The Burning Bridge 1/2

[ratherastory]

[Master Post]

"So how long is it going to take?" Sam asks.

It's not really Sam, of course. It's the guy who looks like Sam who's been walking around in his body for the last eighteen months or so and who seems to think he's a new and improved version of Sam. Dean disagrees, but it's hard not to think of him as 'Sam,' even if it's not really Sam he sees when he looks into this guy's dead fish-eyes.

"How long is what going to take?"

"Before you stop looking at me like I've grown an extra head. We've known for two weeks now that I have no soul, and it's not like that's changed anything. I'm still the same person I was two weeks ago."

"But you're not the same person you were."

Sam shrugs. "Are you the same person you were two years ago?" he counters, and Dean has to concede the point. "See, that's what I'm saying. We all change, it's inevitable. I just changed more than most people do. It's not my fault you don't like the change."

"You let me get..." Dean stops, blows out his cheeks. There's no point rehashing this stuff with I, Robot on the other side of the table in this diner anyway.

"Turned by a vampire, molested by fairies, sort-of raped by demons. I know, and I get it now, it's bad, I won't do it anymore. Promise."

The real Sam would never have done it to begin with, and if he somehow had, either by accident or because he was under the influence of some nasty supernatural substance, he'd be wallowing in well-deserved guilt by now. But of course this Sam doesn't feel guilt.

"Not really the point, Sam."

"Okay, but seriously, what do you want from me?" Sam takes a sip of his coffee to wash down a bite of the impossibly large ham sandwich he's just ordered.

This Sam eats more meat, too, and drinks his coffee black. Dean doesn't remember the last time that Sam bothered to order a French vanilla anything. For a while, when he was still Sam, it was because they were broke and partly, Dean thinks, because it was a weird way of punishing himself for ending the world. Doing a lifetime of penance by denying himself even the small pleasure of a frappuccino. Ridiculous. Except that this Sam apparently likes his coffee black.

"Do you want me to apologize again?" Sam asks. "Because I can do that."

"I don't want you to apologize unless you actually mean it!" Dean snaps. "There's no point."

Sam just shrugs. "Okay."

"Sometimes I don't get why you're sticking around, to be honest."

"Like I said, it's better with you around. Even Samuel thought I was pretty screwed up in the head, if you recall. I'm not like other people. I knew that even before Cas fisted me," Sam says, ignoring the way Dean chokes on his mouthful of beer at the word. "I stick out. I say the wrong things, push too hard, and people get weird-they clam up and won’t answer questions, if they even stick around that long. I wasn't like that before. I'm a better hunter, but I suck at the people stuff now, and you don't. And the people stuff is important if I want to solve cases."

"So you're staying with me because I'm more sensitive than you?" Dean can't keep the incredulity out of his tone.

"If the shoe fits..."

"Jesus," Dean shakes his head and polishes off his beer before motioning for another one. In another life, Sam would be glaring at him right now for having even one beer at this hour of the day, but this Sam hasn't so much as blinked.

"So you can't give me an estimate?"

"No, I can't give you an ETA on how long it's going to take me to process that you don't have a freaking soul!"

Sam makes a face that's almost a bitch-face but ends up settling halfway between frustration and incomprehension and just kind of looks wrong on his features anyway. "Can we at least keep working in the meantime?"

"What other choice do we have?"

"We could split up, keep working separately, if that's what you wanted."

"Is that what you want?"

"No," Sam says, with the patient air of someone who's had to explain the same thing multiple times. Maybe he has, come to think of it. "I want to work with you. Apart from me, you're the best hunter out there. The Campbells can't hold a candle to you. They might think they’re the second coming just because it's been the family business for generations, but they lack imagination. They're complacent. Overconfident. And Christian's an asshole."

"Not like you?" Dean points out drily, but Sam doesn't rise to the bait.

"Exactly. I'm not overconfident. I know exactly what I'm capable of, no more, no less. I know what you're capable of, too, and you're better than they are. We work well together."

And the thing is, they do work well together. Apart from the fact that Sam gives him the screaming mimis, Dean has to admit that they've solved a lot of cases since Sam came back, since he left Lisa and Ben, and they've solved the cases with a minimal number of casualties. It's nothing to sneeze at, really. They're back to the family business: saving people, hunting things, and isn't that what they always wanted? None of this stupid apocalypse crap hanging over their heads, no angel and demon stuff, just plain, straightforward salt-and-burns, a good old-fashioned skinwalker or two, and no fate of the world hanging in the balance. It even felt good, for a while, just to do what they do best and not have to worry about whether the world was about to end at any given moment.

"Except that we both know exactly what you're capable of." Apparently Dean just can't let it go. "That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence."

"That's why you should stick around. Make sure I don't violate whatever weird code of ethics you've got going on there."

"It's not a 'weird code of ethics' not to murder people!" Dean almost yells, catches himself at the last minute and lowers his voice.

"Collateral damage isn't murder." Sam calmly polishes off the first half of his ham sandwich and turns his attention to the second half. "Anyway, I think I found a case for us."

"Oh, thank God," Dean breathes. "At least it'll get us off of this topic."

"What's wrong with the topic?"

"Apart from it making me want to eat my own gun? Nothing at all. What's the case?" Dean prompts before Sam can ask him to elaborate on why discussing the ethics of letting civilians die is pushing him to the brink of suicide.

"Mysterious deaths in Kansas city," Sam says around a mouthful of sandwich. He pulls out a folded newspaper from where he was apparently sitting on it, and hands it over to Dean. "Page eighteen, bottom right. I've circled it."

It's a tiny article, one of those written by ambulance-chasing journalists who aren't big enough to sign their names to the three-sentence blurb. Still, it's something to start with, at least. Most of their cases come from tiny, vague-sounding articles like these, or from lurid tabloids, or from small-town newspapers when they can't get anything else. Those are harder to come by, though, because their print runs are usually tiny, their distribution strictly local, and they're almost never available in electronic format. Dean honestly doesn't know how hunters managed to do anything before the age of the internet. It's amazing the whole community isn't dead yet through lack of communication.

"So, two victims of radiation poisoning? What makes you think this is our sort of gig?"

Sam finishes his sandwich. "It's not the radiation poisoning, it's the 'unexplained' part that caught my attention. It's not like people develop spontaneous cases of radiation poisoning. There has to be an underlying cause, and the two victims aren't related in any way."

"Huh." Dean tilts his head to the side. "Good point. It's worth checking out, anyway. It's a decent-sized city, too, we'll be able to fit in better. People are less likely to notice you're not working with the full range of human emotion, there, Wall-E."

"Yeah, screw you."

Dean tosses a crumpled ten and a five onto the table. "All right, then. Let's get this show on the road."

~*~

It's a long drive into Missouri, made even longer by the fact that Sam doesn't talk much in the car anymore. He doesn't bitch about the music-although Sam hadn’t been bitching much about the music near the end there, either, Dean has to admit. It's just that, as stupid as it sounds, the quality of the not-bitching has changed. Before he gave the impression of suffering in stoic silence because he was willing to let Dean get away with just about anything short of murder in yet another attempt to make up for the fact that he almost single-handedly unleashed the Devil on the world. It was like drinking his coffee black: an absurd method of self-flagellation. These days, though, Dean is pretty sure that Sam doesn't care if he puts on music or lets the radio stay silent, and wouldn't care if he decided to play 'Barbie Girl' on repeat for sixteen hours straight, and God knows any man in his right mind would have to object to that shit at some point or another.

Sam does talk a little about the case, when he's not taking down notes in a neat, obsessive hand in his new notebook. The notebooks are new, too. The old Sam used to take notes on his laptop, if he took any at all, or else he would add to Dad's old journal. This Sam, though, he has a little notebook for every new case, neatly labelled, and when the case is over he just takes the salient features of the case, notes them in a larger journal, and leaves the notebook itself in storage somewhere.

"It's more efficient that way," he explained to Dean at one point. "That way I know all the information is available, but I don't have to cart it around with me all the time. You ever notice how thin Dad's journal really is? I mean, it's a brick, but there's only about a hundred or so pages in here if you don't include the news clippings. That's after twenty-two years of hunting. You ever wonder where all the rest of his notes went? He kept it like a personal diary, too, in some cases. I'm betting he's got another storage locker or a lock box somewhere out there that we haven't found yet in which he kept all the other pages we just haven't seen."

It does make sense, but it also makes Dean uneasy in a way he can't quite define, the idea that there's this whole chunk of Dad's life out there that he and Sam never knew about, that they might never know about now, since there's no guarantee anyone will ever let them know if something has happened to those extra journals, if they even exist.

Sam is also weirdly pragmatic about taking notes on the laptop. "Sure, it makes a certain amount of sense, but technology isn't reliable. Data storage is changing from day to day. Most people can't read a floppy disk these days, so what's to say that we'll be able to read what's on a USB key in five years? Or ten? And data gets corrupted, gets erased by EMPs. It's not reliable. So you write it out longhand, you guarantee that it survives a much longer time, especially if you keep it in a dry, warm place away from bugs."

"You have spent way too much time thinking about this."

"Knowledge is the key to hunting," Sam says, and for a second he sounds so much like the old Sam that Dean's heart lurches painfully in his chest. When he looks up, though, Sam is bent a little over his notebook, holding his pen neatly between his thumb and index finger instead of resting on his middle finger the way he used to hold it, and the tiny spark of hope that had kindled somewhere inside Dean fizzles out again. "We just need to find a way to keep it all together."

"I think you just summed up most of our problems," Dean mutters.

Sam doesn't bother answering, and Dean keeps driving, both hands on the steering wheel, long after the sun dips low over the horizon and tinges the sky a deep crimson before disappearing entirely, plunging the world in darkness.

~*~

They end up pulling into Kansas City just before ten o'clock the next morning. Of course, it doesn't really matter what time it is, because Sam doesn't sleep anymore. Dean still hasn't figured out how that works. He still eats and does all the other things humans do, still has the same brain, the same everything, except no soul, and Dean can't figure out how he manages to not collapse from lack of sleep. When they do get Sam's soul back, Dean figures he's probably going to be in a coma for half a year or so to make up for it. Then again, he reminds himself, Sam never was all that big on sleep to begin with, so maybe it’ll be okay.

Sam is behind the wheel, ostensibly so Dean can catch a few minutes of sleep, but Dean's never been good at sleeping while someone else drives his baby, especially since that guy is now the soulless douchebag version of his brother. He also doesn't quite trust Sam not to try pushing him out of the moving vehicle as a kind of weird experiment to see at what speeds the human body will and won't survive. He still hasn't forgotten the look of fascination on Sam's face when the vampire turned him all those weeks before-just the thought makes him shiver.

"You want to get us a room?" Sam pulls into a motel parking lot. The neon vacancy sign is buzzing, threatening to fizzle out at any moment. Home, sweet home.

"Should I bother getting you a bed?"

"Better for watching porn that way," Sam grins, and the smile doesn't reach his eyes. Dean shudders. "Yeah, why not. Two queens or a king, the price is the same, and I know you like it better when you can shove your bed against the wall."

"I don't always take the bed by the wall."

Sam shrugs. "You used to take the bed by the door all the time. I get that―easy escape route, and a way of keeping an eye out in case something comes in. I haven't figured out your new pattern yet. It's a little haphazard. Comes and goes depending on how much you drink, I think, but I'm not sure."

"You know, it's really creepy that you're keeping such close tabs on me. I just thought you should be aware of that."

"I thought you liked it when I did that. You like it when Cas keeps tabs on you."

"Cas is an angel, and it's creepy when he does it too."

Sam tilts his head in a way that suggests he's just letting the whole matter drop because he doesn't care about it that much, and Dean heads inside to get a room. The clerk doesn't so much as blink, just hands over two sets of keys-the old-fashioned kind, not even the newer key cards that so many motels are investing in these days. A hand-written sign by the dinosaur-aged computer (Dean catches a glimpse of a window running something DOS-based) informs potential clients of 'Free WiFi! Ask for our password at reception!' and gets a slip of paper with the word 'candybar' as the securest password they could apparently come up with.

"It's like they want to get hacked," Sam sighs as he types the password into the laptop later on, when they're settling in.

Dean kicks off his boots, cracks open a beer. "Who'd want to hack this place anyway?"

"Good point."

"So what do we have on the victims?"

Sam pulls out his notebook and types a couple of words into the search engine on the laptop with his free hand. "As usual, not much to start with. We've got a dead guy who, get this, was actually sentenced to life in jail for offing his kid. Held a pillow over little Allison's face and smothered her in her sleep. I tell you, if this state had the death penalty, this guy would have gotten the chair a hell of a long time ago. Judging by all the comments on the news articles online at the time, he's lucky a lynch mob didn't get him."

"So what killed him?"

"'Doctors baffled by mysterious death' kind of sums that one up. He kicked the bucket about two weeks ago, showed all the signs of radiation poisoning, but no one could figure out where he might have gotten exposed to all that radiation. It takes a lot, especially given how fast he died."

"He was in prison, wasn't he? Wouldn't that mean all the other guys were exposed too?"

"Got it in one," Sam nods. "Except that they weren't. No one there showed a single damned sign of radiation poisoning. They scoured that whole place from top to bottom, transferred out his cell mate and then went over it again with a fine-toothed comb―and squat. Nada. The place is squeaky clean."

"Huh." Dean takes a sip of his beer and scrunches his toes against the bedspread. "So who else died?"

"An accountant who went into surgery for a gallbladder removal. One minute he's recovering from elective surgery with no complications, the next he's covered in sores and losing his hair. He died late last week. It's the guy in prison who got all the press, but because the cause of death was the same this guy got a few lines in the paper."

"So there's more than that one article you showed me?" Dean can't keep the annoyance out of his voice. He's getting well and truly tired of Sam keeping stuff like this from him.

"Just found it now, because it's not exactly about his death. Well, it is, but it's mostly all about the case he was sentenced for. The whole article has a judgey, he-had-it-coming-to-him feel to it. Monster murders his little girl, dies a gruesome death, everybody wins."

Dean swallows a mouthful of bile. "Anyone else?"

"That's it. No deaths, anyway. There's a nurse who's come down with the exact same symptoms, but she's not dead yet."

"Same hospital?"

Sam taps at the keyboard a few times. "As a matter of fact, yeah."

"Yahtzee. There's our connection. Bet you dollars to doughnuts that Robert Latimer there got treated at the hospital before he went all Chernobyl."

"Okay. So, something in the hospital. Any ideas what?"

Dean lies back against the headboard, messes around with the pillows until he's comfortable, and raises his beer bottle to his lips. "Not a clue. It's early days yet. I'm going to catch a nap, because you drive like you've had both your hands surgically removed and replaced with extra feet. Then we'll head over to the hospital, see what's what."

Sam snorts. "You taught me to drive, you know."

"I taught Sam to drive, C3P0. Now shut up. Normal people actually need sleep. Don't do anything too psychotic while I'm out, okay?"

"Define 'too psychotic.'"

Dean flips onto his stomach and pulls his pillow over his head, refusing to dignify that with an answer.

~*~

The good thing about large hospitals is that they're all more or less alike. Same huge administration, same massive amounts of paperwork, same harried and overworked staff who are only too glad to avoid having extra responsibilities placed on their shoulders when they're already swamped with patients and charts and demanding doctors who think that their word is always law even when it conflicts with every other order the poor employee's been given. This means that a kind word here, an offer to keep out of the way there, and most hospital staff will give anyone with an official-looking badge a wide berth. Dean pauses just inside the front entrance, turning to Sam.

"Okay, so let me talk to the people, got it? You just hang back and... try to look like you know what empathy means," he tells Sam, who rolls his eyes.

"You know, I did this for a whole year without you," Sam points out mildly.

"Yeah, and look how well that worked out for you. You told me yourself people don't like to talk to you. I never thought I'd say this, but out of the two of us, I'm the people-person now, and I'd feel better if you weren't either antagonizing the witnesses or screwing them up against the nearest bathroom wall." At the smug look Sam gets at that comment, Dean snorts. "Exactly. We need information, not someone to get you laid. I am seriously starting to feel more sympathy for when Sam used to make this speech."

"I am Sam. "

Dean makes an effort to put all of Sam's current issues out of his mind as they grab their newly-minted CDC badges out of the glove compartment and saunter confidently up to the receptionist. She's busy wrangling two very upset clients and several phone lines while struggling to get her computer to obey her, directs them to the right floor while barely acknowledging their presence. Dean takes that as a good sign. He takes the lead, heading down the almost-empty hallway until he gets to a small, cluttered office where a woman a few years older than him in a lab coat is working at a computer.

"Dr. Rayner?" Dean steps forward, Sam close on his heels, pulling out his badge. "You put in a call to the CDC?"

She shakes her head, surprised. "No, but I was about to. I expect you've heard about what's been happening?"

"Someone else must have put in the call," Sam lies easily. "We were sent down to assist. Or, rather, my colleague here was sent to assist, and I was sent to assist him," he smiles in a way that doesn't quite reach his eyes, but Dr. Rayner doesn't appear to notice.

"Follow me," she gets up and starts walking briskly down the the hall, heels clacking authoritatively on the tile. "You're familiar with the file?"

"We've read it," the lie comes just as easily now as it ever has, "but I'd love to hear your perspective on it. Nothing beats a live voice, you know? I mean, this is pretty unusual, even by our standards. We're just hoping it won't take too long to study what's happening, before this thing has a chance to spread."

Dr. Rayner stops in her tracks and turns back to face them. "You haven't heard, then? We've already had another victim."

Dean shakes his head. "We came by plane, and I guess if someone called or texted it didn't come through. You know technology," he adds with a smile that's calculated to put her at ease without making her feel like he's making light of the situation―trickier than it sounds. "It's meant to make our lives easier but all it does is cause communication glitches and make us work even harder than before."

She rolls her eyes. "Tell me about it. I just wasted half a day on Monday getting malware cleared off my computer. Apparently some people in this hospital think it's funny to keep porn on the shared network so that it'll spread viruses to everyone's computer. Like digital STDs. Anyway, whatever it is, I think it must have to do with the hospital itself―the last two victims both work here."

"So, this is someone aside from the nurse?"

"Cindy, yeah. No, my newest patient is from the administration wing, Mr. Gerard. As far as I know he's had no recent contact with any of the others, which is what makes this so baffling. He's through here," she motions toward an isolation ward. "Cindy's already beginning to slip away from us―by the looks of it she only has a few days left at best. Mr. Gerard is still lucid, though, so you can take an oral history from him if you want. I haven't dealt much with your branch, but I know that some people like to work from scratch, get their own idea of what's what."

"That would be great," Sam interjects. "You said you thought this might be related to the hospital?"

"Not that they're listening to me," the doctor says darkly. "If I'm right they'll have to shut the place down until they figure it out, and we can't afford that, so they're telling me there's no conclusive evidence."

Sam nods, then tilts his head at Dean, his intent clear: keep the doctor and the patient talking while he does a sweep with the EMF. That, Dean can do with one hand tied behind his back. So he gives Sam a nod, takes Dr. Rayner by the elbow, flashes her his most winning smile, and pretends that it's really her leading him to the patient and not him getting her out of Sam's way.

~*~

The patient is an asshole.

That's the conclusion Dean comes to about thirty seconds into his interview with Mr. Gerard, who insists on being called that instead of by a more congenial first name. Dean spots Dr. Rayner rolling her eyes discreetly, even though she struck him as a pretty empathetic sort. Mr. Gerard, though, would try the patience of a saint.

"It's just typical," he complains to Dean, picking at his hospital-issue sheet with hands that are red and blistering in patches near the wrists. His cheeks are flushed with fever, and Dean can see spots on his head where his hair has already begun to fall out. "There are no standards in this hospital. Can't imagine why we haven't been reported for this. Probably that nurse's fault anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if she was at the source of it all."

"Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Gerard," Dr. Rayner says a little sharply. "You and I both know that Cindy was taken ill long after the first patient was diagnosed. Besides, we're focusing on you now, not on Cindy."

"Is she dead yet?"

Dean clears his throat. "Wow, you're not, uh, all that big on the sympathy thing, are you? Anyway, you should know we're not at liberty to discuss the treatment of other patients," he tells him in his best imitation of government authority, and Mr. Gerard subsides a little, which earns Dean a grateful look from the doctor.

"Sympathy is for weak-minded fools who can't get ahead in life."

It's like listening to a really cranky version of Sam these days. "Uh-huh. So why don't you take me back through the last few days, see if we can't retrace your steps, see where this all might have started?"

"I've already been over this," is the petulant reply, and Dean forces himself to smile patiently.

"Humour me."

It's not long before Mr. Gerard runs out of energy, though, and the fever and confusion make it next to impossible to get anything coherent out of him after only a few minutes. Dean shrugs, tucks away his notebook, pretends he can't hear the tell-tale sound of the EMF from a few doors down. Dr. Rayner, on the other hand, hears it just fine.

"I didn't see where your partner went."

"He probably went to check in on the nurse. Cindy, right? Knowing him he's just taking a quick look at her chart, getting a read on things. He'll be back in a second, but I can go find him if you'd like," Dean says, trying to make it sound like it's entirely unnecessary for them to go find Sam. She gets the hint.

"Oh, he can catch up, it's no problem. Did you want to see Cindy as well?"

"No, I'll leave that up to my partner. Actually, I'd rather talk to the rest of the staff, see what her schedule was, if she had any contact with the previous patients."

"Not that I'm aware of, because we did check into that first thing," she says a little defensively, "but I'm sure the staff will be happy to help in any way they can. Hang on," she whips back around as one of the monitors starts beeping alarmingly, darts back to the bed. "Shit," she mutters. "Okay, look, can you manage on your own? I'll be with you as soon as I can."

"Of course. You do what you gotta do. Need help?" Dean offers, praying really hard that she'll say no. He has to stop himself from breathing a sigh of relief when she shakes her head, and beats a hasty retreat before she can change her mind.

Sam meets him out in the hallway. "EMF's off the scale. We've either got a whole slew of spirits or one really nasty one."

Dean grimaces. "Could be either or. This is a hospital, there's bound to be, like, a gajillion spirits wandering around these halls. Death echoes, death omens, you name it."

Sam tilts his head in acknowledgement, but shrugs at the same time. "It's a lot stronger right near the nurse. I figure whatever's going on with her, it's ghost-related."

"Fair enough. You want to go check Pollyanna back there as soon as the doc's figured out how to keep him alive? I'm going to hit up the other nurses, see what they have to say about Cindy's chosen lifestyle."

"On it," Sam doesn't even bother to comment on Dean's phrasing, which is just too depressing for words. The old Sam would have at least made a bitchface at him. "I'll see if I can't get anyone to tell me about local legends about the hospital. There's always something in these places, you know?"

"Try not to antagonize anyone, okay? Or have a quickie in a supply closet, either."

"Try to remember I'm a professional, okay?" Sam mimics his tone with eerie accuracy. "If I'm going to bang a chick I'll at least wait until we're done for the day."

Dean shudders. "I don't want to know. If you do, get yourself your own damned room, or go back to her place. And don't screw with the witnesses."

"Screw you," Sam says mildly, and then he's gone.

~*~

Dean spends a frustrating couple of hours tracking down all the various nurses and aides the unfortunate Cindy spent any time with at all, and the net result is pretty much absolutely zip in terms of useful information. It's not that they're not forthcoming, but they basically don't know anything except for the fact that Cindy wasn't especially social and refused to so much as talk to her coworkers except when it directly concerned their work.

"She was very good at the job," the nurse manager assures him. "Very proficient, her standards of care were high above the norm, but she wasn't-isn't much of a people person," she confesses. "She's not very well-liked among the staff, and a few patients have complained that her bedside manner lacks... warmth, but we've been working on that, focusing on improving her people skills. She's a very skilled nurse otherwise."

"I see," Dean makes a show of noting things down. "She wouldn't have had any reason to come into contact with radioactive materials that you know of, right?"

"No, absolutely not. The only place in the hospital would be in the specialized radiology areas, and she had no reason to go anywhere close to oncology. Besides, radiation therapy isn’t meant to cause this level of illness.”

“So she wouldn’t have been,” Dean digs around in his memory for the right word, “floated there, say?”

“Sometimes our nurses get floated to other floors, but Cindy hasn't been to any other ward except her own in quite some time. She wouldn't go to oncology, anyway, considering her history. We made a point of never sending her there.."

Now that's interesting. "How's that?"

The head nurse looks uncomfortable. "Oh, I've probably spoken a little out of turn. It was all a long time ago, anyway."

Dean gives her what he hopes is a really sympathetic look. "You can count on my discretion. Was there a problem? With a patient, maybe? Another unexplained death?"

"Oh, no," she shakes her head. "Nothing like that. It's... I'm surprised you don't know about this, but I suppose it's not really up the CDC's alley. We don't really like to remind people of the hospital's failings, you know."

"So?" Dean prompts her gently, and she colours a little.

"One of the doctors in the oncology ward was..." she hesitates again, then appears to gather her resolve. "Well, he was what the investigators at the time called an 'angel of death.' They say he may have been responsible for up to thirty deaths over years before he was finally found out. He was very good at hiding what he was doing, we never even suspected. He was using the radiation treatments themselves to hasten the death of his patients, so that no one would catch on. Well, it was a little before my time, but Cindy was here then. She's one of the first who thought something must be wrong, when so many of her patients were dying prematurely."

Yahtzee, Dean thinks. "So what happened? He was arrested?"

"Do you know, I'm not really sure. I assume so, but like I said, it was before my time, and no one here really likes to talk about it. I don't think it ever even made the papers much, even though it would have made a sensation. The hospital kept a tight lid on all negative publicity from that event."

"Okay, well, that's probably not related," Dean reassures her. "You've been a big help, thanks."

"No problem. I didn't think it was related. After all, it was years ago, and none of these poor people were cancer patients, after all. It's just a terrible coincidence."

Coincidence my ass, Dean thinks to himself with a sigh before going to find Sam.

"So we've got ourselves a repeat performance of a bunch of deaths from a million years ago?" Sam asks when Dean catches up to him..

"Doubtful, but it's got to be related. I mean, all those people died of what's essentially radiation poisoning, right?"

"So it's one of the patients, you think? Why now?"

Dean shrugs. "Who knows? Could be something set it off, or maybe it was hanging around the hospital feeling lost and whatever and only recently went bonkers. Could be anything, really."

"So, hospital archives?"

"Tomorrow," Dean confirms. "I'm guessing they're not open after hours."

"So what? We're wasting time, here," Sam says, expression scrunching up in annoyance. "Tell you what, since I don't need to sleep, I'll go in myself, get the ball rolling. At the very least I'll get my hands on a list of his patients, see which of their family members or whatever are still around. I'll piggyback on the wireless, find out what prison the guy's in. We're short on time for interviews, so the faster we get this, the better."

It's impossible to argue with logic like that, even if Dean hates the idea of leaving Sam alone in this place without supervision from someone who's soul-enabled. "Okay, fine. But check in every so often, you hear me? And if you see something weird, or something that needs killing, don't do anything unless you're sure that you won't cause collateral damage," he says, making air quotes for emphasis.

"I got it, you don't need to lecture me like a little kid."

"Little kids don't shoot civilians because they're between them and the monsters. You know what? Forget it. Just stay out of trouble," Dean gives up, throws his hands in the air, stalks back to the Impala without waiting for Sam to say anything.

~*~

Dean hasn't been this happy to see an empty motel room in a very long time. He kicks off his shoes, sheds the suit jacket and pants and hangs them up in the closet. The problem with traveling with only duffel bags is that it wreaks havoc on the dry-clean only stuff, he thinks, glaring at the wrinkles at the bottom of the jacket. He always feels like a monkey in those things, anyway, though it's been long enough that they almost don't feel like a disguise anymore. Besides, he kind of enjoys the automatic respect that the badge and the suit afford him, which he almost never gets when he's in his regular clothes.

"Hello, Dean."

He almost doesn’t hear the quiet gust of air that always announces Castiel's appearance, but it takes all of Dean's self-control not to jump or, worse, whip around and try to bury his knife into the intruder. It helps that he's not currently carrying his knife.

"Jesus, Cas! How many times do I have to tell you not to freaking drop in like that?"

As usual, Castiel just looks exasperated by Dean's insistence on following what he considers useless human protocol. "It wastes time, Dean. Why should I engage in such things when they’re not necessary?"

"Privacy? Personal space? I'm not even dressed, here!" Dean gestures at himself, glad that he's at least still wearing his undershirt and boxers. He takes one look at Cas' face, then sighs in resignation. "All right, fine, whatever. I don't suppose we're ever going to get over this particular hurdle. What do you need now? Got another heavenly weapon that needs neutralising?"

Cas frowns at him. "You requested periodic updates about my attempts to find out about Sam's soul, and about Crowley's attempts to find Purgatory. I simply came to tell you that I have yet to acquire any useful information."

It takes all of Dean's self-control not to snap at him to ask why he bothered coming at all, then. Wasn’t he the one who’d complained that Cas never came around anymore? He clears his throat. "Yeah, okay. Um, thanks, Cas."

"You are welcome."

Okay, it's a little awkward with Cas standing right there in his personal space, especially since Dean usually likes to have a few more layers of clothing between them, as a rule. "You want to maybe sit, Cas? Have a beer?"

"No, thank you. But I will sit," Cas moves over to one of the two wooden chairs in the room and grasps the back, though he doesn't actually sit in it right away.

Dean pulls on a pair of jeans and buttons them before sitting cross-legged on the bed and cracking open a can of beer. It's lukewarm, because of course this craphole motel doesn't have anything like a mini-fridge, but he'll take what he can get. At least Cas is sticking around and isn't demanding that Dean run off to the far end of the country to help with some heavenly matter or other. It feels a little bit like how things used to be, before Sam jumped into the Pit, only without the Apocalypse hanging over his head. It's a nice change, all things considered.

"Hey, Cas, I was wondering..." he starts, fiddling with the tab on the top of his can.

"What?"

"About Sam's soul," Dean says, trying to figure out how to word his question.

"I have no news about that, as I said. I promise I will apprise you of any developments on that score."

"No, no I get that, it's cool," he says hastily. "I just... there's something I don't get. Well, a lot of things I don't get, but this one's bugging me. We think that the same thing that brought Sam back brought back our grandfather, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so how come Samuel still has his soul? I mean, I don't get how something could pull only part of Sam out of the Cage. It just doesn't make any sense, you know? Why Sam? Why Samuel? Why not any other hunters? Why Sam specifically, if it was so hard that he couldn't bring all of him back?"

"You assume the rescuer was male."

Dean huffs in exasperation. "Can we not worry about pronouns for a minute? Why does Samuel still have his soul but Sam doesn't?"

Castiel looks away, and Dean could swear that he actually looks uncomfortable. Probably because he doesn't like not having all the answers for once, Dean thinks uncharitably.

"I don't know," Cas confesses after a moment. "I only know of two ways for a soul to be brought back, and neither applies to Sam. The first way is how we rescued you from Hell: and no such attempt has been made. No attempt had been made to harrow Hell for well over a thousand years before we rescued you and I pulled you from the Pit."

Dean resolutely does not think about that. "What's the other way?"

"A soul in Hell may be brought out by a demon, but I think it unlikely that Samuel was also in Hell. He would have been there for thousands of years the way you reckon time, undergoing torture. He would long since have turned into a demon."

"So is there a third option?"

"Heaven," Cas says succinctly. "If your grandfather was in Heaven, which is the more likely scenario, then a deal made with a demon could easily bring him back. Both you and your father made similar deals, and your soul and Sam's soul were restored to you upon your resurrection."

"So... it would have to be a demon?"

"No angel would make such a deal-we are not in the habit of trading one soul for another. I know of no other creature that is interested in human souls the way we are."

"Okay, so if it was a demon, how come Sam's soul wasn't part of the bargain?"

"I don't know," Cas says, a hint of exasperation coming through. "If I knew, then I would tell you. The only explanation I can think of is that Lucifer was simply too powerful in his own domain to allow the most important part of Sam to be taken from him when the extraction took place. It was not simply Sam's soul that descended into Hell, remember, it was all of him: he jumped in voluntarily, while he was still alive. Perhaps Lucifer allowed his body to be taken knowing that whoever was trying to take Sam away would not notice the lack of a soul before it was too late."

Dean lifts the can of beer to his mouth only to realize that it's empty, and crushes it in his fist before reaching for another one. "This sucks."

To his surprise, Castiel shrugs and nods. "As you say." He glances out of the window at the sky, as though trying to read something in the clouds gathering overhead. "I am afraid I've stayed too long. There are other matters that require my immediate attention."

"Yeah, okay. Don't be a stranger, Cas," Dean starts, but Castiel is already gone. "Fine," Dean mutters under his breath, and whips his empty beer can at the wastebasket with a little more force than is strictly necessary. "Don't let me keep you or anything."

~*~

A shower goes a long way to making him feel slightly more human, but even after that Dean is out of sorts, staring disconsolately at his reflection in the mirror. He hasn't shaved in a few days, and he's hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed and doing his very best impression of a hobo. Shaving would probably help with that, he thinks.

He's in the midst of rummaging through his duffel bag when his phone rings, and when he sees Sam's name on the call display he snatches it off the bedside table. "Everything okay?"

"Just fine. I think I got something, I'll be back in about fifteen minutes. Were you going out?"

"Yeah, maybe, but I'll wait." Dean finds his cannister of shaving cream, gives it an experimental shake, then sighs. "You mind if I borrow your shaving cream? I just ran out."

"Knock yourself out. Just replace it later."

"Right."

It's hard to even say thank you, even though Dean is pretty sure it's kind of dickish of him not to afford the guy who's mostly his brother even that small courtesy. His cannister of shaving cream joins the two cans of beer in the wastebasket, and he unzips Sam's duffel, going through his stuff a little more carefully than his own. At the very least, he can respect the fact that Sam has always liked to keep his stuff in a specific order. Still, duffel bags aren't exactly the easiest thing to search, and he ends up pulling out a lot of Sam's clothes and laying them aside carefully in order to get at his toiletry kit, and that's when he notices that Sam has added a new pocket to the inside of his bag, neatly sewn in place.

He shouldn't be snooping around, especially since it's something that Sam clearly wanted to keep secret, but now that he's seen it he can't bring himself to leave it alone. This Sam is an enigma at the best of times, totally unreadable, and if this can give Dean even a clue about how his mind works, then so much the better, he tells himself. He jams a couple of fingers into the narrow opening, feels them close around something that feels like cord or very supple wire, and tugs until it comes free to land in his palm.

He stares at the object for what feels like a really long time. It's not like he doesn't know all of its contours by heart, though, the number of years he wore it around his neck, fiddled with it when he was nervous, wrapped his hand around it whenever he needed to anchor himself with something familiar. Where the hell would this Sam have found his amulet? More importantly, why would he have kept it all this time? Dean juggles it in the palm of his hand. It feels warm in his grasp, as though it was jammed up against a radiator for a while and absorbed some of the heat. Dean has no idea what to even begin to do with it now that it's here. He hasn't thought about it since he tossed it, almost two years ago now, give or take a few weeks.

By the time Sam comes in he's shaved and buttoning up one of his good shirts. "Took you long enough," Dean says, maybe a bit more gruffly than he intended.

"You're the one with the car. I didn't exactly want to run back here, sweat is a bitch to get out of these suits."

"So what's this?" Dean holds up the amulet, letting it dangle at the end of its cord.

Sam looks at him like he's lost his mind, then carefully plucks the amulet from his fingers. "Uh, it's the amulet I gave you when we were kids. You having some kind of amnesia problem?"

"Don't be a smartass. I mean, where did you get it? How the hell did you find it? Why do you even have it?"

Sam seems completely unconcerned, even though Dean thinks his own heart might be in danger of exploding on the spot, it's beating so hard. "I've always had it. I mean, I remember picking it up out of the trash can when you threw it out, and then I kept it. I don't really remember why I did it, but I remember that it was important, or something."

Dean shakes his head. "But... okay. But you-Sam jumped into the Pit with it, right? Or did he leave it behind?"

"No, I had it in my pocket. Just, when I got out of Hell, I still had it. I was in a field, naked as a jaybird except for that. It was around my neck." Sam shrugs. "I figured it had to have come with me for a reason, except nobody could tell me what that reason was."

"And you... what? You just shoved it into your bag and never bothered to tell me about it?"

Sam just looks confused. "I put it somewhere it wouldn't get lost, and I pretty much didn't think about it after that. Are you upset? You seem upset."

"I'm not upset!" Dean snaps. "I just want to know why you kept this a secret!"

"I didn't keep it a secret," Sam insists. "I didn't think it was important. I mean, you said yourself it was useless, right? It's a worthless piece of junk, and you threw it away. I just kept it because it was the only physical thing that came out of Hell with me, and I figured someday we might need it for something. Why are you getting all bent out of shape?"

Dean blows out a long breath. "You know what? Never mind."

Sam holds it out. "Technically, I guess it's yours. Did you want it back?"

"No," he shakes his head. "I shouldn't have been messing with your stuff anyway. Keep it."

"Okay," Sam kneels next to his bag and puts it back in the little pocket. "I don't care if you look through my stuff, there aren't any secrets in here. If I had secrets, which I don't, I'd hide them way better than that. I just didn't want it to get lost, which is why I sewed it in there. So, we going out?"

Dean doesn't feel remotely like going out now, but he's already gotten dressed and shaved and it seems like a waste at this point. "Yeah, sure. You spot any good bars around?"

Sam flashes him another of those grins that give Dean the creeps, because they're always accompanied by that same fish-eyed stare. "Yup. Plenty of cute girls, it doesn't look half-bad in terms of the selection, and it's not expensive. I'll fill you in on what I found out while we're there. First round's on me, though by the looks of it you've got a bit of a head start," he jerks his head toward the wastebasket with the two empty cans in it. Two years ago, that would have been Sam's way of implying that Dean was drinking too much. Now, though, it's a straight statement of fact, and all it does is depress Dean more.

"All right then, Dexter, lead the way to the inexpensive booze."

~*~

"So I think we're actually dealing with the spirit of the doctor himself," Sam tells him over their first round of drinks. "The list of victims is almost longer than my arm, but none of them really fit the profile, you know? I don't think any of them knew what he was up to."

Dean pops a handful of peanuts and finds himself wishing they were pretzels. There's a couple of cute girls in dresses that reveal way more than they hide sitting at the bar a few feet from their table giving both of them a very appreciative once-over, but he barely spares them a glance.

"Yeah? Okay. Why the doctor? I'm guessing that he's dead?"

"Yup. Committed suicide when he found out that the authorities were onto him. I guess he figured he wouldn't stand a chance in court, so he sneaked into the radiology section and basically nuked himself, the same way he was doing to his patients, only a lot more. Died pretty horribly within a week, according to hospital records. Let me tell you, it's not a nice way to go."

"Okay. So Doctor Mengele goes nuts, kills a bunch of patients, then offs himself. You think he's trying to carry on where he left off?"

"Sounds like it to me. It makes more sense than it being one of his patients, don't you think?"

"Victimology is off, though," Dean points out. "Why not go after cancer patients like he was doing when he was alive? I mean, remember that ghost nurse who was killing off the guys in that prison? That made a lot more sense."

"She was killed in a prison riot."

Dean isn't even sure how that's relevant. "Okay, whatever. We'll look into your doctor. It's easier than tracking down all eleven billionty of his patients, anyway."

"Tomorrow, right?" Sam shoots him a look that Dean can only describe as predatory. "I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure those two girls over at the bar are game for pretty much anything tonight. Be my wingman?"

The thought turns Dean's stomach. "Uh, pass. I've had a couple too many, I think," he gestures futilely at the table, even though he hasn't had nearly enough alcohol to get more than a little buzzed. "You, uh, go on and do... whatever, though. You know, if it floats your boat, or... yeah. Just don't bring them back to the room, all right?"

Sam shrugs. "Suit yourself, bro. You go get your beauty sleep, and I'm going to go score. Don't wait up!"

"Never do anymore," Dean mutters, tossing a couple of bills on the table to cover his tab. Sam can pay for his own damned drinks.

The night air feels a lot better on his face once he's outside and free from the cloying atmosphere of the bar-too much perfume and cigarettes all mingling together. Maybe bars aren't really his scene anymore, he thinks, trying not to let the notion depress him too much. He takes a roundabout route back to the motel, reluctant to simply give up and go to bed right away, but eventually he finds himself standing in front of the door to the room and almost entirely sober, the moon high in the sky overhead.

Dean empties what's left of his flask, decides he'll refill it in the morning, crawls under the covers of his bed, and falls asleep almost immediately. He jerks awake again sometime later, both surprised to find that it's still dark and surprised that he managed to fall asleep at all. He sits up blearily, trying to figure out just what it was that woke him, until he registers the sound of quiet coughing and the toilet flushing in the bathroom. He makes a face, but swings his legs over the side of the bed, pushes himself to his feet to go knock on the door.

"Okay in there?"

"Fine," Sam's voice is a little strangled. It's a sound Dean knows well, and means Sam has been throwing up. It's more than a little weird that he still sounds the same, even if it's not really Sam in that body anymore. "Must've eaten something bad."

Dean nudges the door open when he finds it unlocked. Sam is head-down over the sink, rinsing out his mouth. "You sure? You've had a cast-iron stomach since you came back. I mean, Sam was always eating these froufy little salads, but you've pretty much been eating whatever without any problems."

Sam reaches for his toothbrush and smears toothpaste over it, making a face at himself in the mirror-probably because his mouth still tastes like puke. "No idea. Whatever it is, something's not agreeing with me. Feel like crap."

Worry-about-Sam appears to be hard-written into Dean's genetic code or something, because he takes a step forward into the room, already checking Sam over for visual cues that he's sick. It's a little hard to tell, because this Sam has none of the usual tells that Dean usually looks for. He's flushed though, his cheeks beginning to blossom bright red with what could be a fever, and there are reddish patches appearing on his neck.

"You look like you might have a fever," he concedes. "Maybe you picked up a bug at the hospital? I didn't even know you could get sick. How does that work?"

"Beats me," Sam says, his words distorted around his toothbrush. "It's not like I came out of Hell with an instruction manual, you know?"

"Guess not. Normally I'd tell you to get some sleep, but..."

"Yeah," Sam spits the toothpaste into the sink. "I'll just do some research, or whatever. Keep myself busy. We have Advil, it should take care of whatever this is. Go back to bed, I don't want to deal with you tomorrow if you're a crabby, sleep-deprived zombie."

"Yeah, fuck you too," Dean says without energy.

If Sam doesn't want his help, then screw him, he thinks, and simply goes back to bed and pulls his pillow back over his head so that he doesn't have to be aware of the light from the laptop, glowing softly from the next bed for the rest of the night, reminding him of his failures with every passing second.

~*~

Dean sleeps badly, kept awake by the sound of Sam shuffling to the bathroom every few minutes. Eventually, though, he does manage to fall into a slightly deeper sleep, unbroken by outside noises. When he wakens the next morning, he finds Sam has ditched the laptop in favour of staying in the bathroom. Dean finds him sitting on the floor next to the toilet, leaning against the grimy tiled wall, his eyes closed against the harsh glare from the overhead light. Dean hesitates in the doorway, watching curiously as Sam's chest rises and falls evenly, one arm draped over his middle. He looks terrible, sweaty and flushed, his hair clinging to his face, and there are red patches of skin on his arms and legs that look like they're beginning to blister.

"Sam?" he says softly, almost reluctant to wake him if this is the first time Sam has managed to sleep in over a year and a half.

Sam's eyes snap open immediately, though. "What?"

Dean moves closer and sits on the edge of the tub beside him. "You look like shit, dude."

"Feel like shit," Sam confirms. "Was up half the night losing everything I ate for the past two years, or what felt like it anyway."

"Ugh," Dean musters a little bit of sympathy. "Just puking? Or-"

"Or," Sam agrees, and Dean winces.

"I never even heard you."

"You sleep like the damned dead," Sam mutters, licking his lips in a futile attempt to moisten them.

In spite of his better judgement Dean leans over and brushes the back of his fingers against Sam's forehead. "Yeah, I've felt ovens less hot than that. You still sick to your stomach? Okay," he blows out a breath, worry warring with tired resignation somewhere near his sternum. "Figures we wouldn't get out of this unscathed. You thinking what I'm thinking?"

Sam tries unsuccessfully to push himself further upright, subsides again and lets his eyes close. "Symptoms are about right. Was looking them up last night, before my intestines decided they'd rather be on the outside of my body. Fever's getting worse, too," he says matter-of-factly, as though he's discussing some random guy off the street instead of describing symptoms that mean he might very well die in a couple of days.

"Hospital it is, then. Think you can make it to the car if I help you? Sam," he snaps his fingers above Sam's face when he doesn't answer, and waits a tense moment before Sam's eyes flutter open again.

"What?"

"You with me? I asked if you could get to the car on your own power."

Sam isn't quite focusing on him, though. "I, um... I was trying to think if... What were you saying?"

"Fuck," Dean mutters to himself. "Okay, we're getting up. On three. Ready? One, two, three!"

He doesn't wait for Sam to be ready, just shoves an arm under Sam's shoulders and hauls him to his feet. Sam wavers a bit but rallies after a few seconds, letting Dean take some of his weight.

"Feel like shit," he murmurs, almost to himself. He sounds surprised, like he doesn't really understand what's going on, and it occurs to Dean that in the few months they've been together he doesn't remember Sam so much as getting the sniffles. He has no idea what sickness is like if your soul isn't in the same zip code as you are, and maybe Sam has no idea either. What a fucking mess this is turning out to be, he thinks to himself.

It takes a little bit of coaxing and a whole lot of careful manoeuvring to get Sam all the way into the passenger seat of the Impala. It's not that he won't cooperate-he’s actually being more compliant than Dean remembers him ever being when he was sick before, back when he still had his soul on board-it’s that he's not really lucid enough to follow Dean's instructions, keeps getting confused and trying to go back to the room and forcing Dean to shove him in the right direction. If Sam were a little smaller, or at least didn't have fourteen tons of muscle on him, this might be easier, Dean thinks darkly.

By the time they get to the hospital Sam's got his wits back about him, though for how long is anyone's guess. He gets whisked away from Dean on a gurney the minute the doctors find out what his symptoms are, leaving Dean with yet another pile of paperwork to fill out. At least he already knows the doctor who'll be treating his brother, he tells himself, and resists the urge to kick the nearest wall or, worse, to simply leave all the paperwork there and go find the nearest bar to lose himself in the bottom of a glass.

It's only about forty minutes later, but it feels like an eternity by the time Dr. Rayner comes out to talk to him, her expression grim.

"I am so sorry," she blurts, and he can only nod.

"Yeah."

"If you need anything, to contact his family or to arrange for anything at all, please let me know, I'll be happy to help."

"It's fine. He doesn't really have any family, but I'll stick with him. We need to figure out what's causing this, though. Uh, is he awake? I need to talk to him, figure out just what he was doing before he got sick."

"He's awake, but we haven't been able to bring down his fever much. He's... I'm afraid it looks worse than the others," she confides in a low tone. "Each patient has been exhibiting signs of higher and higher levels of exposure to whatever's been causing this. I can't even begin to explain it, it makes absolutely no sense. The progression of symptoms should be the same, not exponential."

He gives her arm an absent pat. "You're running bloodwork, I assume?"

"Of course."

"Okay, let me know what you find. I'm going to see if he can talk to me, try to get something that makes sense out of all of this."

"I don't know how this could have happened," she all but wails, wringing her hands. "He can't have been so close to the source of contamination. Unless he went somewhere without you?"

"He might have. I'll see what I can find out, and I'll keep you informed."

He already knows the labs aren't going to find anything, but at the very least it'll keep her out of his hair until he's able to deal with the ghost that's causing this. He barely listens to her assurances, simply walks away from her and heads directly into the exam room where they're holding Sam until they can get a bed ready for him upstairs. Sam's lying on the same gurney, eyes open but glassy with fever, staring at the ceiling. Dean pulls up a chair but doesn't sit, leans on the back of it.

"Hey. How you doing?"

Sam turns his head a little to face him, and Dean winces as he sees a patch of skin beginning to blister and peel along his jawline. "Pretty sure this is bad," Sam rasps. "They can't even tell why I'm not unconscious yet. Maybe it's the whole soullessness thing."

"You've been unconscious before, can't be that."

"Guess I'm just resilient," Sam fiddles a little with the IV sticking into his arm until Dean reaches out and puts a hand over his to stop him. "I think it's ghost fever."

"What?"

"You know, like a Buruburu," Sam says, fingers moving restlessly under Dean's. "The crazy doctor commits suicide by extreme radiation poisoning, and now something's set him off and he's making the rest of us relive what he felt when he died."

"Shit," Dean has none-too-fond memories of that particular experience. "But a salt-'n'-burn should work, right? Torch the remains, problem solved?"

"Probably," Sam agrees, but his voice is fading. "Bobby knew, last time. Helped figure it out. You should call him, ask him about it."

"The last time, as I recall, you both came up with the idea of scaring the ghost to death. Not your best plan ever, if you want my opinion."

Sam chuckles at that. "Guess not. Probably won't work here anyway. Just... keep your options open. Hey, you got the laptop?"

"I put it in the car. Didn't want to leave it in the motel, so it's in the trunk."

Sam nods. "Bring it before you go? I'm going to keep looking, see if there's anything we missed."

Dean's stomach clenches unpleasantly. "How about you concentrate on getting better, huh?"

"That's exactly what I'm doing," Sam points out, infuriatingly reasonably for a guy whose brain appears to be cooking in his head. "As long as I'm awake, it makes more sense for me to keep researching than just to lie here and stare at the ceiling. It's not like I'm going to sleep, right? So unless I'm unconscious, I may as well make better use of my time."

"Fine. I'll be right back."

By the time he gets back they're already wheeling Sam up to his room. Dean follows close on their heels, leaves the laptop on the table by the bed. Sam's eyes are closed, forehead dotted with beads of sweat. Even if he's not sleeping, Dean figures it's better if he rests. Can't put Sam's soul back in his body if it's dead, he tells himself, and resists the urge to smooth Sam's hair away from his face.




[Part 2]