Frayed Ends Of Sanity, 1/?
Oh god it's early...and no more WB :( aww
Title: Frayed Ends Of Sanity
Author: mellaithwen
Chapters: 1/?
Rating: R (Gen)
Warnings: Spoilers for Devil's Trap. Only spec for season 2, no spoilers.
Summary: Post Devil's Trap. Everything has an aftermath...
Seriously, this would'a looked completely different without
pixel_0's awesome beta work and support!
Part One
Sound floats in and out, like the jagged frequency of a broken radio, and just like that damned radio, with its ominous ironic country music filtering back and forth between sound and wavelengths, there’s static. Static in his ears, static on the radio, static in the air, because demons aren’t supposed to walk among us, and their imprints leave marks, stains, wounds.
They leave static in their wake. Golden wisps of electricity that are anything but the angelic likelihood they seem to possess. Rips in the atmosphere, tears, scars, jagged knife wounds when no blade need be present. Windows that should not be opened. Windows that lead way to something else, something no man dare ever think about for fear his head might explode.
Not from the sheer magnitude of the information, and variables they are forced to take in, but rather, from fear; blood rushing to their hearts so quickly that the thump, thump, thump stops altogether.
There are three thump, thump, thumps in this battered metallic frame that once was a beautiful American classic. Some thumps are a little slower than others, some faster, some...just there, hanging on.
The s-s-st-static rises, screeches until it deafens, and the birds can cry no longer because their insides are turned to jelly. The bugs slither backwards into the grass, sliding far, far, far away into the earth, until earth is all they know, and light is gone, gone, gone.
*-*-*
Demons are manipulative bastards. Most-well, I say most, I really mean, occasional-creatures of the not-so-conformist-life-style where flesh and bone are concerned, tend to abide by a simple rule that if they don’t see you, you don’t see them.
But then, comes the cocky swagger, the tilt of a gun, the expert reload, and they’ve noticed you. They’ve noticed that you’ve noticed them too, and as far as pleasing demons go, this isn’t the way to get into their good-books. Searching for a mythical gun, that isn’t so make believe after all doesn’t do much either.
Sometimes they’ll have their fun, kill, maim, destroy, and they’ll grin in glee at the destruction caused. Then a power above, or rather, far below them, in the deepest, darkest confines of Hell itself, will knock them down. Remind them who’s really in charge, and berate them for their reckless moves, because the Winchesters were never supposed to be left hanging on. Collateral damage on a whole other level.
But it’s not completely unfixable; the ambulance sirens can already be heard in the distance over the din of the radio, and crackling floor beneath the demon’s feet. He clicks his fingers, and the demon behind the crash dissolves into nothingness, leaving him left to explain to his boss why it is the precious, younger Winchester, stupid protégé-psychic-child, currently losing a lot of blood from a huge gash spanning the length of the side of his face.
He looks left, looks right, and disappears from sight.
There’s a truck driver. He isn’t married, but he has his girl back home, and boy, is she pretty. He’d gone nearly three years of walking into that same bar, always treating her with the respect she deserved, and keeping his comments to himself, never letting his eyes stray if ever the moment was wrong. He had no idea she appreciated that until one night she made the first move.
He doesn’t have a dog; he’s a trucker, so there isn’t much point, and he doesn’t wait for a miracle. He’s pretty sure he’ll return home, and his girl will have her man. But still, it’s more than most guys have. Except for the ones who put rings on their girls’ fingers and have settled down, bought a dog, and had some kids.
His head snaps back, and his mouth is filled with black smoke, ash, fire, and when he falls over, the first thing he sees is a tyre, burst, rubber skewed, and he swallows, looking up. He sees the black sleek body, and as he gets on his knees, he takes deep gulps of air, trying to remember what the hell happened.
But then he’s running for his radio, and he’s screaming down the other end, because there’s so much blood in the midnight-black car, and not enough he fears, in the unconscious men lying so still in their seats.
*-*-*
The car is crushed, the metal bent and broken, scratched and discarded into nothingness because this, this right here, is everything: broken toys and broken dolls inside of a broken car. This is life, and according to Dean Winchester-as he wakes up with a cry of agony, sees his family, bloody, around him-life sucks.
The static still buzzes, but he keeps his eyes closed, firmly, tries not to let his breathing hitch because it’s so cold, and he hurts so much. He bites his tongue to stop from screaming out his brother’s name, be it for his own comforting purpose or Sam’s.
Dean can’t hear his brother and father. They’re not fighting anymore, they’re not talking, or whispering, or...anything, but the static is only now ebbing away, and he has to wait just a few more moments before he can open his eyes, that’s all.
“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”
Can he?
“...Sam,” he whispers, croaks, rasps, but it isn’t Dean’s brother holding the side of his face, it isn’t Sam’s hands checking so gently, so carefully, if he’s bleeding from anywhere else.
It’s not his brother’s fingers checking the not-so-steady thrum of his pulse, but Dean opens his eyes anyway. And the first thing he sees, eyes trained forward, is the EMT of course, and just past her reassuring smileand rounded shoulder, he sees his brother wheeled away on a stretcher.
“Sam.”
She follows his glazed gaze, swallows, and tells him about concussion, asks about the relation, ID, but Dean doesn’t answer. Just stares.
Dean opened his eyes, why can’t Sam?
Then his stomach does a flip flop, and nausea creeps up his throat so quickly that he lurches, and hisses, leaving the EMT to tell him suddenly to stop it, to calm down, you’re gonna hurt yourself.
Dean can’t see his father anywhere.
*-*-*
When he’s painfully manoeuvred onto a stretcher, everything seems like a blur because all he can see is above, the sky, the ceiling, and sometimes a face, but that’s all, and when they get to the hospital-stark white walls, men and women in scrubs and coats-he tilts his head to the side, and there’s Sam.
Sam with his eyes closed, Sam getting taken farther and farther away. Sam and his hands so still by his sides. Sam with a puddle of blood beneath his head.
“Sammy.”
He doesn’t know his father’s on the other side going through the same hell. He doesn’t know why seeing that door close and hide his brother, makes him so worked up, or why his eyes burn, and his chest tightens, but when he looks to the ceiling, he half expects the flames.
And that’s enough to make his walls crumble, and let the darkness in.
*-*-*
Dean’s stopped breathing.
John’s barely conscious, but he knows Dean’s not breathing. He can see, while he’s wheeled through the never ending corridors of white linoleum, and he mutters constantly, “My sons, my boys.” But no one listens; they’re too busy trying to tend to all three Winchesters, all three Smiths, one unconscious with head trauma, one conscious but unaware of his surroundings, and the other...The worst of all three, having lost too much blood and been left for too long, odds stacking against him, and now, he’s not breathing.
He was awake, last of adrenaline and worry for others keeping unconsciousness at bay, but then he opens his mouth to breathe and is met with nothing. His back arches off of the gurney, but it’s not enough, and he’s already weak. With a clatter he falls back, head lolled, and no air refills his lungs. His body is shutting down.
John’s boys are next door, nothing but a set of double doors separating them, and when the doctors weave back and forth, John hears the barking orders for an intubations kit, and his heart skips a beat.
His son isn’t breathing, and he can’t see Sam.
*-*-*
Mr. Toms says you should do this, Mr. Toms says you should do that. That’s all John’s heard all morning as he gets the boys ready for school. Sam bright and bouncing at far too early an hour and Dean grumpy at his brother’s happiness before eight a.m.
“Who’s Mr. Toms?” John asks, when Sam runs into the kitchen for breakfast.
“New guy stepping in until Sam’s teacher gets back from maternity leave,” Dean explains with a yawn.
“What’s he like?” John asks, wary of new people around his boys, and Dean quirks an eyebrow.
“Like every other teacher out there?”
John frowns, and Dean calls to his little brother.
“Hey, Sammy! Tell Dad what’s wrong with the Winchester bullying policy.”
“What policy?” John asks, not fully aware there was indeed a policy
“If they hit you, hit back harder,” Dean says, reminding his father. Sam shakes his head vigorously, long locks falling around him.
“Mr. Toms says that’s bad and that bullies are like bees!”
John waits for an explanation.
“If you ignore them, they go away,” Sam finishes with a smile, and John pretends to be moderately impressed while Dean rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, and sometimes they sting you for the hell of it,” he mocks, as he ruffles Sam’s hair and pushes him back toward the kitchen.
*-*-*
Head-wounds bleed heavily, and most-if not everyone-knows that, and sometimes, it can be nothing. It will look gruesome because there’s glass somehow imbedded at the top of the skull, and removing it brings forth more rivulets of crimson, and all the cotton balls in the world can’t stop that post-apocalyptic look of blood pouring down the face.
Losing that much blood is dangerous, very dangerous, not to mention the fact that the head holds one of the most fragile organs in the human body. Thick skull or not, that deep a gash and a possible concussion can’t bode well together.
They schedule CAT-scans for the younger man, and he takes his sweet time to wake up too. The return of REM sleep was the first indication, and how cruel, the doctors thought, that his waking up after that much trauma would be the result of a nightmare.
But it beats not waking up at all.
*-*-*
They’re asleep when John comes, whistling.
John Winchester does not whistle. In over twenty years, Sam has never heard his father whistle, so he shoots awake in bed in time to find himself flung against the wall, hit with something much stronger than just déjà vu. He looks over at Dean, and sees him lying in the same position on the bed, asleep.
The demon is back for revenge.
But he isn’t the only one.
“Not this time, fucker,” Dean snarls, as the demon in John stands above, ready to strike. No, not this time, Dean thinks as he grabs the dagger beneath his pillow and embeds it into his father’s chest, reaching up from his sitting position, not letting go until he can feel the warm blood on his hands.
“No?” the demon laughs, a hollow, mirthless chuckle that gurgles horribly.
John’s hands grab the hilt, turn, and with a sickening squelch pull it out, leaving a ghastly trail of crimson shredded flesh in its wake. He brandishes it in front of him, teasing the oldest Winchester son, still on the bed.
“No,” Sam says from the other side of the room, freed from invisible bonds by his brother’s attack on the demon. He pulls the trigger with expert precision, spreading powder across his hand. The bullet hits the demon square in the head, and he falls forward onto Dean, with the dagger still held out in his hand.
The boys may have hit their target, but now, so has the demon.
Dean gasps as he feebly pushes his father’s corpse to the floor and tries in vain to staunch the bleeding while Sam runs over.
“Why...?” Dean begins, but never manages to finish his sentence, and Sam cries out because he’s done it again, and he’s all alone.
*-*-*
Sam screams for the whole ten minutes before the option of calming him down through words and pleas is abandoned, and he’s forced to be sedated.
He’ll wake up late the next day, gladder than ever to know it wasn’t real. They’ll ask him if he has night-terrors regularly, and he’ll feign ignorance, and after some careful cajoling it’ll be written off as mild PTSD from the crash. Sam shrugs it off as if it’s nothing more than a bad dream.
But he can’t tell if it was a vision or not.
And that’s what scares him.
*-*-*
When Sam sees Dean, he tells himself he’s wrong. He sees the ashen pale form on the bed and panics. He’s reminded of faith healers and the rain clouds of Nebraska because that’s what happened the last time Sam saw his older brother look so frail. The rest of his body is hidden behind blue and white sheets. Clean and sanatised.
The first time he saw his father, John told him all about the scare. He was told about the blue lips and steady chest, no rise, no fall and he felt his heart constrict at the news before letting out a whoosh of relief when John reassures him that they brought Dean back from the brink.
He’s breathing, son, he’s alive.
Sam doesn’t feel that sweet relief now though. No matter how much he tells himself that things could have been so much worse. He stands there, staring, while his ears ring until all he can hear is the demon’s voice in his ear.
He won’t last the night.
*-*-*
John was lucky. His injuries, common of those in car-crashes (not including a certain bullet wound), were treated expertly, and he’ll live to see another day. Hell, he’ll only be on crutches for a few weeks. Things could have been much worse.
And if he hears it one more time he’ll throttle whatever doctor, nurse or visitor tells him so.
He was already pissed at Bobby after all, so he thinks fighting with him is justified.
And when Bobby makes the slightest implication that maybe, just maybe, this could have been avoided; John throws the Bible from the bedside table at him and screams, “Get out!”
Bobby shakes his head, as though he knew this was going to happen, and complies with John’s not-so-polite request. But then in the doorway, he pauses, turns, and knows exactly why John’s in such a foul mood.
“You’re going after it, aren’t you?”
John says nothingand sits like a petulant child, sulking after having been found out.
“What about the boys?” Bobby asks, and John lets his hollow stare find his former ally.
“What about them?”
Bobby growls. He knows it’s a façadeand knows damn well John Winchester would never mean something like that, but it hangs in the air still. Cold, impersonal words and Bobby just can’t help himself.
“You don’t deserve their loyalty, John.”
“Don’t you dare-”
The sirens scream next door, and both hunters feel their stomach drop. Sam's worried calls can be heard over the din outside in the hall, and while Bobby runs to Dean’s room to see what’s going on, John's left trying to limp through the agony in his thigh.
TBC
Title: Frayed Ends Of Sanity
Author: mellaithwen
Chapters: 1/?
Rating: R (Gen)
Warnings: Spoilers for Devil's Trap. Only spec for season 2, no spoilers.
Summary: Post Devil's Trap. Everything has an aftermath...
Seriously, this would'a looked completely different without
pixel_0's awesome beta work and support!
Part One
Sound floats in and out, like the jagged frequency of a broken radio, and just like that damned radio, with its ominous ironic country music filtering back and forth between sound and wavelengths, there’s static. Static in his ears, static on the radio, static in the air, because demons aren’t supposed to walk among us, and their imprints leave marks, stains, wounds.
They leave static in their wake. Golden wisps of electricity that are anything but the angelic likelihood they seem to possess. Rips in the atmosphere, tears, scars, jagged knife wounds when no blade need be present. Windows that should not be opened. Windows that lead way to something else, something no man dare ever think about for fear his head might explode.
Not from the sheer magnitude of the information, and variables they are forced to take in, but rather, from fear; blood rushing to their hearts so quickly that the thump, thump, thump stops altogether.
There are three thump, thump, thumps in this battered metallic frame that once was a beautiful American classic. Some thumps are a little slower than others, some faster, some...just there, hanging on.
The s-s-st-static rises, screeches until it deafens, and the birds can cry no longer because their insides are turned to jelly. The bugs slither backwards into the grass, sliding far, far, far away into the earth, until earth is all they know, and light is gone, gone, gone.
*-*-*
Demons are manipulative bastards. Most-well, I say most, I really mean, occasional-creatures of the not-so-conformist-life-style where flesh and bone are concerned, tend to abide by a simple rule that if they don’t see you, you don’t see them.
But then, comes the cocky swagger, the tilt of a gun, the expert reload, and they’ve noticed you. They’ve noticed that you’ve noticed them too, and as far as pleasing demons go, this isn’t the way to get into their good-books. Searching for a mythical gun, that isn’t so make believe after all doesn’t do much either.
Sometimes they’ll have their fun, kill, maim, destroy, and they’ll grin in glee at the destruction caused. Then a power above, or rather, far below them, in the deepest, darkest confines of Hell itself, will knock them down. Remind them who’s really in charge, and berate them for their reckless moves, because the Winchesters were never supposed to be left hanging on. Collateral damage on a whole other level.
But it’s not completely unfixable; the ambulance sirens can already be heard in the distance over the din of the radio, and crackling floor beneath the demon’s feet. He clicks his fingers, and the demon behind the crash dissolves into nothingness, leaving him left to explain to his boss why it is the precious, younger Winchester, stupid protégé-psychic-child, currently losing a lot of blood from a huge gash spanning the length of the side of his face.
He looks left, looks right, and disappears from sight.
There’s a truck driver. He isn’t married, but he has his girl back home, and boy, is she pretty. He’d gone nearly three years of walking into that same bar, always treating her with the respect she deserved, and keeping his comments to himself, never letting his eyes stray if ever the moment was wrong. He had no idea she appreciated that until one night she made the first move.
He doesn’t have a dog; he’s a trucker, so there isn’t much point, and he doesn’t wait for a miracle. He’s pretty sure he’ll return home, and his girl will have her man. But still, it’s more than most guys have. Except for the ones who put rings on their girls’ fingers and have settled down, bought a dog, and had some kids.
His head snaps back, and his mouth is filled with black smoke, ash, fire, and when he falls over, the first thing he sees is a tyre, burst, rubber skewed, and he swallows, looking up. He sees the black sleek body, and as he gets on his knees, he takes deep gulps of air, trying to remember what the hell happened.
But then he’s running for his radio, and he’s screaming down the other end, because there’s so much blood in the midnight-black car, and not enough he fears, in the unconscious men lying so still in their seats.
*-*-*
The car is crushed, the metal bent and broken, scratched and discarded into nothingness because this, this right here, is everything: broken toys and broken dolls inside of a broken car. This is life, and according to Dean Winchester-as he wakes up with a cry of agony, sees his family, bloody, around him-life sucks.
The static still buzzes, but he keeps his eyes closed, firmly, tries not to let his breathing hitch because it’s so cold, and he hurts so much. He bites his tongue to stop from screaming out his brother’s name, be it for his own comforting purpose or Sam’s.
Dean can’t hear his brother and father. They’re not fighting anymore, they’re not talking, or whispering, or...anything, but the static is only now ebbing away, and he has to wait just a few more moments before he can open his eyes, that’s all.
“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?”
Can he?
“...Sam,” he whispers, croaks, rasps, but it isn’t Dean’s brother holding the side of his face, it isn’t Sam’s hands checking so gently, so carefully, if he’s bleeding from anywhere else.
It’s not his brother’s fingers checking the not-so-steady thrum of his pulse, but Dean opens his eyes anyway. And the first thing he sees, eyes trained forward, is the EMT of course, and just past her reassuring smileand rounded shoulder, he sees his brother wheeled away on a stretcher.
“Sam.”
She follows his glazed gaze, swallows, and tells him about concussion, asks about the relation, ID, but Dean doesn’t answer. Just stares.
Dean opened his eyes, why can’t Sam?
Then his stomach does a flip flop, and nausea creeps up his throat so quickly that he lurches, and hisses, leaving the EMT to tell him suddenly to stop it, to calm down, you’re gonna hurt yourself.
Dean can’t see his father anywhere.
*-*-*
When he’s painfully manoeuvred onto a stretcher, everything seems like a blur because all he can see is above, the sky, the ceiling, and sometimes a face, but that’s all, and when they get to the hospital-stark white walls, men and women in scrubs and coats-he tilts his head to the side, and there’s Sam.
Sam with his eyes closed, Sam getting taken farther and farther away. Sam and his hands so still by his sides. Sam with a puddle of blood beneath his head.
“Sammy.”
He doesn’t know his father’s on the other side going through the same hell. He doesn’t know why seeing that door close and hide his brother, makes him so worked up, or why his eyes burn, and his chest tightens, but when he looks to the ceiling, he half expects the flames.
And that’s enough to make his walls crumble, and let the darkness in.
*-*-*
Dean’s stopped breathing.
John’s barely conscious, but he knows Dean’s not breathing. He can see, while he’s wheeled through the never ending corridors of white linoleum, and he mutters constantly, “My sons, my boys.” But no one listens; they’re too busy trying to tend to all three Winchesters, all three Smiths, one unconscious with head trauma, one conscious but unaware of his surroundings, and the other...The worst of all three, having lost too much blood and been left for too long, odds stacking against him, and now, he’s not breathing.
He was awake, last of adrenaline and worry for others keeping unconsciousness at bay, but then he opens his mouth to breathe and is met with nothing. His back arches off of the gurney, but it’s not enough, and he’s already weak. With a clatter he falls back, head lolled, and no air refills his lungs. His body is shutting down.
John’s boys are next door, nothing but a set of double doors separating them, and when the doctors weave back and forth, John hears the barking orders for an intubations kit, and his heart skips a beat.
His son isn’t breathing, and he can’t see Sam.
*-*-*
Mr. Toms says you should do this, Mr. Toms says you should do that. That’s all John’s heard all morning as he gets the boys ready for school. Sam bright and bouncing at far too early an hour and Dean grumpy at his brother’s happiness before eight a.m.
“Who’s Mr. Toms?” John asks, when Sam runs into the kitchen for breakfast.
“New guy stepping in until Sam’s teacher gets back from maternity leave,” Dean explains with a yawn.
“What’s he like?” John asks, wary of new people around his boys, and Dean quirks an eyebrow.
“Like every other teacher out there?”
John frowns, and Dean calls to his little brother.
“Hey, Sammy! Tell Dad what’s wrong with the Winchester bullying policy.”
“What policy?” John asks, not fully aware there was indeed a policy
“If they hit you, hit back harder,” Dean says, reminding his father. Sam shakes his head vigorously, long locks falling around him.
“Mr. Toms says that’s bad and that bullies are like bees!”
John waits for an explanation.
“If you ignore them, they go away,” Sam finishes with a smile, and John pretends to be moderately impressed while Dean rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, and sometimes they sting you for the hell of it,” he mocks, as he ruffles Sam’s hair and pushes him back toward the kitchen.
*-*-*
Head-wounds bleed heavily, and most-if not everyone-knows that, and sometimes, it can be nothing. It will look gruesome because there’s glass somehow imbedded at the top of the skull, and removing it brings forth more rivulets of crimson, and all the cotton balls in the world can’t stop that post-apocalyptic look of blood pouring down the face.
Losing that much blood is dangerous, very dangerous, not to mention the fact that the head holds one of the most fragile organs in the human body. Thick skull or not, that deep a gash and a possible concussion can’t bode well together.
They schedule CAT-scans for the younger man, and he takes his sweet time to wake up too. The return of REM sleep was the first indication, and how cruel, the doctors thought, that his waking up after that much trauma would be the result of a nightmare.
But it beats not waking up at all.
*-*-*
They’re asleep when John comes, whistling.
John Winchester does not whistle. In over twenty years, Sam has never heard his father whistle, so he shoots awake in bed in time to find himself flung against the wall, hit with something much stronger than just déjà vu. He looks over at Dean, and sees him lying in the same position on the bed, asleep.
The demon is back for revenge.
But he isn’t the only one.
“Not this time, fucker,” Dean snarls, as the demon in John stands above, ready to strike. No, not this time, Dean thinks as he grabs the dagger beneath his pillow and embeds it into his father’s chest, reaching up from his sitting position, not letting go until he can feel the warm blood on his hands.
“No?” the demon laughs, a hollow, mirthless chuckle that gurgles horribly.
John’s hands grab the hilt, turn, and with a sickening squelch pull it out, leaving a ghastly trail of crimson shredded flesh in its wake. He brandishes it in front of him, teasing the oldest Winchester son, still on the bed.
“No,” Sam says from the other side of the room, freed from invisible bonds by his brother’s attack on the demon. He pulls the trigger with expert precision, spreading powder across his hand. The bullet hits the demon square in the head, and he falls forward onto Dean, with the dagger still held out in his hand.
The boys may have hit their target, but now, so has the demon.
Dean gasps as he feebly pushes his father’s corpse to the floor and tries in vain to staunch the bleeding while Sam runs over.
“Why...?” Dean begins, but never manages to finish his sentence, and Sam cries out because he’s done it again, and he’s all alone.
*-*-*
Sam screams for the whole ten minutes before the option of calming him down through words and pleas is abandoned, and he’s forced to be sedated.
He’ll wake up late the next day, gladder than ever to know it wasn’t real. They’ll ask him if he has night-terrors regularly, and he’ll feign ignorance, and after some careful cajoling it’ll be written off as mild PTSD from the crash. Sam shrugs it off as if it’s nothing more than a bad dream.
But he can’t tell if it was a vision or not.
And that’s what scares him.
*-*-*
When Sam sees Dean, he tells himself he’s wrong. He sees the ashen pale form on the bed and panics. He’s reminded of faith healers and the rain clouds of Nebraska because that’s what happened the last time Sam saw his older brother look so frail. The rest of his body is hidden behind blue and white sheets. Clean and sanatised.
The first time he saw his father, John told him all about the scare. He was told about the blue lips and steady chest, no rise, no fall and he felt his heart constrict at the news before letting out a whoosh of relief when John reassures him that they brought Dean back from the brink.
He’s breathing, son, he’s alive.
Sam doesn’t feel that sweet relief now though. No matter how much he tells himself that things could have been so much worse. He stands there, staring, while his ears ring until all he can hear is the demon’s voice in his ear.
He won’t last the night.
*-*-*
John was lucky. His injuries, common of those in car-crashes (not including a certain bullet wound), were treated expertly, and he’ll live to see another day. Hell, he’ll only be on crutches for a few weeks. Things could have been much worse.
And if he hears it one more time he’ll throttle whatever doctor, nurse or visitor tells him so.
He was already pissed at Bobby after all, so he thinks fighting with him is justified.
And when Bobby makes the slightest implication that maybe, just maybe, this could have been avoided; John throws the Bible from the bedside table at him and screams, “Get out!”
Bobby shakes his head, as though he knew this was going to happen, and complies with John’s not-so-polite request. But then in the doorway, he pauses, turns, and knows exactly why John’s in such a foul mood.
“You’re going after it, aren’t you?”
John says nothingand sits like a petulant child, sulking after having been found out.
“What about the boys?” Bobby asks, and John lets his hollow stare find his former ally.
“What about them?”
Bobby growls. He knows it’s a façadeand knows damn well John Winchester would never mean something like that, but it hangs in the air still. Cold, impersonal words and Bobby just can’t help himself.
“You don’t deserve their loyalty, John.”
“Don’t you dare-”
The sirens scream next door, and both hunters feel their stomach drop. Sam's worried calls can be heard over the din outside in the hall, and while Bobby runs to Dean’s room to see what’s going on, John's left trying to limp through the agony in his thigh.
TBC