SPN Fic: The World
Title: The World
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean, Sam, Missouri
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: self-harm, insanity
Spoilers: Up to 7.02
Words: 8291
Summary: Missouri didn't expect to see them again. And for all her psychic powers, she could not have foreseen how much they changed.
Note: Witten for the following prompt left by anonymous at the current ohsam fic challenge:
GEN.
Something doesn't have to be sexual to be intimate and soulmates don't have to be lovers.
Sam and Dean are closer than most lovers could ever be. They complete each other in ways no one else could ever hope to.
Set in Season 7. Someone's observations on the boys and the way they interact and take care of each other. Unstable or just plain Crazy Sam and Caring Dean.
While she had never seen them again after their one meeting years ago, Missouri Mosley had kept an eye out for the Winchester brothers in the dark times that followed. She heard when their father died, learned about the plans the demon Azazel had for Sam and the reason for his extraordinary powers. She knew about Dean’s deal and the apocalypse.
And she felt when Sam took out Lucifer and Michael and himself because the entire psychic plane shook and trembled like a tree in a storm.
She also felt it when Sam returned since it was impossible to pull a soul out of the deepest pit of Hell without letting every psychic on the planet know. But after that moment her psychic sense went blind when it came to him. Dean had always been hard to grasp unless he was standing right in front of her because her powers were not meant to work across great distances, but Sam used to shine like a beacon in the night. Now he didn’t. There was not even the dull echo she received from Dean. There was nothing. If she hadn’t known better she would have thought he was dead.
She would have known it he was dead. So far she had known it every time.
There were other ways to get information, of course. Missouri had contacts all over, and she knew how to create new ones. More than one hunter came to her for help - and more than one came to her asking for help to find Sam Winchester and kill him. She heard when they did kill him, and Dean, eventually, and laughed at their conviction that they would stay dead.
Later rumors showed up that they were alive after all. Then Sam went to Hell and Dean disappeared. It became quiet, until Sam returned. They were on the news a lot, drawing a trail of murders all through the states, but Missouri knew it wasn’t them. The things she saw on tv wearing their faces, though, they scared her. They were so old.
It seemed these boys never got a break.
A part of her always expected them to come to her again, asking for her help, and was surprised that they never did.
Things once again became quiet around them. Everyone thought they were finally dead, and Sam continued to be silent to her senses. Gone. She worried about that, but respected their wish to keep their circle of friends small. They had met once. Likely, they barely remembered her.
Therefore she was quite surprised after all when one day they did show up on her doorstep asking for help.
-
“I know it’s asked for much,” Dean said.
Missouri huffed and considered hitting him. “After all you two have done for this world, I would think that I owe you more than a place to stay for a while.”
“Why would you of all people have to pay the bill for the entire world?”
“Because I’m a part of this world, so you saved me, too.” It was sad that this needed explaining. “I’m only paying my own bill. Everyone else still owes you.”
Dean grinned as he thought that over. Missouri didn’t need psychic powers to know that he hadn’t been told this nearly often enough.
“Take off your shoes before you enter the living room,” she told him as she led the boys deeper into the house - just so they wouldn’t think that gratitude made her let go of her principles.
To her surprise it was Dean who complied - looked like someone had taught that boy some manners in recent years - while Sam just walked in as if he hadn’t heard.
“Hey, Sammy.” Dean took his brother by the arm and held him back. “Shoes.”
Sam looked down at his feet, then around the room, as if searching for something. “That doesn’t make sense.”
It was the first time he spoke at all.
“It actually does. Remember? You used to be pretty good at this.”
Sam froze for a moment, then he shivered. His eyes darted to a corner of the room.
“Sam,” Dean said with some force, like a strict but patient parent. He grabbed Sam’s arm and squeezed it until his brother was looking at him.
“What’s the point?” Sam asked, sounding confused and somewhat helpless.
“The point is not getting Missouri’s carpet dirty.”
And then, for the first time, Sam looked at Missouri, and Missouri almost flinched and ran even as his eyes filled with infinite sadness. “She’s new,” he said.
“Really, Sammy? That’s actually awesome.”
It didn’t happen often that Missouri didn’t know what was going on. Dean was talking as if it all made sense, though, and she knew it would be a mistake to interrupt them now. This was important - whatever this was.
“Just humor me here,” Dean said after getting his brother’s attention back. “Take off your shoes. I promise it’ll be okay.”
Apparently, that was enough. Sam slipped out of his shoes, and Dean just nodded and walked towards the couch as if all this was completely normal. To them, it seemed, it was.
Sam followed more slowly, but without hesitation. His eyes took in the room, though; cataloguing every detail. Sometimes he flinched, but he never said anything.
Missouri nearly addressed him, but sensed that would be a mistake. Instead she turned back to Dean and received instant gratitude he wasn’t even aware of.
“We wouldn’t have come here if there was another choice,” Dean said as if their conversation had never been interrupted. Sam chose a spot and stood with his back to the wall, watching the room, and her, with the eyes of someone waiting for an attack but without the stance of someone preparing for it.
“I’m glad you did,” Missouri told his brother. “I was worried about you boys. You should have come before. So, tell me about the trouble you’re in this time.”
“Well, for starters, someone took our shapes and made us look like serial killers with ego problems.”
“Tell me the part I did not know already. I may be old but I do know how to turn on the tv.”
Dean had the grace to blush. “Then you know that we can’t exactly attract attention right now. And hustling pool always attracts attention - mostly that of pissed-off people. We can’t use our credit cards either, because the assholes that impersonated us know all our old aliases, and lately they’ve been getting good at figuring out the new ones as well.”
“Still using the names of rock stars?”
Dean gave her a puzzled look but didn’t insult his own intelligence by asking how she knew that. “Actually, no. We switched to random names - hell, we used a freaking names generator we found on the web!”
“Stop pouting, boy! You’re a grown man, aren’t you?”
“Then stop calling me ‘boy’.” Dean was still pouting.
“So you came here because you are out of money.”
“Well. Yes.” Dean wasn’t ashamed of this. “We need a place to stay, to be exact. Someplace where they can’t track us. Just for a week or so.” He didn’t look over to Sam but he might as well have. All his senses were permanently tuned to his brother anyway. “We happened to be in the area when we ran out of cash. That’s why we came to you. I promise we’ll behave.”
Missouri didn’t believe that for a second, though surprisingly, Dean did.
She couldn’t yet begin to understand what was going on with these boys, but she could tell how badly they needed a break.
“You can stay as long as you want,” she said.
-
“Shut up,” Sam said.
Missouri and Dean stopped in their conversation to look at him, but Sam wasn’t talking to them. He was looking at something in the corner of the room, and Missouri felt a chill run down her spine even though she could sense absolutely nothing.
There was nothing. But Sam said “No,” and “Go away,” and curled in on himself, covering his ears with his hands.
“Sam.” Dean got to his feet and walked over to his brother. Before he even touched him Sam cried out and flinched away, slapping a hand over his face as if something was going for his eyes.
“Shit,” Dean cursed, and for once Missouri gave it a pass. Dean’s hand closed around Sam’s wrist to pull his hand away from his face. “Sammy,” he said and Missouri had to retreat her senses in a way she rarely did to keep his emotions from overwhelming her.
Sam didn’t look at him, so Dean twisted his hand at the wrist. The spark of sharp pain was the first signal Missouri received from Sam since they rang her doorbell. It drew her eyes to Sam’s hand and now she saw the angry scars running over it, the bruises disappearing under the hem of his shirt.
“What are you doing?” she hissed at Dean, even though every instinct told her not to get involved. (She usually listened to her instincts.)
“What I have to.” Dean twisted the arm harder. Something half-healed broke open and caused blood to drop on her carpet. Dean, for all his promise to behave, didn’t pay attention to that. “Sammy, look at me,” he said. “At me.”
Sam was staring wide eyed, but at something behind Dean. Only when Dean dug his fingers into the opened wound did his eyes flicker to his brother.
“Who is it?” Dean asked.
Sam didn’t answer, but his eyes filled with tears and he looked so lost.
“Shit. Me?”
Sam’s silent tears seemed to be answer enough.
“Did he hurt you?”
A barely perceptible nod.
“You feel this?” Dean shook Sam’s twisted arm. “Feel the difference?”
Now Sam closed his eyes and seemed to listen into himself. When he opened them again he looked around the room, but his eyes never settled on anything. Until they found Missouri and he flinched.
“That’s Missouri,” Dean said with a slight chuckle that seemed entirely out of place. “She’s real. We’re gonna stay here for a while, remember? So you better get used to her.”
Sam still looked unsure. He pulled his arms back and Dean let it go, watching passively as Sam ripped at the stitches of a cut that couldn’t be older than a day.
Only after that did most of the tension run from Sam’s body. He nodded at her but didn’t say anything, as if accepting that she existed was greeting enough.
But then he looked down and said, “Sorry about the carpet,” and was just the boy she had met so long ago, for a second.
“Don’t worry about that,” Dean generously allowed. “Come over to the couch, let me wrap that up.” He nodded to the injured hand and looked at Missouri afterwards. “Would you happen to have…”
“Just a second.” The gauze was in the cabinet in the kitchen and as much as Missouri hated to admit it, it was a relief to get some distance between her and the brothers. The room was so filled with pain and grief she felt she was drowning in it, but it all came from Dean. The only thing she received from Sam was purely physical sensation, and that unsettled her almost as much as the question what he might have seen in her living room.
-
Missouri stood back while Dean wrapped up his brother’s hand, the gentleness with which he handled the task a sharp contrast to his former brutality.
She could feel Dean’s exhaustion and see Sam’s. She also felt Dean’s hunger, and that the hunger was more important than the need for sleep. Still Dean, then. She did not have pie, she thought with some regret and realized the same moment that she was willing to forgive that they had ruined her carpet.
Right now, Dean was not even aware of his own exhaustion, but very much so of Sam’s. They needed a place to sleep, so Missouri went to fetch a few spare sheets and set up the narrow guest bed in back room.
When she returned, Sam was sitting beside Dean, his face buried in his brother’s shoulder, the fingers of his right hand periodically digging into the gauze around his left. Dean was holding him close, stroking his hair in a display of affection she had not thought him capable of in public.
Then Missouri realized that this wasn’t about displaying affection, it was about comfort. And yes, giving his brother what he needed, that was very Dean.
“I got the bed ready,” she said as she entered the room, judging it better not to move on tip toes around them but relying on her instincts here instead of her senses. “You can stretch out your legs if you want - you look beat.”
Dean, at least, approved of her approach, she could tell. Sam remained silent in every sense of the word.
“Okay, let’s get you to bed, kid, before you fall asleep in my lap,” Dean told his brother. “Can’t have you drool on me again.” He pulled his brother to his feet and Sam let himself be led, looking only at Dean all the way.
Even without reading him, Missouri knew she had never seen anyone this broken.
She left them alone to go and prepare dinner.
-
As expected, the smell of roasted potatoes and beef summoned Dean to the kitchen like a spell. He looked into the frying pan with approval and left the kitchen door open.
“Already washed my hands,” he said proudly, holding up his hands for inspection. They weren’t just clean, that had been scrubbed until the skin was raw. Dean hated having his brother’s blood on his hands.
“Then sit down.” Missouri nodded towards the table. “I know you love beef.”
“You don’t need to be psychic for that,” Dean grinned. It was all an act, but she didn’t call him out on it.
He was eating like a horse, but Missouri wasn’t too strict with his manners this time. He didn’t put his feet on the table, and that was a definite improvement.
She wondered if his improved overall manners were a result of the time he spend living a normal life, trying to be a role model for a kid that was not his brother.
She also wondered when he had last eaten a proper meal. Dean didn’t think about that at all - he was merely happy for the one he was getting.
“I’m glad you like it,” she said when he took his third helping. Missouri herself had barely eaten, too preoccupied with her guests, and if she was honest with herself, too disturbed by them. “Leave some for your brother. Boy looks like you’ve been stealing his food for months.”
“I wish.” Dean drowned half a glass of water. “Sam doesn’t eat much - believe me, I tried, but most food makes him… freak out. Meat is worst, but so is everything that’s too soft, or too hard, or frigging soup!” There was a lot of frustration and even more worry in those words.
“So,” Missouri said.
“So.” Every pretence of happiness was gone from Dean’s face.
“What happened to Sam?”
“You don’t know?” Dean was honestly surprised about this. He had thought she would need no explanations.
Missouri shook her head. “I can’t read him. I can’t even grasp him. I can sense his presence when he’s right before me, but when I try to reach for him it’s like there’s a million broken pieces that are slipping through my fingers.”
“That might be the most accurate description ever. So you get nothing at all?” Dean was worried about this - wondering if this meant his brother was somehow already gone, but while that was not the case she doubted he would much like what she could tell him next.
“I can still sense him when I see him, but that’s all. The power that boy contains… it’s blinding all my senses. It’s too strong.”
“Power?” As expected, Dean perked up at that, and not in a good way. “What kind of power?”
“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “Lucifer’s got nothing to do with it. It’s all Sam.”
“Sam doesn’t have any powers anymore.”
“Oh, he does! They are stronger than ever. But.” She held up her finger to silence him, “That he has them doesn’t mean he can use them - or wants to. They lie dormant inside him, and he is too scared of them to ever use them.”
“He never told me about that.”
“I don’t think he’s aware.”
Dean thought about that, unhappy. It was interesting that in the face of all the things that were wrong with his brother, this was what bothered him so much.
“You haven’t told me what’s wrong with him,” she reminded him.
Dean shrugged. “Hell.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“No, I mean it. Sam thinks he’s still in Hell. They fucked him over so often, using my face, and our father’s and those of basically everyone he was ever close to. And they made him believe he was out, too, more than once. He just can’t tell what’s real anymore. The hallucinations don’t help, of course.”
A lot of the things Sam said and did suddenly make sense. Missouri’s heart ached for these two who never did anything to deserve this, no matter what they believed.
“And the pain helps,” she observed. “Dean, I swear, if I didn’t know how much you love that kid I would have smacked you.”
Dean looked like he wanted to cry. “I hate it. But I’ll do whatever it takes to keep him focused on reality. The alternative would be worse for him, believe me.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t.” It was merely a statement. “You can’t. Even with all your psychic mojo, you can’t begin to imagine. Be glad.”
She was.
-
After dinner, they settled in on the couch, where Dean could keep an eye on the open door to the guest room. Missouri knew, in the way she just knew things, that he hadn’t been separated from his brother in a log time.
When she offered Dean a drink, he declined. “Juice will do, thanks.”
“You still manage to surprise me,” she admitted as she handed him a class of orange juice. “You used to be quite the drinker.”
“Alcoholic, you mean.” Dean made a vague gesture with the hand not holding the glass. “I have to keep it together for Sammy, you know.”
“So you stopped. That’s quite an achievement, especially without help.”
“Wasn’t easy. But you know, the thought of what Sam might do to himself while I’m drunk was motivation enough.”
He meant it, of course. Missouri could see quite clearly that his brother was the centre of his world.
“And who’s keeping it together for you?” she asked.
Dean waved her words away. “No one needs to. I mean, it’s just me and Sammy, you know? And he’s struggling hard enough just to stay alive.”
Missouri thought that that might be the answer right there. But Dean would need to figure that out on his own.
-
That first day, Missouri was quite surprised that despite the nightmare that was his waking hours, Sam’s sleep seemed to be dreamless. She later learned that that was not the case.
Dean set temporary camp on the couch, and the door to Sam’s room always remained open unless Dean was in there with him. When he was it was shut, keeping everything else out. Missouri understood that Sam needed it to be just them, sometimes.
It took him a long time to get out after the first night. He slept for ten hours, the final three with his brother stretched out behind him and nearly falling off the narrow bed. Afterwards Dean dragged him to the shower and stood watch as he cleaned himself and shaved.
When Sam emerged from the shower stall and found his brother standing outside, he made a face at him. “Dude,” he said, his voice a little rough. “I’m not a baby.”
“You look like one,” Dean assured him and as Sam turned away to get fresh clothes from his bag, Dean send a brilliant smile in Missouri’s direction, happy beyond belief that his brother was having one of his better days.
In moments like this it was easy to see why so many fell for him. Considering the cause for his smile, though, it was just as easy to see why they would never really stand a chance.
Sam came back minutes later, dressed in a clean but crumbled shirt and the same pair of jeans he had been wearing the day before. There were spots of blood on it that he didn’t seem to notice. If this was the best he could do, their time on the run had been longer than Dean let on.
Sam’s state, of course, did not make it easier. Nothing attracted attention like a crazy person, especially if someone was already looking for one.
He noticed her late, because he was looking at something on the floor as he walked. Or maybe he just postponed looking at her until the last moment. It unsettled Missouri that she couldn’t tell.
“Good Morning, Sam,” she greeted him when he finally acknowledged her presence. “I hope you slept okay on that old thing.”
“It’s better than the backseat of the car.” Sam offered a small smile, then turned around to glare at Dean who still lingered in the doorway of the bathroom, watching them. Missouri knew that he only went to the shower and out of sight because it looked like Sam was okay and could do without him for a few minutes.
Sam turned back to her with a pained expression on his face. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said, and Missouri was surprised he even remembered that. “I, uh. I can’t offer you money. But I know ways to get blood out of fabric.”
“So do I,” she informed him. “And what do you mean, you can’t offer money? Do you want me to smack you, boy? Without you I wouldn’t even have a carpet, let alone a house. I thought your brother was the idiotic one.”
“I heard that,” Dean’s voice rang from the bathroom.
Sam rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, Dean, close the door before you pee!” Then he flinched and threw an apologetic look at Missouri. They were so used to be alone with each other.
Since he was obviously sorry and Missouri was walking on eggshells here, she let it go. “Come to the kitchen, Sam. I can hear your stomach growl from here. What do you want to eat?”
Sam hesitated for a long time, but eventually he said, much to her relief, “Salad would be nice. If you have some. I’m not that hungry. No need to fix something just for me. Or an apple.”
Apples and salad were okay, then. Missouri put them on a list in her mind because she was determined not to let this boy starve while he was her guest.
-
Dean joined them for breakfast. Missouri offered to make him toast and bacon, partially because she felt like that herself but he shook his head frantically and she understood that Sam couldn’t handle the smell of grilled meat any more than the taste.
Sam picked at his salad for a long time but in the end ate most of it. He was quiet thought breakfast, while Dean chatted away, telling all kinds of nonsense Missouri would have scolded him for if she hadn’t seen how his voice grounded his brother. Dealing with these boys, she would have to adjust her principles for the moment.
She’d also have to cancel some appointments for today and tomorrow. It was hard enough for Sam to deal with her presence. It was impossible to tell how he would react to strangers.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, slumping in his chair as if he wanted to hide from view.
“Sorry for what, Sam?” Missouri asked.
“For stealing your time and ruining your plans because I’m batshit crazy” he said, sounding as if he was just repeating something he’d heard
“Sam.” Dean put a hand to his brother’s back. “She didn’t say anything like that.”
Sam looked up, at Dean, then at Missouri. “She didn’t?” He sounded completely lost and Missouri’s heart broke for him.
Then he moved his hands under the table and she felt the spike of pain when he squeezed his injured hand. He kept staring at her and squeezed harder until Dean touched him from behind and Sam jumped.
“She’s really here,” Dean told him. “She just didn’t say that.”
Sam looked like he wanted to cry. Dean took his arm, pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go get some air.”
Missouri remained sitting long after they were gone, her heart aching as she put the pieces together to form a horrible picture. The hallucinations Sam had sprang from his subconscious - the same subconscious that still had access to his powers. They must have picked up her thoughts and his experiences in Hell twisted them into something ugly. Projecting another her over the one that really existed.
If things like this happened all the time, it was no surprise that it got harder and harder for him to figure out what was real.
-
The boys were gone for a long time, but they didn’t go far. Missouri could see them from her window, lingering just at the other end of her yard. When she first looked outside Dean was holding Sam, much like he had done the day before, and she turned away to leave them what privacy she could offer, even though it was obvious that being watched didn’t matter to Sam and that Dean didn’t care as long as he could help his brother.
She made a few calls, cancelling a couple of appointments for the next two days and rescheduling two to meet at the client’s house. When she looked for Sam and Dean an hour later, they were sitting on the fence and Dean was laughing, Sam smiling.
-
What Missouri learned during the next two days was that Sam’s state was unpredictable. He could be more or less fine for hours or even a day, but anything could trip him off from one moment to the other. And there was absolutely no pattern, no precautions they could take.
Just keeping Sam away from other people wasn’t enough because his hallucinations would never leave him alone completely. Missouri learned that, too: When Sam seemed fine, that only meant that he was able to ignore the shadows constantly populating his world.
She spent a couple of hours out, visiting her clients and going to the store, believing the brothers being on their own would help Sam adjust. But when she returned it was to Sam kneeling in the yard, retching, while Dean knelt beside him, his hand hovering over Sam’s back but not touching him.
Sam didn’t join them for dinner.
“I have an IV stand in the car,” Dean told her that night. “In case he doesn’t eat for too long.”
It was probably the only reason why Sam was still alive.
They didn’t need it yet but things didn’t exactly get better either. The next morning Sam refused to look at Missouri and constantly replied to things that hadn’t been said. One time he yelled something in a language Missouri had never heard before and Dean jumped to his feet to pull Sam into his arms and rock him until Sam, for whatever reason, passed out.
His unconsciousness didn’t last long, When he woke up again he was better and even managed to eat something and keep it down. It was just some apples and a sandwich with cheese and salad, but it was better than nothing.
He even let Missouri change the bandage around his hand. It allowed her to get a good look at the limb; there was no doubt that this hand and arm were what suffered worst from the boy’s need for pain. There were deep scars, some not completely healed yet and some recently reopened. The back of the hand was bruised back and yellow and two of the fingers slightly crooked, speaking of badly healed breaks. How Sam was still using this hand almost normally was beyond her, but then, he probably appreciated the pain it caused him.
Everything but her instincts told her that this was wrong.
Afterwards she gave the two of them the new clothes she had brought for them: jeans and plaid shirts and t-shirts to wear beneath them, just as they were used to. Dean hesitated a long time before accepting the gift. Only when Missouri reminded him that they were on the run and would attract even more attention if they ran around in torn rags did he take the bags she offered.
The sizes she picked were the ones Sam and Dean were already wearing, so in the end this only showed that they hadn’t been shopping for shirts since things got bad for Sam. In Dean’s case, they were a little too wide, proving that his brother was not the only one who had lost weight. In Sam’s case, the clothes hung off his frame like sheets.
But at least they were clean and whole.
That night, Missouri came down in the middle of the night for a glass of water and found both brothers on the couch, Sam’s head in Dean’s lap and Dean’s hand in Sam’s hair. The tv was running on mute, showing pictures that seemed to have no meaning.
Dean’s sleep was deep and peaceful. His brother was safe and with him. It was all he needed to know.
-
The next day, Sam disappeared. Dean had helped Missouri get something from a high shelf - he was only gone from one moment, but when he returned, there was no sign of his brother. Considering the circumstances, Missouri could well understand his instant panic.
Sam wasn’t in the house. He wasn’t in the yard either. It was Missouri who finally found him, after barely twenty minutes. He was sitting on the ground beside the street, rocking back and forth, and when she came closer, he took a large, sharp-edged stone and brought it down on his already hurt hand.
Then he did it again. Perhaps he thought if he hurt himself enough, she would disappear; Missouri didn’t know. She only knew that she couldn’t help him.
Dean came when she called for him. Together they tried to grab Sam and take away his stone, but he fought them, constantly yelling in that strange language that made Missouri shiver and Dean clench his teeth. In the end, Dean pressed a piece of cloth against his brother’s face and Sam finally, finally went limp.
“Chloroform,” he explained later, after he had carried Sam back to the house and they had done for his broken bones what little they could without involving a hospital. “I hate doing this to him, but sometimes I have to. He nearly died, once - hit an artery when he cut himself and I couldn’t help him because he kept fighting me. Sometimes, the only way is to knock him out.”
“He’s just sleeping,” Missouri reminded him. “He will be fine.”
“No. He’s having nightmares, and he can’t wake up. This is bad. Tomorrow is going to be bad.”
Missouri thought it was pretty bad already. Instead, it got worse.
-
Sam didn’t wake up from his artificially induced sleep when he should. He tossed and whimpered but never opened his eyes. Missouri tried to talk Dean into giving him something for the pain, to bring it down to more manageable levels, but Dean pressed his lips together and shook his head.
The pain radiating from Sam made it hard for her to go near him, but even that didn’t convince Dean. He seemed to know what he was doing, though. If anything, this made Missouri feel, for the first time, relief that physical agony was the only thing Sam would let her have.
It was a shameful thought - she was leaving him alone with this suffering. And yet, she did not believe for one moment that she could help him if she understood. She didn’t even believe that she would understand if she knew.
Before dawn, Sam started seizing. As if he had known this would happen, Dean hadn’t even tried sleeping but sat with his brother the whole time. Missouri fell asleep on the couch and was woken by the monologue of nonsense that slipped from Dean’s lips as he held Sam and made sure he didn’t fall off the bed. He never tried to wake him. He just made sure that Sam, should he snap out of it even for a second, would hear his voice.
It happened again and again, with longer and longer breaks in between, until noon. Eventually, Dean fell asleep stretched out beside Sam while Missouri remained watchful, drinking coffee and preparing a lunch that could be re-heated since no one would eat it anytime soon. She was out of her depth here, she had to admit; The thought of Sam seizing again without Dean waking up to take care of him terrified her. There was something about him that let her know touching him would be a very bad idea.
But Sam didn’t seize again. Purely on instinct, Dean had known when it was over.
He woke up just before Sam, as if he had known that as well. When Sam opened his eyes minutes later he was delirious with fever, just tossing on his bed and muttering things Missouri did not understand. He clamed down when Dean stroked his hair and eventually fell into a deep sleep that would do nothing to heal him.
Dean barely left to go to the bathroom, but he did eat the food Missouri brought him.
“Sam get’s bitchy if I don’t eat,” he said, apparently thinking he had to apologize for having dinner while his brother was sick. “’Sides, I can’t take care of him if I collapse from hunger.”
“He needs a doctor,” she told him gently. Dean’s face closed off immediately, but she knew that he knew she was right. “That hand of his is worse off than we can fix.”
“I should never have let him out of my sight,” Dean spat, setting down his plate. How very typically him to blame himself and never see the good things he did.
“You can’t watch him every second of the day.”
“I should have!”
She heard the echo of old orders ring though his mind. “And why is that? Because your old man told you so?”
Dean looked at her - pale, tired, and with a gnawing sense of desperation that overshadowed everything else in his life he looked at her, and started to think about that question, possibly for the first time in his life.
She waited patiently, but he didn’t need all that long to find the answer, “No,” he said. “I guess, maybe, I never did. I mean, yeah, Dad’s orders used to rule my world but Sammy did so even more. If it ever came down to either follow Dad’s order or protect Sam... Well, it did, actually. And I chose Sam. I would always have chosen him”
“But that’s not surprising,” she prompted. “Watching over your brother has been ingrained in you from a very early age. It’s only natural that you wouldn’t be comfortable doing anything else. And you do think that you have to sacrifice yourself for your family, because it is family.”
“And that’s stupid,” Dean told her, matter-of-factly, though he might never be able to really believe it. “I know I’m messed up in that regard. But I also know that Sam is the best thing that ever happened to me. And I don’t know if that’s because of Dad, or because we’re blood, but he’s mine to watch over. Because I love him, and I don’t wanna lose him.”
It was a very simple, very fundamental truth, and perhaps it was the first time ever he said that.
Missouri smiled despite the desperate situation while Dean sat in wonder at how he had needed this long to put this into words.
She could only hope that Dean would eventually be able to accept that he was not the only one who felt this way.
“He still needs a hospital,” she said, getting the conversation back on track. “I know he needs the pain, but his hand will hurt enough even with the bones set and healing properly.”
“That’s not it. We’re on the run. Even if no one at the hospital thought, ‘Wait! Aren’t these the homicidal brothers that made the news every fucking day for weeks?’ the Leviathans might track our fake insurance. Or already be there - they like hospitals, it’s easy to feed there. And if they find us, they’ll find you, too.”
“Don’t you worry about me, boy. And don’t you worry about the hospital, either. I will take care of this.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “You take care of your brother.”
-
Naturally, Sam’s fever got worse - it seemed to be a recurring theme in the Winchester’s lives, things getting worse. Missouri was worried for a while that they would have to involve a doctor after all, right here at her house, or Sam would die right under their hands, but Dean got him through it with a lifetime of practice and a lot of water and medication. It took a day, but finally the fever lowered and Sam’s sleep grew quieter.
“He looks peaceful,” Dean said in a low voice when he caught her watching them. “He isn’t.”
Missouri would never understand how he knew when even she didn’t, but she didn’t doubt he was right,
She made more calls and cancelled more appointments. These kids were bad for her business, but lack of pay aside, mothering these motherless boys a little was worth more than telling Mr. Jacobs from down the road that yes, of course his wife’s baby was his child and not that of his best friend.
Dean crashed hard, eventually. By then, Missouri had seen enough of these two to know that Sam would be fine enough for a while - and that Dean would be awake immediately if he wasn’t.
It gave her a certain relief in a situation that left her feeling helpless and inadequate - not a feeling Missouri Mosley, psyching since birth, was used to, She could read people. She was always at the advantage, and only now did she realize how much security she drew from this fact. Sam and Dean Winchester left her unsettled and in foreign territory, but she realized, with the practical outlook she had on life, that this also offered a chance for her to prove to herself that she didn’t need the advantage of her powers to get away with being who she was.
It was a good way of approaching this, she decided - yet was still shaken in her confidence when she climbed down the stairs in the morning - quietly, so she wouldn’t wake anyone - and found herself confronted with Sam while Dean was still snoring on the couch.
Sam was standing in front of her bookshelf, inspecting it. He didn’t look like he was scanning it for things that could maim him but merely like he was reading the titles, and eventually he pulled one of the older volumes out and flipped through the pages. When he heard her moving behind him he jumped, but while the look in his eyes was a little weary, he didn’t panic. He just seemed embarrassed that she caught him touching her stuff.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.” He nodded towards the book, yet kept looking at her, his body betraying the tension he felt. With anyone else Missouri would have thought it was the pain from his hand, which he was using for turning the pages despite its near-uselessness, but the way he kept tracking her movement told another story.
Without Dean there to confirm her existence, Sam wasn’t sure she was real. And yet he did his best to be polite, asking for her permission just in case she actually was. Oh, this boy.
“Take any you want.” Missouri smiled to hide that fact that he was breaking her heart. She glanced at the one in his hands. “I didn’t know you speak Italian.”
“Only a little,” he admitted. “I learned in college, but only took one semester before I had to drop out.”
Nothing about his choice of words or his voice let of that he was talking about the death of the girl he wanted to marry and the end of the life he had worked for so hard.
And nothing but the way he kept looking her up and down let on that a part of him still thought he was talking to empty air.
“That’s pretty heavy stuff,” she told him. “If you want to, I have something that’s easier to read, for practice.”
“That would be awesome, thank you.” Sam put the book back where he found it and waited patiently until Missouri found the book she was looking for. He thanked her when she handed it to him, and placed it on the table, carefully, to wait until their conversation was over.
“You must be thirsty,” Missouri observed. “You have been pretty sick” He still looked sick - his face was pale safe for red spots betraying his fever, his eyes overly bright and his hands, she noticed, were shaking. He had to be in terrible pain, but she understood that it grounded him. Still she wished he would take something for it. How he was even standing was beyond her.
How used he had to be to agony.
Sam hesitated; probably wanting to bolt but not wanting to be impolite in case this was really happening. The underlying sense of pain she had all the time when near him suddenly flared up and she understood that he was focusing on it, letting it prove to him what was real. When he smiled at her, it was a little more honest.
“Just water,” he said. “I’d get it myself, but I fear my hand is a little useless right now.” And he waved his hand to remind her, as if he had just got it stuck in the car door. It was at the same time depressing and amazing how these boys accepted Sam’s mental illness and all the suffering it brought them as part of their life.
Sam sat on the kitchen table but kept the door open so he could see Dean if he wanted to. He accepted the water and even the few unthreatening slices of cucumber and apple she placed before him. “Do you have bacon?” he suddenly asked, taking her by surprise. “Dean would like that for breakfast.”
“How do you know?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s Dean. He had a hard night. And he gets cravings, after a while.”
“He doesn’t want me to make anything containing meat while you can smell it,” Missouri told him. If they brothers were dealing with Sam’s state this openly, she figured, she might as well do so herself. If anything, it seemed to help if Sam’s situation was not treated as something so stigmatizing that it could never be mentioned.
“I can wait outside,” Sam told her. “It’s not a problem. I’ll sit in front of that window, so Dean can see me.” He nodded towards the window to his right and Missouri had to smile. Dean wasn’t the only one who knew his brother very well and did everything he could to make him feel better.
Even if it was little things like this.
“An old friend of mine is a doctor,” Missouri told him. “He has a small private clinic not far from here. I called him and explained your situation, and he agreed to have a look at your hand, do what needs to be done.”
Sam looked startled, worried. “You told him about us?”
“Just what he needs to know. He knows there’s more out there than most people realize. And he trusts me, as I trust him.”
“We can’t know that.”
“Yes, you can. Because if he’s not good to you, I’m going to come for him.”
This made Sam smile a little, which was worth a lot. But he still shook his head. “We can’t a-”
“Don’t you even finish that sentence, son,” Missouri interrupted him. “He owes me, so this will not cost you a single penny.”
Sam nodded slowly, but still didn’t look entirely convinced.
“Don’t worry about that,” Missouri told him, guessing what he was thinking about. “It will still hurt for a long time. But if you don’t get that treated properly…”
“I’ll lose use of the hand. I know.” Sam sighed. “I get that. And I don’t want that. I need both hands, else Dean will have to do all the work. Couldn’t even fight anymore.”
His priorities were a little skewed, but then, Missouri shouldn’t be surprised that he first thought about how this would affect his brother.
“He will see you on Sunday, when there’s no one else around.” It was still two days until then, and Missouri worried about how long Sam’s period of calm would last.
But right now Sam was doing as well as he ever did anymore. Missouri sat beside him, watching him eat, and ever so carefully extended her senses, reaching for him like she would reach for a frightened rabbit. She could feel him, just out of her grasp, like pieces of broken ice floating on water. This time she concentrated on just one of them instead of trying for the whole. In the last moment before she could make contact, however, everything disappeared, slipping away as Missouri was shoved back to where she came from, finding herself sitting on the kitchen chair, slightly dizzy and finally understanding that Sam was protecting her, without even knowing it, from the things she would find in his mind.
Sam was focused on eating his apple, never even realizing what was going on.
-
Dean got his bacon that day, and afterwards he was a little happier, a little closer to really enjoying himself instead of just pretending. All he needed was his brother to be with him and okay,
This was what counted for okay these days. It was all they got, so it was all they needed.
All they needed was each other. Missouri had another day for watching them just be themselves and she understood this with a clarity that had nothing to do with reading minds. Everything with these boys was about each other. They could be given money, a set home and a family, friends, stability, and all the adventures and heroism they wanted, and it would mean nothing, absolutely nothing if the other wasn’t there. They could fall in love but no woman would ever be enough to make them leave each other. Dean would choose his mentally ill, broken mess of a brother over a perfect life without him any day, in a heartbeat, and it was not just obligation that made him. It would not be guilt that killed him if he lost Sam but the fact that they literally could not live without each other.
As for Sam… The only thing Sam always accepted as real was his brother.
Missouri had been asked for her predictions on the future of paying couples more times that she could remember, but if there ever were two people who belonged together forever, it were these two.
Sam spent the last day at her place reading the Italian book she’d given him, burning through the pages much faster than she thought he would. Dean spent the last day watching tv, and then fixing a broken segment of the fence for her. They barely even spoke, each occupied with their own thing. Coexisting in the way typical for those used to sharing small spaces - and yet when Sam stopped turning the pages for too long, his eyes looking through the book at something only he could see, Dean knew, and watched him silently, ready to act, until Sam retuned and Dean got back to watching an the old western without a word. When Dean went outside to fix the fence, Sam followed, wordlessly and without any prompt, sitting on the porch in the sun, reading where Dean could see him.
The next morning they left. Sam’s shattered hand kept him grounded through the rest of their stay and Missouri finally fully understood why he kept hurting himself and why Dean let him. Didn’t mean she didn’t hate it, but Dean hated it more and he knew what he was doing.
After Sam’s hand was taken care of, they would move on. Her life would return to normal after they were gone. Maybe they would meet again someday. Maybe not. There was peace in not knowing.
On the way to their car, Sam turned around and waved her goodbye. Missouri watched them leave, side by side, not touching but too close to not be sees as one unit, and knew they would hang on. Sam would never be fine, their lives would never be stable, but they were together.
It was enough.
November 13, 2011