There's No Such Thing As Monsters (8/10)
There's No Such Thing As Monsters
Summary: Sam is definitely not schizophrenic. So why is everyone telling him that he is?
Chapter Eight
Sam woke knowing that something had changed.
The smells of the hospital were gone, replaced by stale cigarette smoke and mildew. Over-starched sheets were now worn and the mattress he was lying on was lumpy and one spring in particular was getting well acquainted with the small of his back.
It felt like home.
Sam opened his eyes. He'd never been so happy to see the water-marked ceiling of a motel room before because it could only mean one thing: Dean got him out.
Breathing out a sigh of relief, revelling in the feel of the lumpy, springy bed that somehow seemed more comfortable than the one at the hospital, Sam turned his head to the right, expecting to see Dean - his one constant when he woke up in places other than where he went to sleep - probably sitting on his bed, watching Sam in full-on big brother mode, not willing to rest until he'd heard from Sam himself that he was okay.
Instead, Sam was greeted by the sight of the motel room door, small kitchenette off to the side. He frowned. It was the same room they'd been in before he woke up in the ward, he recognised the off-putting orangey-brown wallpaper, so... Okay, so he was in Dean's bed for some reason, and Dean must be...
Sam turned his gaze to the motel room in general, skimmed past the TV, sitting lifeless on a tiny cabinet that looked as though it was about to give out under the weight of the set, and the small round table littered with takeaway coffee cups and bits of paper, laptop standing to attention amongst it all. His eyes lingered on the half-open door to the bathroom before he noticed that there was someone sleeping in the bed next to him.
Not someone. Him. Sam. He was sleeping in the bed.
Sam sat bolt upright, headache spiking as he scrambled off the bed and backed into the kitchen. It was... he was... Sam looked down at himself. It was definitely him, still dressed in hospital scrubs, but then who... what?
The motel room door creaked open behind him. Sam spun, panicked, and stumbled. Dean's hand closed over his shoulder.
“Hey, whoa,” Dean said, “You okay?”
The hand not on Sam's shoulder held a take-out bag. Sam's eyes darted from it, to Dean, to... him on the bed, and back. Why wasn't Dean freaking out about there being two of him? Or why wasn't Dean at least jumping to explain why there were two of him?
“I... what's going on? Why- What-?”
“Hey, just calm down, okay?” Dean was speaking the way he did to victims, the lucky ones that escaped the monsters. All calm and authoritative, the voice that said, hey, listen to me and you'll be all right. He tossed the take out bag onto his bed so he could bring his hand up and hold onto both of Sam's shoulders. “You remember who I am?”
Sam let out a small laugh (and if it was a tad hysterical he was totally entitled) at the ridiculous question. “Of course I know who you are. Don't mess around with me, Dean. God, just... what's going on? Why is...?” He threw a helpless gesture towards the Sam on the bed.
Dean frowned, eyes turning quizzical. “Rosalie?” he asked.
Sam let out a stunned breath, stomach dropping. “What? Why are you calling me Rosalie?”
Dean pulled back but his hands tightened on Sam's shoulders. “Sam?”
Sam tried to turn to look at the other him but Dean shook him, forcing him to keep his gaze forward.
“Sammy? That you in there? Come on, answer me!”
“...in where?” Sam asked finally, a little faint. He didn't understand. He didn't understand at all, then Dean was pulling him into a hug, which freaked him out even more, and he didn't fit right. Not the way he usually did, not that hugs were that usual between them, head tucked under Dean's chin, almost smothered by his brother, and was he smaller than he should be or was Dean bigger?
“I don't understand,” Sam said into Dean's jacket.
Dean pulled back, taking the 'you scared the shit out of me' look off of his face and ran his eyes over Sam from head to toe. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
Sam looked down at himself in consternation. “What d'you mean?”
Dean's eyebrows quirked warily. “Don't freak out, okay? I'm gonna fix this.” He steered Sam towards the bathroom.
Sam let himself be guided along. “Fix what? Dean, I was in this psych ward. They said I was schizophrenic, and you came and-”
He broke off as he got a look at himself in the mirror.
That... that wasn't him. That was...
Sam gripped the sink tightly, stitches stinging his wrists, a vague wave of vertigo washing over him as he leant closer to the girl who stared back, face etched with shock. “Rosalie.”
Dean's mirror-image nodded. “What ever's been going on in that freaky head of yours... it wasn't actually your freaky head. Your freaky head, and the rest of you, has been snoozing on that bed for the last week.”
Sam let out a shaky breath, tearing his gaze away from the mirror to look down at himself. Still looked like him, but when he looked back it was Rosalie he saw. How did that make sense? How did any of this make sense?
“God,” he said. “God, I thought she was just crazy. I mean... Jesus, she was telling me all along. She kept saying I was in her head but I thought...”
Dean frowned. “What, you talked to her like she was a separate person? You weren't just, like, a voice in her head?”
Sam turned away from Rosalie's face, leaning against the sink as he addressed Dean. “No, I was really there... I thought I was really there. I'm in her head? How does that work?”
Dean raised his eyebrows. “You want me to try to figure out the logistics of this? No way, Sammy, that's more your department, don't you think? All I know is that you wouldn't wake up - still won't wake up technically - and you said something about Rosalie Jones so I found her, and now here we are.”
Sam turned back to the mirror, mind racing. How was this even possible? And why?
“Sam” Dean's reflection was biting his lip, suddenly anxious. “Look, Sammy, I don't know how long you're gonna be running this show. I mean, last night when I busted Rosalie out, I busted Rosalie out. You remember any of that?”
Sam shook his head slowly, but, “Were you wearing purple?”
Dean's eyebrows threatened to disappear into his hairline. “Right, well, whatever. Tear yourself away from that mirror, stop staring at Rosalie's tits-”
“I'm not!” Sam exclaimed indignantly, spinning around. Dean just held up a hand and continued.
“-and come tell me everything you know, so that I'm not just working on what schizophrenia girl tells me.”
“You shouldn't call her that,” Sam frowned as he followed Dean out of the bathroom. “It's not her fault she has a mental illness. You know-”
“Can the lecture, Sam. There's some sort of time limit here.”
Despite Dean's words, Sam lingered by the bed he was currently sleeping on (and wasn't that a weird sentence?). Looking at himself through someone else's eyes was... creepy and wrong and kind of made him want to hyperventilate. He was so still, breathing evenly but without any other sign of life. He looked like he needed a long shower and a decent meal.
“I've just been... like that, since...?”
Dean stepped up beside him and looked at Sam's empty body too. Sam glanced up at him (up at him) and caught a glimpse of days worth of fear and worry, before Dean turned away, a hand on Sam's arm pulling him away too.
“Yeah,” Dean said, and Sam could hear the forced lightness in his tone, “And just so ya know, if you're still running the show next time you piss yourself, you're cleaning it up.”
Sam felt himself turn red as Dean pushed him down in one of the chairs. He stared studiously at the table and did his best to explain to Dean what he'd been doing this last week.
Dean scoffed at his other self claiming that monsters were make believe, wondering aloud why Sam would have seen a version of him that clearly hadn't been here at all, scowled at the story of the nurses tying Sam down to drug him, then went quiet at the recount of Mary's visit. But it was the failed attempt at escaping a non-existent Djinn that really got him mad.
“Jesus, Sam, what the hell were you thinking?” Dean ranted as he paced alongside the table.
The severity of his miscalculation was only just setting in. “I know... God, I could have killed Rosalie.” Sam didn't want to think about the girl sitting in her room slicing her wrists because Sam, the voice in her head, had told her that it was the only way to escape the ward. But he hadn't known. He fiddled anxiously with the bandages around his wrists. (Why was he seeing his wrists when they should be Rosalie's? God, Rosalie. He almost killed her. And maybe himself. Would it have worked like that?)
Dean's features softened at Sam's words, the righteous anger fading. He sat back down at the table.
“Not your fault, Sam,” he said shortly. “Not saying it was one of your more brilliant plans - it was probably one of your worst. Seriously, slitting your wrists? Fuck, Sammy - but I guess a Djinn was kind of the logical conclusion... and you were trying to save Rosalie, right? You couldn't have known that she was you or... whatever. Damn, this whole thing is turning my brain to mush.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed aimlessly, still staring at the bandages.
“Aw, Christ. Listen carefully, I'll speak slowly so you can follow; It wasn't. Your. Fault,” Dean enunciated exaggeratedly. “Anyway, I'm guessing that's when you woke up here and rambled something about Djinn's and warehouses, right?”
“I guess. So?”
Dean rolled his eyes. “So you were also going on about how you had to save Rosalie. Who knows how long it would've taken me to figure it out if you hadn't given me her name? So something good came of it, okay? 'Cause now we can get you out of her head... somehow, and everything will be fine.”
Sam grudgingly set his guilt aside for the moment. “What I don't get is why the hell am I in her head anyway? How am I in her head? It doesn't... it's not...” Sam trailed off, bring a hand to his head as pain roared suddenly behind his eyes.
“Sam?”
Sam shook his head slightly, blinking. “Yeah, I'm... whoa.”
The world tilted. He heard Dean say his name again, alarmed now, but he couldn't answer. Blood was rushing past his ears and the motel room shrunk as if it were folding itself up, compacting itself into his mind, then everything went black.
XXX
“Sam! Come on, Sammy, wake up.” Dean crouched over Sam's - Rosalie's - fallen form, suddenly sprawled on the motel room carpet.
It only took a moment before Sam's - Rosalie's - damn it, this was confusing - eyelids flickered, then opened and peered up at him in confusion.
“Dean?” Rosalie asked, blinking. “Where am I?”
It was Rosalie too, Dean would tell by just the slightest change in inflections, the loss of a certain glimmer in her eyes. He tried not to let his disappointment show on his face.
“Hey, don't worry, you're okay. You're at my motel, remember?”
Rosalie stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language, then sat up, looking around. “Oh God,” she muttered. “Oh God, it's real. It's real, right? I've never... I never left the ward before, like, in my head, you know? I was always at the ward.”
“Yeah, it's real all right,” Dean confirmed as he helped her to her feet, mindful of her wrists.
Immediately she let out a small shriek that had Dean reaching for his gun, but she was looking at Sam. Sam's body. Whatever.
“Oh my God,” she said, stepping closer. “It's him. It's Sam. He's real.”
Dean ran a hand over his face. When they'd arrived at the motel it had been the early hours of the morning and Rosalie had crashed out immediately. He hadn't bothered turning the lights on.
“Yeah, he's real too. And he's in your head so you've gotta... like, put him back in his body somehow, okay?”
“I don't...” Rosalie shook her head. “I don't understand.”
“Yeah, neither do I,” Dean admitted reluctantly.
Rosalie swung around to face him again. “What about the other one? Is he real too? Do you know him?”
“Know who?” Dean asked, thinking that maybe he didn't really want to know. How many people could she have crammed in there?
“The man.” Rosalie looked at him with wide eyes. “The man with the yellow eyes.”
TBC
Chapter Nine
Summary: Sam is definitely not schizophrenic. So why is everyone telling him that he is?
Chapter Eight
Sam woke knowing that something had changed.
The smells of the hospital were gone, replaced by stale cigarette smoke and mildew. Over-starched sheets were now worn and the mattress he was lying on was lumpy and one spring in particular was getting well acquainted with the small of his back.
It felt like home.
Sam opened his eyes. He'd never been so happy to see the water-marked ceiling of a motel room before because it could only mean one thing: Dean got him out.
Breathing out a sigh of relief, revelling in the feel of the lumpy, springy bed that somehow seemed more comfortable than the one at the hospital, Sam turned his head to the right, expecting to see Dean - his one constant when he woke up in places other than where he went to sleep - probably sitting on his bed, watching Sam in full-on big brother mode, not willing to rest until he'd heard from Sam himself that he was okay.
Instead, Sam was greeted by the sight of the motel room door, small kitchenette off to the side. He frowned. It was the same room they'd been in before he woke up in the ward, he recognised the off-putting orangey-brown wallpaper, so... Okay, so he was in Dean's bed for some reason, and Dean must be...
Sam turned his gaze to the motel room in general, skimmed past the TV, sitting lifeless on a tiny cabinet that looked as though it was about to give out under the weight of the set, and the small round table littered with takeaway coffee cups and bits of paper, laptop standing to attention amongst it all. His eyes lingered on the half-open door to the bathroom before he noticed that there was someone sleeping in the bed next to him.
Not someone. Him. Sam. He was sleeping in the bed.
Sam sat bolt upright, headache spiking as he scrambled off the bed and backed into the kitchen. It was... he was... Sam looked down at himself. It was definitely him, still dressed in hospital scrubs, but then who... what?
The motel room door creaked open behind him. Sam spun, panicked, and stumbled. Dean's hand closed over his shoulder.
“Hey, whoa,” Dean said, “You okay?”
The hand not on Sam's shoulder held a take-out bag. Sam's eyes darted from it, to Dean, to... him on the bed, and back. Why wasn't Dean freaking out about there being two of him? Or why wasn't Dean at least jumping to explain why there were two of him?
“I... what's going on? Why- What-?”
“Hey, just calm down, okay?” Dean was speaking the way he did to victims, the lucky ones that escaped the monsters. All calm and authoritative, the voice that said, hey, listen to me and you'll be all right. He tossed the take out bag onto his bed so he could bring his hand up and hold onto both of Sam's shoulders. “You remember who I am?”
Sam let out a small laugh (and if it was a tad hysterical he was totally entitled) at the ridiculous question. “Of course I know who you are. Don't mess around with me, Dean. God, just... what's going on? Why is...?” He threw a helpless gesture towards the Sam on the bed.
Dean frowned, eyes turning quizzical. “Rosalie?” he asked.
Sam let out a stunned breath, stomach dropping. “What? Why are you calling me Rosalie?”
Dean pulled back but his hands tightened on Sam's shoulders. “Sam?”
Sam tried to turn to look at the other him but Dean shook him, forcing him to keep his gaze forward.
“Sammy? That you in there? Come on, answer me!”
“...in where?” Sam asked finally, a little faint. He didn't understand. He didn't understand at all, then Dean was pulling him into a hug, which freaked him out even more, and he didn't fit right. Not the way he usually did, not that hugs were that usual between them, head tucked under Dean's chin, almost smothered by his brother, and was he smaller than he should be or was Dean bigger?
“I don't understand,” Sam said into Dean's jacket.
Dean pulled back, taking the 'you scared the shit out of me' look off of his face and ran his eyes over Sam from head to toe. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
Sam looked down at himself in consternation. “What d'you mean?”
Dean's eyebrows quirked warily. “Don't freak out, okay? I'm gonna fix this.” He steered Sam towards the bathroom.
Sam let himself be guided along. “Fix what? Dean, I was in this psych ward. They said I was schizophrenic, and you came and-”
He broke off as he got a look at himself in the mirror.
That... that wasn't him. That was...
Sam gripped the sink tightly, stitches stinging his wrists, a vague wave of vertigo washing over him as he leant closer to the girl who stared back, face etched with shock. “Rosalie.”
Dean's mirror-image nodded. “What ever's been going on in that freaky head of yours... it wasn't actually your freaky head. Your freaky head, and the rest of you, has been snoozing on that bed for the last week.”
Sam let out a shaky breath, tearing his gaze away from the mirror to look down at himself. Still looked like him, but when he looked back it was Rosalie he saw. How did that make sense? How did any of this make sense?
“God,” he said. “God, I thought she was just crazy. I mean... Jesus, she was telling me all along. She kept saying I was in her head but I thought...”
Dean frowned. “What, you talked to her like she was a separate person? You weren't just, like, a voice in her head?”
Sam turned away from Rosalie's face, leaning against the sink as he addressed Dean. “No, I was really there... I thought I was really there. I'm in her head? How does that work?”
Dean raised his eyebrows. “You want me to try to figure out the logistics of this? No way, Sammy, that's more your department, don't you think? All I know is that you wouldn't wake up - still won't wake up technically - and you said something about Rosalie Jones so I found her, and now here we are.”
Sam turned back to the mirror, mind racing. How was this even possible? And why?
“Sam” Dean's reflection was biting his lip, suddenly anxious. “Look, Sammy, I don't know how long you're gonna be running this show. I mean, last night when I busted Rosalie out, I busted Rosalie out. You remember any of that?”
Sam shook his head slowly, but, “Were you wearing purple?”
Dean's eyebrows threatened to disappear into his hairline. “Right, well, whatever. Tear yourself away from that mirror, stop staring at Rosalie's tits-”
“I'm not!” Sam exclaimed indignantly, spinning around. Dean just held up a hand and continued.
“-and come tell me everything you know, so that I'm not just working on what schizophrenia girl tells me.”
“You shouldn't call her that,” Sam frowned as he followed Dean out of the bathroom. “It's not her fault she has a mental illness. You know-”
“Can the lecture, Sam. There's some sort of time limit here.”
Despite Dean's words, Sam lingered by the bed he was currently sleeping on (and wasn't that a weird sentence?). Looking at himself through someone else's eyes was... creepy and wrong and kind of made him want to hyperventilate. He was so still, breathing evenly but without any other sign of life. He looked like he needed a long shower and a decent meal.
“I've just been... like that, since...?”
Dean stepped up beside him and looked at Sam's empty body too. Sam glanced up at him (up at him) and caught a glimpse of days worth of fear and worry, before Dean turned away, a hand on Sam's arm pulling him away too.
“Yeah,” Dean said, and Sam could hear the forced lightness in his tone, “And just so ya know, if you're still running the show next time you piss yourself, you're cleaning it up.”
Sam felt himself turn red as Dean pushed him down in one of the chairs. He stared studiously at the table and did his best to explain to Dean what he'd been doing this last week.
Dean scoffed at his other self claiming that monsters were make believe, wondering aloud why Sam would have seen a version of him that clearly hadn't been here at all, scowled at the story of the nurses tying Sam down to drug him, then went quiet at the recount of Mary's visit. But it was the failed attempt at escaping a non-existent Djinn that really got him mad.
“Jesus, Sam, what the hell were you thinking?” Dean ranted as he paced alongside the table.
The severity of his miscalculation was only just setting in. “I know... God, I could have killed Rosalie.” Sam didn't want to think about the girl sitting in her room slicing her wrists because Sam, the voice in her head, had told her that it was the only way to escape the ward. But he hadn't known. He fiddled anxiously with the bandages around his wrists. (Why was he seeing his wrists when they should be Rosalie's? God, Rosalie. He almost killed her. And maybe himself. Would it have worked like that?)
Dean's features softened at Sam's words, the righteous anger fading. He sat back down at the table.
“Not your fault, Sam,” he said shortly. “Not saying it was one of your more brilliant plans - it was probably one of your worst. Seriously, slitting your wrists? Fuck, Sammy - but I guess a Djinn was kind of the logical conclusion... and you were trying to save Rosalie, right? You couldn't have known that she was you or... whatever. Damn, this whole thing is turning my brain to mush.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed aimlessly, still staring at the bandages.
“Aw, Christ. Listen carefully, I'll speak slowly so you can follow; It wasn't. Your. Fault,” Dean enunciated exaggeratedly. “Anyway, I'm guessing that's when you woke up here and rambled something about Djinn's and warehouses, right?”
“I guess. So?”
Dean rolled his eyes. “So you were also going on about how you had to save Rosalie. Who knows how long it would've taken me to figure it out if you hadn't given me her name? So something good came of it, okay? 'Cause now we can get you out of her head... somehow, and everything will be fine.”
Sam grudgingly set his guilt aside for the moment. “What I don't get is why the hell am I in her head anyway? How am I in her head? It doesn't... it's not...” Sam trailed off, bring a hand to his head as pain roared suddenly behind his eyes.
“Sam?”
Sam shook his head slightly, blinking. “Yeah, I'm... whoa.”
The world tilted. He heard Dean say his name again, alarmed now, but he couldn't answer. Blood was rushing past his ears and the motel room shrunk as if it were folding itself up, compacting itself into his mind, then everything went black.
XXX
“Sam! Come on, Sammy, wake up.” Dean crouched over Sam's - Rosalie's - fallen form, suddenly sprawled on the motel room carpet.
It only took a moment before Sam's - Rosalie's - damn it, this was confusing - eyelids flickered, then opened and peered up at him in confusion.
“Dean?” Rosalie asked, blinking. “Where am I?”
It was Rosalie too, Dean would tell by just the slightest change in inflections, the loss of a certain glimmer in her eyes. He tried not to let his disappointment show on his face.
“Hey, don't worry, you're okay. You're at my motel, remember?”
Rosalie stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language, then sat up, looking around. “Oh God,” she muttered. “Oh God, it's real. It's real, right? I've never... I never left the ward before, like, in my head, you know? I was always at the ward.”
“Yeah, it's real all right,” Dean confirmed as he helped her to her feet, mindful of her wrists.
Immediately she let out a small shriek that had Dean reaching for his gun, but she was looking at Sam. Sam's body. Whatever.
“Oh my God,” she said, stepping closer. “It's him. It's Sam. He's real.”
Dean ran a hand over his face. When they'd arrived at the motel it had been the early hours of the morning and Rosalie had crashed out immediately. He hadn't bothered turning the lights on.
“Yeah, he's real too. And he's in your head so you've gotta... like, put him back in his body somehow, okay?”
“I don't...” Rosalie shook her head. “I don't understand.”
“Yeah, neither do I,” Dean admitted reluctantly.
Rosalie swung around to face him again. “What about the other one? Is he real too? Do you know him?”
“Know who?” Dean asked, thinking that maybe he didn't really want to know. How many people could she have crammed in there?
“The man.” Rosalie looked at him with wide eyes. “The man with the yellow eyes.”
TBC
Chapter Nine