Folie a Deux - 1/2
Title: Folie a Deux
Author: zoemathemata
Rating: R
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Sam, Jensen/Jared
Spoilers: Season 5
Word Count: 12,000ish
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: At Lofty Pines Mental Institution, Jensen and Jared try to work through their delusions of being Dean and Sam Winchester.
-Or-
At Lofty Pines Mental Institution, Dean and Sam Winchester are being manipulated into thinking they’re Jensen and Jared
“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?” - Chuang Tzu
Unbeta'd
If he had to pick which he hated more, group therapy or one on one sessions, he’d pick one on one. He dislikes group therapy too, no doubt about it. There’s something painfully awkward and not at all helpful about someone trying to get you to air out all your problems in front of a bunch of strangers. But, at least at group, there’s always the chance that no one will notice you that day. And then you can just sit there and pretend to be interested while someone else spills shamefully honest details about their most intimate secrets while really you’re just keeping up a litany in your head of don’t pick me, don’t pick me, don’t pick me.
Usually, it works out pretty well in group too, because there’s always a handful of ‘sharers,’ the people who are just dying to tell you ever miniscule detail about their life.
But not in one-on-one. In personal sessions, it’s just him and Dr. Reid. She runs group too, but there’s something more… pointed about her in one-on-one. All her attention is focused on you.
She’s got a bunch of degrees. Or so he assumes. She doesn’t hang any on the wall. She doesn’t sit behind a desk, or make him recline back on a sofa. She has two giant bean bag chairs and she doesn’t mind if you stand up and tower over her while she reclines. She doesn’t mind if you pace. She doesn’t mind if you kick the bean bag chair, so long as it’s not the one she’s in.
She says whatever makes you comfortable, Jensen.
She really looks like she means it too.
She has a clipboard and she takes notes. Shorthand notes that he can’t read. He’s tried. Once she had to leave one-on-one in the middle because Jacob had managed to get into the med closet and was threatening to shoot himself up with narcotics unless they let him call his mother. Dr. Reid left her clipboard on the floor when she raced out to talk Jacob out of the closet and Jensen had tried to read what she wrote about him but it was all squiggles and doodles that made no sense.
She came back five minutes later with a swelling lip from were Jacob had apparently punched her and when she saw Jensen staring at the clipboard she asked if he wanted to know what it said.
But he didn’t.
Not really.
He knows he’s fucked up.
Really fucked up.
Which is why even though he hates group, he hates one-on-one and he hates the meds that dull everything out and make the edges gray and fuzzy, he sticks with it. Because there has to be more than this.
She tells him there’s more than this.
It’s a one-on-one session today. Two group sessions a week and three personal sessions. And then there are two days off, which really, are his favorite because then he can just hang out, go to the rec room or the library or whatever and not worry about answering questions.
Or not answering questions.
He picks at the soft cotton of his pants and shifts in the bean bag chair which makes a squishy sound. He’s glad they let him wear jeans and a t-shirt instead of some dumb pajama outfit.
Lofty Pines bills itself as a Progressive Center for the Mental Imbalanced.
Which is a really nice way of saying Insane Asylum.
But no matter how much you dress it up, there’s no mistaking what it is.
Secluded up in the Colorado mountains, they say the fresh air is instrumental in assisting the guests in rebalancing their minds.
Translation: we’re keeping the crazy folks far away so as not to bother the not-crazy folks.
While everyone can wear jeans or khakis instead of scrubs, they are generic, hospital issued clothes; all identical and somewhat industrial.
Dr. Reid doesn’t wear a doctor’s coat. She wears dark slacks and sweater sets with sensible pumps on her feet. Her hair is always in a perfect bob, the dark ends just barely curling under her chin.
It’s hard to tell how old she is. Somedays she looks older than others.
It’s hard for him to remember time. He gets events confused. Days, weeks, months. He’s not sure how long he’s been at Lofty Pines. He’s afraid to ask.
“Anything in particular you want to discuss today, Jensen?” she asks. Her eyebrows go up expectantly, giving her a wide eyed look.
He shrugs. “Not really.”
It’s his standard answer. Sure there’s stuff he wants to talk about but he doesn’t want to be the one to bring it up. And then there’s other stuff he knows he should talk about but never wants to.
“How’s the new dosage working out?”
He shrugs again. “S’okay.”
“Any side effects? Vivid dreams, tremors, fogginess?”
“Little bit with the dreams.”
“Really vivid, detailed?”
He nods. “Yeah.”
“That’s to be expected. Anything else?”
“Thirsty a lot.”
“Unfortunately, it’s another common side effect. But if you can live with both of them, it’s a good combo you’re on so I’d like to stick with it.”
“Um. Okay.”
She smiles. “Good. That’s good. We’ll stick with it for a few weeks and see how it goes. Okay?”
“Sure.” It’s not like he has a choice.
“If there’s nothing in particular you’d like to talk about, I was hoping we could discuss Dean Winchester.”
He stiffens immediately. He doesn’t want to talk about Dean.
“Why? I’m better now.”
“I know,” she says easily. “But I think we need to figure out why you picked Dean. What is it about him that makes you want to be him?”
He starts cracking his knuckles. He’s waiting for the day she tells him not to do it, that it’s bad for his joints, but she never says anything.
“I don’t think I’m him anymore. I know who I am. I’m me. I’m Jensen.”
“And I’m glad for it. But it’s important that you understand why you latched on to him. If we can take it apart and uncover it all, you won’t need him anymore. Remember what I said about therapy at the start?”
He shifts in his seat. “Yeah.” She had said it was like a rain barrel, and while things looked clean on the surface there was always sludge and grime that you had to stir up, clean out, and then you’d really have clean water instead of just the illusion of clean water.
“So, tell me. Tell me about Dean Winchester.”
***
They talk about Dean. About his backstory. This elaborate backstory that seemed to live in Jensen’s mind.
And Dr. Reid systematically helps him poke holes in it all. She isn’t mean about it, or judgmental. She simply presents a set of questions and when he thinks about it he realizes that the entire thing is pretty far-fetched.
“So, after Mary Winchester was killed, Dean’s father took two young boys, babies essentially, on the road. Hunting things.”
“Yeah,” Jensen says with a nod.
“How did he hunt things if he had children with him? Who looked after the children while he was gone?”
“Um, there was Bobby and Pastor Jim.”
“But if they were stationary and John travelled around, how did that work?”
“Um, I guess it wouldn’t?” It’s hard not to make things a question all the time. “I mean, it wouldn’t.”
“What about money? Health care?”
“There’d be fake papers for that. Credit cards and such.”
Dr. Reid nods. “How did John Winchester learn all these things?”
“I guess he didn’t,” replies Jensen. “I mean, I guess it wouldn’t be that easy. It just wouldn’t work out.”
“Why?”
“We’d be growing and would need clothes and stuff. And school. We’d have to go to school. Not we, I mean,” he says quickly. “Dean and Sam would have to go to school and when they were little, it’d be too hard for them to keep moving around.”
It goes on like that for an hour and he’s shaking his head by the time they’re done. It makes so much sense coming from Dr. Reid. He doesn’t know why he always dreads one-on-one so much. Things are so clear while he’s with her. She pays attention to him and listens to everything he says.
“I’m really proud of you, Jensen,” she says toward the end of the hour.
“Why?”
“I know it’s hard. But you show up every time for session and you do the work. Recovery is a process and it takes effort.”
“Well, I take my meds.”
“The meds are only part of it. They’re a tool to get you to a place where you can make your own connections. But every time you show up, you’re making a commitment to getting better. It’s hard and it’s messy sometimes, but you keep showing up. You keep doing the work. And I’m proud of you.”
He smiles shyly under her praise, stealing a glance from underneath his lashes.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at group. Think about sharing sometime with them. I know you don’t like it but I think it would be another big step.”
He squirms in his seat at the thought of group again and she grins.
“I know you hate it, but trust me, it’s part of the process.”
He gives her another shy smile in return as he tries to work his way out of the beanbag chair.
“Have a good day,” she says brightly as he leaves.
He shuts the door to her office behind him and starts back down the hallway to his room. He feels a little wrung out from therapy, but it’s a good wrung out. A clean wrung out.
His good mood lasts for all of two minutes before hands grab him and haul him into a supply closet.
He tries to yell but a hand is clapped over his mouth and he’s pushed roughly up against a shelving of blankets. The overhead lighting is dim but he can make out who’s got him. As soon as he makes eye contact, the hand drops.
“What the hell?” Jensen hisses. “You can’t just grab people and stuff them in a closet!”
“I had to talk to you alone. Are you okay?”
“I was until you manhandled me in here, what the fuck is wrong with you, Jared.”
Jared shakes his head, his mop of hair swaying back and forth as he does. “Don’t do this, Dean, don’t do this to me. It’s Sam.”
Jensen swallows hard. He has to stay calm. “No, it’s not. And don’t call me Dean. My name is Jensen.”
Jared grabs Jensen’s shoulders and holds on. “Dean, seriously man, you can’t do this to me. Tell me you haven’t been taking those pills.”
“Of course I’ve been taking my medication. It’s why we’re here. To get better.”
“No, Dean,” Jared says, putting an extra emphasis on the name. “We’re here because they won’t let us leave.”
“That’s ridiculous, Jared.”
“It’s Sam,” he hisses. “Jesus, I was only gone for two days. What did they do to you while I was gone?”
Jensen struggles against him. “Nothing. ‘They’ haven’t been doing anything to me. ‘They’ are doctors, Jared. And we’re sick. We’re here to get better. I’m getting better. And if you tried harder, then they wouldn’t have to put you in lockdown so often.”
Jared’s hands open and close reflexively on his shoulders. “Dean, you have to believe me. You have to.” His hands tighten painfully. “We’re all we’ve got in here and if you… if you don’t… we have to get out of here, Dean. I don’t know who’s behind this or what the fuck, but we gotta get out of here.”
“Are you listening to yourself? There’s no one behind anything. We’re in an insane asylum. Because we’re insane!” Jensen pauses willing his voice lower. “But we can get better and when we do, we can go home.”
“Home? Home is the Impala and Bobby’s and crappy hotel rooms. It’s shitty but it’s ours and we’re never going to see it again if you don’t stop drinking the fucking kool-aid!”
“Is that what you want? Jesus, Jared, don’t you want to get better?”
“I’m not sick! You’re not sick! At least you weren’t until you started taking the meds they’ve been shoving at us. And my name is Sam!.”
Jensen shakes his head. “I’m doing a lot better now and I’m not… I’m getting better and I’m going to go home.”
“Really? Where’s home? Tell me all about it.”
Jensen opens his mouth to speak and nothing comes out. He thinks home and there’s nothing in his brain but a vague, blank spot. He tries not to panic. Dr. Reid warned him that coming down from the delusion would be hard, that there would be setbacks, moments where things could get fuzzy again, but he just had to stay focused.
“I’m not having this discussion with you,” Jensen finally says.
“You can’t remember anything, can you? You don’t have a life outside of here as Jensen. You’re only Jensen in here,” Jared says knowingly. “That’s because you’re not him. You’re Dean.”
“Dean Winchester is some fucked up figment of my imagination. Hunting monsters? Living in hotel rooms? Seriously? It’s fucking ridiculous.”
“Dean,” Jared says, stepping in closer, right into Jensen’s space. The heat coming off him is incredible. Jensen turns his eyes away from Jared, looking over his shoulder at the stack of bed linens. Jared leans his face even closer, a hairs breadth away from his. “Look at me.”
“You’re crazy, man,” Jensen breathes.
“According to you, we’re both crazy,” Jared counters. “But I need you to believe me. I need you.”
He’s got Jensen cornered now, in the closet, his large body pressing up against Jensen’s.
“Stop it,” Jensen says quietly, without any force behind his voice. “We can’t.”
“Why not?” Jared counters, tilting his hips slightly into Jensen’s, pressing into him.
“Because we’re-” brothers.
He almost said it. But it’s not true. It’s part of the delusion. He sucks in a breath as Jared pushes him against the wall and cants his hips into his pelvis. He can feel Jared’s erection through the industrial denim of their jeans. Jared’s hands curling around Jensen’s biceps, leaving fingermarks in his flesh. Jared’s breathing hotly in his ear, his tongue darting out and nipping at Jensen’s ear and the thrill of desire, the spark of need and want mixed in with can’t and wrong is heady and arousing. It’s illicit and forbidden and he wants it so much.
“You can’t have it both ways,” Jared says in his ear, rocking his hips against Jensen. He licks at Jensen’s lips and pulls away when Jensen makes a miniscule motion to lean into the kiss. “You can’t say you’re not Dean and then say you can’t because it’s wrong. If you’re not Dean-”
“I’m not,” Jensen breathes. His hands clutch at Jared’s shirt, fisting in the cheap fabric, contorting it out of shape.
“Then there’s nothing stopping you, is there?” Jared whispers, tilting his head down and mouthing at the stubble on Jensen’s jaw.
He starts working his way down Jensen’s throat and Jensen drops his head back against the wall with a loud ‘thunk.’ He thunks it against the wall again as Jared slides down his body and fumbles with the button of the stiff denim, finally pushing it through the hole then drags the zipper down. Jared tugs at Jensen’s jeans, slips them off his hips, taking his boxers down with them until his cock springs free, already hard and hot.
Jensen can’t look down, keeping his head tilted back and his eyes shut. It’s so wrong and he can never say no. He doesn’t want to say no. His hands automatically fist in Jared’s silky hair, so soft and too long and he thinks, Time for a haircut, Sasquatch and then Jared’s mouth is on his dick, hot and wet and he stops thinking anything but fuck, yes, I need.
The sounds Jared makes as he sucks on Jensen’s cock are fucking perfect. Wet, sloppy, slurping sounds interspersed with gasps of need and grunts of want. His hands wrap around Jensen’s ass, pulling Jensen closer and he digs his fingertips into the flesh but it’s not enough.
“Harder,” Jensen says lowly and Jared grips him tighter, digging his fingernails in roughly. He tongues at the tip of Jensen’s cock and then takes it all in, swallowing around it before pulling back off and doing it all over again. Jensen feels the whine build at the back of his throat, feels the pressure build at the base of his spine and before he knows it he’s curling over Jared and coming hard with a gasp.
“Sam.”
***
If he can beat the shrinks at their own game, Sam thinks, he can get out of here. He can get both of them out of here.
Palming his meds is simple enough and he figures he’s got enough stored up to get some useful things in trade.
What worries him the most is Dean.
Sam was in lockdown for two days after he knocked out one of the orderlies and nearly busted out of his floor. In those two days, Dean’s taking his meds and spouting off about being Jensen again.
It makes things harder, but not impossible. Once Sam can get them out of here, he can focus on getting Dean off the meds and they can lay low for a while.
If he could get to a phone he could call Bobby or Rufus. Unfortunately, phone privileges are for ‘compliant’ patients.
He’ll just have to be compliant.
Dr. Reid looks up as he’s shown into her office for his one-on-one session.
“Jared,” she says brightly. “It’s good to see you.”
“Dr. Reid,” he says with a polite smile, slouching down low into the bean bag chair.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Good.”
“Meds giving you any problems?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
She makes a note on her pad. “No sluggishness or fogginess?”
“Nope.”
She makes another note. “Okay, great. Anything on your mind today?”
He shrugs.
“Okay. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to talk about what got you upgraded to security 4 the other day.”
“You mean lockdown.”
She bobs her head back and forth. “I try to avoid that term but yes, lockdown.”
He shrugs. “I guess I got upset. Confused. I thought I wanted to leave.”
“And now?”
He smiles at her. “I can see why I need to stay here. I’m sick.”
She nods slowly and puts her pen down. “Jared, one of the cornerstones of therapy is honesty. You need to know that this is a safe place. You can say anything here and you won’t be judged or persecuted.”
He nods vaguely. “Sure.”
“Two days ago you were so… agitated that you broke a guard’s arm trying to get out of the building and now you tell me that you understand you’re sick.”
“Well, I had a lot of time to think while I was in lockdown.”
“Mmhmm,” she says noncommittally. “It wouldn’t be the norm for a person in your position to do a full turn around. Sure, it can happen, but it is rare.”
“Well, like I said, I had a lot of time to think.”
She nods again. “Okay. I was hoping to talk a bit today about Sam Winchester.”
“Sure.”
“Does talking about him bother you?”
“Nope. Why would it?”
“Well, some patients find it difficult to talk freely about their delusions.”
“If you think it’s important for my recovery, let’s do it.”
***
Sam’s not sure if Reid’s a demon or a shapeshifter or skin walker or what, but she’s good.
She systematically tries to break down everything he’s ever believed in. She’s like a pit bull, pulling at all the frayed edges of his life, trying to unravel the story.
But you can’t unravel the truth.
He says all the right things. Agrees with her when she points out something that seems strange or bizarre. Smiles when she smiles. Mirrors her body language and speech patterns back to her. He paid attention in Psych 101 at Stanford, and a lifetime of hunting has helped him become excellent at giving people what they want.
“One of the things I find most interesting is the sudden shift in Sam’s life toward a Judeo-Christian mythology,” Dr. Reid says. “For a while, other than of course the clear reference to the Jesus myth with Sam and Dean’s parents being named John and Mary, it seems like there is no prevalent faith and then suddenly, there is heaven and hell, demons and angels, but God is still not present.”
Sam’s not sure what the question is in there so he shrugs. “Well, I think we all struggle with the concept of religion.”
“And then there was…” she looks down at her notes. “Chuck. The prophet Chuck.”
He shrugs again, not sure if that was a question. “Yeah.”
“So, in this world, the closest voice you have to god is an alcoholic writer and somehow he sees Sam and Dean’s life, writes it down and passes it off as fiction.”
Sam squirms. When she says it like that, it does sound completely ridiculous. Even he and Dean didn’t believe it at first.
“Yeah,” he says with a huff. “Pretty crazy.”
She gives him a rueful smile. “Well, we try to avoid that word around here. Bad for morale.” She taps her pen on the pad. “And Ruby, she was a demon?”
He clenches his teeth at Ruby’s name and doesn’t say anything. She’s just fishing. Trying to get him riled up.
“How do you reconcile the part of the delusion where Sam trusts Ruby?”
“What?” He pushes his hair out of his eyes. She doesn’t know. She wasn’t there.
“In this world you and Jensen have created, this shared delusion, you’re brothers above all else. The sense of family at the beginning is epic. Two brothers on a search for their father, taking up the mantle of hunting the creature that killed their mother. Family is the heart.”
Sam feels his heart start to race and he wills himself to remain calm, trying to let her words, her judgement flow over him, unheeded and unnoticed.
“Then after the tragic death of the father figure, John,” she continues, “we transition to this ultimate sacrifice on the part of Dean where he sells his soul, preferring to go to hell rather than live without his brother. The natural conclusion of that would have been for Sam to rescue Dean from Hell. But he doesn’t. A third party intervenes, and this third party, this…” she checks her notes. “Castiel.”
Of course he couldn’t save Dean from Hell, it was Hell and Dean made him promise, promise not to do anything. And even when he tried, he couldn’t because no one would talk to him. It wasn’t like he just sat back and did nothing.
“So Castiel now becomes part of the narrative and appears to further upset the brotherly dynamic. We have Dean with the classic angel on his shoulder, whereas Sam has the demon, Ruby, whispering in his ear.”
It wasn’t like that, he wants to say. Ruby wasn’t whispering in his ear. He wasn’t an automaton. Sure now, in hindsight he can see how it would look that way, but in the middle of it, he was trying to stop the apocalypse. The was trying to do everything he could, whatever it took to stop Lucifer, the devil from rising.
“This culminates with this horrible betrayal where Sam choses to believe Ruby, the demon, one of the creatures he’s sworn to fight, he’s pledged his life to fight against, over his own brother.”
And god, he can never take that back, he can’t. But he’s trying to make it up to Dean. He’ll spend the rest of his life trying to make it up if he has to.
“Up until the last moment, Dean is trying to stop Sam, but is unsuccessful. Then Sam, releases Lucifer, starting the apocalypse on earth. So not only do we have the betrayal of his brother, Dean, but also we have this complex martyr concept of Sam through his somewhat bumbling misguided intentions starting the end of the world.”
“Jesus Christ, it wasn’t like that!” Sam finally barks, pushing his large frame to his feet. “You’ve no idea, no idea what it’s like. It’s all the time. It’s hunting and killing and you can’t get away even if you try to get out, this life just sucks you back in and I thought I was doing the right thing!”
He’s towering over her and she’s blinking up at him and he realizes what he just said, how he said it.
“Sam,” she says, the barest hint of disappointment on her face. She gives a little sigh. “I suppose you’re just learning to tell me what I want to hear, is that it?”
Oh, fuck. He turns hard on his heel, punches the wall and she flinches.
“Pretending to get better is only deluding yourself, Jared.”
“My name is Sam.”
“You haven’t even been taking your meds, have you?”
He glares at her.
“Jared,” she begins, “I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself.”
“I’m not Jared. I’m Sam. Sam -”
“Winchester. I know. But we’ve talked about this. You agree the entire story is… convoluted, yes?”
“It’s not a story.”
She purses her lips as he stares down at her. “You’re a smart guy, Jared. You can see all the elements of classical mythology playing out in this story. Starting from Sam’s infancy where he was somehow infused with special powers. It’s a classic tale from Greek mythology. Perseus, Hercules, Helen… All the famous mythology figures, all the ones that had special powers were all somehow descendant from the gods. Partially graced, yet essentially mortal.”
“It’s not a story, it’s our lives.”
“It’s a classic persecution delusion interspersed with elements of Christianity. How is it possible that in all the world, all these things revolve around Sam and Dean and only Sam and Dean?”
“Things were put into place. The angels-”
“Orchestrated your birth?”
He swallows hard.
“You say there are other hunters in this world,” she continues.
“Yes,” Sam grits out.
“Then where are they when the apocalypse is happening? Why is it they only show up sporadically?”
“Hunting is a solitary business. It doesn’t pay to make friends.”
She keeps chipping away at him. “How do you keep the supernatural events from leaking out to the media? Why aren’t we seeing survivor tales from the people you’ve helped?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe them!” he shouts. “Just like you don’t believe me!”
It’s a face off of sorts for a few seconds - him staring down at her, using his height and her being unperturbed by the show of dominance. She blinks up at him a few times.
“Jared,” she says and he gets the feeling she’s deliberately using his name. “You say that I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t.”
She nods in acquiescence. “And you’re upset by that. But, can you alternatively see my point of view? The same way you say I don’t believe you, you don’t believe me.”
“Why the fuck would I believe you?”
“I could ask you the same question,” she counters. “Although I would do it without the vulgarity.”
“I’m telling the truth,” he declares hotly.
“So am I. Are we at an impasse?”
He huffs in frustration and annoyance. “You could be a demon!”
“How can I prove I’m not?”
“Christo.”
Nothing happens. She raises an eyebrow at him. “Was that a test? Do I pass?”
“It doesn’t mean you aren’t something else,” he says with grim determination.
She puts her pen down. “What can I do to prove I’m not?”
He eyes her suspiciously. “What?”
“I want to prove I’m not anything other than what I say I am. A doctor. How can I prove it to you?”
“I’d need silver.”
“Alright. How much silver? What kind?”
His eyes narrow. “Not every creature responds to silver.” If she’s willing to give him silver, she likely is something that doesn’t react. Besides, he’d have no way of knowing if what she gave him was pure silver or some kind of amalgamate. “You could be a ghoul or a succubus.”
She picks her pen up and makes another note before looking up at him again. She stares at him for a long while.
“What if allowed you the opportunity to make a phone call?”
He freezes. A phone call. Jesus, they could call Bobby to come bust them out, or at least, give them a hand. Suspicion tickles his brain.
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“You want to prove to me your life is real. I want to prove to you it’s not. If you could call someone from your life, a verifiable someone, that would go a long way toward proving your claim.”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do, you’re never going to buy it. Besides, it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s real. And every second I’m in here, we’re in here, people could be dying.”
“Okay, we’re going around in circles here and I think we’re both getting a little frustrated. You’re a logical guy and you’re intelligent. I really want you to think about your life as Sam; the chronology, the events. Ask yourself: do these events make logical, rational sense, on a day to day basis.” At his look she holds up a hand, forestalling him. “I don’t mean the demon hunting and monster killing. I mean an every day basis. Laundry. Banking. Paying bills. Headlines in newspapers. Law enforcement. Even… medical issues. Broken limbs, jaws. Bruises, scars. Think about what a life of hunting would do to your body and ask yourself if your physical state is consistent with that lifestyle.” She pauses as if she’s waiting for her words to sink in. “And if the answer is yes, it makes complete sense, then I want you to come in here at your next session and tell me how and why it makes sense.
“But if the answer is no, then instead of getting upset or aggressive, I want you to think about why the answer is no. Can you do that?”
He shrugs dismissively. “Fine.”
He can almost feel the sigh she holds back. “Okay.”
He moves toward the door, palm on the handle.
“One more thing I’d like you to think about,” she says.
He grips the handle tight. “Yes?”
“Is Sam Winchester’s life a happy one?”
He pulls the door open hard and slams it shut on his way out.
***
Jensen doesn’t want to talk about what happened in the supply closet and he wishes he could hide out in his room, away from Jared, but the nurses make you come out and hang out in the common room, even if you just want to read a book or something solitary.
They say no one ever got better holed up in their room.
He bets no one got better trying to put together puzzles that are missing pieces either. It’s too freakishly close to a metaphor for all their brains.
He fiddles with one of the blue sky pieces, methodically trying it in a bunch of gaps, rotating it around, even when he knows it won’t fit, because it’s part of his systematic way of doing puzzles. As much as it’s mechanical and rote, he gets a strange satisfaction and dull sense of calm from picking up a piece, trying it all four ways against one space, then moving on and trying it against another space. It should be maddening in it’s repetition, but he likes it.
He sees Jared’s large shadow hulking over him before Jared himself steps into the corner of his eyesight. Without a word, Jared sits down, picks up a piece and slots it into place.
Motherfucker.
Jensen raises his eyes slightly to watch Jared as he quietly picks up another piece. Jensen rotates the piece in his own fingertips as Jared leans over the table and snaps his piece into another perfect fittingly place.
As much as he doesn’t want to see Jared, wants to avoid him, he longs to be near him as well. There’s something familiar and comforting about being around Jared. Jensen feels sorry for all the other SOB’s in this den of lunacy that are all sort of bobbing about alone.
He’s always got Jared.
Even when the fucker is finding another piece and putting it into place. Goddamn.
“You gotta stop taking the meds,” Jared says casually, his voice low so the nurses won’t hear.
“Jare…”
“Dean. Seriously. Just… it’s…” Jared pauses, frustrated and pushes his long hair out of his face. “That Dr. Reid… She twists things up and makes it all…” he motions his hands around his head.
“Crazy?” Jensen offers and Jared thins his lips at him.
“Dude, not helping.”
Jensen stifles a smile. “Sorry, man. Gallows humor.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Yeah, I hear that’s what all the crazy people say.”
Again, Jared levels him with a look, his hazel eyes boring holes into Jensen. “Just… I need you with me on this, Dean.”
Jensen doesn’t look up as he goes through his pattern of trying each piece of the puzzle against the empty spaces. He’s not having any luck. “I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe it doesn’t fit.”
Jared snatches the piece from his finger and unerringly finds its home and it locks into place.
“It fits.”
***
Dr. Zagorodniuk makes them call him Zig.
He gets a real kick out of saying, “You know, like Zig Zag.”
Group sessions are the worst.
Steve [agoraphobia and chiraptophobia] won’t sit next to Lexie [obsessive-compulsive with germophobic and numeric tendencies] because the way she counts certain words annoys him. Dylan [manorexic] and Mallory [anorexic] have to be kept separated ever since the nurses found out they are egging each other on in a battle to see who can lose more weight but also sharing tips about it. Jodie, the bulimic, feels left out but at least no one in group cared if she smoked, so that makes her feel better. Tom’s paranoid and convinced aliens are coming back to get him to take the rest of his brain out and replace it with their biological substitute. He’s tried three times to dig out what he swears is a tracking device in his left calf. Twice he’s tried to dig it out from the right one. Phoebe is bad at taking her meds and a cutter. She’s scarily good at finding new things to turn into sharp instruments. Most notably, the casing of a pen. Jensen heard through the grapevine that she went off her meds once and tried to carve up one of the doctors. Since then she’s patted down twice a day and her room gets searched at random intervals.
Jared and Jensen are both classified as nihilistic delusionals with paranoid tendencies. Jared has the added bonus of Grandiose Delusions because of his special telekinesis powers, notably demon banishing and short lived visions. Together they have foile a deux, although Dr. Reid likes to call it a shared psychotic disorder.
Zig wants them all to get along and ‘share.’
He’d have them sing Kumbaya if he didn’t think it would set off Jensen and Jared’s religious delusions.
Not that either of them particularly care. Really, what the fuck does Kumbaya mean, anyway?
The beginning of group is always tense and awkward. Of course, the ending is tense and awkward too, but it’s worse at the start.
“Hey gang,” says Zig, clapping his hands together once. He always calls them ‘gang.’ Like they’re a weird club or something.
Zig’s brown eyes are bright and happy behind his Buddy Holly glasses. “We’ve got a newbie today, so I’m going to bring her in and I want you all to make her feel welcome.”
Silence echoes in the circle of chairs as Zig looks at each one of them expectantly.
“Okay!” he says brightly, getting up from the chair and walking briskly from the room.
No one says anything to each and they all studiously avoid making eye contact as well. Zig ambles back into the room minutes later with a shifty, anxious and wary looking blonde. He leads her to an empty chair in the half-circle and she sits down carefully.
“Group, this is Elizabeth. Elizabeth, why don’t you say a few words about yourself.”
Beth looks like she’d rather swallow her own tongue [which, in this group, no one would bat an eye at], but when Zig gives her his big, eager eyes, she speaks.
“Um. I’m Liz. Hi.”
When she doesn’t offer anything else, Zig nods encouragingly and she shifts her eyes around looking for someone to clue her in.
“Tell us why you’re here,” Zig says.
“Well, ‘cause people think I’m crazy.” She’s eyeballing him like he’s crazy and Jensen smirks at her expression.
“Liz, we don’t like to use that word here,” Zig admonishes. “It’s got a lot of baggage.”
She shrugs. “Whatever.”
“Why don’t you tell us what happened? What brought you here?”
She looks around at the group again. Lexie is compulsive scratching at her neck in the same spot. She gets eczema from applying hand sanitizer like lotion. Steve is trying to unobtrusively scooch his chair back. Jodie lights up. The anorexics look bored. Phoebe is running her long pinky nail over a spot in her arm, making an impressive scratch and Tom…
Tom has fully checked out. He’s zoned out in the corner, not even blinking. They got him on a new med combo and it’s either working out great because he’s calm or working out horribly because he’s comatose.
Liz shifts in her seat. “Well, I guess this is like introducing yourself in jail, isn’t it? Everyone wants to know what you’re in for but then no body’s gonna believe me when I say I didn’t do it.”
That gets Liz a few dry chuckles from the group. She hit the nail right on the head with that one.
Liz sighs and then blurts out, “I’m here because I shot my boyfriend.”
Mental note, don’t get on Liz’s bad side, Jensen thinks.
“Why did you shoot him?” Zig prods gently.
Liz rolls her eyes and huffs. “Because he was a werewolf, okay?”
Jensen’s eyes snap over to Jared, who is sitting up straighter in his seat, suddenly intent on Liz.
“So, fine, call me crazy. But it was him or me and tomorrow’s a full moon. So I was on a deadline.” She pauses. “I do well with deadlines.” Another pause. “No pun intended.”
“Why did you think he was a werewolf?” Zig asks.
“I didn’t just think it, I knew it. He’d go away, for like, these guys nights out. Him and his friends. But then I realized that they were always at the same time.”
Zig waits for her to continue and then motions with his hands when she doesn’t. “And?”
Jensen leans forward in his chair, Jared mirroring his posture.
“And… Then I found this room. In his house. In the basement. And there was… stuff in there.” Liz tucks her hand under her thighs, sitting on them tensely.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Stuff, okay,” she exclaims. “Creepy, weird ass stuff and it was… I don’t wanna talk about it. But I knew what it meant. And then just… I mean, I always knew he was different, right? And I’ve got this thing, for the bad boys, which I’m probably fucking cured of now, thank you very much, not that it does me any good in here. And at first it was… like… kind of sexy and… you know? But that room… And he found out I knew. He knew I knew and that was it. It was him or me and I picked me and if that makes me crazy well… fine.”
“What happened when the authorities went to his house?”
She glares at Zig. “You know what happened.”
“They didn’t find the room did they?”
“His creepy friends are just like him,” she protests hotly. “I know they cleaned that shit up, I just know it.” She purses her lips together. “And then they got me locked up in here and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But I’m not.”
“I told you, Liz, we don’t use that word here.”
Liz turns flat eyes on Zig. “Whatever.”
On to part 2
Author: zoemathemata
Rating: R
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Sam, Jensen/Jared
Spoilers: Season 5
Word Count: 12,000ish
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: At Lofty Pines Mental Institution, Jensen and Jared try to work through their delusions of being Dean and Sam Winchester.
-Or-
At Lofty Pines Mental Institution, Dean and Sam Winchester are being manipulated into thinking they’re Jensen and Jared
“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?” - Chuang Tzu
Unbeta'd
If he had to pick which he hated more, group therapy or one on one sessions, he’d pick one on one. He dislikes group therapy too, no doubt about it. There’s something painfully awkward and not at all helpful about someone trying to get you to air out all your problems in front of a bunch of strangers. But, at least at group, there’s always the chance that no one will notice you that day. And then you can just sit there and pretend to be interested while someone else spills shamefully honest details about their most intimate secrets while really you’re just keeping up a litany in your head of don’t pick me, don’t pick me, don’t pick me.
Usually, it works out pretty well in group too, because there’s always a handful of ‘sharers,’ the people who are just dying to tell you ever miniscule detail about their life.
But not in one-on-one. In personal sessions, it’s just him and Dr. Reid. She runs group too, but there’s something more… pointed about her in one-on-one. All her attention is focused on you.
She’s got a bunch of degrees. Or so he assumes. She doesn’t hang any on the wall. She doesn’t sit behind a desk, or make him recline back on a sofa. She has two giant bean bag chairs and she doesn’t mind if you stand up and tower over her while she reclines. She doesn’t mind if you pace. She doesn’t mind if you kick the bean bag chair, so long as it’s not the one she’s in.
She says whatever makes you comfortable, Jensen.
She really looks like she means it too.
She has a clipboard and she takes notes. Shorthand notes that he can’t read. He’s tried. Once she had to leave one-on-one in the middle because Jacob had managed to get into the med closet and was threatening to shoot himself up with narcotics unless they let him call his mother. Dr. Reid left her clipboard on the floor when she raced out to talk Jacob out of the closet and Jensen had tried to read what she wrote about him but it was all squiggles and doodles that made no sense.
She came back five minutes later with a swelling lip from were Jacob had apparently punched her and when she saw Jensen staring at the clipboard she asked if he wanted to know what it said.
But he didn’t.
Not really.
He knows he’s fucked up.
Really fucked up.
Which is why even though he hates group, he hates one-on-one and he hates the meds that dull everything out and make the edges gray and fuzzy, he sticks with it. Because there has to be more than this.
She tells him there’s more than this.
It’s a one-on-one session today. Two group sessions a week and three personal sessions. And then there are two days off, which really, are his favorite because then he can just hang out, go to the rec room or the library or whatever and not worry about answering questions.
Or not answering questions.
He picks at the soft cotton of his pants and shifts in the bean bag chair which makes a squishy sound. He’s glad they let him wear jeans and a t-shirt instead of some dumb pajama outfit.
Lofty Pines bills itself as a Progressive Center for the Mental Imbalanced.
Which is a really nice way of saying Insane Asylum.
But no matter how much you dress it up, there’s no mistaking what it is.
Secluded up in the Colorado mountains, they say the fresh air is instrumental in assisting the guests in rebalancing their minds.
Translation: we’re keeping the crazy folks far away so as not to bother the not-crazy folks.
While everyone can wear jeans or khakis instead of scrubs, they are generic, hospital issued clothes; all identical and somewhat industrial.
Dr. Reid doesn’t wear a doctor’s coat. She wears dark slacks and sweater sets with sensible pumps on her feet. Her hair is always in a perfect bob, the dark ends just barely curling under her chin.
It’s hard to tell how old she is. Somedays she looks older than others.
It’s hard for him to remember time. He gets events confused. Days, weeks, months. He’s not sure how long he’s been at Lofty Pines. He’s afraid to ask.
“Anything in particular you want to discuss today, Jensen?” she asks. Her eyebrows go up expectantly, giving her a wide eyed look.
He shrugs. “Not really.”
It’s his standard answer. Sure there’s stuff he wants to talk about but he doesn’t want to be the one to bring it up. And then there’s other stuff he knows he should talk about but never wants to.
“How’s the new dosage working out?”
He shrugs again. “S’okay.”
“Any side effects? Vivid dreams, tremors, fogginess?”
“Little bit with the dreams.”
“Really vivid, detailed?”
He nods. “Yeah.”
“That’s to be expected. Anything else?”
“Thirsty a lot.”
“Unfortunately, it’s another common side effect. But if you can live with both of them, it’s a good combo you’re on so I’d like to stick with it.”
“Um. Okay.”
She smiles. “Good. That’s good. We’ll stick with it for a few weeks and see how it goes. Okay?”
“Sure.” It’s not like he has a choice.
“If there’s nothing in particular you’d like to talk about, I was hoping we could discuss Dean Winchester.”
He stiffens immediately. He doesn’t want to talk about Dean.
“Why? I’m better now.”
“I know,” she says easily. “But I think we need to figure out why you picked Dean. What is it about him that makes you want to be him?”
He starts cracking his knuckles. He’s waiting for the day she tells him not to do it, that it’s bad for his joints, but she never says anything.
“I don’t think I’m him anymore. I know who I am. I’m me. I’m Jensen.”
“And I’m glad for it. But it’s important that you understand why you latched on to him. If we can take it apart and uncover it all, you won’t need him anymore. Remember what I said about therapy at the start?”
He shifts in his seat. “Yeah.” She had said it was like a rain barrel, and while things looked clean on the surface there was always sludge and grime that you had to stir up, clean out, and then you’d really have clean water instead of just the illusion of clean water.
“So, tell me. Tell me about Dean Winchester.”
***
They talk about Dean. About his backstory. This elaborate backstory that seemed to live in Jensen’s mind.
And Dr. Reid systematically helps him poke holes in it all. She isn’t mean about it, or judgmental. She simply presents a set of questions and when he thinks about it he realizes that the entire thing is pretty far-fetched.
“So, after Mary Winchester was killed, Dean’s father took two young boys, babies essentially, on the road. Hunting things.”
“Yeah,” Jensen says with a nod.
“How did he hunt things if he had children with him? Who looked after the children while he was gone?”
“Um, there was Bobby and Pastor Jim.”
“But if they were stationary and John travelled around, how did that work?”
“Um, I guess it wouldn’t?” It’s hard not to make things a question all the time. “I mean, it wouldn’t.”
“What about money? Health care?”
“There’d be fake papers for that. Credit cards and such.”
Dr. Reid nods. “How did John Winchester learn all these things?”
“I guess he didn’t,” replies Jensen. “I mean, I guess it wouldn’t be that easy. It just wouldn’t work out.”
“Why?”
“We’d be growing and would need clothes and stuff. And school. We’d have to go to school. Not we, I mean,” he says quickly. “Dean and Sam would have to go to school and when they were little, it’d be too hard for them to keep moving around.”
It goes on like that for an hour and he’s shaking his head by the time they’re done. It makes so much sense coming from Dr. Reid. He doesn’t know why he always dreads one-on-one so much. Things are so clear while he’s with her. She pays attention to him and listens to everything he says.
“I’m really proud of you, Jensen,” she says toward the end of the hour.
“Why?”
“I know it’s hard. But you show up every time for session and you do the work. Recovery is a process and it takes effort.”
“Well, I take my meds.”
“The meds are only part of it. They’re a tool to get you to a place where you can make your own connections. But every time you show up, you’re making a commitment to getting better. It’s hard and it’s messy sometimes, but you keep showing up. You keep doing the work. And I’m proud of you.”
He smiles shyly under her praise, stealing a glance from underneath his lashes.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at group. Think about sharing sometime with them. I know you don’t like it but I think it would be another big step.”
He squirms in his seat at the thought of group again and she grins.
“I know you hate it, but trust me, it’s part of the process.”
He gives her another shy smile in return as he tries to work his way out of the beanbag chair.
“Have a good day,” she says brightly as he leaves.
He shuts the door to her office behind him and starts back down the hallway to his room. He feels a little wrung out from therapy, but it’s a good wrung out. A clean wrung out.
His good mood lasts for all of two minutes before hands grab him and haul him into a supply closet.
He tries to yell but a hand is clapped over his mouth and he’s pushed roughly up against a shelving of blankets. The overhead lighting is dim but he can make out who’s got him. As soon as he makes eye contact, the hand drops.
“What the hell?” Jensen hisses. “You can’t just grab people and stuff them in a closet!”
“I had to talk to you alone. Are you okay?”
“I was until you manhandled me in here, what the fuck is wrong with you, Jared.”
Jared shakes his head, his mop of hair swaying back and forth as he does. “Don’t do this, Dean, don’t do this to me. It’s Sam.”
Jensen swallows hard. He has to stay calm. “No, it’s not. And don’t call me Dean. My name is Jensen.”
Jared grabs Jensen’s shoulders and holds on. “Dean, seriously man, you can’t do this to me. Tell me you haven’t been taking those pills.”
“Of course I’ve been taking my medication. It’s why we’re here. To get better.”
“No, Dean,” Jared says, putting an extra emphasis on the name. “We’re here because they won’t let us leave.”
“That’s ridiculous, Jared.”
“It’s Sam,” he hisses. “Jesus, I was only gone for two days. What did they do to you while I was gone?”
Jensen struggles against him. “Nothing. ‘They’ haven’t been doing anything to me. ‘They’ are doctors, Jared. And we’re sick. We’re here to get better. I’m getting better. And if you tried harder, then they wouldn’t have to put you in lockdown so often.”
Jared’s hands open and close reflexively on his shoulders. “Dean, you have to believe me. You have to.” His hands tighten painfully. “We’re all we’ve got in here and if you… if you don’t… we have to get out of here, Dean. I don’t know who’s behind this or what the fuck, but we gotta get out of here.”
“Are you listening to yourself? There’s no one behind anything. We’re in an insane asylum. Because we’re insane!” Jensen pauses willing his voice lower. “But we can get better and when we do, we can go home.”
“Home? Home is the Impala and Bobby’s and crappy hotel rooms. It’s shitty but it’s ours and we’re never going to see it again if you don’t stop drinking the fucking kool-aid!”
“Is that what you want? Jesus, Jared, don’t you want to get better?”
“I’m not sick! You’re not sick! At least you weren’t until you started taking the meds they’ve been shoving at us. And my name is Sam!.”
Jensen shakes his head. “I’m doing a lot better now and I’m not… I’m getting better and I’m going to go home.”
“Really? Where’s home? Tell me all about it.”
Jensen opens his mouth to speak and nothing comes out. He thinks home and there’s nothing in his brain but a vague, blank spot. He tries not to panic. Dr. Reid warned him that coming down from the delusion would be hard, that there would be setbacks, moments where things could get fuzzy again, but he just had to stay focused.
“I’m not having this discussion with you,” Jensen finally says.
“You can’t remember anything, can you? You don’t have a life outside of here as Jensen. You’re only Jensen in here,” Jared says knowingly. “That’s because you’re not him. You’re Dean.”
“Dean Winchester is some fucked up figment of my imagination. Hunting monsters? Living in hotel rooms? Seriously? It’s fucking ridiculous.”
“Dean,” Jared says, stepping in closer, right into Jensen’s space. The heat coming off him is incredible. Jensen turns his eyes away from Jared, looking over his shoulder at the stack of bed linens. Jared leans his face even closer, a hairs breadth away from his. “Look at me.”
“You’re crazy, man,” Jensen breathes.
“According to you, we’re both crazy,” Jared counters. “But I need you to believe me. I need you.”
He’s got Jensen cornered now, in the closet, his large body pressing up against Jensen’s.
“Stop it,” Jensen says quietly, without any force behind his voice. “We can’t.”
“Why not?” Jared counters, tilting his hips slightly into Jensen’s, pressing into him.
“Because we’re-” brothers.
He almost said it. But it’s not true. It’s part of the delusion. He sucks in a breath as Jared pushes him against the wall and cants his hips into his pelvis. He can feel Jared’s erection through the industrial denim of their jeans. Jared’s hands curling around Jensen’s biceps, leaving fingermarks in his flesh. Jared’s breathing hotly in his ear, his tongue darting out and nipping at Jensen’s ear and the thrill of desire, the spark of need and want mixed in with can’t and wrong is heady and arousing. It’s illicit and forbidden and he wants it so much.
“You can’t have it both ways,” Jared says in his ear, rocking his hips against Jensen. He licks at Jensen’s lips and pulls away when Jensen makes a miniscule motion to lean into the kiss. “You can’t say you’re not Dean and then say you can’t because it’s wrong. If you’re not Dean-”
“I’m not,” Jensen breathes. His hands clutch at Jared’s shirt, fisting in the cheap fabric, contorting it out of shape.
“Then there’s nothing stopping you, is there?” Jared whispers, tilting his head down and mouthing at the stubble on Jensen’s jaw.
He starts working his way down Jensen’s throat and Jensen drops his head back against the wall with a loud ‘thunk.’ He thunks it against the wall again as Jared slides down his body and fumbles with the button of the stiff denim, finally pushing it through the hole then drags the zipper down. Jared tugs at Jensen’s jeans, slips them off his hips, taking his boxers down with them until his cock springs free, already hard and hot.
Jensen can’t look down, keeping his head tilted back and his eyes shut. It’s so wrong and he can never say no. He doesn’t want to say no. His hands automatically fist in Jared’s silky hair, so soft and too long and he thinks, Time for a haircut, Sasquatch and then Jared’s mouth is on his dick, hot and wet and he stops thinking anything but fuck, yes, I need.
The sounds Jared makes as he sucks on Jensen’s cock are fucking perfect. Wet, sloppy, slurping sounds interspersed with gasps of need and grunts of want. His hands wrap around Jensen’s ass, pulling Jensen closer and he digs his fingertips into the flesh but it’s not enough.
“Harder,” Jensen says lowly and Jared grips him tighter, digging his fingernails in roughly. He tongues at the tip of Jensen’s cock and then takes it all in, swallowing around it before pulling back off and doing it all over again. Jensen feels the whine build at the back of his throat, feels the pressure build at the base of his spine and before he knows it he’s curling over Jared and coming hard with a gasp.
“Sam.”
***
If he can beat the shrinks at their own game, Sam thinks, he can get out of here. He can get both of them out of here.
Palming his meds is simple enough and he figures he’s got enough stored up to get some useful things in trade.
What worries him the most is Dean.
Sam was in lockdown for two days after he knocked out one of the orderlies and nearly busted out of his floor. In those two days, Dean’s taking his meds and spouting off about being Jensen again.
It makes things harder, but not impossible. Once Sam can get them out of here, he can focus on getting Dean off the meds and they can lay low for a while.
If he could get to a phone he could call Bobby or Rufus. Unfortunately, phone privileges are for ‘compliant’ patients.
He’ll just have to be compliant.
Dr. Reid looks up as he’s shown into her office for his one-on-one session.
“Jared,” she says brightly. “It’s good to see you.”
“Dr. Reid,” he says with a polite smile, slouching down low into the bean bag chair.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Good.”
“Meds giving you any problems?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
She makes a note on her pad. “No sluggishness or fogginess?”
“Nope.”
She makes another note. “Okay, great. Anything on your mind today?”
He shrugs.
“Okay. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to talk about what got you upgraded to security 4 the other day.”
“You mean lockdown.”
She bobs her head back and forth. “I try to avoid that term but yes, lockdown.”
He shrugs. “I guess I got upset. Confused. I thought I wanted to leave.”
“And now?”
He smiles at her. “I can see why I need to stay here. I’m sick.”
She nods slowly and puts her pen down. “Jared, one of the cornerstones of therapy is honesty. You need to know that this is a safe place. You can say anything here and you won’t be judged or persecuted.”
He nods vaguely. “Sure.”
“Two days ago you were so… agitated that you broke a guard’s arm trying to get out of the building and now you tell me that you understand you’re sick.”
“Well, I had a lot of time to think while I was in lockdown.”
“Mmhmm,” she says noncommittally. “It wouldn’t be the norm for a person in your position to do a full turn around. Sure, it can happen, but it is rare.”
“Well, like I said, I had a lot of time to think.”
She nods again. “Okay. I was hoping to talk a bit today about Sam Winchester.”
“Sure.”
“Does talking about him bother you?”
“Nope. Why would it?”
“Well, some patients find it difficult to talk freely about their delusions.”
“If you think it’s important for my recovery, let’s do it.”
***
Sam’s not sure if Reid’s a demon or a shapeshifter or skin walker or what, but she’s good.
She systematically tries to break down everything he’s ever believed in. She’s like a pit bull, pulling at all the frayed edges of his life, trying to unravel the story.
But you can’t unravel the truth.
He says all the right things. Agrees with her when she points out something that seems strange or bizarre. Smiles when she smiles. Mirrors her body language and speech patterns back to her. He paid attention in Psych 101 at Stanford, and a lifetime of hunting has helped him become excellent at giving people what they want.
“One of the things I find most interesting is the sudden shift in Sam’s life toward a Judeo-Christian mythology,” Dr. Reid says. “For a while, other than of course the clear reference to the Jesus myth with Sam and Dean’s parents being named John and Mary, it seems like there is no prevalent faith and then suddenly, there is heaven and hell, demons and angels, but God is still not present.”
Sam’s not sure what the question is in there so he shrugs. “Well, I think we all struggle with the concept of religion.”
“And then there was…” she looks down at her notes. “Chuck. The prophet Chuck.”
He shrugs again, not sure if that was a question. “Yeah.”
“So, in this world, the closest voice you have to god is an alcoholic writer and somehow he sees Sam and Dean’s life, writes it down and passes it off as fiction.”
Sam squirms. When she says it like that, it does sound completely ridiculous. Even he and Dean didn’t believe it at first.
“Yeah,” he says with a huff. “Pretty crazy.”
She gives him a rueful smile. “Well, we try to avoid that word around here. Bad for morale.” She taps her pen on the pad. “And Ruby, she was a demon?”
He clenches his teeth at Ruby’s name and doesn’t say anything. She’s just fishing. Trying to get him riled up.
“How do you reconcile the part of the delusion where Sam trusts Ruby?”
“What?” He pushes his hair out of his eyes. She doesn’t know. She wasn’t there.
“In this world you and Jensen have created, this shared delusion, you’re brothers above all else. The sense of family at the beginning is epic. Two brothers on a search for their father, taking up the mantle of hunting the creature that killed their mother. Family is the heart.”
Sam feels his heart start to race and he wills himself to remain calm, trying to let her words, her judgement flow over him, unheeded and unnoticed.
“Then after the tragic death of the father figure, John,” she continues, “we transition to this ultimate sacrifice on the part of Dean where he sells his soul, preferring to go to hell rather than live without his brother. The natural conclusion of that would have been for Sam to rescue Dean from Hell. But he doesn’t. A third party intervenes, and this third party, this…” she checks her notes. “Castiel.”
Of course he couldn’t save Dean from Hell, it was Hell and Dean made him promise, promise not to do anything. And even when he tried, he couldn’t because no one would talk to him. It wasn’t like he just sat back and did nothing.
“So Castiel now becomes part of the narrative and appears to further upset the brotherly dynamic. We have Dean with the classic angel on his shoulder, whereas Sam has the demon, Ruby, whispering in his ear.”
It wasn’t like that, he wants to say. Ruby wasn’t whispering in his ear. He wasn’t an automaton. Sure now, in hindsight he can see how it would look that way, but in the middle of it, he was trying to stop the apocalypse. The was trying to do everything he could, whatever it took to stop Lucifer, the devil from rising.
“This culminates with this horrible betrayal where Sam choses to believe Ruby, the demon, one of the creatures he’s sworn to fight, he’s pledged his life to fight against, over his own brother.”
And god, he can never take that back, he can’t. But he’s trying to make it up to Dean. He’ll spend the rest of his life trying to make it up if he has to.
“Up until the last moment, Dean is trying to stop Sam, but is unsuccessful. Then Sam, releases Lucifer, starting the apocalypse on earth. So not only do we have the betrayal of his brother, Dean, but also we have this complex martyr concept of Sam through his somewhat bumbling misguided intentions starting the end of the world.”
“Jesus Christ, it wasn’t like that!” Sam finally barks, pushing his large frame to his feet. “You’ve no idea, no idea what it’s like. It’s all the time. It’s hunting and killing and you can’t get away even if you try to get out, this life just sucks you back in and I thought I was doing the right thing!”
He’s towering over her and she’s blinking up at him and he realizes what he just said, how he said it.
“Sam,” she says, the barest hint of disappointment on her face. She gives a little sigh. “I suppose you’re just learning to tell me what I want to hear, is that it?”
Oh, fuck. He turns hard on his heel, punches the wall and she flinches.
“Pretending to get better is only deluding yourself, Jared.”
“My name is Sam.”
“You haven’t even been taking your meds, have you?”
He glares at her.
“Jared,” she begins, “I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself.”
“I’m not Jared. I’m Sam. Sam -”
“Winchester. I know. But we’ve talked about this. You agree the entire story is… convoluted, yes?”
“It’s not a story.”
She purses her lips as he stares down at her. “You’re a smart guy, Jared. You can see all the elements of classical mythology playing out in this story. Starting from Sam’s infancy where he was somehow infused with special powers. It’s a classic tale from Greek mythology. Perseus, Hercules, Helen… All the famous mythology figures, all the ones that had special powers were all somehow descendant from the gods. Partially graced, yet essentially mortal.”
“It’s not a story, it’s our lives.”
“It’s a classic persecution delusion interspersed with elements of Christianity. How is it possible that in all the world, all these things revolve around Sam and Dean and only Sam and Dean?”
“Things were put into place. The angels-”
“Orchestrated your birth?”
He swallows hard.
“You say there are other hunters in this world,” she continues.
“Yes,” Sam grits out.
“Then where are they when the apocalypse is happening? Why is it they only show up sporadically?”
“Hunting is a solitary business. It doesn’t pay to make friends.”
She keeps chipping away at him. “How do you keep the supernatural events from leaking out to the media? Why aren’t we seeing survivor tales from the people you’ve helped?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe them!” he shouts. “Just like you don’t believe me!”
It’s a face off of sorts for a few seconds - him staring down at her, using his height and her being unperturbed by the show of dominance. She blinks up at him a few times.
“Jared,” she says and he gets the feeling she’s deliberately using his name. “You say that I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t.”
She nods in acquiescence. “And you’re upset by that. But, can you alternatively see my point of view? The same way you say I don’t believe you, you don’t believe me.”
“Why the fuck would I believe you?”
“I could ask you the same question,” she counters. “Although I would do it without the vulgarity.”
“I’m telling the truth,” he declares hotly.
“So am I. Are we at an impasse?”
He huffs in frustration and annoyance. “You could be a demon!”
“How can I prove I’m not?”
“Christo.”
Nothing happens. She raises an eyebrow at him. “Was that a test? Do I pass?”
“It doesn’t mean you aren’t something else,” he says with grim determination.
She puts her pen down. “What can I do to prove I’m not?”
He eyes her suspiciously. “What?”
“I want to prove I’m not anything other than what I say I am. A doctor. How can I prove it to you?”
“I’d need silver.”
“Alright. How much silver? What kind?”
His eyes narrow. “Not every creature responds to silver.” If she’s willing to give him silver, she likely is something that doesn’t react. Besides, he’d have no way of knowing if what she gave him was pure silver or some kind of amalgamate. “You could be a ghoul or a succubus.”
She picks her pen up and makes another note before looking up at him again. She stares at him for a long while.
“What if allowed you the opportunity to make a phone call?”
He freezes. A phone call. Jesus, they could call Bobby to come bust them out, or at least, give them a hand. Suspicion tickles his brain.
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“You want to prove to me your life is real. I want to prove to you it’s not. If you could call someone from your life, a verifiable someone, that would go a long way toward proving your claim.”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do, you’re never going to buy it. Besides, it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s real. And every second I’m in here, we’re in here, people could be dying.”
“Okay, we’re going around in circles here and I think we’re both getting a little frustrated. You’re a logical guy and you’re intelligent. I really want you to think about your life as Sam; the chronology, the events. Ask yourself: do these events make logical, rational sense, on a day to day basis.” At his look she holds up a hand, forestalling him. “I don’t mean the demon hunting and monster killing. I mean an every day basis. Laundry. Banking. Paying bills. Headlines in newspapers. Law enforcement. Even… medical issues. Broken limbs, jaws. Bruises, scars. Think about what a life of hunting would do to your body and ask yourself if your physical state is consistent with that lifestyle.” She pauses as if she’s waiting for her words to sink in. “And if the answer is yes, it makes complete sense, then I want you to come in here at your next session and tell me how and why it makes sense.
“But if the answer is no, then instead of getting upset or aggressive, I want you to think about why the answer is no. Can you do that?”
He shrugs dismissively. “Fine.”
He can almost feel the sigh she holds back. “Okay.”
He moves toward the door, palm on the handle.
“One more thing I’d like you to think about,” she says.
He grips the handle tight. “Yes?”
“Is Sam Winchester’s life a happy one?”
He pulls the door open hard and slams it shut on his way out.
***
Jensen doesn’t want to talk about what happened in the supply closet and he wishes he could hide out in his room, away from Jared, but the nurses make you come out and hang out in the common room, even if you just want to read a book or something solitary.
They say no one ever got better holed up in their room.
He bets no one got better trying to put together puzzles that are missing pieces either. It’s too freakishly close to a metaphor for all their brains.
He fiddles with one of the blue sky pieces, methodically trying it in a bunch of gaps, rotating it around, even when he knows it won’t fit, because it’s part of his systematic way of doing puzzles. As much as it’s mechanical and rote, he gets a strange satisfaction and dull sense of calm from picking up a piece, trying it all four ways against one space, then moving on and trying it against another space. It should be maddening in it’s repetition, but he likes it.
He sees Jared’s large shadow hulking over him before Jared himself steps into the corner of his eyesight. Without a word, Jared sits down, picks up a piece and slots it into place.
Motherfucker.
Jensen raises his eyes slightly to watch Jared as he quietly picks up another piece. Jensen rotates the piece in his own fingertips as Jared leans over the table and snaps his piece into another perfect fittingly place.
As much as he doesn’t want to see Jared, wants to avoid him, he longs to be near him as well. There’s something familiar and comforting about being around Jared. Jensen feels sorry for all the other SOB’s in this den of lunacy that are all sort of bobbing about alone.
He’s always got Jared.
Even when the fucker is finding another piece and putting it into place. Goddamn.
“You gotta stop taking the meds,” Jared says casually, his voice low so the nurses won’t hear.
“Jare…”
“Dean. Seriously. Just… it’s…” Jared pauses, frustrated and pushes his long hair out of his face. “That Dr. Reid… She twists things up and makes it all…” he motions his hands around his head.
“Crazy?” Jensen offers and Jared thins his lips at him.
“Dude, not helping.”
Jensen stifles a smile. “Sorry, man. Gallows humor.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Yeah, I hear that’s what all the crazy people say.”
Again, Jared levels him with a look, his hazel eyes boring holes into Jensen. “Just… I need you with me on this, Dean.”
Jensen doesn’t look up as he goes through his pattern of trying each piece of the puzzle against the empty spaces. He’s not having any luck. “I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe it doesn’t fit.”
Jared snatches the piece from his finger and unerringly finds its home and it locks into place.
“It fits.”
***
Dr. Zagorodniuk makes them call him Zig.
He gets a real kick out of saying, “You know, like Zig Zag.”
Group sessions are the worst.
Steve [agoraphobia and chiraptophobia] won’t sit next to Lexie [obsessive-compulsive with germophobic and numeric tendencies] because the way she counts certain words annoys him. Dylan [manorexic] and Mallory [anorexic] have to be kept separated ever since the nurses found out they are egging each other on in a battle to see who can lose more weight but also sharing tips about it. Jodie, the bulimic, feels left out but at least no one in group cared if she smoked, so that makes her feel better. Tom’s paranoid and convinced aliens are coming back to get him to take the rest of his brain out and replace it with their biological substitute. He’s tried three times to dig out what he swears is a tracking device in his left calf. Twice he’s tried to dig it out from the right one. Phoebe is bad at taking her meds and a cutter. She’s scarily good at finding new things to turn into sharp instruments. Most notably, the casing of a pen. Jensen heard through the grapevine that she went off her meds once and tried to carve up one of the doctors. Since then she’s patted down twice a day and her room gets searched at random intervals.
Jared and Jensen are both classified as nihilistic delusionals with paranoid tendencies. Jared has the added bonus of Grandiose Delusions because of his special telekinesis powers, notably demon banishing and short lived visions. Together they have foile a deux, although Dr. Reid likes to call it a shared psychotic disorder.
Zig wants them all to get along and ‘share.’
He’d have them sing Kumbaya if he didn’t think it would set off Jensen and Jared’s religious delusions.
Not that either of them particularly care. Really, what the fuck does Kumbaya mean, anyway?
The beginning of group is always tense and awkward. Of course, the ending is tense and awkward too, but it’s worse at the start.
“Hey gang,” says Zig, clapping his hands together once. He always calls them ‘gang.’ Like they’re a weird club or something.
Zig’s brown eyes are bright and happy behind his Buddy Holly glasses. “We’ve got a newbie today, so I’m going to bring her in and I want you all to make her feel welcome.”
Silence echoes in the circle of chairs as Zig looks at each one of them expectantly.
“Okay!” he says brightly, getting up from the chair and walking briskly from the room.
No one says anything to each and they all studiously avoid making eye contact as well. Zig ambles back into the room minutes later with a shifty, anxious and wary looking blonde. He leads her to an empty chair in the half-circle and she sits down carefully.
“Group, this is Elizabeth. Elizabeth, why don’t you say a few words about yourself.”
Beth looks like she’d rather swallow her own tongue [which, in this group, no one would bat an eye at], but when Zig gives her his big, eager eyes, she speaks.
“Um. I’m Liz. Hi.”
When she doesn’t offer anything else, Zig nods encouragingly and she shifts her eyes around looking for someone to clue her in.
“Tell us why you’re here,” Zig says.
“Well, ‘cause people think I’m crazy.” She’s eyeballing him like he’s crazy and Jensen smirks at her expression.
“Liz, we don’t like to use that word here,” Zig admonishes. “It’s got a lot of baggage.”
She shrugs. “Whatever.”
“Why don’t you tell us what happened? What brought you here?”
She looks around at the group again. Lexie is compulsive scratching at her neck in the same spot. She gets eczema from applying hand sanitizer like lotion. Steve is trying to unobtrusively scooch his chair back. Jodie lights up. The anorexics look bored. Phoebe is running her long pinky nail over a spot in her arm, making an impressive scratch and Tom…
Tom has fully checked out. He’s zoned out in the corner, not even blinking. They got him on a new med combo and it’s either working out great because he’s calm or working out horribly because he’s comatose.
Liz shifts in her seat. “Well, I guess this is like introducing yourself in jail, isn’t it? Everyone wants to know what you’re in for but then no body’s gonna believe me when I say I didn’t do it.”
That gets Liz a few dry chuckles from the group. She hit the nail right on the head with that one.
Liz sighs and then blurts out, “I’m here because I shot my boyfriend.”
Mental note, don’t get on Liz’s bad side, Jensen thinks.
“Why did you shoot him?” Zig prods gently.
Liz rolls her eyes and huffs. “Because he was a werewolf, okay?”
Jensen’s eyes snap over to Jared, who is sitting up straighter in his seat, suddenly intent on Liz.
“So, fine, call me crazy. But it was him or me and tomorrow’s a full moon. So I was on a deadline.” She pauses. “I do well with deadlines.” Another pause. “No pun intended.”
“Why did you think he was a werewolf?” Zig asks.
“I didn’t just think it, I knew it. He’d go away, for like, these guys nights out. Him and his friends. But then I realized that they were always at the same time.”
Zig waits for her to continue and then motions with his hands when she doesn’t. “And?”
Jensen leans forward in his chair, Jared mirroring his posture.
“And… Then I found this room. In his house. In the basement. And there was… stuff in there.” Liz tucks her hand under her thighs, sitting on them tensely.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Stuff, okay,” she exclaims. “Creepy, weird ass stuff and it was… I don’t wanna talk about it. But I knew what it meant. And then just… I mean, I always knew he was different, right? And I’ve got this thing, for the bad boys, which I’m probably fucking cured of now, thank you very much, not that it does me any good in here. And at first it was… like… kind of sexy and… you know? But that room… And he found out I knew. He knew I knew and that was it. It was him or me and I picked me and if that makes me crazy well… fine.”
“What happened when the authorities went to his house?”
She glares at Zig. “You know what happened.”
“They didn’t find the room did they?”
“His creepy friends are just like him,” she protests hotly. “I know they cleaned that shit up, I just know it.” She purses her lips together. “And then they got me locked up in here and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But I’m not.”
“I told you, Liz, we don’t use that word here.”
Liz turns flat eyes on Zig. “Whatever.”
On to part 2