Folie à Deux 1/2

[adrenalineshots]

Spoilers for episode 7x03

Bobby, Sam and Dean spent three weeks in Rufus' cabin, a span of time from which we know little about. This is what I imagine happened...



FOLIE À DEUX- Shared madness

Even if he wasn't aware of them in these specific terms, two undeniable facts dictated Dean's life at the moment. Fact number one was that long bones, when broken, hurt a hell of a lot more than the short ones. And, fact number two, was that morphine's awesome power of making fact number one go away lasted, at best, two hours.

After two and a half hours of driving non-stop, hoping to have left Dr. I'mGonnaEatYa and the rest of the Leviathans as far behind as they could, Dean had grown quiet. Real quiet.

He looked downright mesmerized by the sight of the road, as if he hadn't already seen a gazillion trees and about twice as much of that worth in asphalt.

It took another half-hour after that for Bobby, who had been too busy trying to comb his brains for a safe place to hold up with gimpy and sleeping beauty, to realize that Dean's silence was more than just concern for his unconscious brother ridding in the back of their stolen ambulance, or the fact that they had just left behind a hospital stock full of innocent people helpless to defend themselves against the swarm of flesh-eating, pre-biblical, toothy monsters that were parading as medical personal there.

When the older hunter spared a sideways glance away from the road and to his silent passenger, Bobby found his foot hitting the brakes even before his mind had reached the brilliant connection between 'about to pass out' and 'we really needed to stop and take a break'.

"Why didn't you say anything, you id'jit?" Bobby barked as soon as the vehicle came to a stop, loose pebbles flying backwards propelled by skittering tires.

Rhetorical question at best, because Bobby could well see that Dean wasn't capable of saying anything at that point. Face as white as that stupid gown he'd been wearing just a couple of hours before, sweat pouring down the side of his face like he was the goddamn Niagara Falls and his bottom lip trapped so viciously under his teeth, there was no way a sound was escaping Dean's mouth anytime soon.

"Noth-nothing we can-cando about it any-anyway. Best to… best to j-just keep on drivin'," Dean managed to stutter, flooring all assumptions Bobby had so carefully constructed about what he could and could not do at the moment.

Bobby shook his head. While the main effect of the painkillers had obviously worn off, some other effects were still painfully present. Like the lack of rational thinking.

They were riding in a frigging ambulance. What did Dean think they carried in the back? Onions?

The door squeaked in protest as Bobby opened it and jumped to the ground. He walked around the front of the ambulance, keeping one eye open for any overly curious passing drivers and the other on Dean.

When Bobby'd arrived home and been greeted by smoldering embers and an ambulance speeding away from the place, he'd damn near had a heart attack. The thought of losing all of his books, of seeing the house he and Karen had called home reduced to ashes, still paled in comparison with the thought that Sam and Dean might've been inside the house when it had been torched.

After all that had happened, after everything they had been through, Bobby was certain that losing those two boys would be the straw that would break and bury the damn camel.

Emotion, more than the acrid smell of burned wood, plastic and melted metal had made his voice faint and raspy and Bobby had been forced to ask twice about any mortal victims when he'd phoned the police to check on fire report. Twice.

Only then did the high pitched woman's voice on the other side of the phone manage to understand what he was asking; the victims collected at the site of the arson, she had reported, had not been involved in the fire per se, but rather in some kind of assault that had resulted in a concussion and a broken leg.

Bobby was pretty sure that the woman on the other side of the line likely dubbed him a crazy person when he'd started laughing over the phone, but he really couldn't help it at the time. His house was a black piece of char; Sam and Dean were hurt badly enough that whichever one of them was conscious at the time had decided that their condition had warranted a trip to the hospital, but damn! His boys were both alive.

"Come on, you lump," Bobby said, opening the door to Dean's side.

Dean took the arm that the older man offered and gingerly slid down the seat, like some kid afraid of the water at the Waterville Park. The second his good foot touched the ground, the leg not being kept straight as an arrow by two tons of cast, folded, giving Bobby a pretty good idea as to why Dean had been laying on the floor of the hospital room when he'd first arrived to pick him up.

"Why d-didwe stop, Bobby?" Dean mouthed against Bobby's shoulder, as the older man grabbed the hoops of his belt to keep him upright.

"In case you haven't noticed, Einstein, we're driving a pharmacy on wheels," Bobby said, diverting Dean's attention from the fact that he was all but carrying him to the back of the ambulance. "I'm sure there's something in this damn rig that we can give you for the pain."

To his credit, Dean didn't even bothered denying that he was, in fact, in pain.

From all the panting and swallowed whimpers, if he failed to find any good drugs, Bobby would settle for a hammer at this point, just so he could knock the Dean out of his misery. Cast or no cast, broken legs hurt like a bitch, especially after being seated on one, stuck in a bouncing, pitching vehicle for over two hours.

In hindsight, it had been foolish of them to escape the hospital without stocking up on meds for the two them, but there hadn't really been time. Dean, for one, should be under a steady flow of heavy-duty painkillers and probably some antibiotics too, not to mention that Bobby had no idea what to do with that cast or when it was supposed to come off. At least with Sam he had managed to grab the kid's file along with his unconscious self.

"Here," Bobby said, guiding Dean to lean against the side of the parked ambulance. "You ain't gonna tip over or anything, are you?"

Dean shook his head, his whole body canting to the side. It really didn't do much to assure Bobby that he wouldn't fall on his ass, but at least the kid listed towards the ambulance, which was... something, he supposed.

Quickly opening the double back doors, Bobby shot a hand out, grabbing Dean just in time to save the young man from a severe nosedive and possibly another broken bone.

"There you go," Bobby grunted, half pushing, half pulling Dean into the back of the ambulance. There was a perfectly fine and empty gurney beside the one where Sam still slept and no reason at all why Dean should be up front, putting more stress on his broken limb.

"Have a seat while I see what the bartender's special is," the older man said, dry humor all around. The comment fell flat; at that moment there wasn't a single person inside the vehicle with half a wit to laugh, and in the face of all the crap headed their way, the happiness of finding each other alive was quickly wearing off. Humor or no humor, Dean didn't say a word as he complied, an action in itself that spoke a whole novel of words about how he was feeling.

"Shouldn't he be awake by now?" Dean whispered, half seated, half lying on the gurney with his broken leg up and his neck twisted so he could keep an eye on Sam. Made him look like a broken pretzel. "I mean... was it... was it safe getting him out? They wer- I remember them talking about internal blee-internal bleeding and-"

Bobby rummaged through the various cabinets and drawers built into the back of the ambulance, half a mind focused on reading a million and one labels, and the other listening to Dean's ramblings. Because the kid was rambling, hanging in that half conscious state of speaking words without any actual proper thought or filter behind the process.

It would be pointless to tell Dean now that Bobby had grabbed Sam on his way out of the head scan and that according to what they had scribbled in his file, the exam hadn't found anything serious. If he knew that kid well enough, and Bobby did know him better than most, Dean was about one step away from passing out from the pain alone, which meant that at this point, his processing abilities were reduced to three points: pain, leg and breathing.

"Aha!" Bobby let out quietly in triumph, staring at the locked box marked 'opiates'. There was nothing he could do about his burned to the ground house, or about the evil nasties that were after him and the boys, or even for Sam's broken psych. But there was something he could do for Dean's pain.

Bobby picked up a pair of scissors and used them as leverage to break the lock on the box, smiling in relief when it gave in at first try. Inside, the two bottles of liquid morphine smiled back at him.

Making short work of pulling a syringe out of its plastic wrapper and attaching a needle to it, Bobby carefully drew out a small amount of the clear liquid into the empty chamber before turning his attention back to Dean.

"... believe how strong tho- those motherfuckers wer-were. I could feel my le-leg snapping right off when that thi-thing threw me... do you think that's why Sa-Sam hasn't woken yet?"

"Left or right?" Bobby asked instead, talking over Dean's monologue.

The young man's eyes crossed over the bridge of his nose as he tried to grasp what the hell Bobby was talking about. By the time he'd figured it out -or given up trying- Bobby was already pulling down the edge of Dean's torn up jeans and jamming the needle in the muscle of his left thigh.

"Oh," Dean managed to voice before his eyelids grew heavy and a contented sigh of relief washed over his face.

"Sweet dreams, princesses," Bobby couldn't help but add with a smug smile as he closed the ambulance doors on the two snoring Winchesters. They would've killed him if they'd been conscious enough to register his words.

Now, Bobby just had to figure out a place for them to hole up and ditch that very stolen, very much conspicuous ride of theirs. He doubted Dr. EvilBite at the hospital would raise the alarms anytime soon, but ambulances were the sort of thing that people tended to notice and remember. And they really, really needed the world to forget about them for a couple of weeks.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

There was dust and a faint smell of mold in the air and Dean woke up with a sneeze.

"Bless ya!" a Kermit-like, nasal voice said.

The unfamiliar voice made Dean jump to awareness. He was half-laying on an old couch, his casted leg extended in front of him and his left one bent painfully sideways. His neck cracked when he raised his head, looking at his surroundings.

There was a table behind him, the centerpiece of a sort of living room with a fireplace. An open door to the right reveled an old kitchen, the kind that seemed to come straight from cold war times; another door to the left was either the bathroom or a really big broom closet and behind the couch, by the window on the other side of the shed, there was a small cot, currently occupied with what looked to Dean like a giant. Given the amount of leg expanse hanging over the edge of the thing, Dean figured it was probably his sleeping brother.

Outside, Dean could hear nothing but chirping birds and wind, rustling through leaves. No traffic, not even at a distance.

He had no idea where he was.

But unless Sam had learned to speak like a Muppet in his sleep, they were not alone. "Hello? Who's there?"

"Shit!" the same voice spoke, quickly followed by the sound of small feet running across the old, rickety floorboards.

The noise was akin to rats, scurrying to their hiding places and Dean couldn't help the shiver that raced through his skin. He looked around for something to support his weight, remembering that he had ditched his hospital stolen crutches just before he'd jumped into Bobby's hospital stolen ambulance. Thinking about it... man, that was some serious bad Karma points they were adding up there.

It also meant that he had no way to move around. Not that something like that was going to stop him.

Testing his weight on his left leg, Dean gingerly rose to his feet. The room immediately spun around him before settling in a slightly wavering motion. As far as his watering eyes could see, there was no one there other than him and Sam.

Sam.

Jesus. The kid's noggin was already a piece of mush, taking off after imaginary Hell-pals and trying to shoot his own brother… getting rammed by a piece of iron on the side of the head was not an FDA's approved treatment for his condition, Dean was pretty sure of that.

He had no idea what time it was or how long it had been since they had escaped the hospital, but it couldn't possibly be normal for Sam to still be snoozing like that.

With growing thoughts of coma or worse, a dead Sam, Dean attempted one step in that direction and stopped. He needed to go to Sam, check out how his brother was doing, but the distance seemed impossibly long now.

Dean's arms felt like jello, no strength at all to hold his weight as he pushed against the couch. The nearest wall was out of his arm's reach and Dean had no idea how he was going to get there without landing himself on the floor. He was Spiderman trying his first jump in between tall buildings; Superman high on Kryptonite... hell, he was Batman on a bend. And neither of that was getting him closer to that wall.

Busily, sucking air through his nose to combat the pain and willing his one functioning leg to do the work of two, he never heard the cabin's door creak open. Dean was just too occupied staying vertical to even realize that someone else had entered the cabin…

"If I have to pick you off the floor one more time, you're paying for my chiropractor's next appointment, boy," Bobby offered, putting two paper bags on top of the table.

Defeated before he even begun, Dean sank back to the couch, his broken leg protesting at the jarring when his body bounced off the seat. Taking a deep breath, Dean swallowed down the pain. "How's Sam doing?"

"He's surviving, same as the rest of us." When Dean looked up again, he found Bobby watching him with a concerned look. "How're you doing, kid?"

"Peachy," Dean said too quickly, no time at all to hide the pain in his voice. It cracked in a miserable way, like he was going through puberty all over again. "Where the hell are we anyway?"

"Middle of nowhere, Montana. Rufus' anti-social cabin," Bobby said, pulling two orange bottles from his jacket's pocket. "Here... managed to get you these," he tossed one of them Dean's way. "Big ones are antibiotic. Smaller ones, a painkiller. Though, you should probably eat something before ta-" Dean was already swallowing a pair of pills from the bottle marked as painkiller. "-king those."

"Why is Sam still out?" Dean asked, looking longingly at the span of ground standing between him and his brother.

"He's not out, he's resting," Bobby assured him. "Even woke up a while ago. Seemed coherent enough."

"Any crazy weirdness? Talking to the voices inside his head?" Dean asked, leaning back against the couch. The pill was already starting to kick in, pulling him into a dual sensation of numbness and floating in the air that meant Bobby had gotten him the good stuff.

"He just woke up long enough to take a leak and ask about you, Dean," Bobby said patiently. "Not really a therapy session."

"Speaking of leak," Dean mumbled, making a half-assed attempt to get back to his feet. It was like the couch had a big, frigging magnet hidden in its depths and Dean's ass was made of iron. Which would totally explain why, as soon as Dean managed a couple of inches away from the damn thing, it pulled him right back down.

The bathroom was right there. Close enough that he could probably just yank his dick out, take aim and...

"Don't you even think about it," Bobby's voice, way too close for comfort when Dean's hand was down his own pants, interrupted his line of thought. And aim.

Dean was pretty sure that what followed was very emasculating and embarrassing for him, most likely revolving around his loaded bladder, his dick, his painkiller-addled brain and Bobby's hands.

Fortunately for Dean, he had no recollection of it.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

The next time Dean woke, Papa Smurf was staring at him. Dean blinked, startled by the pint-sized, bushy bearded image. In the fragment of time it took his eyelids to drop and rise again, however, the space in front of him was empty.

"Mornin'," a voice that was most definitely familiar greeted him.

Dean rolled to a seated position, groaning as he worked the kinks out of his spine. Reorienting himself, he realized he was back on the couch, his casted leg was on fire and Sam was sitting at the table, eating some kind of crunchy cereal that exploded between his teeth every time he took a bite. Across the room there was a TV on, the volume just loud enough for Dean to know that whatever the actors were saying, it wasn't English. It was loud enough for Dean to finally notice that there was a TV in that place at all.

"Morning," Dean mumbled, making it sound more like a question rather than a greeting. The light coming from outside and filtering through the dust-covered windows was too bright and cheerful for the cotton balls taking up space inside his head.

"You feel like eating something?"

Dean forced his brain to start working again, wiping the crust out of the corner of his eyes with his thumbs. Maybe if he poked his fingers deep enough he could jump start the damn thing impersonating mush inside his skull?

"Dean?"

Somehow, it must've worked, because it finally clicked that Sam was up and eating and looking all kinds of normal while Dean still felt like crap.

"Hey! You're up," Dean said in a spasm of brilliancy as he twisted to get a better look at Sam. "You doing okay?" he asked, eying his brother more carefully now that his brain was semi-working.

Sam nodded, white knuckling his spoon to keep it from spilling milk all over. He looked tired, dark smudges under his eyes and his hair looked kind of greasy, but other than that there was none of the drooling mess or crazy-eyed stare that Dean had feared Sam would be reduced to after the latest events.

"Headache, some dizziness," Sam confessed, painfully honest as he'd taken to be of late. "But other than that, okay, I guess."

"No-" Dean paused, searching for the best way to check Sam's craziness without calling him nuts. His brain couldn't really come up with one. "So, it's just you and me here?" he added, instantly wishing he could kick himself at the implied 'no hallucinations sharing breakfast with you, loonybin?' "I mean…" he tried again, "where's Bobby?"

The squinty look Sam gave him was either a testament to the size of Sam's headache, or a sign of how lame Dean's evasive maneuver had been. "He's out back. Chopping wood," he finally answered. "Apparently, we're in for a chilly couple of nights. Cereal box is about six months past due, but they're not half bad. You want some?"

Dean took a deep breath. The smell that assaulted his nose was acrid and foul and to his surprise, coming from him rather than the cereal. Whatever appetite he might have, dimmed away drastically. God! He really needed a shower.

Staring at the white cast coving his right leg from thigh to foot, Dean felt tired just from thinking about the logistics of getting up, finding something to cover that long extent of lumpiness that was attached to him and finding his way to the shower stand. Assuming the place even had running water.

"Not really hungry," Dean confessed. His eyes traveled to the bathroom and back again as he slumped quietly in defeat.

Still, the prospect of a warm shower and less body odor was far more appealing than sitting in his own filth and Dean came to a quick -if not desperate- decision: Nike had it right. Just do it.

"You really should eat something," Sam nudged. "Those pain pills'll do a number on you if you keep on taking them on an empty stomach."

"Maybe later," Dean said as he pulled himself to his feet. At least this time around, the room actually behaved and stayed put, instead of wavering all around like a drunken hula-hoop dancer.

Eyeing his destination, Dean hobbled the few feet that separated him from his goal, wincing as the pain rose in crescendo with every second he spent with his leg down. Grinding his teeth against the tide, he continued on, trying to breathe through the worst of the knife-like jabs that radiated up and down his leg. If he kept a hand on the wall or furniture along the way, it was almost easy. In that walking-barefoot-over-hot-coals easy way.

"Need any help?" Sam asked.

Risking a glance back, Dean was almost tempted to say yes. He was in pain; the one foot he could use felt like it was stepping on marshmallows, wavering floor that didn't feel at all steady and the general need to just not be alone assaulted him out of nowhere, like a stealthy ninja waiting for him to go sappy.

Sam was on his feet, all ready to race to Dean's rescue. The grip the kid kept on the back of his chair, however, spoke of how dizzy he really was and Dean held back. What a pair they made. The intrepid Winchester brothers! Blow on them hard enough, and watch them crumbled to the ground!

There was really no point in both of them ending in a heap on the floor over a trip to the bathroom. "Nah… I'll manage, don't worry," Dean offered with a smirk that was this close to being true. "Had enough people staring at my bare ass to last me a decade. I can do without your ogling."

"Whatever, dude," Sam said with a smile. There was unmasked gratitude in his eyes when he sank back on his chair. "I'm nauseous enough as it is."

It was meant to be funny, but Dean failed to catch the humor in it. Damn those Leviathans and their freakishly powerful hits.

Dean was sweating by the time he managed to pass the threshold of the bathroom door. Three freaking feet and he felt like he'd just run a marathon.

Broken legs sucked.

The bathroom was tiny, barely more than a hole in the ground to take a leak and a showerhead. Someone -Bobby, almost certainly- had thought ahead and put a cheap plastic chair in the shower stall, something for which Dean was extremely grateful. Sinking heavily into it, Dean took a moment to catch his breath before making short work of taking of his layers of shirts. His black t-shirt, it felt, had become like a second skin that he needed to peel off rather than take off. The jeans, oddly enough, were the easy part. After all, the butchers at the ER had already mangled them to get to his broken leg, so they slid effortlessly down his legs.

Now, to cover up that cast so it wouldn't soak up all the water...

Dean looked around, hoping for some solution to drop out of heavens, because really, all that there was to see in that poor-excuse-for-a-bathroom was accounted for in one glimpse.

His eyes landed on the shower curtain.

There was no telling what had been its original color, but it was yellowish now, covered with black mold spots, like disgusting looking freckles. But it was plastic and it was mostly intact.

Not thinking too much about it, Dean gave it a good yank, pulling it free from the hanging rod with ease. It clashed to the floor with a clatter of snapped plastic rings.

"Everything okay in there?" Sam's disembodied voice echoed through the walls, a hint of concern in his words. "Need any help?"

"'m fine, dude," Dean yelled back, smiling in triumph as he wrapped the plastic around his cast. "Give a guy some me-time, will ya?"

It wasn't pretty and if he moved too much, the whole thing would unwrap and collapse, but it was as much protection for his stupid cast as Dean was about to bother with.

Looking at the water faucet, way up above where he sat in the chair, Dean almost felt like crying. He couldn't reach it from where he was and if he attempted to get up, his leg condom would fall off.

Maybe he should've just waited for Bobby to finish his manly task outside...

Suddenly, the shower curtain rod fell to the floor with a clang. The metal tube bounced twice on the floor before coming to a standstill within Dean's reach.

Dean looked up, dumbstruck. He hadn't pulled that hard, had he? And yet, there it was the evidence, in the ripped wood and the hanging nails that had failed to support the rod any longer after Dean's pull.

Shrugging it off a long overdue bit of luck on his part, given that the stick had fallen towards him, Dean bent at the waist and picked it up. One carefully aimed maneuver of the rod and glorious water was raining down over him. Cold as rain too, but nothing beat the feeling of yuck washing away from his skin.

Maybe, just maybe, Dean could survive in this place until that cast came off.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

Dean was dying.

Well, maybe nothing as overdramatic as a full on organ failure and decomposing, but boredom killed more than bullets. True fact.

Bobby was acting busy as a bee, doing what should've been Dean's and Sam's work of keeping an eye on the Leviathans and the mess they were unleashing in the world, while at the same time taking care of the Humpty Gimpy and Humpty Nutty.

Sam was around most of the time, but he wasn't always there. More than once, Dean had heard his brother muttering half muffled words, talking to someone that only he could see; and that was when he wasn't stuck staring off into space, like that crazy lizard chick from Rango.

The TV was useless. The only channels it seemed capable of picking up were either the ones airing Mexican soap operas all day long or TV documentaries that had initially aired before Dean was even born.

And Dean... well, other than his pills and the damned itch that. Would. Not. Let. Go... he had nothing, really.

Going outside was out of the question. The weather had chilled, as promised, making the ground perfect for ice skating but crap for gimpy-walk.

Bobby had eventually stopped by a clinic and found Dean a pair of crutches so that he could move around the house, but the damn things were a foot too short for him and made for an even more awkward hobbling and a sore back than regular crutches usually did.

Dean was trying his best to avoid falling into the trap of spending his days sitting by the window, looking longingly outside. It was too much of a cliché and Dean didn't do cliché. But, with nothing else to do in that cabin, it was getting harder and harder to resist the temptation.

He'd already done the newspaper's crosswords puzzle twice (once with a pencil and once in ink) and the old Soduku puzzles' book that he'd found laying around had burned fiercely in the fireplace when Dean had gotten tired of the damn thing and threw it away. Watching it burn was a hell of a lot more entertaining than adding stupid numbers in predictable sequences.

Of course, staring at the fire in the fireplace was almost as bad as staring out the window. Fire reminded Dean of Bobby's house, burned to the ground. Which reminded him of the things responsible for it, those ugly assed, black-gooed sons of bitches. Which reminded him of Cass.

And Dean really, really didn't want to think about Cass. Stupid, hardheaded, idiot Cass.

Because thinking about the dead angel who had unleashed this new plague on an already broken world would mean that Dean would have to face his own failures at saving the ones he loved and he already had a pretty good reminder of that every time he looked at his brother, thank you very much.

Every time Dean closed his eyes he could see Cass' face, the regret and the fear in his eyes in those final moments. All that nerdy angel had ever wanted was to keep Earth safe from the threat of yet another apocalypse, this time, at Raphael's hands; and while he had accomplished his task and put an end to Raphael and his followers, Cass had also left a legacy the likes of which would see even more suffering for humanity. He brought upon them all a new, bloodthirsty and even more powerful threat, a creature about which hunters knew nothing about and, what little they knew, told them that none, short of God Himself, could defeat them.

And Sam… Sam had stopped the first apocalypse from happening, had faced and conquered Lucifer's possession, only to be left with a soul too broken to be mended, pieces so sharp that they were piercing through his sanity and ripping it apart.

All of that was on Dean. His failure to see the road Cass was heading down; his failure to do the right thing and end Sam's misery back when he'd still had no soul to deal with, before Dean had forced the issue and condemned his brother to a life time of losing his mind.

Dean tossed the TV remote in his hands, watching in pleasure at it broke apart in pieces. It wasn't like he had more than three channels to choose from anyway.

Sam was sleeping -again- and Bobby was out -again- when Dean decided that he was going to shoot his brains out if he stayed cooped up a second longer. He grabbed his coat, pulled the edge of his cut up jeans as far down as they went until reaching the cast, then snatched his crappy crutches from the floor and stepped outside. Ice or no ice, he was going for a 'walk'.

The chilly air was like a jolt of electricity, coursing through Dean's skin; it reminded him that he was still alive. He wasn't desperate enough to venture alone into the woods with his bum leg, but the grounds around the house seemed safe enough.

To the right of the cabin, there was a dirt road, disappearing into the forest like it was one giant, green mouth of brown teeth.

To the left, more trees nesting an open shed, a tarp-covered truck hidden underneath it.

With a sigh, Dean pictured his own car, abandoned back at Bobby's yard, waiting for things to cool off before the older man made the trip back to pick her up. Bobby had assured him that Sheriff Mills was keeping an eye on the place while they were away, but until his baby was back in his sight, there was no convincing Dean that those Leviathings wouldn't go back to mess with his car. They were just evil enough to do something like that.

Besides, it wasn't like he could drive with his right leg trapped inside concrete as it was. No. For now, Dean had two options: walk or sit.

The long wooden bench on the front porch looked inviting enough.

The thing cracked and groaned as Dean settled all his weight, but it didn't collapse all together as he'd feared it would.

There wasn't much more to see outside the cabin than there was inside, to be fair. Rufus had picked a place well hidden from view, which meant that other than the ever present mountains decorating the horizon, all Dean could see were trees, trees, bushes and a couple more trees.

Lulled by the steady white noise of the chirping birds, Dean was almost dozing off when he heard a dissonant sound, ripping though his monotony. Nothing more than a gentle rustle of leaves, in the far left bushes.

Looking up, he peered into the wall of trees. The canopy was too thick for any wind to push through and the sound had come from too close to the ground.

Montana had bears, right? Big, grizzly, claw-your-head-out types of bears. Dean was pretty sure of that.

Dean tensed, wondering why the hell he had figured that coming outside without so much as a gun was a good idea.

If a big Grizzly came rushing out of those trees towards him, there wasn't much Dean could do but make sure that the thing had the worst indigestion of its life when it chewed on Dean's ass.

The rustling became more pronounced as something big approached the edge of the tree line and Dean stopped breathing altogether... until he found himself staring at Bambi, instead of Yogi Bear. Well, Bambi's father, from the size of those antlers.

Before Dean could decide if this was just too frigging cute or a sign from above that he'd reached his limit at Nature communion, something moved onto the buck, faster than Dean's eyes could track.

The spray of blood that followed was much easier to follow. "SAM! Get out here!" Dean found himself calling.

Because he had no weapons to fight.

He had no ability to run.

And there was something fucking fast eating Bambi four feet away from him. "SAM!"

Dean was already on his feet, precariously balanced on his good leg and with one of the crutches passing as a club in his hands, when Sam came racing outside. His hair was all over the place and the pillow creases on his cheek made Sam's face look skewed; crust sealed his eyes almost shut like superglue. "W'uhat?"

Dean spared a second to give his still asleep brother the stinky eye. "Open your goddamn eyes and you'll see what!" he whispered, exasperated because yelling at this point would only call more attention to their presence.

When Sam's eyes finally opened and Dean saw none of the same horror reflected in his brother's face, he jabbed a finger backwards, pointing to where the mess was happening. He couldn't believe Sam wasn't seeing it. It was quite obvious.

Sam's face remained impassive. "Dude," he said looking over Dean's shoulder, something that, by the way, Dean hated. He didn't need a reminder as to just how friggin' tall his little brother was. "I don't see anything."

"How hard did you hit your head?" Dean stressed, coming short of grabbing Sam's head and pointing his eyes in the correct direction. "You have to be blind to not see the-"

The words died in Dean's throat, along with a small piece of his sanity. There was a pretty good reason why Sam wasn't seeing anything.

There was nothing to seen.

"What the hell?" Dean mumbled, taking a step forward before remembering why that was a bad idea. His feeble balance lost, Dean saw the porch's front balcony, a sturdy piece of compact wood, rushing to meet his teeth like a tank moving in slow motion.

"Woah, there!" Sam huffed, his arm reaching out and saving Dean from a life of mashed food and protein shakes. "I think someone needs to lie down and sleep it off."

"Dude, get off'me," Dean grumbled. He couldn't move his eyes off from the place where he'd seen the buck get eaten. There was absolutely nothing there, not even the blood that had splashed all over the leaves and ground. "It... I was right here, sitting on the bench, bored out of my skull, and then this thing jumped the buck and ate it. There should be blood, and gore and bits of... yuck everywhere!" Dean rambled, head flapping left and right as he tried to look at Sam and the 'murder' scene at the same time. "I don't get it."

Sam stood quiet for a moment, looking down at his brother. "I do," he finally said, pulling Dean with him inside the cabin. He sounded weary, old and wise beyond his years. "Trust me, this is something I know all too well."

That tone, if not the words, made Dean tear his gaze away from the magically vanished ripped-to-shreds Bambi and look at his brother. Watching the pain and discomfort in his brother's eyes, it finally dawned on Dean what Sam was talking about. "I didn't imagine it. It was. Right. There."

Sam didn't answer until he had parked Dean back on that couch and grabbed him a glass of water. Bottled water, because there was no way they were taking their chances with the tap stuff. "How many of those are you taking a day?" Sam asked, picking up the almost empty bottle of painkillers that Dean had left abandoned on the coffee table.

"What are you, Dad?" Dean asked, defiant and defensive. "It's been hours since I took the last one and I know what I saw, Sam," he added, earnestly. "There was something out there."

Sam eyed him critically and Dean resisted the urge to cringe away. Sam was the one with the head-crap, not him. So what if he didn't want to be in pain and took his pills like he was supposed to, because, newsflash! broken legs hurt? So what if he sometimes washed them down with a couple of beers? It wasn't like that was something he'd never done before. "I know what I saw, Sam. It was real."

"Lucifer was pretty real to me until you proved me wrong, Dean," Sam said gently. "And these are pretty heavy painkillers. It's perfectly normal that you get a little confused and see-"

Dean would've punched his brother if that didn't imply having to get up to reach him. "I WASN'T HIGH AND I WASN'T IMAGINING IT!"

He sounded like a toddler and the worst part was, Dean was perfectly aware of that.

"Like it wasn't you who ate that whole pie two nights ago?"

Dean swallowed the urge to break his brother's nose and settled for the less satisfying but equally effective stinky-eye-of-doom. He couldn't believe Sam was bringing that up again.

Bobby had bought a cherry pie a couple of days before. Dean had whined so much about starving on their straight diet of C-rations and scrambled eggs that the older man had relented and gone to the city just to buy the thing.

Bobby had one slice, Sam passed and Dean had two slices, pacing himself to still have some pie left the following day. Come morning, however, the pie was gone, crumbs and all. Despite Dean's denials, accusatory glances were thrown his way, both Bobby and Sam assuming that Dean had just eaten it all by himself.

Which Dean hadn't. And it had pissed him off that one of them, the obvious culprit, was fucking with him by putting the blame on him. Dean suspected Sam, but there was no way to prove it. The bastard was that stealthy.

And now Sam was using that to prove his point and make Dean think he was losing his mind. Ha!

"Look, Dean, I'm just saying," Sam went on, his tone more conciliatory, wisely so, considering the visible anger seething in Dean's stare. "I went outside pretty fast and there was absolutely nothing there. You have to at least consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, your eyes played a trick on you."

Fuck Sam! And the most annoying thing was that he was actually right. It was one thing to find invisible or superhumanly fast beings in their line of work. Hell, he could close his eyes and name at least ten fuglies who could do it. But the buck... there had been nothing supernatural about the animal, which meant that its mangled remains should've still be there, even if the thing that attacked it was long gone.

Dean found himself nodding, which might've given Sam the impression that he was agreeing with him.

"Good, because it's bad enough that one of us keeps seeing things that aren't there. Things would get crowded if you started doing it too," Sam added with a forced chuckle.

Dean forced a smile back and didn't correct him. All he had to do was wait for Sam to take his next nap and go check for himself the place where he'd seen the buck get killed.

ooOoOoOoOoOoo

A big thank you to jackfan2, for making this story so much better! All remaining mistakes are mine. Part 2 should be up in a couple of days ;)

ON TO PART DEUX