The Woods are Lonely, Dark and Deep
18. Little Miss Sunshine
Hudak spits out the last of it and debates resting her aching head against the cool porcelain rim of the can for one one-thousandth of a second before she focuses on the stains, calculates the odds that Pa Bender regularly bleached it, and concludes it's a long-shot at best. She settles for leaning back against the murky tile wall and breathing out her stress for a couple of minutes before hauling herself up with a hand on the sink, and splashing her face.
She stares at herself in the mirror, features tired and drawn, her Florida Keys tan a distant memory. She wonders for the nth time how the hell she got tangled up with this and thinks that if she hadn't swapped lunches with Matty that day, he'd have had the pleasure of Dean Winchester's company on the search for his brother. She drifts off into how it could have been, how she would have passed Matty on his way out into the parking lot, maybe nodded at the fox and glanced back over her shoulder to check out his ass before thinking there was no way anything that pretty wasn't batting for the other team, making her way into the office and never seeing him again. Though, she chides herself, batting for the other team probably not the best analogy given what he's been through.
She knows she'll have to face Sam and Bobby, although her hurried departure, hand up to her mouth, must have been all the confirmation they needed. In truth it wasn't the lacerations and the bruising that had turned her stomach so much as the five oval marks, still purplish-black, in the pale, freckled skin around his left hip: four to the front, one to the back. She wonders how they could have missed them when they were cleaning him up; Lee Bender's brand, effectively seared into Dean's hide by brute force as he gripped him, as if he were nothing more than livestock, like one of Cal Mobley's cattle.
She stares at her own hand, wonders exactly how hard she would have to grip to make marks like that on someone, even rolls up her pants and tries it on her lower leg, squeezing to the point of pain and still only coming up with reddish blotches that fade in seconds. And she wonders if Bender made those bruises through sheer force or if the warfarin Dean might have been taking caused the blood to leak into his skin even with modest pressure. She thinks about the most likely of those options. Even though she doesn't want to.
There's a soft knock at the door and she knows it's Bobby even before she opens it.
"So," he says, noncommittally.
She shakes her head. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't…" She trails off, and then feels a sudden wave of anger. "Fuck. I feel I was coerced into that, I really do. I can't believe I agreed… Jesus. As if he hasn't been through enough."
Bobby puts a hand on her shoulder, guides her past the bedroom and into what passes for the Benders' family room, sits her on the couch.
"Sam's right," he says, softly. "We needed to know for sure so we can find out how best to help him deal with this."
"Help him?" she snaps. "That probably just set him back. You saw him."
Bobby shakes his head. "No Kathleen… listen, Dean, he isn't too good at sharing, for want of a better word. He bottles things up. He isn't gonna be able to bottle this up if he knows we know. It had to be done."
She's not about to let go of it though. "Sorry, but I'm not buying that. It was like it was happening all over again for him." She drops her face into her palm."
An awkward arm rests around her shoulders, and she and Bobby sit like that for a minute before she briskly wipes her face with her hands. "I'm going to hope he wasn't aware of that on some level," she says quietly, although she knows damn well he was aware of it on the level that mattered. "And I don't want him knowing it was me who checked."
Bobby sighs. "Well if he does remember it, he might be comforted by the fact it wasn't me or his brother who did it, Kathleen," he ventures.
She looks at him, considers. "If he asks you can tell him. But only if he asks."
The night is clear, the cloudless sky sprinkled with pinprick stars.
She has been walking for a long time, she's tired, and her heart aches with loss. Her mind is bursting with a vision of something good that was hers for such a short time, something warm, something that never hurt her, and she holds her picture, torn from Pa's bible, up to the light of the moon and gazes at it, grieving her loss.
She wants to go home, doesn't want to go anywhere with ChildServices, like that doctor wanted her to after he picked her up on the road and told her Gabe was dead, swept away in the river and drowned. Maybe that other boy will still be there, she muses, the one that took her angel-boy away for himself to keep forever when he should be with her, when the Lord sent him to her to save her from Jared.
Maybe that other boy will be there and she can show him what Benders do to pigs who steal their stuff. Her fingers reach into her pocket, tighten around the handle of her pigsticker. "Don't matter how big they are when they bleed," she says into the dark as it rustles around her. "Don't matter how tough they are, they all scream as loud as the next pig." She thinks of gutting pigs hung upside down from Pa's meat hook, how all it takes is one slash from pecke-to-necker, ain't that what Lee says, and all those steaming insides come spilling out down on to the dirt for the dogs to play with.
And then she remembers that other boy killed Gabe's dog.
"Mister, you got a bad temper," she mutters, as her step quickens. "Time you learn your lesson, boy."
Sam thinks it was all fucking pointless. Pointless because he saw Hudak's gaze suddenly directed at the spotted pattern on Dean's hip, saw it all slot into place in her eyes and knew instantly himself what the bruises meant. He should have seen them, should have been able to put the pieces together and solve that puzzle without humiliating his brother any more, without slicing even deeper into a sense of self esteem that was already holed below the water line before Hudak hooked her thumbs into the waistband of Dean's shorts.
The way his brother screamed sent shivers down his spine, and the way he, Sam, reacted, sent the same set of shivers racing right back up to the top. Where the fuck had channeling his dad come from? And he hears Dean's voice from back then, you fight with him because you're alike, you're both stubborn bastards who won't give each other a fuckin' inch. But it worked, though he doesn't like to think about Dean's startled, wide-eyed look of fear mixed with a pathetic desire to please, thinks he never again wants to see those emotions in his brother's eyes, only those deeper feelings that had flashed in them before the river took him.
"God, Dean," he breathes. "How the fuck are we gonna get past this? How the fuck am I gonna fix you this time?"
He puts his hand on his brother's, looks up at the walls, starts counting the roses on the faded wallpaper, tries to put the other things he's thinking about and imagining out of his head. But he thinks idly that Bender had it coming, that no one messes with his brother and lives, and he feels a surge of boiling, simmering, white-hot rage in his gut that he throws out like an invisible missile
The glass of water Bobby placed on the nightstand jounces up and off the surface, crashing to the floor.
"Christ," Sam blurts out. He glances over his shoulder, thanks God the door is closed, thanks God no one saw it. He doesn't dwell on how it happened and how it felt to fling out that force, like he had at Swenson's. How it felt good, cleansing, in some strange way, like a release of pressure.
He feels a tickle on his hand, looks down to where it lies on the bed and sees that Dean's hand is now lying on top of it, grasping it loosely. He glances to his brother's face, sees him staring at him, looking more lucid than he has since they walked up the trail away from this house weeks before.
"Gotta watch that, Sammy," Dean whispers, voice low and broken. "Watch that shining." He smiles faintly. "Still love you, kiddo… still m' brother."
Maybe not that lucid then, Sam thinks, because he knows his brother would never stumble that willingly into a real-live chick-flick moment if his head wasn't still stuffed full of cotton.
"Dean," he whispers, and he can't help it, he lifts his brother's hand up and kisses the back of it.
"Fuckin' girl…" Dean slurs lazily, but he doesn't tug his hand back, and there's an expression of such fondness on his face that Sam's throat tightens.
"Where am I?"
Sam bites his lip, wonders how much to reveal, decides on a little white lie. "At the Deputy's house - Kathleen Hudak, you remember her? You've been real sick Dean, still are. So no sudden moves, huh?"
His brother's eyes crinkle at the corners as he smirks. "Cramp… m' style?"
"I mean it Dean. You need to keep still. Jesus, you need to eat, you haven't eaten in days…"
Dean's face falls. "N' hungry… later…"
Sam takes a deep breath, jumps in. "Dean, do you remember? Do you remember what happened?"
It's almost imperceptible, only noticeable to someone who knows Dean and how he works better than he knows himself, but Sam sees how his brother's expression is suddenly guarded and his eyes are shuttered.
"Remember… what? Running… dogs… water. Woke up, see you. Nothing more…"
Sam knows he just got served, but he's read the unabridged version of the Dean Winchester Operator's Manual from cover to cover, committed the troubleshooting tips to memory, isn't fooled in the slightest. "You don't remember the kid? Bender? All those weeks?"
His brother looks at him, narrows his eyes, and Sam can almost sense his panic jumpstart, hear his heartbeat start to grow erratic and his breathing speed up fractionally. He sees Dean swallow and gag slightly, hears the wheezing begin.
"No… don't do this Dean. Look to me. To me. My eyes, now." Sam reaches for the oxygen mask, turns the knob on the tank, places it over his brother's nose and mouth for a minute, and Dean's fingers clutch at the quilt as he fights the tickle that threatens to erupt into coughing. "Shhhhh," Sam soothes. "Breathe. Not gonna happen, Dean, just not gonna happen. Calm." He sees his brother's breathing even out, sees he's able to reach the peak of his inhalation without sputtering, removes the mask.
Dean stares right at him, doesn't drop his eyes at the lie. "Blank… blanked it out… s'nothin' there…"
Sam nods slowly. "Okay. Okay." He reaches over to shut off the valve on the tank. "But you need to eat, I'll see if Kathleen has anything."
His brother quirks a weak smile. "Kathleen. I remember her. Sweet. Tell her I'll take her home again…"
Sam rolls his eyes, gets up and heads towards the door.
"Sam…" his brother calls out after him hoarsely, and he turns, goes back and leans down.
"What do you need, kiddo?"
"S' important…"
"Anything. What?"
"No… meat… meat food. Please. S'important…"
Dean's eyes drift closed, what little energy he has drained right out of him by the effort expended in speech, and Sam presses a large hand to his brow, suddenly flashes to the FBI report and knows how important his brother's plea is, knows that it's going to be a long time before he can make it through a day without feeling his gorge rise at what Dean has endured.
Knows damn well his brother remembers what has happened to him, to the last fucking detail.
All the nightmares you ever had are real.
Those were Bobby's words.
Hudak is standing on the porch and Christ, she's longing for a smoke even though it's six years since she quit. Maybe not so much for the nicotine but so she'll have something she can do with her hands, something to stop them shaking in the wake of what Bobby has told her. She roots in her pocket, finds a quarter and sits down on the step, starts trying to feed it in and out over her fingers like all the best Mafiosi can do. Having to field it as it falls to the ground and rolls away takes her mind off ghosts, werewolves and zombies for whole seconds at a time.
She'd love to think the old man is crazy but she knows in her heart he's no nutjob, and the story he's just spun her fits the boys like a glove. And it all makes sense now: his diatribe against their father, the picture he's drawn her of Dean as an emotionally needy serial killer of things that go bump in the night, and his brother, desperate to escape and maybe build a life that doesn't end sad and bloody.
The door opens behind her and she's so lost in thought she almost tips flat on her back. She looks up into the non-psychopathic-lunatic Winchester's eyes, and Sam folds his lanky frame in half to sit beside her.
"Bobby says he told you."
"He sure did."
"You okay with it?"
"That may well be the dumbest thing you've said to me, Sam."
"Dumber than no hospital?"
She snorts. "Well it ranks up there alongside no hospital."
Sam smiles, grows serious then. "But you understand now why I couldn't take him there? Why it's dangerous for him? It's better if the Feds think he's dead and you know the police probably would have run his prints because of the bullet wound. And the rest of it… his injuries."
She nods, because it's true. "What are you going to do Sam?" she says. "With him, I mean? I just-he just isn't the person I met, and all this just seems insurmountable to me. I guess you've maybe seen him worse and seen him claw his way back…"
Sam looks at the ground between his legs for a moment. "Honestly? I have no clue. I've seen him worse off physically, yeah, but this other thing… I've been trying to think of a way to broach it with him once he's up to it, but Jesus, what would I say? I guess the easy way would be to hang on and see if he caves first."
Hudak takes a few more rounds with her quarter, drops it in the dirt every single time. "I knew someone that happened to," she says then. "College buddy. And, uh, it… wasn't pretty. Are you going to get any help with it?"
Sam snorts. "What, a shrink? Counselor? 'Bout as likely as the devil drinking holy water." He glances over at her. "That college buddy, what happened to him? You said it wasn't pretty."
She sighs at the memories. "Oh… he just… he just never really found his way back from it."
Sam's look says he knows exactly what she's saying.
He returns to looking ahead, scanning the darkness. "My brother isn't getting lost in this," he whispers after a moment.
Bobby makes an airplane noise as he swoops the spoon down towards Dean's mouth and the kid has the good grace to smile drowsily, though he doesn't seem too impressed by the food, grimacing as he chews slowly, swallowing only with obvious effort and finally turning his face away altogether.
"One more?" Bobby tries, but it's no use. "Alrightie, son, but you're gonna be dropping back down to your birthweight at this rate."
He fusses about wiping Dean's face with a damp cloth, ignoring the hand that tries to bat him away.
"W' the fuck?" Dean grouses. "Off me, Lee."
Bobby pricks his ears up at that, reaches his hand down to grip Dean's chin and turn his face to look at him. "I'm not Lee, Dean," he says gently. "And you aren't Gabe. Now this drifting off has got to stop, boy, you hear?"
Dean squints up at him, seems to snap back to awareness, albeit tinged with confusion. "Bobby… dude… whassit?"
Bobby shakes his head, sits down on the side of the bed. "Come on boy, you need to try and stay in the now, it's-"
The door suddenly pushes open and Hudak's dog bounds in, grinning, tongue lolling, throwing what looks like a pair of balled tube socks up into the air and showering drool everywhere as it snaps its jaws down on its prey with an audible click.
Bobby feels the movement from the bed before he hears the croaked, low-pitched protest.
"No… no… please don't… get it, get it out…"
He turns to see Dean hoisting himself weakly up to the top of the bed, pressing into the headboard, face milk-pale with shock as the keening rises to full-throated cries: his brother's name.
Sam is in there in a second, hauls the hound back out in the hallway, and sprints back in to gather Dean in his arms almost faster than Bobby's eyes can see, scrabbling for the oxygen mask as the wheezing starts up. "Got you," Sam says calmly. "I got you. I got you, Dean, I got you."
Bobby leans over, turns the valve on the tank, and Dean's labored pants gradually calm once he sees the dog has gone.
Sam looks back at Bobby. "We need to keep the dog in another room if that door doesn't latch properly… we can't have it coming in here, he could hurt himself if it scares him."
Bobby nods, gets up. "I'll put her in the family room."
As Dean's violent shaking eases off, his arms let go their hold on Sam's shirt and he slumps in exhaustion.
"Come on, relax man," Sam soothes. "Back to bed. It's just Hudak's dog, it's harmless."
"Thought… I thought…"
"I know, Dean. I know what you-"
"How the fuck would you know?" Dean cries suddenly, an almost-yell, irritable, borderline damn mean, Sam thinks.
"You know fuck all…" Dean spits as Sam stands and pulls up the blankets, and then his voice takes on a note of panic and despair, and he tugs at Sam's sleeve. "Can't sleep, Sammy," he whispers. "Bad feelin'… something bad coming."
Sam parks his right haunch back on the bed. "Dean, it's over," he says slowly. "They're gone. You're safe, you're with me and Bobby. You need to sleep, dude, get better."
Dean shakes his head agitatedly, eyes huge. "No, no… Can't sleep, Sammy, y' see… can't sleep. See things…things…"
Sam raises an eyebrow, thinks gotcha. "See what, Dean? You said you didn't remember. Do you remember?"
And his brother shuts down just like before. "No… no. Just tired."
"Then sleep. I'll be right here."
"Can't sleep. Sammy. Can't. Need something… to help."
Sam sighs long and deep. "What'll help you sleep, Dean?"
His brother's face brightens. "Red ones, Sammy. They help me sleep." He scowls again as Sam shakes his head.
"No more pills Dean. Sleep. I'll be right here in the chair."
Sam moves off the bed, pulls up the chair, a motheaten Barcalounger Bobby dragged in from the other room, gets comfortable.
"Fuckin' bastard," Dean snarls weakly. "Need 'em." He mutters a few curses as Sam settles in. "Lee'd give 'em to me," he says, spitefully.
Sam ignores him, doesn't pull him up over the fact he's just name-checked Bender after denying all knowledge, and his brother falls quiet for a few minutes.
"Be right there, Sammy?" he whispers.
"Be right here, Dean."
Missy rubs herself a clean spot on the glass, peers into the dimly lit room.
Her eyes light up with joy.
Bobby is sacked out on the couch, dreaming about Cancun, his last jaunt there with Rufus, dreaming about dusky maidens dotting his face with fairy kisses that get sloppier and sloppier until he comes round to the messy reality of Hudak's dog slobbering all over him.
"Uh! Off! Get off! Jesus. Kathleen, come get your-"
And suddenly he's coughing as he takes in a lungful of smoke, hears crackling, spitting sounds. The dog is frantic, pawing at the door and Bobby lurches up and over there, lays his palm on the wood, finds it boiling hot.
He sniffs in deep.
He knows the smell of kerosene anywhere.
Sam's throat is tickling and he can feel tears on his cheeks, and a burning in his mouth. He cracks his eyes open and feels a stinging sensation, sees a haze in the air, smells… gasoline?
He sits bolt upright, stares into his brother's frightened eyes, follows the knife held to his throat up the grimy hand and skinny arm attached to the alive-and-kicking Missy Bender.
"Don't hurt him!" Sam yelps as he gets up and backs away, unthreatening, until he's up against the door. He can feel the heat of the worn wood even through his tee and shirt, knows that means the flames must be close up outside the room.
His sneakers slip in something wet and he follows the trail of liquid right up to the gas can lying on its side vomiting its contents out over the floorboards. The whole floor around the bed and up to the window is saturated. Black smoke seeps in under the door and he reaches out with his foot, hooks the ragged shirt his brother had been wearing when he went in the river from where they threw it on the floor, and heels it up against the bottom of the door in an attempt to block off the gap.
The girl smiles, shakes the box of matches in her hand. "Betcha sorry now, Mister," she taunts through her own spluttering coughs.
Sam can hear Dean's terrible efforts to breathe, see his chest heaving up and down and the tears streaming down his cheeks, see his wild-eyed alarm, hear him beginning to cough. "Please… Missy. Let me take him outside. He's sick… he can't breathe, the smoke will kill him."
"Ain't yours, Mister," the girl snaps, rubing her eyes and wilting slightly. "He's mine."
Her hand slips a little, and Dean winces, whimpers.
Sam fights the urge to cough, clears his throat. "You can keep him. Come outside with us and you can keep him," he croaks, his throat catching now on every word. "We can't stay in here, Missy, we can't breathe…"
He moves a step towards her, calculates whether he can get to her and grab the knife before she slashes his brother's jugular, and sees Dean shift minutely up away from the increased pressure of the blade.
"Please, Missy. I thought you loved him… you love him don't you? You don't want to hurt him do you?"
He thinks she might be swaying now but his lungs are so tight he knows it might be him. She's coughing, he can hear it, muffled, as if she's getting further away, and he can see that Dean's chest isn't rising and falling quite as rapidly, sees that his brother's eyes are half-closed as he succumbs.
"No one's keepin' him but me," the girl is crying, wiping away tears with her free hand, and in the next instant she drops the knife and she falls.
Sam lunges, but only in his mind, because he's really falling down onto his hands and knees, coughing, spitting, his vision blurred by smoke and tears, but not so blurred he doesn't see the bright spark of flame as she lights the match, a tiny shooting star trailing down to the pool of accelerant, where it flares up into a bright orange sunburst of flames that eat everything in their path.
Next
Hudak spits out the last of it and debates resting her aching head against the cool porcelain rim of the can for one one-thousandth of a second before she focuses on the stains, calculates the odds that Pa Bender regularly bleached it, and concludes it's a long-shot at best. She settles for leaning back against the murky tile wall and breathing out her stress for a couple of minutes before hauling herself up with a hand on the sink, and splashing her face.
She stares at herself in the mirror, features tired and drawn, her Florida Keys tan a distant memory. She wonders for the nth time how the hell she got tangled up with this and thinks that if she hadn't swapped lunches with Matty that day, he'd have had the pleasure of Dean Winchester's company on the search for his brother. She drifts off into how it could have been, how she would have passed Matty on his way out into the parking lot, maybe nodded at the fox and glanced back over her shoulder to check out his ass before thinking there was no way anything that pretty wasn't batting for the other team, making her way into the office and never seeing him again. Though, she chides herself, batting for the other team probably not the best analogy given what he's been through.
She knows she'll have to face Sam and Bobby, although her hurried departure, hand up to her mouth, must have been all the confirmation they needed. In truth it wasn't the lacerations and the bruising that had turned her stomach so much as the five oval marks, still purplish-black, in the pale, freckled skin around his left hip: four to the front, one to the back. She wonders how they could have missed them when they were cleaning him up; Lee Bender's brand, effectively seared into Dean's hide by brute force as he gripped him, as if he were nothing more than livestock, like one of Cal Mobley's cattle.
She stares at her own hand, wonders exactly how hard she would have to grip to make marks like that on someone, even rolls up her pants and tries it on her lower leg, squeezing to the point of pain and still only coming up with reddish blotches that fade in seconds. And she wonders if Bender made those bruises through sheer force or if the warfarin Dean might have been taking caused the blood to leak into his skin even with modest pressure. She thinks about the most likely of those options. Even though she doesn't want to.
There's a soft knock at the door and she knows it's Bobby even before she opens it.
"So," he says, noncommittally.
She shakes her head. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't…" She trails off, and then feels a sudden wave of anger. "Fuck. I feel I was coerced into that, I really do. I can't believe I agreed… Jesus. As if he hasn't been through enough."
Bobby puts a hand on her shoulder, guides her past the bedroom and into what passes for the Benders' family room, sits her on the couch.
"Sam's right," he says, softly. "We needed to know for sure so we can find out how best to help him deal with this."
"Help him?" she snaps. "That probably just set him back. You saw him."
Bobby shakes his head. "No Kathleen… listen, Dean, he isn't too good at sharing, for want of a better word. He bottles things up. He isn't gonna be able to bottle this up if he knows we know. It had to be done."
She's not about to let go of it though. "Sorry, but I'm not buying that. It was like it was happening all over again for him." She drops her face into her palm."
An awkward arm rests around her shoulders, and she and Bobby sit like that for a minute before she briskly wipes her face with her hands. "I'm going to hope he wasn't aware of that on some level," she says quietly, although she knows damn well he was aware of it on the level that mattered. "And I don't want him knowing it was me who checked."
Bobby sighs. "Well if he does remember it, he might be comforted by the fact it wasn't me or his brother who did it, Kathleen," he ventures.
She looks at him, considers. "If he asks you can tell him. But only if he asks."
The night is clear, the cloudless sky sprinkled with pinprick stars.
She has been walking for a long time, she's tired, and her heart aches with loss. Her mind is bursting with a vision of something good that was hers for such a short time, something warm, something that never hurt her, and she holds her picture, torn from Pa's bible, up to the light of the moon and gazes at it, grieving her loss.
She wants to go home, doesn't want to go anywhere with ChildServices, like that doctor wanted her to after he picked her up on the road and told her Gabe was dead, swept away in the river and drowned. Maybe that other boy will still be there, she muses, the one that took her angel-boy away for himself to keep forever when he should be with her, when the Lord sent him to her to save her from Jared.
Maybe that other boy will be there and she can show him what Benders do to pigs who steal their stuff. Her fingers reach into her pocket, tighten around the handle of her pigsticker. "Don't matter how big they are when they bleed," she says into the dark as it rustles around her. "Don't matter how tough they are, they all scream as loud as the next pig." She thinks of gutting pigs hung upside down from Pa's meat hook, how all it takes is one slash from pecke-to-necker, ain't that what Lee says, and all those steaming insides come spilling out down on to the dirt for the dogs to play with.
And then she remembers that other boy killed Gabe's dog.
"Mister, you got a bad temper," she mutters, as her step quickens. "Time you learn your lesson, boy."
Sam thinks it was all fucking pointless. Pointless because he saw Hudak's gaze suddenly directed at the spotted pattern on Dean's hip, saw it all slot into place in her eyes and knew instantly himself what the bruises meant. He should have seen them, should have been able to put the pieces together and solve that puzzle without humiliating his brother any more, without slicing even deeper into a sense of self esteem that was already holed below the water line before Hudak hooked her thumbs into the waistband of Dean's shorts.
The way his brother screamed sent shivers down his spine, and the way he, Sam, reacted, sent the same set of shivers racing right back up to the top. Where the fuck had channeling his dad come from? And he hears Dean's voice from back then, you fight with him because you're alike, you're both stubborn bastards who won't give each other a fuckin' inch. But it worked, though he doesn't like to think about Dean's startled, wide-eyed look of fear mixed with a pathetic desire to please, thinks he never again wants to see those emotions in his brother's eyes, only those deeper feelings that had flashed in them before the river took him.
"God, Dean," he breathes. "How the fuck are we gonna get past this? How the fuck am I gonna fix you this time?"
He puts his hand on his brother's, looks up at the walls, starts counting the roses on the faded wallpaper, tries to put the other things he's thinking about and imagining out of his head. But he thinks idly that Bender had it coming, that no one messes with his brother and lives, and he feels a surge of boiling, simmering, white-hot rage in his gut that he throws out like an invisible missile
The glass of water Bobby placed on the nightstand jounces up and off the surface, crashing to the floor.
"Christ," Sam blurts out. He glances over his shoulder, thanks God the door is closed, thanks God no one saw it. He doesn't dwell on how it happened and how it felt to fling out that force, like he had at Swenson's. How it felt good, cleansing, in some strange way, like a release of pressure.
He feels a tickle on his hand, looks down to where it lies on the bed and sees that Dean's hand is now lying on top of it, grasping it loosely. He glances to his brother's face, sees him staring at him, looking more lucid than he has since they walked up the trail away from this house weeks before.
"Gotta watch that, Sammy," Dean whispers, voice low and broken. "Watch that shining." He smiles faintly. "Still love you, kiddo… still m' brother."
Maybe not that lucid then, Sam thinks, because he knows his brother would never stumble that willingly into a real-live chick-flick moment if his head wasn't still stuffed full of cotton.
"Dean," he whispers, and he can't help it, he lifts his brother's hand up and kisses the back of it.
"Fuckin' girl…" Dean slurs lazily, but he doesn't tug his hand back, and there's an expression of such fondness on his face that Sam's throat tightens.
"Where am I?"
Sam bites his lip, wonders how much to reveal, decides on a little white lie. "At the Deputy's house - Kathleen Hudak, you remember her? You've been real sick Dean, still are. So no sudden moves, huh?"
His brother's eyes crinkle at the corners as he smirks. "Cramp… m' style?"
"I mean it Dean. You need to keep still. Jesus, you need to eat, you haven't eaten in days…"
Dean's face falls. "N' hungry… later…"
Sam takes a deep breath, jumps in. "Dean, do you remember? Do you remember what happened?"
It's almost imperceptible, only noticeable to someone who knows Dean and how he works better than he knows himself, but Sam sees how his brother's expression is suddenly guarded and his eyes are shuttered.
"Remember… what? Running… dogs… water. Woke up, see you. Nothing more…"
Sam knows he just got served, but he's read the unabridged version of the Dean Winchester Operator's Manual from cover to cover, committed the troubleshooting tips to memory, isn't fooled in the slightest. "You don't remember the kid? Bender? All those weeks?"
His brother looks at him, narrows his eyes, and Sam can almost sense his panic jumpstart, hear his heartbeat start to grow erratic and his breathing speed up fractionally. He sees Dean swallow and gag slightly, hears the wheezing begin.
"No… don't do this Dean. Look to me. To me. My eyes, now." Sam reaches for the oxygen mask, turns the knob on the tank, places it over his brother's nose and mouth for a minute, and Dean's fingers clutch at the quilt as he fights the tickle that threatens to erupt into coughing. "Shhhhh," Sam soothes. "Breathe. Not gonna happen, Dean, just not gonna happen. Calm." He sees his brother's breathing even out, sees he's able to reach the peak of his inhalation without sputtering, removes the mask.
Dean stares right at him, doesn't drop his eyes at the lie. "Blank… blanked it out… s'nothin' there…"
Sam nods slowly. "Okay. Okay." He reaches over to shut off the valve on the tank. "But you need to eat, I'll see if Kathleen has anything."
His brother quirks a weak smile. "Kathleen. I remember her. Sweet. Tell her I'll take her home again…"
Sam rolls his eyes, gets up and heads towards the door.
"Sam…" his brother calls out after him hoarsely, and he turns, goes back and leans down.
"What do you need, kiddo?"
"S' important…"
"Anything. What?"
"No… meat… meat food. Please. S'important…"
Dean's eyes drift closed, what little energy he has drained right out of him by the effort expended in speech, and Sam presses a large hand to his brow, suddenly flashes to the FBI report and knows how important his brother's plea is, knows that it's going to be a long time before he can make it through a day without feeling his gorge rise at what Dean has endured.
Knows damn well his brother remembers what has happened to him, to the last fucking detail.
All the nightmares you ever had are real.
Those were Bobby's words.
Hudak is standing on the porch and Christ, she's longing for a smoke even though it's six years since she quit. Maybe not so much for the nicotine but so she'll have something she can do with her hands, something to stop them shaking in the wake of what Bobby has told her. She roots in her pocket, finds a quarter and sits down on the step, starts trying to feed it in and out over her fingers like all the best Mafiosi can do. Having to field it as it falls to the ground and rolls away takes her mind off ghosts, werewolves and zombies for whole seconds at a time.
She'd love to think the old man is crazy but she knows in her heart he's no nutjob, and the story he's just spun her fits the boys like a glove. And it all makes sense now: his diatribe against their father, the picture he's drawn her of Dean as an emotionally needy serial killer of things that go bump in the night, and his brother, desperate to escape and maybe build a life that doesn't end sad and bloody.
The door opens behind her and she's so lost in thought she almost tips flat on her back. She looks up into the non-psychopathic-lunatic Winchester's eyes, and Sam folds his lanky frame in half to sit beside her.
"Bobby says he told you."
"He sure did."
"You okay with it?"
"That may well be the dumbest thing you've said to me, Sam."
"Dumber than no hospital?"
She snorts. "Well it ranks up there alongside no hospital."
Sam smiles, grows serious then. "But you understand now why I couldn't take him there? Why it's dangerous for him? It's better if the Feds think he's dead and you know the police probably would have run his prints because of the bullet wound. And the rest of it… his injuries."
She nods, because it's true. "What are you going to do Sam?" she says. "With him, I mean? I just-he just isn't the person I met, and all this just seems insurmountable to me. I guess you've maybe seen him worse and seen him claw his way back…"
Sam looks at the ground between his legs for a moment. "Honestly? I have no clue. I've seen him worse off physically, yeah, but this other thing… I've been trying to think of a way to broach it with him once he's up to it, but Jesus, what would I say? I guess the easy way would be to hang on and see if he caves first."
Hudak takes a few more rounds with her quarter, drops it in the dirt every single time. "I knew someone that happened to," she says then. "College buddy. And, uh, it… wasn't pretty. Are you going to get any help with it?"
Sam snorts. "What, a shrink? Counselor? 'Bout as likely as the devil drinking holy water." He glances over at her. "That college buddy, what happened to him? You said it wasn't pretty."
She sighs at the memories. "Oh… he just… he just never really found his way back from it."
Sam's look says he knows exactly what she's saying.
He returns to looking ahead, scanning the darkness. "My brother isn't getting lost in this," he whispers after a moment.
Bobby makes an airplane noise as he swoops the spoon down towards Dean's mouth and the kid has the good grace to smile drowsily, though he doesn't seem too impressed by the food, grimacing as he chews slowly, swallowing only with obvious effort and finally turning his face away altogether.
"One more?" Bobby tries, but it's no use. "Alrightie, son, but you're gonna be dropping back down to your birthweight at this rate."
He fusses about wiping Dean's face with a damp cloth, ignoring the hand that tries to bat him away.
"W' the fuck?" Dean grouses. "Off me, Lee."
Bobby pricks his ears up at that, reaches his hand down to grip Dean's chin and turn his face to look at him. "I'm not Lee, Dean," he says gently. "And you aren't Gabe. Now this drifting off has got to stop, boy, you hear?"
Dean squints up at him, seems to snap back to awareness, albeit tinged with confusion. "Bobby… dude… whassit?"
Bobby shakes his head, sits down on the side of the bed. "Come on boy, you need to try and stay in the now, it's-"
The door suddenly pushes open and Hudak's dog bounds in, grinning, tongue lolling, throwing what looks like a pair of balled tube socks up into the air and showering drool everywhere as it snaps its jaws down on its prey with an audible click.
Bobby feels the movement from the bed before he hears the croaked, low-pitched protest.
"No… no… please don't… get it, get it out…"
He turns to see Dean hoisting himself weakly up to the top of the bed, pressing into the headboard, face milk-pale with shock as the keening rises to full-throated cries: his brother's name.
Sam is in there in a second, hauls the hound back out in the hallway, and sprints back in to gather Dean in his arms almost faster than Bobby's eyes can see, scrabbling for the oxygen mask as the wheezing starts up. "Got you," Sam says calmly. "I got you. I got you, Dean, I got you."
Bobby leans over, turns the valve on the tank, and Dean's labored pants gradually calm once he sees the dog has gone.
Sam looks back at Bobby. "We need to keep the dog in another room if that door doesn't latch properly… we can't have it coming in here, he could hurt himself if it scares him."
Bobby nods, gets up. "I'll put her in the family room."
As Dean's violent shaking eases off, his arms let go their hold on Sam's shirt and he slumps in exhaustion.
"Come on, relax man," Sam soothes. "Back to bed. It's just Hudak's dog, it's harmless."
"Thought… I thought…"
"I know, Dean. I know what you-"
"How the fuck would you know?" Dean cries suddenly, an almost-yell, irritable, borderline damn mean, Sam thinks.
"You know fuck all…" Dean spits as Sam stands and pulls up the blankets, and then his voice takes on a note of panic and despair, and he tugs at Sam's sleeve. "Can't sleep, Sammy," he whispers. "Bad feelin'… something bad coming."
Sam parks his right haunch back on the bed. "Dean, it's over," he says slowly. "They're gone. You're safe, you're with me and Bobby. You need to sleep, dude, get better."
Dean shakes his head agitatedly, eyes huge. "No, no… Can't sleep, Sammy, y' see… can't sleep. See things…things…"
Sam raises an eyebrow, thinks gotcha. "See what, Dean? You said you didn't remember. Do you remember?"
And his brother shuts down just like before. "No… no. Just tired."
"Then sleep. I'll be right here."
"Can't sleep. Sammy. Can't. Need something… to help."
Sam sighs long and deep. "What'll help you sleep, Dean?"
His brother's face brightens. "Red ones, Sammy. They help me sleep." He scowls again as Sam shakes his head.
"No more pills Dean. Sleep. I'll be right here in the chair."
Sam moves off the bed, pulls up the chair, a motheaten Barcalounger Bobby dragged in from the other room, gets comfortable.
"Fuckin' bastard," Dean snarls weakly. "Need 'em." He mutters a few curses as Sam settles in. "Lee'd give 'em to me," he says, spitefully.
Sam ignores him, doesn't pull him up over the fact he's just name-checked Bender after denying all knowledge, and his brother falls quiet for a few minutes.
"Be right there, Sammy?" he whispers.
"Be right here, Dean."
Missy rubs herself a clean spot on the glass, peers into the dimly lit room.
Her eyes light up with joy.
Bobby is sacked out on the couch, dreaming about Cancun, his last jaunt there with Rufus, dreaming about dusky maidens dotting his face with fairy kisses that get sloppier and sloppier until he comes round to the messy reality of Hudak's dog slobbering all over him.
"Uh! Off! Get off! Jesus. Kathleen, come get your-"
And suddenly he's coughing as he takes in a lungful of smoke, hears crackling, spitting sounds. The dog is frantic, pawing at the door and Bobby lurches up and over there, lays his palm on the wood, finds it boiling hot.
He sniffs in deep.
He knows the smell of kerosene anywhere.
Sam's throat is tickling and he can feel tears on his cheeks, and a burning in his mouth. He cracks his eyes open and feels a stinging sensation, sees a haze in the air, smells… gasoline?
He sits bolt upright, stares into his brother's frightened eyes, follows the knife held to his throat up the grimy hand and skinny arm attached to the alive-and-kicking Missy Bender.
"Don't hurt him!" Sam yelps as he gets up and backs away, unthreatening, until he's up against the door. He can feel the heat of the worn wood even through his tee and shirt, knows that means the flames must be close up outside the room.
His sneakers slip in something wet and he follows the trail of liquid right up to the gas can lying on its side vomiting its contents out over the floorboards. The whole floor around the bed and up to the window is saturated. Black smoke seeps in under the door and he reaches out with his foot, hooks the ragged shirt his brother had been wearing when he went in the river from where they threw it on the floor, and heels it up against the bottom of the door in an attempt to block off the gap.
The girl smiles, shakes the box of matches in her hand. "Betcha sorry now, Mister," she taunts through her own spluttering coughs.
Sam can hear Dean's terrible efforts to breathe, see his chest heaving up and down and the tears streaming down his cheeks, see his wild-eyed alarm, hear him beginning to cough. "Please… Missy. Let me take him outside. He's sick… he can't breathe, the smoke will kill him."
"Ain't yours, Mister," the girl snaps, rubing her eyes and wilting slightly. "He's mine."
Her hand slips a little, and Dean winces, whimpers.
Sam fights the urge to cough, clears his throat. "You can keep him. Come outside with us and you can keep him," he croaks, his throat catching now on every word. "We can't stay in here, Missy, we can't breathe…"
He moves a step towards her, calculates whether he can get to her and grab the knife before she slashes his brother's jugular, and sees Dean shift minutely up away from the increased pressure of the blade.
"Please, Missy. I thought you loved him… you love him don't you? You don't want to hurt him do you?"
He thinks she might be swaying now but his lungs are so tight he knows it might be him. She's coughing, he can hear it, muffled, as if she's getting further away, and he can see that Dean's chest isn't rising and falling quite as rapidly, sees that his brother's eyes are half-closed as he succumbs.
"No one's keepin' him but me," the girl is crying, wiping away tears with her free hand, and in the next instant she drops the knife and she falls.
Sam lunges, but only in his mind, because he's really falling down onto his hands and knees, coughing, spitting, his vision blurred by smoke and tears, but not so blurred he doesn't see the bright spark of flame as she lights the match, a tiny shooting star trailing down to the pool of accelerant, where it flares up into a bright orange sunburst of flames that eat everything in their path.
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