselves out and then we’ll have to take a measure of what supplies we have left, how much of the cargo did or didn’t fall out of the back.”
Dean pursed his lips thoughtfully, making a sour face at the squeal and grind of sand as he redistributed his weight. He lifted his head and squinted up at the sun, fierce and hard, and then he said, “Water’s top of the list. Half-rations, I guess, for the time being. Got to make it stretch far as long as it can. Wonder if the cargo brought any MREs.”
Sam smiled, felt his skin stretch too tight and unfamiliar. “MREs and manual labor. Just like home.”
“Never thought I’d miss Dad’s crazy Survival Weekends,” Dean agreed, chuckling.
They laughed for a minute, half-silent and furtive, guilty for humor when it was so palpably inappropriate.
Dean coughed to break himself off before it turned hysterical. “We got any shovels down there?”
Sam scratched his head. His hair was already thick and oily, two days in the heat without a shower. It would only get worse from here. “Probably. I’ll poke around.”
They stayed motionless for two minutes more, shoulders touching, hands in pockets, staring out at nothing, nothing, nothing out there but dry and death.
Then, Dean turned around to look in a new direction and said, “C’mon. Inside.”
And, yes, now Dean was getting it. If he was going to take charge of everyone, he needed to order Sam around, too, and expect Sam to obey. And Sam, for his part, had to obey, or else.
Well.
Or else he’d sabotage the plan he himself thought up. And then they’d all have no chance at all.
So Sam lowered himself down as smoothly as he could, careful not to wrench his shoulders. He couldn’t afford to be injured. His toes brushed the upturned chair and he dropped his weight, then he pushed the chair out of the way and called, “Ready!”
Dean had apparently been considering his options here, and he kept his elbows close to his body and dropped nearly easily, controlling it so that Sam could catch his weight for the couple of seconds it took for Dean to situate himself and land on the deck.
Sam glanced around, and, uh.
“Hi,” a guy said casually, and he had a mullet. He was sitting in the first row of seats, chewing on a protein bar, wrapper shiny in his hand.
Dean said, “Who are you?” and then, “Stop eating that!” He swiped the bar away and folded the wrapper around the remains, tossed it down on a clear seat.
The guy with the mullet - either Ash or Scott, Sam’s mind supplied, and oh, good, he probably wasn’t bleeding in the brain - held up his hands, lax and vague. “Dude. Chill.”
And, oh. He sounded stoned. How was that even possible?
Dean repeated, “Who are you,” no question in it, just demand.
“Ash. Hi. You?” Ash was skinny and proportioned oddly, elbows too prominent and belly carrying too much pudge.
Dean was tense, arms hanging away from his body like he was ready for a fight, weight shifting belligerently and looking for a good balance to start a fight. “Dean Winchester.”
Jo could stand without assistance, now. Her voice was hoarse as she said, “He’s the pilot,” from behind Ash. Ellen and Singer were there, too, flanking their CO just in case.
Sam looked past their cluster, to the flashlight-lit surgery still going on. Andy was sewing Max up, and Max had mercifully passed out, and Ava’s hand shook the light she held.
Ash’s eyebrows shot up, and he made a show of glancing around the ruined cabin. Then, he raised both hands and put some unnecessary force into two-thumbs-up. “Hey, man, good job.”
Dean didn’t say anything. Sam thought maybe he was seriously weighing the consequences of punching Ash in the mouth.
Sam set his hand at the small of his brother’s back, a small thing but hopefully enough to ground Dean in the In Control charade they were trying to put on.
Dean took a deep, silent breath - Sam felt his back very deliberately loosen up - and said, “Do not take rations again until we have a better sense of how far they’ll have to stretch.” And then his tone lighten up and he looked up at Jo. “Lieutenant Harvelle?”
“Yeah?” her eyes were clear and focused, and she couldn’t be more than a year out of West Point. She stood straight, shoulders back, blond hair fallen down around her shoulders, dirty and creased from the tight braid she’d worn when they’d loaded up.
Dean grinned. “Can I call you Jo?”
Ellen scowled at him, but Jo smiled back. “Sure.”
“How are you feeling, Jo?”
She winced and touched the back of her head. “Better, in a queasy hangover way.”
“Listen,” and, oh God, Dean cocked his head in that way that meant; even though he had a girl in every port, this time would be special and amazing. “You know the supplies you packed up, right? Could you take a look around and see what we still have and what we lost?”
Sam held his breath, because this was Jo’s chance to assert herself and pull the leadership role out from under Dean. If she did as she was told, she always would; if she didn’t, this could get complicated.
But Jo was Sam’s age and Dean was an older, handsome man, looking at her like that and asking a favor. She nodded, stopped, held her head, and just said, “Yeah, I can.”
“Okay, then,” Dean nodded, and then didn’t look at Sam as he added, “See what you can do about shovels, Sam.”
So, yeah. Sam got to work.
In the end, he found two shovels in a military-issue field kit - “For digging shitholes,” Singer explained, right before he told Sam to call him Bobby.
So, he grabbed two large pieces of metal and ignored the twisted, ripped edges and told Ellen and Bobby to push the sand out from the inside, and made sure Ava and Andy understood the concept because they would have to help once they got Max hooked up in the right places.
He would have explained it to Ash, too, if the fucker hadn’t disappeared somewhere in the half-light of the cabin. He would have been furious enough to let Dean kill the bastard, except Ash reappeared just in time to join in the digging with white-faced Andy and tired Ava.
He and Dean climbed back up through the emergency exit and got to work with the shovels, moving half a ton of sand one shovelful at a time in the blazing sun.
They didn’t talk at all. Now was not the time for complaining about the heat just for the sake of complaining.
When all the sand was cleared away, they set up one of the army-issue tents up over the open end of the Impala, heavy green canvas keeping out the gritty, parched wind when they went inside. It also trapped whatever heat made it in, which meant that the metal-oven effect became even worse during the day.
They all drank half a gallon of water each and ate cold MREs, because the chemical heating packets required water as a catalyst and no one needed their food hot badly enough to make that sacrifice.
And then it was nighttime, and as soon as the sun was gone it was cold as fuck in comparison. Everyone threw their bedding together in one cleared-out corner of the cabin and opened up the tent’s canvas door to let the wind and cold in to air out the too-stifling-for-words heat inside.
Dean couldn’t pile in with everyone else for warmth, though, because leaders were distant and not one of the guys. So, without discussing it with Dean, Sam pulled out the tattered sleeping bags they kept up front just in case they had to sleep in the Impala because there weren’t any free rooms or something, and he made up a different bed for the two of them in the cockpit. There was even nearly enough room for both of them.
But they crawled into it and curled up together, like they used to when Dad and his copilot Caleb had to pull an all-night flight and there wasn’t anyone to watch the boys so they came along and mostly slept.
And Sam kept his voice as low as he could, murmured their plans right into Dean’s ear - you can’t do anything with Jo, okay, don’t lead her on like that, and nine people, half a gallon, four and a half gallons a day, we have enough for fifteen days and maybe a week more if we push it, and good idea, letting Jo rest and take inventory instead of working today, and we can’t let people know I’m giving you advice like this.
And Dean whispered back, tired, they were both tired, and they smelled like work and sweat and desert dust, gamey and wild. Dean said, just stay with me on this, Sammy, and I need you to trust me, and go to sleep.
So.
That was the first day.
---
Sam woke up with his nose buried in Dean’s neck, and it smelled like gross and B.O. and more gross and man, and it was already too hot to touch, so he wasn’t even allowed the illusion that it was all a dream.
Sam pushed out of the bed, which they’d already mostly kicked into a scattered pile of blankets. He was a little embarrassed about clinging like that in his sleep, because he wasn’t a six-year-old being bullied in school anymore.
“Dean,” he croaked. He was already thirsty, but he swallowed it down - Dad taught him better than that.
Dean curled his arm up where Sam used to be, squeezed his eyes shut, and rubbed his hands over his face. “Dude, Sammy, fucking fuck fuck.” When he opened his eyes, the dirty light from the windshield picked up the gold flecks in the green, and his freckles stood out more than Sam could ever remember.
Sam wanted to cut through the preliminary stuff. “So. Hi, Dean. We crashed the Impala.”
“Yeah,” Dean groaned, dropped his head back down, “and we discovered that you’re secretly a criminal mastermind.”
“Let’s see if I can mastermind us up some delicious egg breakfasts.”
“If you’re referring to the yellow jello goo MRE, Sammy, as actual food, I’ll give you a Charlie horse.” Dean tapped his fist, middle knuckle pushed out further than the rest, against the tendon tying Sam’s thigh muscle to his knee.
Sam chuckled, and then when he was quiet he heard movement from the cabin and huffed out a sigh. “Come on. Your kingdom awaits.” He staggered to his feet, shoulders tight and achey from yesterday’s work.
Dean grunted and stuck his hand out for Sam to help him stand.
---
Max was still alive.
He didn’t rise with the sun, but he wasn’t feverish or overheating any more than everyone else was in the cooking body of the plane. The skin held together by the tough thread was pink and raw and a little swollen, and Andy pulled Dean aside and spoke through his teeth and made a worn, worried face and shook his head.
When Dean came back, he told Sam immediately anyway, but it was good that Andy recognized power. “He doesn’t know. If the kid’ll.”
Sam nodded, and asked, “D’you want to ask a couple of people to take the shovels and dig a more permanent toilet at the edge of the farthest dune?”
Dean contemplated the bleached-white sky and his lips twisted. “Yes,” he said carefully. “Yes, that is what I want you to organize. Make it so, Number One.” He said it with the full Patrick Stewart accent, even.
Sam snickered and knocked his shoulder into Dean’s. He gave a salute that would have made Dad wince, and drawled, “At least Troi’s hot, man.”
Dean smiled and let it drop dead and stared at the reflective metal of the Impala, with very-obviously-not-on-purpose wrinkles and crunches in the outer panels. “I’ll get on that radio.”
---
When Andy relieved him for a turn with the shovel, Sam found himself gravitating back to the shade of the tent and the low, soft mound of sand and stiff canvas that made up Max’s sickbed.
Ava was there already, hair tied back and eyes warm chocolate and lips cracked and gouged, blowing air across the peppered sweat on Max’s forehead. Her hand tightened in his, and she curled her upper body around to see Sam.
“Hi, Sam The Copilot,” she hummed, low in case she woke up the patient.
“Hello, Private Wilson,” Sam said, with the stern severity that was just a touch too overacted. He knew it came across as joking, because he recognized it as how he flirted.
He also recognized that he should probably really, really not do that.
She smiled at him, sweet and simple, and couldn’t she feel the heat and the silent slide of sand that was already rising up the sides of the plane like a singularly dehydrated tide, how could anyone smile after everything, the closest Sam had come was with Dean and that didn’t count because he could always smile around Dean.
Sam was tired. But he mustered the bare minimum of a smile and crouched down next to her. “How is he?”
“He’s. Well, he doesn’t have most of your plane stuck in him anymore, but.” She wiped the back of her hand through the sticky damp of her forehead, and on over the nape of her neck. “He hasn’t woken up since.”
“He will,” Sam said, even though, well.
She nodded, and touched her stomach through her dirty, sweat-stained undershirt. “I told you to call me Ava,” she said thoughtfully.
“Ava,” Sam echoed dutifully.
“I mean, I hope I can be on a first-name basis with a guy that saved my life.”
He frowned at her hand, wrapped tight around Max’s. “I didn’t.”
“I figure, not many people survive a plane crash, right?”
And Sam couldn’t say things like so do you think we’ll survive this one? to her, so instead he asked, “Are you and Max, um.”
She blinked, stared, and giggled. “Oh, God, no. He asked me a couple of times, but, y’know,” she held up her hand, and in the gloom of the tent the diamond did its job and collected enough light to shine. It was on the right ring finger.
“Engaged?”
“He asked me right before I shipped out for this tour.”
Sam had the feeling that his brain might be melting out his ears, but the sun had that effect most of the time, and he didn’t know what he could do to stop it. “Been together long?”
“Six months, before he asked me, and another three long-distance, you know how it is.”
Sam hadn’t tried to keep contact with anyone but Dean since leaving Stanford, but, uh, sure. “Yeah. So.” And now the lying part. “You looking forward to seeing him?”
Ava’s smile froze solid for a second, and her voice was strong, harder, determined. “Yep. You bet your ass, Sam.”
Sam nodded, yes, this was the attitude she needed. Had to keep morale up.
And, deep down, Sam knew that he was falling back on what he’d learned so that he wouldn’t think about what he felt, but. They all had different ways of coping.
He went to the cockpit, where Dean was flat on his back and buried up to his elbows in wires again.
“How’s the radio?” Sam asked, and put his back to the wall and slid down and let their legs tangle together in the middle of the floor.
“It’s not.” He tugged and arranged the bundles of wires with thinly-veiled frustration. “Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Nearly time for dinner,” Sam observed, which was smaller than breakfast; half their ration of water and half an MRE, sharing it between two people. Breakfast was a whole MRE. Oh, the life of luxury was hard.
“How goes the mind control part?”
“Like herding cats sometimes,” Sam admitted. “Ellen and Bobby don’t want to listen to me, which makes Jo start to clue in on the part where she’s still technically their CO. But they all listened to you, so I’m not worried about it. I just can’t keep relaying your orders like I had to today.”
Dean grunted, which might have been agreement or might have been an expression of his hatred for radios.
Sam bit his chapped bottom lip, and stewed in his own sweaty grossness for a minute, and said, “Ash concerns me.”
“Is he making trouble?” Dean pulled himself out from under the console and stood up and gave a full-body stretch, rubbing one shoulder with the opposite hand.
“It’s not that.” Sam frowned at his boots, the laces knotted too-tight closed to try to keep the desert out. “He just. He disappears just long enough that I can’t give him an order, and then joins in with everyone when they actually get to work. He pretty much just pisses me off.”
Dean shrugged, and knocked their knees together. “Dinner, right?”
“Really. How’s the radio coming?”
He glanced guiltily at the disemboweled console. “It’s coming. Maybe tomorrow.”
When they crawled exhausted and salty and dirty into bed that night, Dean said it again.
Maybe tomorrow, tomorrow, go to sleep, Sammy.
---
Max woke up on the third day, twisting his mouth down and insisting nothing hurt and trying to refuse the water Jo brought to his bed. Andy checked him over and said he had a slight fever, maybe, but it was hard to tell for sure in the heat.
“And, to be honest, I’m not really,” Andy started, and Dean shook his head and told him that his best was enough.
Then everyone settled in to wait out the sun and then go back to sleep, while Dean went back to the cockpit to fix the radio.
---
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