Sick Days - Chapter 9
Title: Sick Days
Summary: Dean's obsession with apparently random medical deaths mirrored from his past lands him and Sam in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Born Under a Bad Sign'
Word Count: 3,379 for this part
Author's Note: Takes place in 2007 post 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with flashbacks to 1987. Many thanks to Amberdreams for the wonderful editing assistance. Master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 8
Sam had been holding out hope for a dirt road, open field or anything else that looked passable. He didn’t care that Dean would kill him for taking the freshly rebuilt Impala off road. No such luck anyway. When the authorities had said that there was only one road out of town they hadn’t been kidding.
There was the one road and then there was dense forest and then there was the ocean. He supposed there was always the option of taking a boat, but aside from the fact that the harbor was no doubt being watched it was time to be honest with himself. Dean was right.
There was no running from this. The timeframe on this disease was too short. Too short to be biological and too short for Sam to waste precious time trying to get Dean to more people that couldn’t help him. If he was going to save his brother he was going to have to do it himself.
While it was about the last thing he had wanted to do, there wasn’t anything that he could do with Dean aside from bring him back to the motel. His brother had been out cold for most of Sam's attempts to get them out of town and hadn’t been together enough to tell Sam when he was going to vomit. Dean needed water, clean clothes and he needed to be in bed. He didn’t need anymore of getting jostled around in a car that was just driving in circles.
Sam was surprised how hard it was not being able to talk to Dean about what was going on. For as independent as he thought he was, until he was unable to get feedback from his brother he hadn’t realized how much he depended on bouncing ideas off of him. Right now Sam was pretty sure that Dean didn’t even know that they were back at the same motel let alone what was happening to him.
He had gone through every piece of information he could find on the town, the sanitarium, on epidemics and plagues. Anything that could even begin to explain what was happening to his brother and the other people in this town.
Like Dean had said, if this was a standard contagion there was no reason why only Dean would be affected. In past plagues some people survived, others didn't. No matter how anyone tried to make sense of it, it just happened. But even a lot of those survivors got sick and just happened to survive it.
He'd been at Dean's side for nearly their entire time in Oregon. With as much as he'd been cleaning Dean up there was no way he hadn't been exposed to any pathogen in massive quantity. Yet his only problem was that he was exhausted from watching his brother suffer. In families all across the town the disease was doing the same thing.
Dean had thought this was a case because it seemed like something was picking and choosing who it was taking in the families. Fathers and sons. It was why he had thought Dean had come, but it turned out that at least one of the original adult victims hadn’t been a father. Dean was right that he needed to get a hold of that list of infected that the hospital was keeping, but Dean was in no condition to be left to take care of himself.
Right now figuring out the symbols they’d found at the sanitarium was the best lead that he could work on from here. He’d downloaded the photos he’d taken onto his laptop and had been trying to match them up to anything. They just weren’t normal ritual markings and he didn’t have the resources here to go into the obscure. Bobby might know what they were but there was no way to accurately enough describe the markings over the phone.
It had taken a long series of random internet searches for him to realized that he was looking for the wrong thing. There were so many different flowing symbols in the circle because the symbols weren’t symbols like he was thinking. They were letters. They just weren’t characters from the Latin alphabet.
As far as he could tell from the pictures he’d found online, they were maybe Arabic or some version of it. The problem was that he didn’t know a word of Arabic and he wasn’t having any success with the online dictionaries.
He lifted his head from the computer screen as he saw Dean shift out of the corner of his eye. He looked towards his brother in the naive hope that something had changed for the better. But if anything, Dean looked worse. At least when he had been asleep Dean had almost seemed comfortable. Now on the edge of waking his brother’s expression was twisted in sadness.
~~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 1987
“Daddy?”
Dean’s small voice wavered as he desperately looked up to his dad silently begging him to see him. He struggled to keep the tough face that he was supposed to wear. Always he tried to be strong like Mom would have wanted and like Dad told him to, but he didn’t know how he could be strong now. Whether or not he saw him, Dad was dead. And it was his fault.
He hadn’t come soon enough. He had known something was wrong for days. Dad had needed him and he hadn’t come. And Dad knew it too. Dean was sure that was why Dad’s ghost wouldn’t look at him. Dean didn’t blame him.
Now he was going to be alone. They would have to go live with Pastor Jim and once Pastor Jim found out that he had let both Mom and Dad die he wouldn’t let him stay to take care of Sammy anymore. If he stayed with Sammy, his little brother would die too.
His jaw was tensed so hard to stop the quivering of his lip that it hurt. Despite his best effort, a tear rolled over his eyelashes and streamed down his cheek. He just wanted his family back.
“Don’t be afraid, child.”
Dean’s big moisture rimmed eyes looked away from the blank ghost of his father and up to the ugly old ghost lady that had just spoken to him. It wasn’t until he really looked at her that he realized she wasn’t only watching, but smiling like she was happy. Seeing her pleasure in this broke something in Dean.
The grief in his eyes melted to something far darker. She’d done this to his dad. No matter how much he wanted it, there was no bringing Dad back, but he’d seen the ghost lady eat the boy and she wasn’t going to do the same thing to Dad’s ghost.
“You should be scared,” he told her.
He took a wide stance that was nearly a perfect miniature replica of the one his Dad would have taken. Rigidly he stood with trembling hands as he aimed the pistol squarely at the ghost lady’s softly smiling face. Right now all he wanted was to hurt her. Rage made him forget how ineffective the gun would be until he had emptied the entire clip into her.
~~~
“Sorry...I’m sorry, Dad...” Dean mumbled desperately in his sleep.
As he began to wake Dean quickly turned a few shades greener, but Sam had already abandoned his laptop and was on his way to Dean’s side. He slipped into the chair he had stationed next to Dean’s bed and leaned in towards his brother.
"Dean, hey, you’re okay, man.” He rested his hand on Dean’s forearm and gave it a gentle shake to try to pull him out of whatever nightmare he was having.
Dean almost opened his eyes but then he clenched them closed. Sam clicked off the lamp beside Dean's bed, but Dean continued to wince. His brother shifted his weight then put his hand on the edge of the bed like he thought he was getting up. Sam gently redirected his hand to stop him.
"You need something?"
Dean gave a barely perceptible nod as he kept his eyes cast down. “Gonna be sick again.”
It came out as a whimper and it was nearly enough to make Sam sick too. Dean was the strong one, the one that never let anyone see him blink. It was then as he looked down at his trembling brother that Sam’s heart sank. After everything Dean had survived, the possibility suddenly struck him that it might be some unseen disease to take his brother. He knew this was the last way Dean would want to go.
“It’s okay,” Sam replied with a forced nonchalance.
He helped Dean roll onto his side just enough so that he could lean over the edge of the bed and not choke on the off chance that there was really anything left in his stomach. Despite Sam’s best efforts he hadn’t gotten Dean to drink that much and everything he did drink just seemed to come back up.
As he moved Dean’s necklace to the side again, his fingers lingered on the talisman his brother had kept so close for so many years. At one point he had thought Dean wore it all the time for his sake, but Dean had kept it even when he’d left for college and Dean didn’t hold on to much. It had never made sense to Sam when he was younger, but he understood Dean now and he got what the talisman meant. That was why he hated the fact that Dean wouldn’t let him take it off.
It wasn’t that he minded moving it out of the way. It was just that Dean had taken everything else off when the fever kicked in but had been ready to start throwing punches when Sam had tried to take the necklace. It wasn’t as if he ever paid attention, but he was sure Dean must take it off when he took showers. Yet Dean was acting like now was different and that made him afraid that Dean’s mind had come to the same conclusion his had.
Sam held the blood splattered ice bucket out with one hand and rested the other on Dean’s bare shoulder. His brother’s skin was far too hot to the touch, but he was distracted from that fact as Dean’s entire body shuddered. It was more blood coming up and Sam didn’t know where it was all coming from or how to stop it.
It seemed like forever before Dean was laying back on the bed. Even after he’d finished cleaning his brother's face Dean’s fatigued eyes were still on him. Sam settled back in the chair beside Dean’s bed and waited for whatever Dean obviously wanted to say.
“You asked me why,” Dean finally spoke.
His voice was barely above a whisper and Sam wished he wouldn’t say anything at all. As much as Sam needed to talk, Dean's breathing sounded pained enough without bringing a conversation into the equation. All Dean was going to do was use up the energy he already didn’t have, but if his big brother really wanted to talk Sam couldn’t bring himself to tell him to stop.
“Why what, Dean?”
He asked his big brother why about a lot of things, always had, but he rarely got an answer. He couldn't begin to guess which why his brother was referring to.
“Why being sick was different.”
“Yeah, but we can talk about it later. Right now you just need to rest.”
“I can rest tomorrow...when I’m dead.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“And you’re not dying either. I’m going to get you better.”
“Can we not do this? Please? I’m tired of pretending. Hell, I'm just tired.”
The pleading look in Dean’s eyes made Sam bite back further protest even though he knew he didn't want Dean to continue. He knew that look. He knew this speech. They both knew what was happening but saying it out loud solidified it.
“I always knew I’d die bloody,” Dean managed to continue. “Comes with the life. It’s why I never should have pulled you back into it. I was just scared. I don’t care about dying, but living alone...I’m not strong enough.”
“Dean...” Sam didn't want Dean to have to say it even more than he just flat out didn't want to hear it.
“This is my death bed. Shut up and let me talk.”
As amused as Sam wasn’t, there was no use in trying to stop his brother or arguing with him. Even when he was barely conscious Dean was about as stubborn as they came. With Sam's silent acknowledgment Dean looked back at him.
“It just got me thinking...if I was so damn sure how I was going die - what did I think would happen to you? I was a selfish bastard for doing this to you. Just like Dad.”
“No. All of this, Mom, Dad, Jessica - you. It’s because of what I am. You didn’t do this to me, Dean.”
“I was supposed to protect you.”
Sam opened his mouth to protest, but the flash of desperation that crossed Dean’s eyes stopped him.
“I don’t want to die like this,” Dean breathed. “It’s past my time. I know it, and if some demon gutted me, if I screwed up...so be it. I asked for it, but this.…”
There was so much that Sam wanted to say but he couldn’t trust himself to say anything right now and he sure wasn't going to say anything that would feed into Dean's notion that this was the end of the road. As long as they were both still breathing there was still a chance of stopping this.
“You’ve got to promise me something, Sammy.”
Sam nodded before slowly bringing his eyes back to Dean’s. “What's that?” he asked hesitantly.
“Promise me you'll get out.”
“Out of where?”
“Out of this. All of it. Screw the Demon. Screw everything. I don't care anymore. I can’t die knowing I left you in this fight alone.”
Sam needed Dean to stop believing that there was no way out of this and start believing that he deserved to live. Dean was stuck on this notion that he should be dead. His brother couldn’t have things more backwards in his head.
Dad hadn’t sacrificed his soul for Dean just so that Dean could throw away his second chance. But telling Dean that for the hundredth time wouldn’t change what Dean believed. Sam wasn’t even sure if Dean wanted to be here so if protecting his little brother was the only thing that was keeping Dean fighting then Sam had no qualms about playing that card.
“Then I guess you can’t die, because you’re right about one thing - I can’t do this without you," Sam replied with a forced strength. “Get some rest, okay?”
Sam stood up and moved away from the bed. For both their sake he pretended it was just sweat slipping down Dean's tensed jaw. For a few minutes longer Sam listened to Dean's hitched breaths until they went quiet. He almost forced himself to return to his laptop when Dean spoke again.
“Sam...”
He let the room lapse into silence for a long moment and swallowed hard before answering. “Yeah, Dean?”
“I did see something at the sanitarium.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. After I fell…I saw myself.”
Sam turned back to him with furrowed brows. “What do you mean?”
“I looked up and I saw me. And at the hospital...the spirits, in the crowd...I think they were the people there...the sick ones.”
He ran his hand through his hair as he thought about what Dean was telling him. It sounded crazy but it was an awfully coherent assertion for someone that was just delusional. Dean had been right when he’d said that it wasn’t unusual that the people marked as insane had the real story.
“They weren’t ghosts.”
“Don’t think so,” Dean agreed hazily.
It would explain how Dean could remember having seen Dad as a ghost even when Dad had still been alive. He was about to ask Dean more but his brother’s eyes had fallen closed. The information was enough to get him started, but he couldn’t be here with Dean and out stopping this at the same time.
Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he looked back to Dean's still form once more before hitting a button on his speed dial and slipping out of the room. Standing right outside the door he looked out over the town from the balcony. Everything about the early morning was still and quiet except for the occasional sirens from an emergency vehicle.
When someone finally picked up he instantly recognized the voice on the other end of the line, but it wasn’t the one he had been expecting to get on Ellen’s emergency cell. It was Jo. Suddenly he forgot everything he was about to say. He hadn’t exactly expected her to be back with her mom.
“Uh...hello?” Jo prompted impatiently. “It’s like four in the morning so this better be good.”
“Um hey, Jo, it’s Sam.”
“Sam. You didn’t try to kill Dean again did you?” His jaw clamped shut and he must have lapsed into silence for longer than he’d thought. “Sam? You still there?”
“Is your mom okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“Is she around?”
“Might be. What’s going on?”
“Jo, honey, who is it?” he heard Ellen ask sleepily in the background.
“It’s just Sam.”
There was some kind of hushed argument that he couldn’t make out before Ellen came on the line. “Hey, Sam. I’ve been worried about you boys. I was going to call in the morning to check how the case was going. Oh, and Bobby had a message for ya.”
“Why didn’t Bobby call us?”
“He tried. He couldn’t get through on Dean’s phone and he didn’t have your new number. Is Dean’s phone working?”
“Um…I don’t know. No,” Sam remembered. “The battery was dead.” Just like the flashlight and remote. Sam’s mind began to wander when Ellen’s voice pulled him back.
“Sam.”
It was creepy how she did that. Just by the way she said his name he could tell she knew something was seriously wrong. While he’d never had a mother watching over him, he imagined that the way Ellen spoke was the epitome of one. He knew Dean thought so and that was more than half the reason he’d called.
“Is Dean okay?”
“No,” he replied honestly. He didn’t have time to dance around what was going on. “Ellen, we need help.”
By Ellen’s quick response, he must have sounded as lost as he felt. “Alright. It’s okay, Sam. You just tell me where you are.”
“We’re off the Oregon Coast Highway just north of…”
“The Oregon coast? Sam…tell me you boys aren’t in Green Bay.”
“How did you know where we are?”
“You listen up, you gotta get Dean out of there straight away.”
“Already tried. The road is blocked and he can’t walk out.”
“How sick is he?”
It already sounded like Ellen knew more about the situation than he did. “How did you know he was sick?”
“That’s what Bobby called about. I was supposed to tell you boys to steer clear of the west coast. Damn it, Sam! You said you were taking the case in Philadelphia.”
“Dean turned around in Illinois to come here. Ellen, what’s happening?”
“We don’t know the whole story yet, but it sure isn’t just some people getting sick. You’re safe, Dean’s not. I’m sorry, that’s all I got. I didn’t think you boys would be in the middle of this. Call Bobby.”
“I tried calling Bobby earlier. He wasn’t answering.”
“He was on the road tonight, he should be back in now. Try him again.”
“I will, thanks.”
“And, Sam, where are you boys staying?”
“We’re at the Bay Motor Lodge. Room 26...but the whole town’s locked down.”
“You and Dean need help, don’t ya?”
“Well, yeah…”
“Then there’s nothing that’s going to keep me out. You boys hang in there, Sam. We’re just over the border in northern California - don’t ask. We’ll be there soon as we can.”
Continue to Chapter 10
Summary: Dean's obsession with apparently random medical deaths mirrored from his past lands him and Sam in the middle of a deadly epidemic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Born Under a Bad Sign'
Word Count: 3,379 for this part
Author's Note: Takes place in 2007 post 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with flashbacks to 1987. Many thanks to Amberdreams for the wonderful editing assistance. Master post can be found here.
~~~
Continued from Chapter 8
Sam had been holding out hope for a dirt road, open field or anything else that looked passable. He didn’t care that Dean would kill him for taking the freshly rebuilt Impala off road. No such luck anyway. When the authorities had said that there was only one road out of town they hadn’t been kidding.
There was the one road and then there was dense forest and then there was the ocean. He supposed there was always the option of taking a boat, but aside from the fact that the harbor was no doubt being watched it was time to be honest with himself. Dean was right.
There was no running from this. The timeframe on this disease was too short. Too short to be biological and too short for Sam to waste precious time trying to get Dean to more people that couldn’t help him. If he was going to save his brother he was going to have to do it himself.
While it was about the last thing he had wanted to do, there wasn’t anything that he could do with Dean aside from bring him back to the motel. His brother had been out cold for most of Sam's attempts to get them out of town and hadn’t been together enough to tell Sam when he was going to vomit. Dean needed water, clean clothes and he needed to be in bed. He didn’t need anymore of getting jostled around in a car that was just driving in circles.
Sam was surprised how hard it was not being able to talk to Dean about what was going on. For as independent as he thought he was, until he was unable to get feedback from his brother he hadn’t realized how much he depended on bouncing ideas off of him. Right now Sam was pretty sure that Dean didn’t even know that they were back at the same motel let alone what was happening to him.
He had gone through every piece of information he could find on the town, the sanitarium, on epidemics and plagues. Anything that could even begin to explain what was happening to his brother and the other people in this town.
Like Dean had said, if this was a standard contagion there was no reason why only Dean would be affected. In past plagues some people survived, others didn't. No matter how anyone tried to make sense of it, it just happened. But even a lot of those survivors got sick and just happened to survive it.
He'd been at Dean's side for nearly their entire time in Oregon. With as much as he'd been cleaning Dean up there was no way he hadn't been exposed to any pathogen in massive quantity. Yet his only problem was that he was exhausted from watching his brother suffer. In families all across the town the disease was doing the same thing.
Dean had thought this was a case because it seemed like something was picking and choosing who it was taking in the families. Fathers and sons. It was why he had thought Dean had come, but it turned out that at least one of the original adult victims hadn’t been a father. Dean was right that he needed to get a hold of that list of infected that the hospital was keeping, but Dean was in no condition to be left to take care of himself.
Right now figuring out the symbols they’d found at the sanitarium was the best lead that he could work on from here. He’d downloaded the photos he’d taken onto his laptop and had been trying to match them up to anything. They just weren’t normal ritual markings and he didn’t have the resources here to go into the obscure. Bobby might know what they were but there was no way to accurately enough describe the markings over the phone.
It had taken a long series of random internet searches for him to realized that he was looking for the wrong thing. There were so many different flowing symbols in the circle because the symbols weren’t symbols like he was thinking. They were letters. They just weren’t characters from the Latin alphabet.
As far as he could tell from the pictures he’d found online, they were maybe Arabic or some version of it. The problem was that he didn’t know a word of Arabic and he wasn’t having any success with the online dictionaries.
He lifted his head from the computer screen as he saw Dean shift out of the corner of his eye. He looked towards his brother in the naive hope that something had changed for the better. But if anything, Dean looked worse. At least when he had been asleep Dean had almost seemed comfortable. Now on the edge of waking his brother’s expression was twisted in sadness.
~~~~
Inside the Krobath Sanitarium - 1987
“Daddy?”
Dean’s small voice wavered as he desperately looked up to his dad silently begging him to see him. He struggled to keep the tough face that he was supposed to wear. Always he tried to be strong like Mom would have wanted and like Dad told him to, but he didn’t know how he could be strong now. Whether or not he saw him, Dad was dead. And it was his fault.
He hadn’t come soon enough. He had known something was wrong for days. Dad had needed him and he hadn’t come. And Dad knew it too. Dean was sure that was why Dad’s ghost wouldn’t look at him. Dean didn’t blame him.
Now he was going to be alone. They would have to go live with Pastor Jim and once Pastor Jim found out that he had let both Mom and Dad die he wouldn’t let him stay to take care of Sammy anymore. If he stayed with Sammy, his little brother would die too.
His jaw was tensed so hard to stop the quivering of his lip that it hurt. Despite his best effort, a tear rolled over his eyelashes and streamed down his cheek. He just wanted his family back.
“Don’t be afraid, child.”
Dean’s big moisture rimmed eyes looked away from the blank ghost of his father and up to the ugly old ghost lady that had just spoken to him. It wasn’t until he really looked at her that he realized she wasn’t only watching, but smiling like she was happy. Seeing her pleasure in this broke something in Dean.
The grief in his eyes melted to something far darker. She’d done this to his dad. No matter how much he wanted it, there was no bringing Dad back, but he’d seen the ghost lady eat the boy and she wasn’t going to do the same thing to Dad’s ghost.
“You should be scared,” he told her.
He took a wide stance that was nearly a perfect miniature replica of the one his Dad would have taken. Rigidly he stood with trembling hands as he aimed the pistol squarely at the ghost lady’s softly smiling face. Right now all he wanted was to hurt her. Rage made him forget how ineffective the gun would be until he had emptied the entire clip into her.
~~~
“Sorry...I’m sorry, Dad...” Dean mumbled desperately in his sleep.
As he began to wake Dean quickly turned a few shades greener, but Sam had already abandoned his laptop and was on his way to Dean’s side. He slipped into the chair he had stationed next to Dean’s bed and leaned in towards his brother.
"Dean, hey, you’re okay, man.” He rested his hand on Dean’s forearm and gave it a gentle shake to try to pull him out of whatever nightmare he was having.
Dean almost opened his eyes but then he clenched them closed. Sam clicked off the lamp beside Dean's bed, but Dean continued to wince. His brother shifted his weight then put his hand on the edge of the bed like he thought he was getting up. Sam gently redirected his hand to stop him.
"You need something?"
Dean gave a barely perceptible nod as he kept his eyes cast down. “Gonna be sick again.”
It came out as a whimper and it was nearly enough to make Sam sick too. Dean was the strong one, the one that never let anyone see him blink. It was then as he looked down at his trembling brother that Sam’s heart sank. After everything Dean had survived, the possibility suddenly struck him that it might be some unseen disease to take his brother. He knew this was the last way Dean would want to go.
“It’s okay,” Sam replied with a forced nonchalance.
He helped Dean roll onto his side just enough so that he could lean over the edge of the bed and not choke on the off chance that there was really anything left in his stomach. Despite Sam’s best efforts he hadn’t gotten Dean to drink that much and everything he did drink just seemed to come back up.
As he moved Dean’s necklace to the side again, his fingers lingered on the talisman his brother had kept so close for so many years. At one point he had thought Dean wore it all the time for his sake, but Dean had kept it even when he’d left for college and Dean didn’t hold on to much. It had never made sense to Sam when he was younger, but he understood Dean now and he got what the talisman meant. That was why he hated the fact that Dean wouldn’t let him take it off.
It wasn’t that he minded moving it out of the way. It was just that Dean had taken everything else off when the fever kicked in but had been ready to start throwing punches when Sam had tried to take the necklace. It wasn’t as if he ever paid attention, but he was sure Dean must take it off when he took showers. Yet Dean was acting like now was different and that made him afraid that Dean’s mind had come to the same conclusion his had.
Sam held the blood splattered ice bucket out with one hand and rested the other on Dean’s bare shoulder. His brother’s skin was far too hot to the touch, but he was distracted from that fact as Dean’s entire body shuddered. It was more blood coming up and Sam didn’t know where it was all coming from or how to stop it.
It seemed like forever before Dean was laying back on the bed. Even after he’d finished cleaning his brother's face Dean’s fatigued eyes were still on him. Sam settled back in the chair beside Dean’s bed and waited for whatever Dean obviously wanted to say.
“You asked me why,” Dean finally spoke.
His voice was barely above a whisper and Sam wished he wouldn’t say anything at all. As much as Sam needed to talk, Dean's breathing sounded pained enough without bringing a conversation into the equation. All Dean was going to do was use up the energy he already didn’t have, but if his big brother really wanted to talk Sam couldn’t bring himself to tell him to stop.
“Why what, Dean?”
He asked his big brother why about a lot of things, always had, but he rarely got an answer. He couldn't begin to guess which why his brother was referring to.
“Why being sick was different.”
“Yeah, but we can talk about it later. Right now you just need to rest.”
“I can rest tomorrow...when I’m dead.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“And you’re not dying either. I’m going to get you better.”
“Can we not do this? Please? I’m tired of pretending. Hell, I'm just tired.”
The pleading look in Dean’s eyes made Sam bite back further protest even though he knew he didn't want Dean to continue. He knew that look. He knew this speech. They both knew what was happening but saying it out loud solidified it.
“I always knew I’d die bloody,” Dean managed to continue. “Comes with the life. It’s why I never should have pulled you back into it. I was just scared. I don’t care about dying, but living alone...I’m not strong enough.”
“Dean...” Sam didn't want Dean to have to say it even more than he just flat out didn't want to hear it.
“This is my death bed. Shut up and let me talk.”
As amused as Sam wasn’t, there was no use in trying to stop his brother or arguing with him. Even when he was barely conscious Dean was about as stubborn as they came. With Sam's silent acknowledgment Dean looked back at him.
“It just got me thinking...if I was so damn sure how I was going die - what did I think would happen to you? I was a selfish bastard for doing this to you. Just like Dad.”
“No. All of this, Mom, Dad, Jessica - you. It’s because of what I am. You didn’t do this to me, Dean.”
“I was supposed to protect you.”
Sam opened his mouth to protest, but the flash of desperation that crossed Dean’s eyes stopped him.
“I don’t want to die like this,” Dean breathed. “It’s past my time. I know it, and if some demon gutted me, if I screwed up...so be it. I asked for it, but this.…”
There was so much that Sam wanted to say but he couldn’t trust himself to say anything right now and he sure wasn't going to say anything that would feed into Dean's notion that this was the end of the road. As long as they were both still breathing there was still a chance of stopping this.
“You’ve got to promise me something, Sammy.”
Sam nodded before slowly bringing his eyes back to Dean’s. “What's that?” he asked hesitantly.
“Promise me you'll get out.”
“Out of where?”
“Out of this. All of it. Screw the Demon. Screw everything. I don't care anymore. I can’t die knowing I left you in this fight alone.”
Sam needed Dean to stop believing that there was no way out of this and start believing that he deserved to live. Dean was stuck on this notion that he should be dead. His brother couldn’t have things more backwards in his head.
Dad hadn’t sacrificed his soul for Dean just so that Dean could throw away his second chance. But telling Dean that for the hundredth time wouldn’t change what Dean believed. Sam wasn’t even sure if Dean wanted to be here so if protecting his little brother was the only thing that was keeping Dean fighting then Sam had no qualms about playing that card.
“Then I guess you can’t die, because you’re right about one thing - I can’t do this without you," Sam replied with a forced strength. “Get some rest, okay?”
Sam stood up and moved away from the bed. For both their sake he pretended it was just sweat slipping down Dean's tensed jaw. For a few minutes longer Sam listened to Dean's hitched breaths until they went quiet. He almost forced himself to return to his laptop when Dean spoke again.
“Sam...”
He let the room lapse into silence for a long moment and swallowed hard before answering. “Yeah, Dean?”
“I did see something at the sanitarium.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. After I fell…I saw myself.”
Sam turned back to him with furrowed brows. “What do you mean?”
“I looked up and I saw me. And at the hospital...the spirits, in the crowd...I think they were the people there...the sick ones.”
He ran his hand through his hair as he thought about what Dean was telling him. It sounded crazy but it was an awfully coherent assertion for someone that was just delusional. Dean had been right when he’d said that it wasn’t unusual that the people marked as insane had the real story.
“They weren’t ghosts.”
“Don’t think so,” Dean agreed hazily.
It would explain how Dean could remember having seen Dad as a ghost even when Dad had still been alive. He was about to ask Dean more but his brother’s eyes had fallen closed. The information was enough to get him started, but he couldn’t be here with Dean and out stopping this at the same time.
Pulling his cell phone from his pocket, he looked back to Dean's still form once more before hitting a button on his speed dial and slipping out of the room. Standing right outside the door he looked out over the town from the balcony. Everything about the early morning was still and quiet except for the occasional sirens from an emergency vehicle.
When someone finally picked up he instantly recognized the voice on the other end of the line, but it wasn’t the one he had been expecting to get on Ellen’s emergency cell. It was Jo. Suddenly he forgot everything he was about to say. He hadn’t exactly expected her to be back with her mom.
“Uh...hello?” Jo prompted impatiently. “It’s like four in the morning so this better be good.”
“Um hey, Jo, it’s Sam.”
“Sam. You didn’t try to kill Dean again did you?” His jaw clamped shut and he must have lapsed into silence for longer than he’d thought. “Sam? You still there?”
“Is your mom okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“Is she around?”
“Might be. What’s going on?”
“Jo, honey, who is it?” he heard Ellen ask sleepily in the background.
“It’s just Sam.”
There was some kind of hushed argument that he couldn’t make out before Ellen came on the line. “Hey, Sam. I’ve been worried about you boys. I was going to call in the morning to check how the case was going. Oh, and Bobby had a message for ya.”
“Why didn’t Bobby call us?”
“He tried. He couldn’t get through on Dean’s phone and he didn’t have your new number. Is Dean’s phone working?”
“Um…I don’t know. No,” Sam remembered. “The battery was dead.” Just like the flashlight and remote. Sam’s mind began to wander when Ellen’s voice pulled him back.
“Sam.”
It was creepy how she did that. Just by the way she said his name he could tell she knew something was seriously wrong. While he’d never had a mother watching over him, he imagined that the way Ellen spoke was the epitome of one. He knew Dean thought so and that was more than half the reason he’d called.
“Is Dean okay?”
“No,” he replied honestly. He didn’t have time to dance around what was going on. “Ellen, we need help.”
By Ellen’s quick response, he must have sounded as lost as he felt. “Alright. It’s okay, Sam. You just tell me where you are.”
“We’re off the Oregon Coast Highway just north of…”
“The Oregon coast? Sam…tell me you boys aren’t in Green Bay.”
“How did you know where we are?”
“You listen up, you gotta get Dean out of there straight away.”
“Already tried. The road is blocked and he can’t walk out.”
“How sick is he?”
It already sounded like Ellen knew more about the situation than he did. “How did you know he was sick?”
“That’s what Bobby called about. I was supposed to tell you boys to steer clear of the west coast. Damn it, Sam! You said you were taking the case in Philadelphia.”
“Dean turned around in Illinois to come here. Ellen, what’s happening?”
“We don’t know the whole story yet, but it sure isn’t just some people getting sick. You’re safe, Dean’s not. I’m sorry, that’s all I got. I didn’t think you boys would be in the middle of this. Call Bobby.”
“I tried calling Bobby earlier. He wasn’t answering.”
“He was on the road tonight, he should be back in now. Try him again.”
“I will, thanks.”
“And, Sam, where are you boys staying?”
“We’re at the Bay Motor Lodge. Room 26...but the whole town’s locked down.”
“You and Dean need help, don’t ya?”
“Well, yeah…”
“Then there’s nothing that’s going to keep me out. You boys hang in there, Sam. We’re just over the border in northern California - don’t ask. We’ll be there soon as we can.”
Continue to Chapter 10