SPN Fic: Awesome
Title: Awesome
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean, Sam, Bobby
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of torture
Spoilers: Up to episode 7.03
Words: 3466
Summary: Sam's unconscious and locked in his head with Lucifer. Dean is too far away and can't exactly walk. Metallica happens.
Note: Written for this prompt by rainylemons at ratherastory's 7.03 meme.
Damn, but they got Sammy good this time. Kid was out for the count and would probably remain so for quite a while.
And this wasn’t good at all. Dean wasn’t stupid. He knew the difference between their usual medium concussion that had one of them poke the other awake all through the night and resulted in a lot of bitching, and this. This was a little more serious than what even a Winchester was comfortable with.
It wasn’t, however, as serious as a hospital full of man-eating monsters with a personal grudge.
Fortunately, Bobby knew that Sam’s injury was serious. Fortunately, Bobby also had stolen them an ambulance, which ranged pretty high on the list of awesome things to happen lately - if only because Dean was pretty high himself and found awesomeness in everything that was moving on wheels. Wheels equalled awesome, but in this case they also equalled equipment and drugs. An ambulance wasn’t a bad place to be in case of injury.
Maybe they should move around in an ambulance all the time from now on. Paramedics got everywhere, right? And if they got thrown down a flight of stairs by a poltergeist or half eaten by a wendigo they would only have to drag themselves into the ambulance and the ambulance could magic-heal them.
Dean was pretty impressed with his idea.
Except, that would mean they would have to ditch the Impala, and that wouldn’t be awesome in the least. The Impala was more important than a magical health-insurance.
The Impala was also at Bobby’s. And Bobby was very decidedly not driving to Bobby’s. (Well, strictly speaking, Bobby’s was gone and now Bobby was in the ambulance which might make the ambulance the new Bobby’s, but that didn’t count because the Impala wasn’t here.)
“Dude,” Dean said. “We need to get my car.”
Bobby snorted and didn’t dignify that with an answer.
He kept driving in the wrong direction until they reached Windom, Minnesota, and Dean had issues with that because a little brother he didn’t know he had once was eaten by ghouls here and that couldn’t be a good omen for the little brother with the head trauma and the broken mind they had in the back. Bobby insisted, though, because apparently he knew someone around here and had a hiding place and stuff.
Cool.
He took them to a cabin just out of town, helped Dean inside because Dean had dropped his crutches outside the ambulance when they took off and walking was more of a problem than he remembered it being. Then Bobby went to get Sam and Dean fell on his face trying to follow him back outside because he had to check on his brother.
Fortunately, his brother had wheels and Bobby wheeled him right to Dean. Wheels were awesome.
Then Bobby helped Dean back on the couch and told him not to move his ass because he had to leave now and couldn’t pick him up again, so if Dean wanted to kiss the carpet again, so be it, but he’d have to make out with it until Bobby got back.
Then Bobby left because he knew a doctor in this town and even drugged up Dean knew that Sammy needed one. Head traumas were bad, after all. People died of head traumas.
Dean didn’t find that awesome at all.
The fact that Sammy had survived worse wasn’t a consolation, because for one, sometimes Sammy hadn’t actually survived it, and besides, everyone’s luck had to run out at some point, right? And speaking of “luck” in regard to anything that ever happened to them was pushing it. A lot.
So Dean approved of Bobby getting a doctor. But Bobby didn’t seem to get back, and okay, having him return in five minutes might be asking for too much, but after ten minutes Dean started to get nervous.
Because he was alone with his brother and maybe Bobby hadn’t noticed, but Dean couldn’t exactly move around right now and Sam might need someone to help him.
Now, even drugged as he was Dean knew that he wasn’t exactly qualified to help anyone with a fractured skill or a bleeding brain or whatever it was Sammy was suffering from. But somehow, the thought of sitting by uselessly while Sam suffered was even worse than that of pacing the room uselessly while Sam suffered.
In addition, the drugs were slowly wearing out. Dean could tell because the pain in his leg not only got worse, it also demanded a lot more of his attention.
For lack of anything better to do, Dean just sat and watched his brother’s chest rise and fall, just to make sure he was still breathing. It was the only way to tell, with him being so still.
Maybe there was an upside to this after all. Maybe unconsciousness meant no dreams and Sam was just out so deeply because his body demanded the rest it had been denied for so long. Dean was not an idiot, and he had twenty-eight years (minus four minus one) of experience in dealing with Sam. Kid might tell him he was fine all the liked, it was obvious he had had nightmares on top of the flashbacks and the hallucinations.
Nightmares after Hell were normal. Nothing to worry about. Two out of two returnees had them.
Didn’t mean things wouldn’t be a thousand times better without them. Especially if the brain had roughly two hundred years of torture to work through.
And that was Dean being optimistic and assuming time in the cage didn’t move any faster than in the rest of Hell.
His drugs were definitely wearing off. Whit the drugs working overtime, everything had been a lot better, and now Dean thought about it, his leg really fucking hurt.
Perhaps he should break Sammy’s leg as well. The he’d always be in pain and know that he was topside and not down there anymore. Would have the added benefit of Sam being unable to run off and maybe shoot himself in the head thinking it might drive the Devil out.
…and that right there was the proof that Dean was still drugged after all, because those were not the thoughts of someone entirely right in the head.
Still, Dean would prefer a broken leg for Sam over this head injury because then Sam would bitch and whine and not just lie there, making Dean worry all the time he’d stop breathing any minute and there would be nothing his brother could do.
Bobby was still gone. The two hours that surely must have passed since Dean last checked his watch turned out to be seven minutes.
Sam twitched.
Dean sat up straighter.
Sam whimpered. And tried to move, only to he hindered by the restraints securing him to the gurney. He whimpered again and the noise sounded so desperate and hopeless that Dean nearly cried.
Still drugged, okay. Drugs made him emo. Regardless, Sam was suffering over there and that was not okay.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean called. “It’s okay.” Which he’d just decided it wasn’t, but Sam didn’t have to know that. If he could hear Dean, maybe he’d believe him and calm down.
“No,” Sam said. It sounded cracked and painful, but he was right, of course. Had seen right through Dean’s lie.
He didn’t fight against the bonds anymore, though, and Dean should have been happy about that. The straps might hold, but the gurney was a flimsy thing and if Sam really put his mind to it he’d throw it over in a minute. So it was great that he was accepting his situation without protest, really, and Dean’s heart had absolutely no reason to turn into a shrivelled little ball of pain that flopped down into his stomach at the sight.
Then Sam said, “Don’t,” followed by another “don’t” and “no no no no no please” and he still wasn’t trying to escape whatever was coming for him, and Dean decided that this was it. Sam was having a nightmare and as an awesome big brother it was his job to wake him from it.
Except he was on the couch and Sam was at least four metres away from him. Four metres were four metres too far for someone with only one leg and no help.
Bobby really should have thought about this when he positioned them.
So, baby steps. First Dean would have to get upright, and then he could think about getting over there. All it took was patience. But that was a little hard to come by when his brother was whimpering and pleading for mercy basically in reaching distance.
If he got the right momentum, Dean could probably throw himself over there. He’d collide with Sammy and wake him. It wouldn’t be graceful, but effective.
Except he would probably throw over the gurney and that couldn’t be good because of the head injury. Dean would end up on the floor unable to get up and when Bobby returned he would either bury or laugh at them.
Or he would bury them and laugh at their graves.
Sam twitched. Then he started seizing, and Dean maybe kind of lost it. The instinct to get to his brother overrode common sense in a millisecond and when the millisecond was over Dean found himself on the floor again, his leg a well of pain and Sam out of sight above him and frighteningly never making a sound.
Now would have been a really awesome moment for Bobby and his doctor friend to come in. Even if they‘d laugh. But the door remained closed and Dean remained on the floor.
The pain would have to shut up for a moment. The good thing about big brother instincts was that they also overrode things like agony and weakness. Dean only registered the pain as background noise as he awkwardly rolled around and pulled himself up on the side of the couch.
Somehow he made it to his one good foot and over to the wall, so he could use it for balance as he hobbled on. Once close to the gurney Dean held on to it and pulled himself over. By that time, Sam had stopped seizing and started whimpering again. His cheeks, when Dean patted them, were damp with tears.
He didn’t flinch away from the touch, but he whimpered again and that was almost worse.
“Hey Sammy,” Dean said loudly. “Time to wake up!”
There was no effect but for another twitch. For one terrible second Dean was convinced Sam would have another seizure right away, but he only muttered “No,” and “Please, not-”
Dean never found out what it was he didn’t want Lucifer (or Michael) to do.
“Hey, little brother,” he tried again, his voice a lot softer now. “You’re okay. You’re out. They can’t hurt you any more, so please, just open those eyes and revel in the glory of this shitty cabin.”
But Sam clearly didn’t appreciate beauty because his eyes remained stubbornly shut.
At least he was silent again. Dean dared to breathe a sigh of relief; he might not have been able to wake Sam, but at least he seemed to have shaken him from his nightmare.
Or so he believed until Sam shuddered and arched and screamed, “No, no, no, Dad, please don’t!”
Dean froze. He had not expected that.
Hell, but he should have. He’d suspected from the start that Lucifer (or Michael) took his shape every now and then for further torment, had seen it confirmed when Sam hallucinated Lucifer looking like Dean. But somehow, it had never occurred to him that they would use Dad, which was just stupid, because no one had ever been able to make Sammy feel vulnerable like John Winchester.
Dean’s hands clenched into fists. This was sick. He wanted nothing more than to get his hands on those bastards and tear them apart!
He’d make it last. He’d show them what he had learned, why he had been Alastair’s favourite pupil.
It normally scared Dean when he started thinking like this. But in this case he was not the one who needed to snap out of something.
“Sam!” he yelled. “You need to wake up, now!”
He reached for Sam’s shoulders again but the moment he touched him, Sam arched and started to scream in terror and agony. The kind of screams Dean had only ever heard from souls on the rack.
He swallowed bile and shook his brother harder, but there was no point. Sam wasn’t just asleep, he had been knocked out, had bumped his brain, and nothing Dean could do would wake him. Bobby had been right not to care that Dean couldn’t reach Sam from the couch because he was completely useless anyway.
“…locked inside his own mind for the rest of his life…” Castiel’s voice echoed through Dean’s mind - the grim prediction of what might happen to Sam if they gave him back his soul.
And then you went and did this to him. Dean pressed his lips into a thin line as a wave of bitterness and rage washed over him, mingling with the grief for his friend until he felt like throwing up.
Sam kept screaming and whatever Dean did to wake him only seemed to make it worse. The blow to his head had locked him in a tiny space with Lucifer and Hell and no way of getting out.
Dean gave up on shaking his brother in order to run his hand over his face and maybe pretend it was only the drugs that made them come away damp. Before he could actually do that, though, he froze, too shaken when the moment he let go of Sam’s shoulders his brother stopped screaming.
It was fucking disturbing. What the Hell did Sam’s mind make of his touch?
Maybe he should have gone with Bobby instead. Sammy would clearly have been better off alone.
Dean eventually got around to his original plan and wiped the tears from his eyes, though he didn’t bother with the pretending. What was the point?
What was the point of anything?
He hadn’t been able to save Sammy from Hell even after getting him out. When every little fucking thing translated as torture in Sam’s mind, all Dean could possibly accomplish was make it worse. His touches were burning or gutting, his words, if they even reached his brother at all, twisted into something else.
Worst of all was that Dean wasn’t sure if it would get any better once (if) Sam woke up. What if this was it? He’d known, as much as he liked to pretend otherwise even to himself, that Sam’s fragile hold against the horrors in his mind wasn’t going to last forever. That Sam wasn’t going to last forever.
Maybe not even for very long.
Eventually, he would get lost in his memories and hallucinations and not come back. At that point, Death would be the only possible (but not guaranteed) cure and a part of Dean almost hoped Sammy would still be able to off himself in an unobserved moment because even now he wasn’t sure if he could do that for him. (It would be the last thing he ever did.)
What if Sam never opened his eyes again? How long would Dean wait and hope before accepting defeat and saving his brother the only way he still could?
Like a child wanting his dad, Dean wished Bobby would come back and make some unconcerned remark that told him he was being overdramatic and this wasn’t actually that bad. His hands clutched the blanket Sam was covered in so tightly his knuckles showed white under his skin but he didn’t touch Sam anymore and Sam was finally almost still, almost quiet for being left alone. After a minute or two Dean realised that he was humming Metallica, as if he was in an airplane and a stupid song could keep it from falling out of the sky. He stopped, feeling stilly on top of horrible.
Sam whimpered. He hadn’t whimpered before.
Huh, Dean thought.
***
There was an old armchair in Rufus’ old cabin. Sam was sitting in it, his head leaned back and his eyes looking at something far away. He didn’t react at all to Bobby entering the room, but Bobby couldn’t tell if that was because he had drifted off or because his splitting headache was so bad every movement was too much of an effort.
There was a book in the boy’s lap, opened at the first page. Sam had sat down to read when Bobby left for his supply run an hour ago. He winced in sympathy; the headache had to be pretty horrible today.
On the other hand, it served the damn fool right. Bobby had painkillers in his collection that made morphine seem ineffective in comparison but Sam refused to take them. Well, let him be in pain if he was so into that.
Dean was on the couch, snoring softly. He’d fallen asleep watching tv again and Bobby could tell that he had noticed his brother’s headache level from the fact that the volume was barely audible. Hardly a surprise it couldn’t hold his attention, then.
Sometimes, Bobby wondered if Sam was aware of the sacrifices Dean made for him. Watching his soaps nearly on mute went against everything the kid believed in.
Sam blinked slowly and finally focused his eyes on Bobby, though it remained the only part of him that moved. Eventually, the corner of his mouth twitched into the hint of a greeting smile and Bobby released a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. He’d been worried, for a moment, that Sam might have checked out again, and even with the kid looking at him there was no way of telling what he was seeing.
As much as Bobby hated to admit it, he didn’t know how to snap Sam out of that. Dean could, but Dean was also in pain and exhausted and the old hunter would rather not have to disturb him.
But he’d wake Dean from his well-deserved sleep before he would start singing to Sam like a goddamn nanny. That was his brother’s job. And Bobby would never forget the moment he came into the cabin in Windom with his old friend from the medical profession in tow to find Dean standing unsteadily beside Sam’s gurney and softly singing “Nothing Else Matters” to him. He’d returned Bobby’s expression of confused irritation with half-hearted glares but didn’t stop singing until the doctor had finished with his brother.
Sam had been out of it, completely still and quiet, and Bobby hadn’t really seen the point. Dean later claimed that his singing was able to chase away Sam’s hallucinations, but to Bobby that was just him trying to justify being a giant girl.
Aside from a couple of absence-seizures and the occasional horrible nightmare Sam had been surprisingly fine since he woke up from his crowbar-induced sleep. In fact, he had seemed more worried about his brother, who had to spend the long ride to Rufus’ cabin in Whitefish, Montana on the backseat of the Impala where he could stretch out his broken leg - and seriously, the only reason why Bobby had risked going back for this damn conspicuous car was that Dean would have bitched without mercy if they’d left it behind. That and the fact that they had to ditch the ambulance anyway, handy as it was, because it was even more conspicuous.
Actually they ditched little more than the shell of the ambulance, with all the drugs and equipment they could fit stuffed in the trunk of the Impala, on top of an arsenal of weapons and the boys’ duffels. Sam had insisted on keeping Dean doped up on pain medication. Dean had insisted that Sam had no right to insist on anything. It had been a very long ride.
And the first morning after arriving at their new temporary home, Bobby had woken to find Sam curled up in Dean’s lap and Dean singing “Eye of the Tiger” to him. It was then that he accepted that John Winchester had left him two daughters to take care of.
If their tight budget allowed for things like that, Bobby would buy Dean a skirt just to see the look on his face (or if he would, in fact, wear it). Since it didn’t and the groceries their money was better spent on were defrosting in Bobby’s arms, he mouthed a soundless greeting in Sam’s direction and moved towards the kitchen.
On the way he stopped to turn off the tv, so his girls could sleep.
October 18, 2011
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean, Sam, Bobby
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: mentions of torture
Spoilers: Up to episode 7.03
Words: 3466
Summary: Sam's unconscious and locked in his head with Lucifer. Dean is too far away and can't exactly walk. Metallica happens.
Note: Written for this prompt by rainylemons at ratherastory's 7.03 meme.
Damn, but they got Sammy good this time. Kid was out for the count and would probably remain so for quite a while.
And this wasn’t good at all. Dean wasn’t stupid. He knew the difference between their usual medium concussion that had one of them poke the other awake all through the night and resulted in a lot of bitching, and this. This was a little more serious than what even a Winchester was comfortable with.
It wasn’t, however, as serious as a hospital full of man-eating monsters with a personal grudge.
Fortunately, Bobby knew that Sam’s injury was serious. Fortunately, Bobby also had stolen them an ambulance, which ranged pretty high on the list of awesome things to happen lately - if only because Dean was pretty high himself and found awesomeness in everything that was moving on wheels. Wheels equalled awesome, but in this case they also equalled equipment and drugs. An ambulance wasn’t a bad place to be in case of injury.
Maybe they should move around in an ambulance all the time from now on. Paramedics got everywhere, right? And if they got thrown down a flight of stairs by a poltergeist or half eaten by a wendigo they would only have to drag themselves into the ambulance and the ambulance could magic-heal them.
Dean was pretty impressed with his idea.
Except, that would mean they would have to ditch the Impala, and that wouldn’t be awesome in the least. The Impala was more important than a magical health-insurance.
The Impala was also at Bobby’s. And Bobby was very decidedly not driving to Bobby’s. (Well, strictly speaking, Bobby’s was gone and now Bobby was in the ambulance which might make the ambulance the new Bobby’s, but that didn’t count because the Impala wasn’t here.)
“Dude,” Dean said. “We need to get my car.”
Bobby snorted and didn’t dignify that with an answer.
He kept driving in the wrong direction until they reached Windom, Minnesota, and Dean had issues with that because a little brother he didn’t know he had once was eaten by ghouls here and that couldn’t be a good omen for the little brother with the head trauma and the broken mind they had in the back. Bobby insisted, though, because apparently he knew someone around here and had a hiding place and stuff.
Cool.
He took them to a cabin just out of town, helped Dean inside because Dean had dropped his crutches outside the ambulance when they took off and walking was more of a problem than he remembered it being. Then Bobby went to get Sam and Dean fell on his face trying to follow him back outside because he had to check on his brother.
Fortunately, his brother had wheels and Bobby wheeled him right to Dean. Wheels were awesome.
Then Bobby helped Dean back on the couch and told him not to move his ass because he had to leave now and couldn’t pick him up again, so if Dean wanted to kiss the carpet again, so be it, but he’d have to make out with it until Bobby got back.
Then Bobby left because he knew a doctor in this town and even drugged up Dean knew that Sammy needed one. Head traumas were bad, after all. People died of head traumas.
Dean didn’t find that awesome at all.
The fact that Sammy had survived worse wasn’t a consolation, because for one, sometimes Sammy hadn’t actually survived it, and besides, everyone’s luck had to run out at some point, right? And speaking of “luck” in regard to anything that ever happened to them was pushing it. A lot.
So Dean approved of Bobby getting a doctor. But Bobby didn’t seem to get back, and okay, having him return in five minutes might be asking for too much, but after ten minutes Dean started to get nervous.
Because he was alone with his brother and maybe Bobby hadn’t noticed, but Dean couldn’t exactly move around right now and Sam might need someone to help him.
Now, even drugged as he was Dean knew that he wasn’t exactly qualified to help anyone with a fractured skill or a bleeding brain or whatever it was Sammy was suffering from. But somehow, the thought of sitting by uselessly while Sam suffered was even worse than that of pacing the room uselessly while Sam suffered.
In addition, the drugs were slowly wearing out. Dean could tell because the pain in his leg not only got worse, it also demanded a lot more of his attention.
For lack of anything better to do, Dean just sat and watched his brother’s chest rise and fall, just to make sure he was still breathing. It was the only way to tell, with him being so still.
Maybe there was an upside to this after all. Maybe unconsciousness meant no dreams and Sam was just out so deeply because his body demanded the rest it had been denied for so long. Dean was not an idiot, and he had twenty-eight years (minus four minus one) of experience in dealing with Sam. Kid might tell him he was fine all the liked, it was obvious he had had nightmares on top of the flashbacks and the hallucinations.
Nightmares after Hell were normal. Nothing to worry about. Two out of two returnees had them.
Didn’t mean things wouldn’t be a thousand times better without them. Especially if the brain had roughly two hundred years of torture to work through.
And that was Dean being optimistic and assuming time in the cage didn’t move any faster than in the rest of Hell.
His drugs were definitely wearing off. Whit the drugs working overtime, everything had been a lot better, and now Dean thought about it, his leg really fucking hurt.
Perhaps he should break Sammy’s leg as well. The he’d always be in pain and know that he was topside and not down there anymore. Would have the added benefit of Sam being unable to run off and maybe shoot himself in the head thinking it might drive the Devil out.
…and that right there was the proof that Dean was still drugged after all, because those were not the thoughts of someone entirely right in the head.
Still, Dean would prefer a broken leg for Sam over this head injury because then Sam would bitch and whine and not just lie there, making Dean worry all the time he’d stop breathing any minute and there would be nothing his brother could do.
Bobby was still gone. The two hours that surely must have passed since Dean last checked his watch turned out to be seven minutes.
Sam twitched.
Dean sat up straighter.
Sam whimpered. And tried to move, only to he hindered by the restraints securing him to the gurney. He whimpered again and the noise sounded so desperate and hopeless that Dean nearly cried.
Still drugged, okay. Drugs made him emo. Regardless, Sam was suffering over there and that was not okay.
“Hey, Sammy,” Dean called. “It’s okay.” Which he’d just decided it wasn’t, but Sam didn’t have to know that. If he could hear Dean, maybe he’d believe him and calm down.
“No,” Sam said. It sounded cracked and painful, but he was right, of course. Had seen right through Dean’s lie.
He didn’t fight against the bonds anymore, though, and Dean should have been happy about that. The straps might hold, but the gurney was a flimsy thing and if Sam really put his mind to it he’d throw it over in a minute. So it was great that he was accepting his situation without protest, really, and Dean’s heart had absolutely no reason to turn into a shrivelled little ball of pain that flopped down into his stomach at the sight.
Then Sam said, “Don’t,” followed by another “don’t” and “no no no no no please” and he still wasn’t trying to escape whatever was coming for him, and Dean decided that this was it. Sam was having a nightmare and as an awesome big brother it was his job to wake him from it.
Except he was on the couch and Sam was at least four metres away from him. Four metres were four metres too far for someone with only one leg and no help.
Bobby really should have thought about this when he positioned them.
So, baby steps. First Dean would have to get upright, and then he could think about getting over there. All it took was patience. But that was a little hard to come by when his brother was whimpering and pleading for mercy basically in reaching distance.
If he got the right momentum, Dean could probably throw himself over there. He’d collide with Sammy and wake him. It wouldn’t be graceful, but effective.
Except he would probably throw over the gurney and that couldn’t be good because of the head injury. Dean would end up on the floor unable to get up and when Bobby returned he would either bury or laugh at them.
Or he would bury them and laugh at their graves.
Sam twitched. Then he started seizing, and Dean maybe kind of lost it. The instinct to get to his brother overrode common sense in a millisecond and when the millisecond was over Dean found himself on the floor again, his leg a well of pain and Sam out of sight above him and frighteningly never making a sound.
Now would have been a really awesome moment for Bobby and his doctor friend to come in. Even if they‘d laugh. But the door remained closed and Dean remained on the floor.
The pain would have to shut up for a moment. The good thing about big brother instincts was that they also overrode things like agony and weakness. Dean only registered the pain as background noise as he awkwardly rolled around and pulled himself up on the side of the couch.
Somehow he made it to his one good foot and over to the wall, so he could use it for balance as he hobbled on. Once close to the gurney Dean held on to it and pulled himself over. By that time, Sam had stopped seizing and started whimpering again. His cheeks, when Dean patted them, were damp with tears.
He didn’t flinch away from the touch, but he whimpered again and that was almost worse.
“Hey Sammy,” Dean said loudly. “Time to wake up!”
There was no effect but for another twitch. For one terrible second Dean was convinced Sam would have another seizure right away, but he only muttered “No,” and “Please, not-”
Dean never found out what it was he didn’t want Lucifer (or Michael) to do.
“Hey, little brother,” he tried again, his voice a lot softer now. “You’re okay. You’re out. They can’t hurt you any more, so please, just open those eyes and revel in the glory of this shitty cabin.”
But Sam clearly didn’t appreciate beauty because his eyes remained stubbornly shut.
At least he was silent again. Dean dared to breathe a sigh of relief; he might not have been able to wake Sam, but at least he seemed to have shaken him from his nightmare.
Or so he believed until Sam shuddered and arched and screamed, “No, no, no, Dad, please don’t!”
Dean froze. He had not expected that.
Hell, but he should have. He’d suspected from the start that Lucifer (or Michael) took his shape every now and then for further torment, had seen it confirmed when Sam hallucinated Lucifer looking like Dean. But somehow, it had never occurred to him that they would use Dad, which was just stupid, because no one had ever been able to make Sammy feel vulnerable like John Winchester.
Dean’s hands clenched into fists. This was sick. He wanted nothing more than to get his hands on those bastards and tear them apart!
He’d make it last. He’d show them what he had learned, why he had been Alastair’s favourite pupil.
It normally scared Dean when he started thinking like this. But in this case he was not the one who needed to snap out of something.
“Sam!” he yelled. “You need to wake up, now!”
He reached for Sam’s shoulders again but the moment he touched him, Sam arched and started to scream in terror and agony. The kind of screams Dean had only ever heard from souls on the rack.
He swallowed bile and shook his brother harder, but there was no point. Sam wasn’t just asleep, he had been knocked out, had bumped his brain, and nothing Dean could do would wake him. Bobby had been right not to care that Dean couldn’t reach Sam from the couch because he was completely useless anyway.
“…locked inside his own mind for the rest of his life…” Castiel’s voice echoed through Dean’s mind - the grim prediction of what might happen to Sam if they gave him back his soul.
And then you went and did this to him. Dean pressed his lips into a thin line as a wave of bitterness and rage washed over him, mingling with the grief for his friend until he felt like throwing up.
Sam kept screaming and whatever Dean did to wake him only seemed to make it worse. The blow to his head had locked him in a tiny space with Lucifer and Hell and no way of getting out.
Dean gave up on shaking his brother in order to run his hand over his face and maybe pretend it was only the drugs that made them come away damp. Before he could actually do that, though, he froze, too shaken when the moment he let go of Sam’s shoulders his brother stopped screaming.
It was fucking disturbing. What the Hell did Sam’s mind make of his touch?
Maybe he should have gone with Bobby instead. Sammy would clearly have been better off alone.
Dean eventually got around to his original plan and wiped the tears from his eyes, though he didn’t bother with the pretending. What was the point?
What was the point of anything?
He hadn’t been able to save Sammy from Hell even after getting him out. When every little fucking thing translated as torture in Sam’s mind, all Dean could possibly accomplish was make it worse. His touches were burning or gutting, his words, if they even reached his brother at all, twisted into something else.
Worst of all was that Dean wasn’t sure if it would get any better once (if) Sam woke up. What if this was it? He’d known, as much as he liked to pretend otherwise even to himself, that Sam’s fragile hold against the horrors in his mind wasn’t going to last forever. That Sam wasn’t going to last forever.
Maybe not even for very long.
Eventually, he would get lost in his memories and hallucinations and not come back. At that point, Death would be the only possible (but not guaranteed) cure and a part of Dean almost hoped Sammy would still be able to off himself in an unobserved moment because even now he wasn’t sure if he could do that for him. (It would be the last thing he ever did.)
What if Sam never opened his eyes again? How long would Dean wait and hope before accepting defeat and saving his brother the only way he still could?
Like a child wanting his dad, Dean wished Bobby would come back and make some unconcerned remark that told him he was being overdramatic and this wasn’t actually that bad. His hands clutched the blanket Sam was covered in so tightly his knuckles showed white under his skin but he didn’t touch Sam anymore and Sam was finally almost still, almost quiet for being left alone. After a minute or two Dean realised that he was humming Metallica, as if he was in an airplane and a stupid song could keep it from falling out of the sky. He stopped, feeling stilly on top of horrible.
Sam whimpered. He hadn’t whimpered before.
Huh, Dean thought.
***
There was an old armchair in Rufus’ old cabin. Sam was sitting in it, his head leaned back and his eyes looking at something far away. He didn’t react at all to Bobby entering the room, but Bobby couldn’t tell if that was because he had drifted off or because his splitting headache was so bad every movement was too much of an effort.
There was a book in the boy’s lap, opened at the first page. Sam had sat down to read when Bobby left for his supply run an hour ago. He winced in sympathy; the headache had to be pretty horrible today.
On the other hand, it served the damn fool right. Bobby had painkillers in his collection that made morphine seem ineffective in comparison but Sam refused to take them. Well, let him be in pain if he was so into that.
Dean was on the couch, snoring softly. He’d fallen asleep watching tv again and Bobby could tell that he had noticed his brother’s headache level from the fact that the volume was barely audible. Hardly a surprise it couldn’t hold his attention, then.
Sometimes, Bobby wondered if Sam was aware of the sacrifices Dean made for him. Watching his soaps nearly on mute went against everything the kid believed in.
Sam blinked slowly and finally focused his eyes on Bobby, though it remained the only part of him that moved. Eventually, the corner of his mouth twitched into the hint of a greeting smile and Bobby released a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. He’d been worried, for a moment, that Sam might have checked out again, and even with the kid looking at him there was no way of telling what he was seeing.
As much as Bobby hated to admit it, he didn’t know how to snap Sam out of that. Dean could, but Dean was also in pain and exhausted and the old hunter would rather not have to disturb him.
But he’d wake Dean from his well-deserved sleep before he would start singing to Sam like a goddamn nanny. That was his brother’s job. And Bobby would never forget the moment he came into the cabin in Windom with his old friend from the medical profession in tow to find Dean standing unsteadily beside Sam’s gurney and softly singing “Nothing Else Matters” to him. He’d returned Bobby’s expression of confused irritation with half-hearted glares but didn’t stop singing until the doctor had finished with his brother.
Sam had been out of it, completely still and quiet, and Bobby hadn’t really seen the point. Dean later claimed that his singing was able to chase away Sam’s hallucinations, but to Bobby that was just him trying to justify being a giant girl.
Aside from a couple of absence-seizures and the occasional horrible nightmare Sam had been surprisingly fine since he woke up from his crowbar-induced sleep. In fact, he had seemed more worried about his brother, who had to spend the long ride to Rufus’ cabin in Whitefish, Montana on the backseat of the Impala where he could stretch out his broken leg - and seriously, the only reason why Bobby had risked going back for this damn conspicuous car was that Dean would have bitched without mercy if they’d left it behind. That and the fact that they had to ditch the ambulance anyway, handy as it was, because it was even more conspicuous.
Actually they ditched little more than the shell of the ambulance, with all the drugs and equipment they could fit stuffed in the trunk of the Impala, on top of an arsenal of weapons and the boys’ duffels. Sam had insisted on keeping Dean doped up on pain medication. Dean had insisted that Sam had no right to insist on anything. It had been a very long ride.
And the first morning after arriving at their new temporary home, Bobby had woken to find Sam curled up in Dean’s lap and Dean singing “Eye of the Tiger” to him. It was then that he accepted that John Winchester had left him two daughters to take care of.
If their tight budget allowed for things like that, Bobby would buy Dean a skirt just to see the look on his face (or if he would, in fact, wear it). Since it didn’t and the groceries their money was better spent on were defrosting in Bobby’s arms, he mouthed a soundless greeting in Sam’s direction and moved towards the kitchen.
On the way he stopped to turn off the tv, so his girls could sleep.
October 18, 2011