FILLED: Firm Foundation 1/1
Title: Firm Foundation
Author: jennytork
Rating: PG-13
Genre/pairing: gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, OFCs
Word count: approximately 2,175
Summary: Sam isn't getting better. But when a coven nearly kills him, Dean finds out one of the huge stumbling blocks to his recovery.
Spoilers: anything up to 7.05
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: They're not mine -- and the way I treat them, maybe that's a good thing!
Author’s notes: Written for the Sam-focused hurt/comfort fic challenge. Prompt: “Voicemail and amulet fix it fic. Gen or Wincest is okay.
Set in season seven sometime. Something Sam and Dean is hunting badly hurts Sam and tells Dean about the voicemail.
The voicemail and amulet issues are finally resolved." by klutzy_girl Sorry I didn't get to the amulet in this one!
Sam wasn't getting better.
Oh, he could say he was dealing with things until he was blue in the face. He could say he was coping and he was fine until the cows came home.
He could turn on the charm and work those puppy-dog eyes and that little-boy smile and make nearly anyone think he was just fine. He could misdirect and deflect and just generally distract until Dean would wander off-track.
Who knows, maybe Sam even believed his own bull. Maybe he honestly thought he was fine, he was coping, he was dealing with things.
But Dean wasn't blind. He could see what was really going on.
He had seen Sam sit bolt upright from a sound sleep, covered in sweat and screaming in a wild mishmash of languages.
He had seen Sam swing out blindly when shaken awake.
He had seen Sam's eyes alight with hellfire during the worst of his - mercifully - very infrequent seizures.
He had seen Sam arguing with thin air under his breath. He had seen Sam's eyes track the air, folllowing something - or someone - only he could see.
And Dean had seen Sam reopen that damned cut on his left palm at least three times. He had seen him shove his thumb inside there so hard at at least two occasions that he'd drawn blood.
So yeah - Sam could claim he was fine or he was coping or whatever all he wanted. But Dean had seen. And Dean wasn't as dumb as he pretended to be.
Dean knew.
Sam wasn't getting better.
And that terrified Dean. So, Dean coped the only way he knew how. He took care of Sam when Sam would let him, letting his words "I don't really need you anymore" be his guide.
No matter how much of a hole those words - on repeat in Dean's mind - carved into his very soul.
Dean drank too much. He knew it. He knew that Sam worried about him, and he hoped that that would be a little bit of impetus for Sam to recover. Give him something to focus on other than Hell and illusions and what wasn't real.
He didn't see how badly that was backfiring until the day that a witch nearly killed Sam.
By now, you would think that a town named "Brujan" would have tripped some alarms. But neither one of them had parsed the name and figured out that it meant "Witches". The reality slammed home into them less than 48 hours after they arrived in the small Texas town when they realised that they had blundered right into the middle of a civil war between two rival covens.
Each of the covens was under the impression that the other had called in a pair of Hunters to wipe out the coven. Neither of them would believe that no, the brothers had just genuinely stumbled into them.
One of the covens attacked at three in the morning. The motel where the brothers were staying was a collection of small cabins. At three in the morning, a sudden explosion jolted both Sam and Dean out of bed. Their room was in shambles and their stuff was in disarray.
Working as a well-oiled machine, they got the most damning of their stuff out of the room and into their car. They went around the burning cabin, making certain that everyone in the cabins around them were safe and all right.
Seeing one of the coven members standing to the side, chanting, Sam yelled, "Dean!"
Dean turned and saw her and they both headed toward her.
Suddenly, she raised her arms and an energy bolt was flung toward them. Dean flattened, but Sam was caught by the edge of it. It lifted him and slammed him full-force into the side of the burning cabin.
Dean's scream was lost in the demonic sound of roaring flames as the building came down around his little brother.
Without even stopping to consider his actions, Dean bolted for the burning cabin - only to find a second energy bolt hitting him in the side and knocking him over.
Still, he found the energy to yell "Stay back!" at the two young women who raced to his side. They soundly ignored him. One dropped to her knees in front of him.
The other planted her feet and gestured expansively. Dean gasped as the sidewalk between them and their enemy churned. Water mains erupted through. One hit the energy bolt firer with enough force to throw her off her feet and keep her down.
The other main poured all its water onto the burning building. The woman who was kneeling in front of Dean stood and took his hand, helping him to his feet. "Come on," she said. "Let's go find your brother."
With a quick nod, Dean bolted for the destroyed cabin. Who and what these women were could wait until later.
Right now, all that mattered was getting to Sam.
The three of them worked side by side. One of the women stood guard while hte other one helped Dean move debris that was still smoking. "Sam!" Dean was yelling. "Sam, can you hear me? Sammy!"
Together, they moved a large beam, and Dean felt his heart stutter within his chest. "Sam!"
Sam lay curled into a foetal position next to one of their dressers. The large beam had been deflected by the dresser, but it was clear he had taken a blow from it.
The woman touched Dean's arm. "I'm calling an ambulance."
Dean nodded absently. His entire existence had reduced to his brother.
Sam's clothes were smouldering. His skin was red and the hands over his face were slightly blistered. His hair appeared brittle and discoloured on the ends, and tremours were wracking his large frame.
"Sam!" Dean called. "Sammy, can you-" He bent as he called, touching Sam's shoulder lightly.
Sam reacted with a wordless, gutteral bellow. His body arched and he swung blindly toward Dean, screaming in that same bizarre mix of languages Dean had heard him many times scream in when first awakened.
Then he seemed to come to himself. ".......Dean?"
"Yeah, buddy. I'm here."
"....hurts...."
"Where?"
Sam just looked at him.
"Sammy?"
"....it hurts...." His eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp.
The woman was back. "Ambulance is on the way."
"Good! He woke--"
That was as far as Dean got, as one of his recurring nightmares suddenly flared into brilliant, technicolour, smoke-scented life.
Sam's lax form began to seize.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
For Dean, the next few hours would forever be a blur of noise and motion and lights and the smell of smoke. His entire world was down to Sam is in that ambulance Sam was in the burned out motel Sam is hurt Sam is burned Sam is seizing Sam Sam Sam....
The rest of the world went away for a little while. The Leviathans, the witches, all the hell of the last few months - none of that was suddenly important.
The only thing that mattered was in an ambulance heading to a hospital with Dean frantically driving a stolen car behind it, sharing it with a pair of strange women who had saved his life.
He didn't even know their names.
When they were at the hospital, came the real hard part - waiting for news. Dean was pacing, nervous, scared, and badly needing a drink.
A small hand landed gently on his arm. He turned and faced the woman who had knelt by him and who had physically helped him move the debris to find Sam. She faced him with a worry that was shown in her deep eyes. "Do you want me to see how he is?"
There was only one answer he could give. "Yes."
She closed her eyes and he frowned deeply. Then he inhaled sharply, realising what he was seeing. "You're psychic."
She opened her eyes and looked at him with a small smile.
His eyes widened as the rest slotted into place. "She controlled the water in the mains....you're psychic...." His head tilted slightly. "You're not a coven at all, are you?"
"We aren't, no."
"You're psychics....and elementals."
She smiled and held out her hand for him to shake. "Riley."
"Dean." He shook her hand. "The other group..."
"Is a coven, yes. Bess and the others went to dismantle them and run them out of town. They went too far tonight, targeting outside our feud." Her jaw set and her eyes blazed. "This ends. Tonight."
"Bess..." He looked around, realising that the second woman had vanished. "The water-controller."
"Yes," Riley nodded. "Now.... about your brother."
Dean waited, nearly vibrating with impatience, as she closed her eyes again. "Seizures have stopped. He's burned over nearly ten percent of his body. He's inhaled a good deal of smoke." Abruptly, her lips thinned. "And he's hiding in his own head because he's scared of the hallucinations and he's wondering when you're going to kill him because you said he wasn't human anymore. He's just waiting for you to kill him."
Her eyes popped open and she fixed him with an incredulous look. "Just what the hell is going on here?"
Dean couldn't believe his ears. "What? Kill him? I'm not going to kill him! I never said he wasn't human!"
Riley turned on her heel and stormed to the nurse's desk. A moment later, she returned with Sam's phone in her hand. She flipped it to Dean. "Are you sure about that?"
Dean frowned and looked at the phone in his hand. He opened it and scanned it, finding one saved message in his voicemail.
A message from three years prior. Frowning deeply, he raised the phone to his ear and listened to it.
And turned pale as milk as his eyes widened.
The tinned female voice asked him if he wished to delete the message and he did so without a second thought. Then he lurched to the public restroom and threw up.
When he emerged an eternity later, Riley was leaning against the wall waiting for him. "Better?"
"That.... That wasn't me."
"He thinks it was."
"I know."
"So what are you gonna do?"
He looked at her, then away, sighing. "I don't know."
"Well, you better figure it out, and fast."
Dean frowned at her. "......fast?"
Riley nodded. "Sam's awake."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Sam looked remarkably good, considering what he'd been through. His hands and face had bad first degree burns and they'd had to cut about two inches off of his hair, but his clothing had protected him from the worst of it.
He raised rheumy eyes to Dean. "......get her?" he asked sleepily.
"No, but the coven's been dissolved, according to Riley." Dean sat down beside Sam.
"Riley? Both of them?"
"Nah, just the one. Riley's a psychic. The other so-called 'coven' is a group of elementals and psychics. They've taken the coven down. And before you ask, Riley and her friend Bess saved your life, so yeah, I trust their word." He chuckled. "Besides, I've been keeping tabs on the police reports."
Sam chuckled slightly. "Figures." He closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
Dean threaded his fingers into his brother's hair. "Sam--- I'm not gonna kill you. You will always be my baby brother. And I'm always gonna love you, no matter what. Got me?"
Sam opened his eyes and frowned. ".......Christo."
"Stop that, I'm not possessed." He took a deep breath. "I heard the voicemail."
Dean could see the instant when it clicked in Sam's brain. ".....oh. So that's why...."
"Yeah. It's been eating at you for years and it's time it stopped. I ain't gonna kill you. I ain't gonna leave your ass. You can stop punishing yourself for something that I never said. I don't know how that message got changed, but that was not what I said."
Sam nodded slowly. "If you really didn't say that, that leaves only one reason why. I was faltering about killing Lilith."
Dean sighed. "Yeah, I think you're right. That was their typical M. O." He froze when he saw Sam's eyes start to track something. "....Sammy?"
Sam turned to face him. "You're real," he whispered, his voice full of emotion. "Because only the real Dean would..." His eyes snapped to the side and he scowled deeply before turning back to Dean. "And yes, I'm sure of it."
Despite the pain Dean knew he was feeling, Sam curled his fingers around Dean's hand. "Stone number one?" Dean asked. "You back with me?"
"Never left," Sam said, his eyes closing and speech slurring slightly as sleep finally pulled him under. "....No' this time." His lips curved slightly. "Firm....foundation...."
Dean sat there and watched him sleep, reluctant to pull his hand away and maybe cause Sam more pain.
He wasn't naive enough to think one talk fixed three years of misery. He knew they had a long way to go.
But he also knew that they were finally on their way.
END
Author: jennytork
Rating: PG-13
Genre/pairing: gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, OFCs
Word count: approximately 2,175
Summary: Sam isn't getting better. But when a coven nearly kills him, Dean finds out one of the huge stumbling blocks to his recovery.
Spoilers: anything up to 7.05
Warnings: none
Disclaimer: They're not mine -- and the way I treat them, maybe that's a good thing!
Author’s notes: Written for the Sam-focused hurt/comfort fic challenge. Prompt: “Voicemail and amulet fix it fic. Gen or Wincest is okay.
Set in season seven sometime. Something Sam and Dean is hunting badly hurts Sam and tells Dean about the voicemail.
The voicemail and amulet issues are finally resolved." by klutzy_girl Sorry I didn't get to the amulet in this one!
Sam wasn't getting better.
Oh, he could say he was dealing with things until he was blue in the face. He could say he was coping and he was fine until the cows came home.
He could turn on the charm and work those puppy-dog eyes and that little-boy smile and make nearly anyone think he was just fine. He could misdirect and deflect and just generally distract until Dean would wander off-track.
Who knows, maybe Sam even believed his own bull. Maybe he honestly thought he was fine, he was coping, he was dealing with things.
But Dean wasn't blind. He could see what was really going on.
He had seen Sam sit bolt upright from a sound sleep, covered in sweat and screaming in a wild mishmash of languages.
He had seen Sam swing out blindly when shaken awake.
He had seen Sam's eyes alight with hellfire during the worst of his - mercifully - very infrequent seizures.
He had seen Sam arguing with thin air under his breath. He had seen Sam's eyes track the air, folllowing something - or someone - only he could see.
And Dean had seen Sam reopen that damned cut on his left palm at least three times. He had seen him shove his thumb inside there so hard at at least two occasions that he'd drawn blood.
So yeah - Sam could claim he was fine or he was coping or whatever all he wanted. But Dean had seen. And Dean wasn't as dumb as he pretended to be.
Dean knew.
Sam wasn't getting better.
And that terrified Dean. So, Dean coped the only way he knew how. He took care of Sam when Sam would let him, letting his words "I don't really need you anymore" be his guide.
No matter how much of a hole those words - on repeat in Dean's mind - carved into his very soul.
Dean drank too much. He knew it. He knew that Sam worried about him, and he hoped that that would be a little bit of impetus for Sam to recover. Give him something to focus on other than Hell and illusions and what wasn't real.
He didn't see how badly that was backfiring until the day that a witch nearly killed Sam.
By now, you would think that a town named "Brujan" would have tripped some alarms. But neither one of them had parsed the name and figured out that it meant "Witches". The reality slammed home into them less than 48 hours after they arrived in the small Texas town when they realised that they had blundered right into the middle of a civil war between two rival covens.
Each of the covens was under the impression that the other had called in a pair of Hunters to wipe out the coven. Neither of them would believe that no, the brothers had just genuinely stumbled into them.
One of the covens attacked at three in the morning. The motel where the brothers were staying was a collection of small cabins. At three in the morning, a sudden explosion jolted both Sam and Dean out of bed. Their room was in shambles and their stuff was in disarray.
Working as a well-oiled machine, they got the most damning of their stuff out of the room and into their car. They went around the burning cabin, making certain that everyone in the cabins around them were safe and all right.
Seeing one of the coven members standing to the side, chanting, Sam yelled, "Dean!"
Dean turned and saw her and they both headed toward her.
Suddenly, she raised her arms and an energy bolt was flung toward them. Dean flattened, but Sam was caught by the edge of it. It lifted him and slammed him full-force into the side of the burning cabin.
Dean's scream was lost in the demonic sound of roaring flames as the building came down around his little brother.
Without even stopping to consider his actions, Dean bolted for the burning cabin - only to find a second energy bolt hitting him in the side and knocking him over.
Still, he found the energy to yell "Stay back!" at the two young women who raced to his side. They soundly ignored him. One dropped to her knees in front of him.
The other planted her feet and gestured expansively. Dean gasped as the sidewalk between them and their enemy churned. Water mains erupted through. One hit the energy bolt firer with enough force to throw her off her feet and keep her down.
The other main poured all its water onto the burning building. The woman who was kneeling in front of Dean stood and took his hand, helping him to his feet. "Come on," she said. "Let's go find your brother."
With a quick nod, Dean bolted for the destroyed cabin. Who and what these women were could wait until later.
Right now, all that mattered was getting to Sam.
The three of them worked side by side. One of the women stood guard while hte other one helped Dean move debris that was still smoking. "Sam!" Dean was yelling. "Sam, can you hear me? Sammy!"
Together, they moved a large beam, and Dean felt his heart stutter within his chest. "Sam!"
Sam lay curled into a foetal position next to one of their dressers. The large beam had been deflected by the dresser, but it was clear he had taken a blow from it.
The woman touched Dean's arm. "I'm calling an ambulance."
Dean nodded absently. His entire existence had reduced to his brother.
Sam's clothes were smouldering. His skin was red and the hands over his face were slightly blistered. His hair appeared brittle and discoloured on the ends, and tremours were wracking his large frame.
"Sam!" Dean called. "Sammy, can you-" He bent as he called, touching Sam's shoulder lightly.
Sam reacted with a wordless, gutteral bellow. His body arched and he swung blindly toward Dean, screaming in that same bizarre mix of languages Dean had heard him many times scream in when first awakened.
Then he seemed to come to himself. ".......Dean?"
"Yeah, buddy. I'm here."
"....hurts...."
"Where?"
Sam just looked at him.
"Sammy?"
"....it hurts...." His eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp.
The woman was back. "Ambulance is on the way."
"Good! He woke--"
That was as far as Dean got, as one of his recurring nightmares suddenly flared into brilliant, technicolour, smoke-scented life.
Sam's lax form began to seize.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
For Dean, the next few hours would forever be a blur of noise and motion and lights and the smell of smoke. His entire world was down to Sam is in that ambulance Sam was in the burned out motel Sam is hurt Sam is burned Sam is seizing Sam Sam Sam....
The rest of the world went away for a little while. The Leviathans, the witches, all the hell of the last few months - none of that was suddenly important.
The only thing that mattered was in an ambulance heading to a hospital with Dean frantically driving a stolen car behind it, sharing it with a pair of strange women who had saved his life.
He didn't even know their names.
When they were at the hospital, came the real hard part - waiting for news. Dean was pacing, nervous, scared, and badly needing a drink.
A small hand landed gently on his arm. He turned and faced the woman who had knelt by him and who had physically helped him move the debris to find Sam. She faced him with a worry that was shown in her deep eyes. "Do you want me to see how he is?"
There was only one answer he could give. "Yes."
She closed her eyes and he frowned deeply. Then he inhaled sharply, realising what he was seeing. "You're psychic."
She opened her eyes and looked at him with a small smile.
His eyes widened as the rest slotted into place. "She controlled the water in the mains....you're psychic...." His head tilted slightly. "You're not a coven at all, are you?"
"We aren't, no."
"You're psychics....and elementals."
She smiled and held out her hand for him to shake. "Riley."
"Dean." He shook her hand. "The other group..."
"Is a coven, yes. Bess and the others went to dismantle them and run them out of town. They went too far tonight, targeting outside our feud." Her jaw set and her eyes blazed. "This ends. Tonight."
"Bess..." He looked around, realising that the second woman had vanished. "The water-controller."
"Yes," Riley nodded. "Now.... about your brother."
Dean waited, nearly vibrating with impatience, as she closed her eyes again. "Seizures have stopped. He's burned over nearly ten percent of his body. He's inhaled a good deal of smoke." Abruptly, her lips thinned. "And he's hiding in his own head because he's scared of the hallucinations and he's wondering when you're going to kill him because you said he wasn't human anymore. He's just waiting for you to kill him."
Her eyes popped open and she fixed him with an incredulous look. "Just what the hell is going on here?"
Dean couldn't believe his ears. "What? Kill him? I'm not going to kill him! I never said he wasn't human!"
Riley turned on her heel and stormed to the nurse's desk. A moment later, she returned with Sam's phone in her hand. She flipped it to Dean. "Are you sure about that?"
Dean frowned and looked at the phone in his hand. He opened it and scanned it, finding one saved message in his voicemail.
A message from three years prior. Frowning deeply, he raised the phone to his ear and listened to it.
And turned pale as milk as his eyes widened.
The tinned female voice asked him if he wished to delete the message and he did so without a second thought. Then he lurched to the public restroom and threw up.
When he emerged an eternity later, Riley was leaning against the wall waiting for him. "Better?"
"That.... That wasn't me."
"He thinks it was."
"I know."
"So what are you gonna do?"
He looked at her, then away, sighing. "I don't know."
"Well, you better figure it out, and fast."
Dean frowned at her. "......fast?"
Riley nodded. "Sam's awake."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Sam looked remarkably good, considering what he'd been through. His hands and face had bad first degree burns and they'd had to cut about two inches off of his hair, but his clothing had protected him from the worst of it.
He raised rheumy eyes to Dean. "......get her?" he asked sleepily.
"No, but the coven's been dissolved, according to Riley." Dean sat down beside Sam.
"Riley? Both of them?"
"Nah, just the one. Riley's a psychic. The other so-called 'coven' is a group of elementals and psychics. They've taken the coven down. And before you ask, Riley and her friend Bess saved your life, so yeah, I trust their word." He chuckled. "Besides, I've been keeping tabs on the police reports."
Sam chuckled slightly. "Figures." He closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
Dean threaded his fingers into his brother's hair. "Sam--- I'm not gonna kill you. You will always be my baby brother. And I'm always gonna love you, no matter what. Got me?"
Sam opened his eyes and frowned. ".......Christo."
"Stop that, I'm not possessed." He took a deep breath. "I heard the voicemail."
Dean could see the instant when it clicked in Sam's brain. ".....oh. So that's why...."
"Yeah. It's been eating at you for years and it's time it stopped. I ain't gonna kill you. I ain't gonna leave your ass. You can stop punishing yourself for something that I never said. I don't know how that message got changed, but that was not what I said."
Sam nodded slowly. "If you really didn't say that, that leaves only one reason why. I was faltering about killing Lilith."
Dean sighed. "Yeah, I think you're right. That was their typical M. O." He froze when he saw Sam's eyes start to track something. "....Sammy?"
Sam turned to face him. "You're real," he whispered, his voice full of emotion. "Because only the real Dean would..." His eyes snapped to the side and he scowled deeply before turning back to Dean. "And yes, I'm sure of it."
Despite the pain Dean knew he was feeling, Sam curled his fingers around Dean's hand. "Stone number one?" Dean asked. "You back with me?"
"Never left," Sam said, his eyes closing and speech slurring slightly as sleep finally pulled him under. "....No' this time." His lips curved slightly. "Firm....foundation...."
Dean sat there and watched him sleep, reluctant to pull his hand away and maybe cause Sam more pain.
He wasn't naive enough to think one talk fixed three years of misery. He knew they had a long way to go.
But he also knew that they were finally on their way.
END