Not Contagious
Written for the Dean focused H/C fic and art challenge at the hoodie_time. This particular promp was by i_speak_tongue, which you can find here.
This story is set somewhere in the last half of season 6. Sam has his soul back, the wall is well in place and Castiel (even though he's not in this story) is still acting all mysterious.
As always, my deepest thank you goes to jackfan2, without whom this story would have been a huge pile of snot. All remaining mucus is my fault ;)
ALSO!!! the most awesome and superfast twasadark has posted the .PDF, .RTF and MOBI files HERE and since she's a sweetie, she's sharing it with anyone who wants to grab it!
NOT CONTAGIOUS
They didn’t even have a name for it. That’s how fucked up the thing they were hunting was.
‘Monster’ was kind of a generic term, but it fit surprisingly well considering it had four heads, all snake-like. Only, instead of single rows of fangs, it had multiple sets of razor sharp teeth. Tree wigs formed a sort of body that didn’t so much slither or move as it did jump and hop space to space.
Oh, and it liked to eat people’s faces.
With all the new monsters popping up in the wake of Eve’s return, there was no research that could help them, no one they could ask how to get ride of it. All they had to go on was the fact that the victims had all been found in the same stretch of woods and that, according to the coroner’s report, all of them had ‘high levels of endorphins in the blood stream’. And of course, their faces were missing, nothing but giant teeth marks left behind.
Which was the same as saying that they’d all died bloody, but happy.
Trying not to assume that the culprit was a murderous clown -more for Sam’s sake than anything else- they had decided to stock up on everything and just wing it.
As soon as he’d laid eyes on the thing, Dean had dubbed it as an Evil-Ent, because he was a closet Lord of the Rings geek at heart and the thing kind of looked like a walking tree. A walking tree with more teeth than a shark, but still...
After that, he promptly decided that the way to kill the monster was to Mount Doom the snot of it.
Fire hadn’t work though.
Neither had chopping off its several heads. While it had seemed like a good idea at the time, the end result had more heads growing in their place.
By the time the brothers realized they had to go Hydra-style on the creep, they were both a little worse for wear. Sam had already been banged against a tree five times, Dean about half that and between them, their bruises were beginning to collect bruises of their own. Both were more than ready to see that monster just end.
They had worked out a system pretty fast. Sam would use a sharp blade to cut off a head and Dean would follow swiftly, lighter fluid and an improvised torch to burn the stumped neck. Once cauterized, it seemed to stop the sprouting of new heads.
They were down to the last head when Sam was thrown by the convulsing body of the beast. He slammed hard against a half hacked down tree trunk, hit his head wrong and this time, failed to get back up.
“SAM!” Dean yelled, his voice faltering as he struggled to catch his breath. The sight of his brother, who lay sprawled on the forest floor, blood oozing from the side of his head didn’t help matters, but there was a larger reason. Exhaustion.
Things had not been easy for them lately.
There was no time to check on Sam or wonder about how shitty their lives had been of late. Each head had taken less than a minute before two more grew in its place, as far as they had managed to time it. And with the last head contorting on the ground, kicking up angry clouds of dust and dry leaves, that gave Dean about thirty seconds to burn the stub of the fallen head and end the monster once and for all.
Dean armed himself with his bottle of lighter fluid and his torch like a knight with a sharp lance facing a dragon. “Come on, you piece of shit!” he blared, even though, technically, the thing had no ears left. If it had any, to start with.
The twiggy neck of the monster was squirming and writhing all over the place, black blood gushing from the severed stump and sprinkling everything around in dark ink.
Dean jumped and rolled, wriggling his way out of the dying beast’s struggles, each movement bringing him closer to his goal. When the severed stump was within reach, he poured the remaining liquid out of the bottle and, after pausing only long enough to allow for it to soak through, touched the tip of the torch over it.
It caught on fire immediately, a blue-greenish flame that smelled of burned metal.
Mesmerized by the flames and the fleeting sense of ‘it’s over’, Dean failed to see one of the heads, moving dangerously close to his leg.
The feeling of sharp teeth sinking into his skin was too excruciating and sudden for Dean to register as a bite. He screamed, the sound echoing under the canopy of trees and masking the dying wails of the monster that had no name.
Dean sunk to the ground at the same time the body of the beast lost all energy and motion and slumped next to him.
The way it ignited from inside out in a powerful blue flame was almost beautiful. It was the last thing Dean saw before everything faded away.
\\\\||º||////
“You imagined it,” Jill pointed out for the second time in less than one minute.
Anna rolled her eyes. “For the last time, I did not imagine it,” she whispered back tersely, gaze locked on the forest ahead of them.
“Well, I didn’t hear a thing, and pretty soon we’ll be too far to find our way back and we’ll be lost and I’ll hate you, and all of that because you thought you heard something and had to go play knight in shiny armor... again! Just like that time when you thought th-”
Anna gave her friend a look, poignant enough for Jill to realize that she was whining nonstop. Jill closed her mouth with an audible snap.
“I didn’t imagine it. It was a scream, and it came from somewhere around here,” she said, eyes once more scanning the woods for any movement. Every tree was beginning to look the same, every bush and mound of ferns like copies of themselves. “Besides, Gabe put on so much aftershave this morning that there is no way we won’t be able to find camp again,” she added with a smirk.
City girls the both of them, born and raised amongst the concrete forest, neither could claim to be at ease in the real thing.
The trekking through the woods had been their boss’s idea, a group bonding exercise, he’d call it. Take the whole gang for a weekend camping in the woods, teach them the skills of teamwork through tracking of buck feces and getting stung by a million bugs. Going was optional; disappointing the boss and his idiot ideas was not.
Anna drew to a sudden stop and Jill shrieked when she collided with her. “What the hell, Anna--”
“There!” Anna squeaked, finally spotting something other than trees and overgrown ferns. “I see a hand, near that tree trunk!”
Jill squinted at it. “That’s not a hand,” she concluded, certainty in her words. “That’s like... a hairless squirrel’s ass or something.”
Anna rolled her eyes. “It is a hand. Come on, you wuss.”
“Wait!” Jill’s hand stopped her, spinning her around to meet her gaze. Anna’s eyes, however, remained stubbornly fixed on the spot. “Are you insane? What if it’s a dead body or something?”
Anna pulled her arm away, looking between her friend and the mysterious hand on the ground. “Dead bodies don’t scream,” she said, her decision made long before she had even spotted anything. The fact that there was actually something there, only gave her resolve more strength. “That person might still be alive and we’re the only ones around who can help.”
Jill bit into her lip, her eyes looking scared and edgy. Her whole body was tense, ready to bolt. Deep down though, past all of her caution and fear, she knew that they couldn’t just walk away now that they’d come this far.
Wiping the pooling sweat off her forehead, Jill gave her friend a faint nod and both carefully made their way forward.
As soon as they were within five feet of the hand, they could see what had been hidden by the large tree trunk. The hand was attached to a giant. Or at least that was what it looked like at first glance.
It was a young guy, possibly mid twenties, shaggy hair and the longest pair of legs Anna had seen in a long time.
“Is he alive?” Jill asked, coming closer once she realized that the man’s eyes were closed. There was a nasty looking cut on the right side of his head that had caked his ear in a thick, bloody paste.
Anna tilted her head, changing the angle in hopes that a different view might provide an answer to that. “I don’t know,” she concluded. The few wisps of grass near his face were moving, but it could be just the wind. “I think he’s breathing.”
“Shouldn’t we... check his pulse or something?”
Anna twisted her nose left and right. She’d never done that in her life and the only thing she knew about checking vital signs was from an old ER episode that she’d seen like two ages ago.
Crouching down, she tentatively reached one hand toward the man’s neck and pressed two fingers to feel for his pulse. The skin was warm to the touch, but she couldn’t tell if that was because of the sun beating down on the man’s skin or because he was actually alive.
From what she remembered, the pulse point was somewhere near the front of the throat. Or was it on the side?
Feeling nothing under her digit, Anna pressed harder.
The body under her touch rebelled, coughing and flailing arms catching her by surprise. Anna screamed, backing hurriedly away, only to fall on her ass.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” Jill kept on saying, like a broken record, seemingly undecided between bolting or going to her friend’s aid. She grabbed a fallen tree branch from the ground and was ready to smack the man when Anna’s out stretched hand stopped her.
“Wait!”
Quickly recovering from the scare, Anna realized two things: the man was obviously alive, so she didn’t needed to go look for a pulse again; and there was a pair of almost feline, blue-green eyes looking at her in confusion. “Hello?” she tried, her trembling voice betraying her cool stance. “Are... are you feeling okay?”
Cat-eyes blinked a couple of times, eyes roving around like loose marbles. When he looked up and sunlight hit him square on, the man scrunched his nose and moaned. His arm flew up, covering his face in a protective way.
“We should probably call someone,” Jill, more composed, offered as she pulled her cell phone out. The branch, however, was still clutched in her other hand.
Anna opened her mouth to agree when the man grabbed her wrist. She gave a startled yelp and froze; fear rounding her eyes and stealing her voice as she gazed at the massive paw clutching her arm.
With a sudden sense of danger, Anna realized how big the hand holding hers was, how easy it would be for those fingers to crush hers. Jill had been right... this had been a really bad id-
“Dean?” the man whispered, almost like a prayer. The feline eyes managed to focus on hers for a few seconds before glazing over and darting around. “Did you get it?” he mumbled, before his eyes drifting close once more.
Anna looked up at her friend, the same confusion that she felt splattered over Jill’s face. Was his name Dean? Was he mistaking her with this ‘Dean’ person? And get what, exactly?
“Oh, God!” Jill said again, more surprise than fear this time as she looked a distance away. “There’s another one.”
Anna looked up and followed Jill’s gaze. In seconds she saw exactly what her friend was talking about; a second body lay less than ten feet from them, but neither had seen it at first because it was covered in some kind of grey dirt that mingled effortlessly with the dark green background.
Making sure that the first man was stable enough to at least continue to breathe on his own, Anna grabbed Jill’s hand and together they moved to the second one.
Ash. The grey dirt was ash, nasty smelling one at that. The man’s face and hair were so heavily covered in the stuff that, at first glance, Anna thought him to be an elderly person. The strong hands and the lack of wrinkles, however, gave him away as about the same age as the other guy.
What were these two men doing in the middle of nowhere, and how the hell had they been injured?
Anna sniffed the air. “Huh,” she murmured and looked around. “That’s weird... it smells like-” Her gaze once again fell on the ash-covered man.
“Really?” Jill huffed. “You mean there’s something not weird about all of this?”
“I don’t see anything burned,” Anna muttered out loud, wondering from where all those ashes had come. It didn’t even smell of burned wood. More like metal... maybe they’d crashed in a small airplane?
“And we’re not looking for it either,” Jill said, taking out her cell. “I’m calling 911... which we should’ve done ages ago.”
Mentally pushing Jill’s phone conversation to the background, Anna looked at the second body more closely, uncertain whether she should touch it or not. There was blood pooling near the man’s left foot and his right hand was twitching, like it had a mind of its own.
“Yes, two guys, unconscious in the middle of the woods,” Jill said again. “No, I don’t know what happened to them, we just found them like that.” From the growing exasperation in her voice, the person on the other end of the line wasn’t taking her all that serious. “Do I sound like that’s a dreamy hallucination for me?” Jill shrieked, kicking out a fern to vent her growing frustration.
The ash-covered body once again drew Anna’s attention and she stared hard at his unconscious form. The twitching that had been restrained to the guy’s hand seemed to be spreading to the rest of him like an earthquake. “Hey, Jill... I think he’s having a seizure, or something,” Anna said quietly, her voice breaking with emotion. They were way over their heads with that whole situation.
After a few seconds, there were few doubts in her mind about the ash-covered man’s condition. The seizure seemed to escalate. In seconds his whole body began shaking. And then he was bending at the back, head and heels pressing against the ground like he was trying to impersonate a human bridge, joints popping and stretching in a way that made her wish there was something she could do to stop it. It looked way too painful for a body to do voluntarily.
As sudden as it had begun, it stopped. His body sagged against the grass-covered ground like a sack of potatoes, puffs of dirt and ash flying from under him. A deadly lack of motion that seemed to suck in all the noises of the forest followed.
“Help is one the way,” Jill announced, breaking the silence with a flip of her cell phone. “He still alive?”
Anna looked down, unable to tell one way or the other. She opened the water bottle that Gabe had insisted everyone carry around, pulled the red scarf she’d been wearing from around her neck, and dabbed one end of it in the lukewarm liquid.
“I- I don’t know,” she answered and knelt down near the man’s face. She felt Jill’s worried gaze on her back but felt compelled to do more despite her friend’s objections and proceeded to clean as much of the ash as she could.
Jill didn’t comment, and Anna was relieved; she didn’t want to argue with her anymore. She was worried, Anna got that but it bothered her that, on top of everything else this guy had so obviously gone through, that ash-stuff coated every inch of exposed skin and he was undoubtedly breathing that crap in. Whatever that was.
“I really don’t think you should touch him that much,” Jill warned. “Lord knows what he might have... you might catch something.”
Anna was only half listening. Jill was right, of course, but the damage was already done. Besides, it was just ash.
“Well, well...” she murmured as her wet cloth revealed the features underneath. “Aren’t you a pretty one.” Running the wet cloth along the bridge of his nose she froze. His eyes rolled beneath closed lids and Anna sucked in a breath. Not wanting to scare him, she and withdrew her hand and waited, anxious to see those lids roll open and let her know that he was okay. The stranger’s eyes, however, remained shut.
His lips parted, a sigh escaping his mouth. Anna could’ve sworn it was a sigh of relief. She kept on cleaning his face.
It was a good thing the 911 phone operator hadn’t seen the men they were about to rescue, or Jill would never have been able to convince them that the call was for real.
After all, how many people can claim to have found two prince charmings, sleeping in the forest?
\\\\||º||////
There was some sort of unauthorized construction work being done inside Sam’s head and the jackhammer was being particularly offensive.
“Arrrgh... please stop that,” Sam mumbled as he opened his eyes. Everything around him was pale green, a stark contrast with the violent greens and browns of his previous location. A nurse stood at the bottom of his bed, hand poised over a little IPad where he’d been taking notes, staring at him. “Hospital, hum?” Sam concluded.
The nurse’s face dissolved into a warm smile. “Glad to see you awake and aware of your surroundings. How’re you feeling?”
Sam swallowed, trying to take stock of what was wrong with him. It had to be something serious for Dean to have brought him to- “Where’s my brother? Is he okay?”
“Ah... we had been wondering if you two weren’t related,” the nurse let out before quickly clamming up. “I’ll go see if your doctor’s around. He can answer all of your questions. It’ll be just a minute, okay?”
It was less of a question and more of a statement as any protest Sam might have voiced died as he watched the backside of the nurse shrinking in the distance. Alone in the room, he briefly entertained the idea of getting up and just looking for Dean himself, but the room was moving far too much for his taste. Besides, he realized as he shifted on the mattress, Sam was pretty sure that he was wearing one of those backless gowns that would do nothing for his dignity and claims of sanity if he chose to take a walk in that.
Gingerly exploring his face with the tip of his fingers, Sam stumbled across the fresh bandage on the right side of his head. He remembered being with Dean in the woods and the two of them fighting that nasty Hydra-like monster. Either they’d lost or Sam hadn’t been awake for the ending, because he had no idea if they’d managed to kill it or not.
The gaping spots in his memory only made Sam’s worry about Dean’s absence escalate. Dignity be damned, he was about to push his covers away and feel his way around like a blind man in search of his brother when a woman about Dean’s age came in.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mr. Shatner” she advised, sternly looking over the rim of her black-framed glasses. “Your concussion is mild at this point. Upgrading it to severe by taking another fall would be counterproductive, wouldn’t you say?”
Sam would’ve given her the stinky-eye, if scrunching his eyes wasn’t so painful at the moment. “My brother... he was the one who brought me in?”
It was a foolish hopeful question, at best. For one, there had been the nurse’s comment that had told Sam that these people didn’t have much information about the two of them; and then there was the fact that Dean was not by his side when he woke up. Nothing short of a grave injury or death would stop his brother from standing vigil at Sam’s side.
“Your brother, yes, nurse Adams told me of the blood connection,” she said, clicking on a file in an IPad similar to what Sam had seen before. “The gentleman brought in with you was identified as Mr. Nimoy?” she worded it as a question, looking back at Sam.
“Mom remarried before I was born,” he explained without missing a beat.
“And you both work for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, is that right?”
Sam nodded, remembering their cover for this case. The more she asked and the less he knew about Dean’s condition, the faster Sam’s heartbeat increased. The doctor must’ve realized that as well, because she cast a guilty look at Sam’s heart monitor and pulled a chair to sit by his bed.
“I’ll level with you, Mr. Shatner,” she started, closing the file and looking him straight in the eyes. She looked tired. “When you and your brother were found by those two campers, Mr. Nimoy was covered in an unknown substance resembling ash. The campers witnessed him having a seizure and the responding medical team reported two more on the way here. We were hoping you could shed some light over what you two were doing in that place.”
“Oh, God,” Sam whispered, bile rising to his mouth as he pictured his brother convulsing. It was a scary image. “We... we were just tracking down some beavers. There wasn’t anyt- God! What’s wrong with Dean?”
The doctor sighed. It was a sound that Sam hated in medical professionals. It was the sound of defeat, the sound of ‘your brother’s heart is damaged and there is nothing we can do about it’.
“That’s what we’re trying to determine,” the doctor went on. “So far, we have reasons to believe that it’s neurological in nature and possibly contagious.”
Sam frowned. That was seriously far from what he was expecting. “What?”
“One of the women who found you also had a seizure shortly after coming in contact with your brother. A few hours after that, she presented with neurological compromise signs very similar to your brother’s. We’re keeping them both in quarantine. Whatever this thing is, it moves fast. And by fast, I mean in a matter of hours.”
Sam licked his lips, his mouth suddenly feeling as dry as the desert. Quarantine? “What do you think is wrong with him?”
“We’re still running tests, but perhaps you can be of some help. Have you noticed any personality changes in your brother in the last few days? Fever? Drowsiness or confusion?”
Sam shook his head. Dean had been feeling tired of late, they both had. Life of late had been one continuous hunt, for months now, and the lack of proper sleep, the bad food, the drinking, and all the worrying about Sam’s memories of Hell...
“What about headaches? Complaining about stiff joints? Neck?”
“No,” Sam told her. “He was feeling fine last I saw him... why all the questions? What do you think he has?” And why was she asking him those questions instead of Dean? “Is he unconscious?”
“He was disoriented and agitated when he woke up earlier, so we gave him a mild sedative. As for his condition, we’ll know more once his MRI comes back and we perform a lumbar puncture, but for now, I’m leaning towards encephalitis, possibly meningoencephalitis,” she said, giving the facts straight. “We’ve notified the CDC and sent them a sample of the substance we found covering your brother. They’re sending someone later today. I’m sure they will be able to tell you more then.”
Sam had to blink. What?
They had just been hunting a weird monster in the forest, one that had turned into ash once it had died, or so Sam could imagine from what the doctor had told him. And now all of a sudden Dean was contagious enough to need the presence of the Center of Disease Control?
“Can... can I see him?” Sam managed to voice before she was gone.
“No. Authorized personal only, I’m afraid,” she said, sounding truly sorry about that. “From what we can tell, you and that second camper were extremely lucky to have not been infected by this thing. Last time something like this broke out, more than fifty people died. We’re taking no risks.”
\\\\||º||////
No risks, his ass.
They had it all wrong, Sam was sure of that. There was no way Dean had been nursing a brain infection without Sam noticing something wrong.
There had to be something in the monster’s remains that had caused Dean’s seizures and remaining symptoms. But of course, Dean couldn’t tell them that, because no one would believe him. Even if he were awake enough to speak for himself.
Sam had to bust him out before people from the CDC arrived, it was as simple as that. Once they were in charge, CDC protocol would be put in place and they would seal off the hospital, or at least the area where Dean was being kept. Once that happened, there would be no way Sam could get his brother out of there.
They would poke him and prod him and make all the wrong assumptions and Dean would freak out on them. Best-case scenario, he would end up in a psych yard. Sam did not wanted to think of what the worst scenario would be.
First step though, Sam figured as he rose from his bed and felt a slight breeze on his back side, was finding some clothes.
\\\\||º||////
He’d been abducted by aliens.
That was the only reasonable explanation for the white, plastic suits surrounding Dean at the present time. An entire race of humanoid condoms. With WWII gas masks hanging from their chins. It was like his worst nightmare coming true. “G’off me!”
“Mr. Nimoy, you need to calm down,” a disembodied voice told him from inside one of the white globs.
The voice was human. Sort of. Still, Dean could detect the distinct frustration in the words even through the Darth Vader distortion of the man’s words. He was pretty sure aliens didn’t have ‘frustration’ listed on their acceptable emotions’ list.
Not really a fan of the idea of being sedated, Dean stopped struggling and, instead, turned his attention to ascertaining just where the hell he was. Moving his head, however, proved to be a monumentally horrible idea; spasms of agony shot up and down his spine and across his chest. An undignified yelp escaped his lips and Dean pressed his teeth hard against soft flesh, trying to trap any further sound inside his mouth.
When the pain finally subsided, he decided against trying that stunt again. Carefully, Dean opened his eyes one at a time, opting for a more static assessment of his surroundings as he kept his head still and allowed his eyes to roam about the room. It was a hospital room of some sort, only different; it was made of glass.
Aside from the condom people, it was filled with all sorts of medical crap. Numerous machines, whose purpose he had no clue on, surrounded his bed. The air smelled of nothing, and yet the distinct feeling of hospital still permeated everything.
The image of a space ship and an alien probing table came unbidden to his mind. Dean squashed it down. No more X-Files for him.
“’M sick?” Dean asked, confused. His eyes stung, like there was a match lit behind his eyeballs, slowly burning all wetness away. He either had a fever or someone had rubbed sand in them when he wasn’t looking.
The last thing Dean could remember was killing the evil-Ent in the forest and watching it turn into dust. The thing had bitten him and-“Where’s Sam? Where’s my brother?”
Two white blobs exchanged a long look, probably communicating on a different channel that kept Dean out of the conversation. “Your brother is fine,” one of the blobs said. “A mild concussion. His doctor should release him later today.”
“Can I go too?” Dean asked hopefully. It felt like he’d been run over by a freight train a handful of times, but that was something he could deal with away from a hospital and the fake medical insurances that he and Sam were currently using. “I’m feeling much better,” he lied though his teeth. He might’ve even smiled, to compose the picture of miraculously healed patient, but his face felt like it was made of plastic and Dean couldn’t really tell if the end result had been a smile or a snarl.
The condom-person nearest to him sat by his side and lowered his head to Dean’s level. This close, Dean could see the little transparent visor covering a man’s face. He had kind brown eyes. It was good to confirm that his skin wasn’t green.
“You are currently in an isolation unit because we suspect you have a very serious, very contagious condition,” the man said, talking placidly and earnestly. “I know that this condition makes it hard for you to completely understand what I’m saying, but you need to try and remain calm, okay? We still need to run a few more tests to be absolutely certain about what we’re dealing here and then we’ll see about making you all better.”
Dean was pretty sure his mouth had dropped to the vicinity of his ankles. What? “What?” Dean all but shouted. His voice sounded wonky to his ears. “Screw that! I feel fine!” he finished and decided to prove just that by getting up from the lumpy bed. The small nuisance of an IV line pulling back at his hand was quickly solved with a sharp pull and suddenly, he could feel cold floor under his bare feet.
For half a second, as he took two confident steps forward, solid ground under his feet, Dean felt awesome. He felt validated, proving to everyone that he was, in fact, fine.
And then the rest of his body caught up with Dean’s actions.
Everything was a contradiction, specifically aimed at making him as miserable as possible. His legs felt numb as ice, while his left ankle was on fire; his arms were made of soggy sponge while his head seemed filled with lead. Everything hurt, even though he couldn’t actually feel most of his body.
Despite being aware that the whole room was boringly white, Dean was seeing sparkles of color everywhere. Bursts of light and shade, of red and purple all around him. A “Shit,” escaped his lips as Dean felt himself going down, dead weight like the floor was a magnet and the lead in his head was deadly attracted to it.
He fully expected to lose conscious before hitting the ground, but instead, his senses refused to take a leave of absence. The spinning lights and colors were making him dizzy and despite knowing better than that, Dean could swear that the floor was undulating, like it was the frigging high sea.
Bile rose fast to his mouth, exploding from his lips before Dean could stop it.
Dean was distantly aware of the indignity of lying there, with his ass and legs barren and soaking in the coldness of the floor as his gown scrunched up, while the condom-people around him called for help to get him back on the bed. His vomit was a yellow mass, sitting flax in front of his nose, moving slowly, like it was trying to get back in.
At some level, Dean was questioning why the hell he felt so weak and battered. Sure, the monster had thrown him and Sam around for a bit, but that was nothing new. And the pain in his ankle had to be from the bite... there had been a bite at some point, right?
The feeling of weightlessness as he was lifted from the floor and on to the bed was nauseating and disturbing, but the touch of soft sheets on his exposed skin was welcomed. Maybe he could postpone his escape for just a few more moments, catch his breath...
“Mr. Nimoy,” an annoyed voice pulled Dean away from the oblivion at hand. More than the name that wasn’t his, it was the pinch in his hand as a new IV line was inserted that made Dean pop his eyes open. A wet cloth was pressed against his face, cleaning the sticky wetness he could feel there. “I understand that you’re confused and probably a little scared,” the man said, his tone softening as he spoke. “Right now, the only thing I can assure you is that we’re doing everything in our power to make you better. But you have to help us a little, okay? We can’t risk any more sedation; so, no more stunts, or we will strap you to the bed. Do you understand that?”
The man was a paradox of caring -bordering on condescension actually-, and heavy-duty bondage. Dean wanted to punch the guy in the face for talking to him like he was a frigging baby. Besides, Dean wasn’t scared. He’d faced monsters; he’d been to Hell and been at the mercy of the worst kind of demons. Waking up in pain, surrounded by strangers and being told that he was the second coming of the black plague? It hardly registered in Dean’s ‘freaking out’ meter.
Now, if he could just convince them to let him go... Sam was the one with the puppy dog eyes thingy that could make people bent to his will. Dean, unfortunately, lacked the skill. “No puppy dog eyes,” he whispered, eliciting a couple of confused looks from the condom people.
As if they had any clue...
“...lumbar puncture, but we need your cooperation,” the man inside the white suit went on. In the midst of his internal monologue, the only words that truly registered in Dean’s mind were ‘lumbar’ and ‘puncture’.
“What?”
“Now, I won’t lie to you, the procedure is a bit uncomfortable,” the doctor continued. “But it is absolutely necessary that we get a measurement of how this unknown entity is affecting your brain.”
Dean’s headache was getting worse. The ‘unknown entity’ part had almost made him laugh, as he remembered the stringy, multiple snake-headed ‘entity’ that he and Sam had killed. “Is my brother okay? Is Sam here?”
The condom-people exchanged another look and Dean could almost feel pity in the air. Had he asked that before?
“We need to proceed. Now.”
They weren’t talking to him anymore, apparently having decided that his contribution to the matter was overrated. They just started moving around his bed, pulling and prodding things that Dean would rather leave un-prodded and before he could get his wits enough to say anything else, Dean found himself on his side, knees tucked in and head pushed down to meet them. It was almost pleasant, close to a fetal position, if it weren’t for the unfamiliar hands holding him down and stopping him from uncurling.
“Wha... what t’hell are you doing?”
“Deep breaths, Mr. Nimoy,” was his only answer as something cold was swabbed across his lower back, quickly followed by a small pinch “This will all be over in a second. Just remember, deep breaths.”
Alastair was the only demon in Hell with access to electricity. While the rest of the pit lay in the gloom or depended on fires to illuminate the place, Alastair had lamps and electric wiring.
“Keep breathing, Mr. Nimoy. Nice and slow.”
One day, when he was feeling particularly artistic, he had stripped an electric wire, cut Dean’s stomach, pulled out his guts and patiently fed the wire inside. When he flipped the switch and lit it, it was almost pretty the way the pale stretch of intestine started to glow like a Christmas decoration.
“Deep breaths... you’re doing fine. Almost done now.”
The feeling of electricity spearing and cutting him in half was about the same Dean was currently experiencing. A hot knife, burrowing itself deeper and deeper inside of him, until Dean was sure the tip would scratch his skull. “Arrrgh! God... stop, please stop!”
There was a clattering sound at the back of the room, large metal pieces being introduced to the pristine floor, making everyone jerked at the sounds, including the person currently stabbing him in the back. Someone mumbled an apology somewhere in the room but Dean didn’t really hear it, he was too busy drowning in the whoosh of blood filling his ears and the screams trapped inside his throat.
The hands restraining him in that awkward position pulled away and Dean realized it was over. The pain was still there. He could still feel the needle inside his spine. His throat felt blocked, filled with cement...
“Deep breaths,” the voice continued, soothing and instructional, like Dean would forget the frigging basics or something. “We’re done.”
And like those two words were a blessing of sorts, Dean finally felt himself slipping away. It should have been restful, it should have been peaceful, but the only thing he was aware of was that he couldn’t stop himself from being pulled under and that he was in the hands of these people and there was something wrong with him. It didn’t feel like falling asleep at all; it felt like he was falling into a deep hole in the ground.
On to part 2
This story is set somewhere in the last half of season 6. Sam has his soul back, the wall is well in place and Castiel (even though he's not in this story) is still acting all mysterious.
As always, my deepest thank you goes to jackfan2, without whom this story would have been a huge pile of snot. All remaining mucus is my fault ;)
ALSO!!! the most awesome and superfast twasadark has posted the .PDF, .RTF and MOBI files HERE and since she's a sweetie, she's sharing it with anyone who wants to grab it!
NOT CONTAGIOUS
They didn’t even have a name for it. That’s how fucked up the thing they were hunting was.
‘Monster’ was kind of a generic term, but it fit surprisingly well considering it had four heads, all snake-like. Only, instead of single rows of fangs, it had multiple sets of razor sharp teeth. Tree wigs formed a sort of body that didn’t so much slither or move as it did jump and hop space to space.
Oh, and it liked to eat people’s faces.
With all the new monsters popping up in the wake of Eve’s return, there was no research that could help them, no one they could ask how to get ride of it. All they had to go on was the fact that the victims had all been found in the same stretch of woods and that, according to the coroner’s report, all of them had ‘high levels of endorphins in the blood stream’. And of course, their faces were missing, nothing but giant teeth marks left behind.
Which was the same as saying that they’d all died bloody, but happy.
Trying not to assume that the culprit was a murderous clown -more for Sam’s sake than anything else- they had decided to stock up on everything and just wing it.
As soon as he’d laid eyes on the thing, Dean had dubbed it as an Evil-Ent, because he was a closet Lord of the Rings geek at heart and the thing kind of looked like a walking tree. A walking tree with more teeth than a shark, but still...
After that, he promptly decided that the way to kill the monster was to Mount Doom the snot of it.
Fire hadn’t work though.
Neither had chopping off its several heads. While it had seemed like a good idea at the time, the end result had more heads growing in their place.
By the time the brothers realized they had to go Hydra-style on the creep, they were both a little worse for wear. Sam had already been banged against a tree five times, Dean about half that and between them, their bruises were beginning to collect bruises of their own. Both were more than ready to see that monster just end.
They had worked out a system pretty fast. Sam would use a sharp blade to cut off a head and Dean would follow swiftly, lighter fluid and an improvised torch to burn the stumped neck. Once cauterized, it seemed to stop the sprouting of new heads.
They were down to the last head when Sam was thrown by the convulsing body of the beast. He slammed hard against a half hacked down tree trunk, hit his head wrong and this time, failed to get back up.
“SAM!” Dean yelled, his voice faltering as he struggled to catch his breath. The sight of his brother, who lay sprawled on the forest floor, blood oozing from the side of his head didn’t help matters, but there was a larger reason. Exhaustion.
Things had not been easy for them lately.
There was no time to check on Sam or wonder about how shitty their lives had been of late. Each head had taken less than a minute before two more grew in its place, as far as they had managed to time it. And with the last head contorting on the ground, kicking up angry clouds of dust and dry leaves, that gave Dean about thirty seconds to burn the stub of the fallen head and end the monster once and for all.
Dean armed himself with his bottle of lighter fluid and his torch like a knight with a sharp lance facing a dragon. “Come on, you piece of shit!” he blared, even though, technically, the thing had no ears left. If it had any, to start with.
The twiggy neck of the monster was squirming and writhing all over the place, black blood gushing from the severed stump and sprinkling everything around in dark ink.
Dean jumped and rolled, wriggling his way out of the dying beast’s struggles, each movement bringing him closer to his goal. When the severed stump was within reach, he poured the remaining liquid out of the bottle and, after pausing only long enough to allow for it to soak through, touched the tip of the torch over it.
It caught on fire immediately, a blue-greenish flame that smelled of burned metal.
Mesmerized by the flames and the fleeting sense of ‘it’s over’, Dean failed to see one of the heads, moving dangerously close to his leg.
The feeling of sharp teeth sinking into his skin was too excruciating and sudden for Dean to register as a bite. He screamed, the sound echoing under the canopy of trees and masking the dying wails of the monster that had no name.
Dean sunk to the ground at the same time the body of the beast lost all energy and motion and slumped next to him.
The way it ignited from inside out in a powerful blue flame was almost beautiful. It was the last thing Dean saw before everything faded away.
\\\\||º||////
“You imagined it,” Jill pointed out for the second time in less than one minute.
Anna rolled her eyes. “For the last time, I did not imagine it,” she whispered back tersely, gaze locked on the forest ahead of them.
“Well, I didn’t hear a thing, and pretty soon we’ll be too far to find our way back and we’ll be lost and I’ll hate you, and all of that because you thought you heard something and had to go play knight in shiny armor... again! Just like that time when you thought th-”
Anna gave her friend a look, poignant enough for Jill to realize that she was whining nonstop. Jill closed her mouth with an audible snap.
“I didn’t imagine it. It was a scream, and it came from somewhere around here,” she said, eyes once more scanning the woods for any movement. Every tree was beginning to look the same, every bush and mound of ferns like copies of themselves. “Besides, Gabe put on so much aftershave this morning that there is no way we won’t be able to find camp again,” she added with a smirk.
City girls the both of them, born and raised amongst the concrete forest, neither could claim to be at ease in the real thing.
The trekking through the woods had been their boss’s idea, a group bonding exercise, he’d call it. Take the whole gang for a weekend camping in the woods, teach them the skills of teamwork through tracking of buck feces and getting stung by a million bugs. Going was optional; disappointing the boss and his idiot ideas was not.
Anna drew to a sudden stop and Jill shrieked when she collided with her. “What the hell, Anna--”
“There!” Anna squeaked, finally spotting something other than trees and overgrown ferns. “I see a hand, near that tree trunk!”
Jill squinted at it. “That’s not a hand,” she concluded, certainty in her words. “That’s like... a hairless squirrel’s ass or something.”
Anna rolled her eyes. “It is a hand. Come on, you wuss.”
“Wait!” Jill’s hand stopped her, spinning her around to meet her gaze. Anna’s eyes, however, remained stubbornly fixed on the spot. “Are you insane? What if it’s a dead body or something?”
Anna pulled her arm away, looking between her friend and the mysterious hand on the ground. “Dead bodies don’t scream,” she said, her decision made long before she had even spotted anything. The fact that there was actually something there, only gave her resolve more strength. “That person might still be alive and we’re the only ones around who can help.”
Jill bit into her lip, her eyes looking scared and edgy. Her whole body was tense, ready to bolt. Deep down though, past all of her caution and fear, she knew that they couldn’t just walk away now that they’d come this far.
Wiping the pooling sweat off her forehead, Jill gave her friend a faint nod and both carefully made their way forward.
As soon as they were within five feet of the hand, they could see what had been hidden by the large tree trunk. The hand was attached to a giant. Or at least that was what it looked like at first glance.
It was a young guy, possibly mid twenties, shaggy hair and the longest pair of legs Anna had seen in a long time.
“Is he alive?” Jill asked, coming closer once she realized that the man’s eyes were closed. There was a nasty looking cut on the right side of his head that had caked his ear in a thick, bloody paste.
Anna tilted her head, changing the angle in hopes that a different view might provide an answer to that. “I don’t know,” she concluded. The few wisps of grass near his face were moving, but it could be just the wind. “I think he’s breathing.”
“Shouldn’t we... check his pulse or something?”
Anna twisted her nose left and right. She’d never done that in her life and the only thing she knew about checking vital signs was from an old ER episode that she’d seen like two ages ago.
Crouching down, she tentatively reached one hand toward the man’s neck and pressed two fingers to feel for his pulse. The skin was warm to the touch, but she couldn’t tell if that was because of the sun beating down on the man’s skin or because he was actually alive.
From what she remembered, the pulse point was somewhere near the front of the throat. Or was it on the side?
Feeling nothing under her digit, Anna pressed harder.
The body under her touch rebelled, coughing and flailing arms catching her by surprise. Anna screamed, backing hurriedly away, only to fall on her ass.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” Jill kept on saying, like a broken record, seemingly undecided between bolting or going to her friend’s aid. She grabbed a fallen tree branch from the ground and was ready to smack the man when Anna’s out stretched hand stopped her.
“Wait!”
Quickly recovering from the scare, Anna realized two things: the man was obviously alive, so she didn’t needed to go look for a pulse again; and there was a pair of almost feline, blue-green eyes looking at her in confusion. “Hello?” she tried, her trembling voice betraying her cool stance. “Are... are you feeling okay?”
Cat-eyes blinked a couple of times, eyes roving around like loose marbles. When he looked up and sunlight hit him square on, the man scrunched his nose and moaned. His arm flew up, covering his face in a protective way.
“We should probably call someone,” Jill, more composed, offered as she pulled her cell phone out. The branch, however, was still clutched in her other hand.
Anna opened her mouth to agree when the man grabbed her wrist. She gave a startled yelp and froze; fear rounding her eyes and stealing her voice as she gazed at the massive paw clutching her arm.
With a sudden sense of danger, Anna realized how big the hand holding hers was, how easy it would be for those fingers to crush hers. Jill had been right... this had been a really bad id-
“Dean?” the man whispered, almost like a prayer. The feline eyes managed to focus on hers for a few seconds before glazing over and darting around. “Did you get it?” he mumbled, before his eyes drifting close once more.
Anna looked up at her friend, the same confusion that she felt splattered over Jill’s face. Was his name Dean? Was he mistaking her with this ‘Dean’ person? And get what, exactly?
“Oh, God!” Jill said again, more surprise than fear this time as she looked a distance away. “There’s another one.”
Anna looked up and followed Jill’s gaze. In seconds she saw exactly what her friend was talking about; a second body lay less than ten feet from them, but neither had seen it at first because it was covered in some kind of grey dirt that mingled effortlessly with the dark green background.
Making sure that the first man was stable enough to at least continue to breathe on his own, Anna grabbed Jill’s hand and together they moved to the second one.
Ash. The grey dirt was ash, nasty smelling one at that. The man’s face and hair were so heavily covered in the stuff that, at first glance, Anna thought him to be an elderly person. The strong hands and the lack of wrinkles, however, gave him away as about the same age as the other guy.
What were these two men doing in the middle of nowhere, and how the hell had they been injured?
Anna sniffed the air. “Huh,” she murmured and looked around. “That’s weird... it smells like-” Her gaze once again fell on the ash-covered man.
“Really?” Jill huffed. “You mean there’s something not weird about all of this?”
“I don’t see anything burned,” Anna muttered out loud, wondering from where all those ashes had come. It didn’t even smell of burned wood. More like metal... maybe they’d crashed in a small airplane?
“And we’re not looking for it either,” Jill said, taking out her cell. “I’m calling 911... which we should’ve done ages ago.”
Mentally pushing Jill’s phone conversation to the background, Anna looked at the second body more closely, uncertain whether she should touch it or not. There was blood pooling near the man’s left foot and his right hand was twitching, like it had a mind of its own.
“Yes, two guys, unconscious in the middle of the woods,” Jill said again. “No, I don’t know what happened to them, we just found them like that.” From the growing exasperation in her voice, the person on the other end of the line wasn’t taking her all that serious. “Do I sound like that’s a dreamy hallucination for me?” Jill shrieked, kicking out a fern to vent her growing frustration.
The ash-covered body once again drew Anna’s attention and she stared hard at his unconscious form. The twitching that had been restrained to the guy’s hand seemed to be spreading to the rest of him like an earthquake. “Hey, Jill... I think he’s having a seizure, or something,” Anna said quietly, her voice breaking with emotion. They were way over their heads with that whole situation.
After a few seconds, there were few doubts in her mind about the ash-covered man’s condition. The seizure seemed to escalate. In seconds his whole body began shaking. And then he was bending at the back, head and heels pressing against the ground like he was trying to impersonate a human bridge, joints popping and stretching in a way that made her wish there was something she could do to stop it. It looked way too painful for a body to do voluntarily.
As sudden as it had begun, it stopped. His body sagged against the grass-covered ground like a sack of potatoes, puffs of dirt and ash flying from under him. A deadly lack of motion that seemed to suck in all the noises of the forest followed.
“Help is one the way,” Jill announced, breaking the silence with a flip of her cell phone. “He still alive?”
Anna looked down, unable to tell one way or the other. She opened the water bottle that Gabe had insisted everyone carry around, pulled the red scarf she’d been wearing from around her neck, and dabbed one end of it in the lukewarm liquid.
“I- I don’t know,” she answered and knelt down near the man’s face. She felt Jill’s worried gaze on her back but felt compelled to do more despite her friend’s objections and proceeded to clean as much of the ash as she could.
Jill didn’t comment, and Anna was relieved; she didn’t want to argue with her anymore. She was worried, Anna got that but it bothered her that, on top of everything else this guy had so obviously gone through, that ash-stuff coated every inch of exposed skin and he was undoubtedly breathing that crap in. Whatever that was.
“I really don’t think you should touch him that much,” Jill warned. “Lord knows what he might have... you might catch something.”
Anna was only half listening. Jill was right, of course, but the damage was already done. Besides, it was just ash.
“Well, well...” she murmured as her wet cloth revealed the features underneath. “Aren’t you a pretty one.” Running the wet cloth along the bridge of his nose she froze. His eyes rolled beneath closed lids and Anna sucked in a breath. Not wanting to scare him, she and withdrew her hand and waited, anxious to see those lids roll open and let her know that he was okay. The stranger’s eyes, however, remained shut.
His lips parted, a sigh escaping his mouth. Anna could’ve sworn it was a sigh of relief. She kept on cleaning his face.
It was a good thing the 911 phone operator hadn’t seen the men they were about to rescue, or Jill would never have been able to convince them that the call was for real.
After all, how many people can claim to have found two prince charmings, sleeping in the forest?
\\\\||º||////
There was some sort of unauthorized construction work being done inside Sam’s head and the jackhammer was being particularly offensive.
“Arrrgh... please stop that,” Sam mumbled as he opened his eyes. Everything around him was pale green, a stark contrast with the violent greens and browns of his previous location. A nurse stood at the bottom of his bed, hand poised over a little IPad where he’d been taking notes, staring at him. “Hospital, hum?” Sam concluded.
The nurse’s face dissolved into a warm smile. “Glad to see you awake and aware of your surroundings. How’re you feeling?”
Sam swallowed, trying to take stock of what was wrong with him. It had to be something serious for Dean to have brought him to- “Where’s my brother? Is he okay?”
“Ah... we had been wondering if you two weren’t related,” the nurse let out before quickly clamming up. “I’ll go see if your doctor’s around. He can answer all of your questions. It’ll be just a minute, okay?”
It was less of a question and more of a statement as any protest Sam might have voiced died as he watched the backside of the nurse shrinking in the distance. Alone in the room, he briefly entertained the idea of getting up and just looking for Dean himself, but the room was moving far too much for his taste. Besides, he realized as he shifted on the mattress, Sam was pretty sure that he was wearing one of those backless gowns that would do nothing for his dignity and claims of sanity if he chose to take a walk in that.
Gingerly exploring his face with the tip of his fingers, Sam stumbled across the fresh bandage on the right side of his head. He remembered being with Dean in the woods and the two of them fighting that nasty Hydra-like monster. Either they’d lost or Sam hadn’t been awake for the ending, because he had no idea if they’d managed to kill it or not.
The gaping spots in his memory only made Sam’s worry about Dean’s absence escalate. Dignity be damned, he was about to push his covers away and feel his way around like a blind man in search of his brother when a woman about Dean’s age came in.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mr. Shatner” she advised, sternly looking over the rim of her black-framed glasses. “Your concussion is mild at this point. Upgrading it to severe by taking another fall would be counterproductive, wouldn’t you say?”
Sam would’ve given her the stinky-eye, if scrunching his eyes wasn’t so painful at the moment. “My brother... he was the one who brought me in?”
It was a foolish hopeful question, at best. For one, there had been the nurse’s comment that had told Sam that these people didn’t have much information about the two of them; and then there was the fact that Dean was not by his side when he woke up. Nothing short of a grave injury or death would stop his brother from standing vigil at Sam’s side.
“Your brother, yes, nurse Adams told me of the blood connection,” she said, clicking on a file in an IPad similar to what Sam had seen before. “The gentleman brought in with you was identified as Mr. Nimoy?” she worded it as a question, looking back at Sam.
“Mom remarried before I was born,” he explained without missing a beat.
“And you both work for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, is that right?”
Sam nodded, remembering their cover for this case. The more she asked and the less he knew about Dean’s condition, the faster Sam’s heartbeat increased. The doctor must’ve realized that as well, because she cast a guilty look at Sam’s heart monitor and pulled a chair to sit by his bed.
“I’ll level with you, Mr. Shatner,” she started, closing the file and looking him straight in the eyes. She looked tired. “When you and your brother were found by those two campers, Mr. Nimoy was covered in an unknown substance resembling ash. The campers witnessed him having a seizure and the responding medical team reported two more on the way here. We were hoping you could shed some light over what you two were doing in that place.”
“Oh, God,” Sam whispered, bile rising to his mouth as he pictured his brother convulsing. It was a scary image. “We... we were just tracking down some beavers. There wasn’t anyt- God! What’s wrong with Dean?”
The doctor sighed. It was a sound that Sam hated in medical professionals. It was the sound of defeat, the sound of ‘your brother’s heart is damaged and there is nothing we can do about it’.
“That’s what we’re trying to determine,” the doctor went on. “So far, we have reasons to believe that it’s neurological in nature and possibly contagious.”
Sam frowned. That was seriously far from what he was expecting. “What?”
“One of the women who found you also had a seizure shortly after coming in contact with your brother. A few hours after that, she presented with neurological compromise signs very similar to your brother’s. We’re keeping them both in quarantine. Whatever this thing is, it moves fast. And by fast, I mean in a matter of hours.”
Sam licked his lips, his mouth suddenly feeling as dry as the desert. Quarantine? “What do you think is wrong with him?”
“We’re still running tests, but perhaps you can be of some help. Have you noticed any personality changes in your brother in the last few days? Fever? Drowsiness or confusion?”
Sam shook his head. Dean had been feeling tired of late, they both had. Life of late had been one continuous hunt, for months now, and the lack of proper sleep, the bad food, the drinking, and all the worrying about Sam’s memories of Hell...
“What about headaches? Complaining about stiff joints? Neck?”
“No,” Sam told her. “He was feeling fine last I saw him... why all the questions? What do you think he has?” And why was she asking him those questions instead of Dean? “Is he unconscious?”
“He was disoriented and agitated when he woke up earlier, so we gave him a mild sedative. As for his condition, we’ll know more once his MRI comes back and we perform a lumbar puncture, but for now, I’m leaning towards encephalitis, possibly meningoencephalitis,” she said, giving the facts straight. “We’ve notified the CDC and sent them a sample of the substance we found covering your brother. They’re sending someone later today. I’m sure they will be able to tell you more then.”
Sam had to blink. What?
They had just been hunting a weird monster in the forest, one that had turned into ash once it had died, or so Sam could imagine from what the doctor had told him. And now all of a sudden Dean was contagious enough to need the presence of the Center of Disease Control?
“Can... can I see him?” Sam managed to voice before she was gone.
“No. Authorized personal only, I’m afraid,” she said, sounding truly sorry about that. “From what we can tell, you and that second camper were extremely lucky to have not been infected by this thing. Last time something like this broke out, more than fifty people died. We’re taking no risks.”
\\\\||º||////
No risks, his ass.
They had it all wrong, Sam was sure of that. There was no way Dean had been nursing a brain infection without Sam noticing something wrong.
There had to be something in the monster’s remains that had caused Dean’s seizures and remaining symptoms. But of course, Dean couldn’t tell them that, because no one would believe him. Even if he were awake enough to speak for himself.
Sam had to bust him out before people from the CDC arrived, it was as simple as that. Once they were in charge, CDC protocol would be put in place and they would seal off the hospital, or at least the area where Dean was being kept. Once that happened, there would be no way Sam could get his brother out of there.
They would poke him and prod him and make all the wrong assumptions and Dean would freak out on them. Best-case scenario, he would end up in a psych yard. Sam did not wanted to think of what the worst scenario would be.
First step though, Sam figured as he rose from his bed and felt a slight breeze on his back side, was finding some clothes.
\\\\||º||////
He’d been abducted by aliens.
That was the only reasonable explanation for the white, plastic suits surrounding Dean at the present time. An entire race of humanoid condoms. With WWII gas masks hanging from their chins. It was like his worst nightmare coming true. “G’off me!”
“Mr. Nimoy, you need to calm down,” a disembodied voice told him from inside one of the white globs.
The voice was human. Sort of. Still, Dean could detect the distinct frustration in the words even through the Darth Vader distortion of the man’s words. He was pretty sure aliens didn’t have ‘frustration’ listed on their acceptable emotions’ list.
Not really a fan of the idea of being sedated, Dean stopped struggling and, instead, turned his attention to ascertaining just where the hell he was. Moving his head, however, proved to be a monumentally horrible idea; spasms of agony shot up and down his spine and across his chest. An undignified yelp escaped his lips and Dean pressed his teeth hard against soft flesh, trying to trap any further sound inside his mouth.
When the pain finally subsided, he decided against trying that stunt again. Carefully, Dean opened his eyes one at a time, opting for a more static assessment of his surroundings as he kept his head still and allowed his eyes to roam about the room. It was a hospital room of some sort, only different; it was made of glass.
Aside from the condom people, it was filled with all sorts of medical crap. Numerous machines, whose purpose he had no clue on, surrounded his bed. The air smelled of nothing, and yet the distinct feeling of hospital still permeated everything.
The image of a space ship and an alien probing table came unbidden to his mind. Dean squashed it down. No more X-Files for him.
“’M sick?” Dean asked, confused. His eyes stung, like there was a match lit behind his eyeballs, slowly burning all wetness away. He either had a fever or someone had rubbed sand in them when he wasn’t looking.
The last thing Dean could remember was killing the evil-Ent in the forest and watching it turn into dust. The thing had bitten him and-“Where’s Sam? Where’s my brother?”
Two white blobs exchanged a long look, probably communicating on a different channel that kept Dean out of the conversation. “Your brother is fine,” one of the blobs said. “A mild concussion. His doctor should release him later today.”
“Can I go too?” Dean asked hopefully. It felt like he’d been run over by a freight train a handful of times, but that was something he could deal with away from a hospital and the fake medical insurances that he and Sam were currently using. “I’m feeling much better,” he lied though his teeth. He might’ve even smiled, to compose the picture of miraculously healed patient, but his face felt like it was made of plastic and Dean couldn’t really tell if the end result had been a smile or a snarl.
The condom-person nearest to him sat by his side and lowered his head to Dean’s level. This close, Dean could see the little transparent visor covering a man’s face. He had kind brown eyes. It was good to confirm that his skin wasn’t green.
“You are currently in an isolation unit because we suspect you have a very serious, very contagious condition,” the man said, talking placidly and earnestly. “I know that this condition makes it hard for you to completely understand what I’m saying, but you need to try and remain calm, okay? We still need to run a few more tests to be absolutely certain about what we’re dealing here and then we’ll see about making you all better.”
Dean was pretty sure his mouth had dropped to the vicinity of his ankles. What? “What?” Dean all but shouted. His voice sounded wonky to his ears. “Screw that! I feel fine!” he finished and decided to prove just that by getting up from the lumpy bed. The small nuisance of an IV line pulling back at his hand was quickly solved with a sharp pull and suddenly, he could feel cold floor under his bare feet.
For half a second, as he took two confident steps forward, solid ground under his feet, Dean felt awesome. He felt validated, proving to everyone that he was, in fact, fine.
And then the rest of his body caught up with Dean’s actions.
Everything was a contradiction, specifically aimed at making him as miserable as possible. His legs felt numb as ice, while his left ankle was on fire; his arms were made of soggy sponge while his head seemed filled with lead. Everything hurt, even though he couldn’t actually feel most of his body.
Despite being aware that the whole room was boringly white, Dean was seeing sparkles of color everywhere. Bursts of light and shade, of red and purple all around him. A “Shit,” escaped his lips as Dean felt himself going down, dead weight like the floor was a magnet and the lead in his head was deadly attracted to it.
He fully expected to lose conscious before hitting the ground, but instead, his senses refused to take a leave of absence. The spinning lights and colors were making him dizzy and despite knowing better than that, Dean could swear that the floor was undulating, like it was the frigging high sea.
Bile rose fast to his mouth, exploding from his lips before Dean could stop it.
Dean was distantly aware of the indignity of lying there, with his ass and legs barren and soaking in the coldness of the floor as his gown scrunched up, while the condom-people around him called for help to get him back on the bed. His vomit was a yellow mass, sitting flax in front of his nose, moving slowly, like it was trying to get back in.
At some level, Dean was questioning why the hell he felt so weak and battered. Sure, the monster had thrown him and Sam around for a bit, but that was nothing new. And the pain in his ankle had to be from the bite... there had been a bite at some point, right?
The feeling of weightlessness as he was lifted from the floor and on to the bed was nauseating and disturbing, but the touch of soft sheets on his exposed skin was welcomed. Maybe he could postpone his escape for just a few more moments, catch his breath...
“Mr. Nimoy,” an annoyed voice pulled Dean away from the oblivion at hand. More than the name that wasn’t his, it was the pinch in his hand as a new IV line was inserted that made Dean pop his eyes open. A wet cloth was pressed against his face, cleaning the sticky wetness he could feel there. “I understand that you’re confused and probably a little scared,” the man said, his tone softening as he spoke. “Right now, the only thing I can assure you is that we’re doing everything in our power to make you better. But you have to help us a little, okay? We can’t risk any more sedation; so, no more stunts, or we will strap you to the bed. Do you understand that?”
The man was a paradox of caring -bordering on condescension actually-, and heavy-duty bondage. Dean wanted to punch the guy in the face for talking to him like he was a frigging baby. Besides, Dean wasn’t scared. He’d faced monsters; he’d been to Hell and been at the mercy of the worst kind of demons. Waking up in pain, surrounded by strangers and being told that he was the second coming of the black plague? It hardly registered in Dean’s ‘freaking out’ meter.
Now, if he could just convince them to let him go... Sam was the one with the puppy dog eyes thingy that could make people bent to his will. Dean, unfortunately, lacked the skill. “No puppy dog eyes,” he whispered, eliciting a couple of confused looks from the condom people.
As if they had any clue...
“...lumbar puncture, but we need your cooperation,” the man inside the white suit went on. In the midst of his internal monologue, the only words that truly registered in Dean’s mind were ‘lumbar’ and ‘puncture’.
“What?”
“Now, I won’t lie to you, the procedure is a bit uncomfortable,” the doctor continued. “But it is absolutely necessary that we get a measurement of how this unknown entity is affecting your brain.”
Dean’s headache was getting worse. The ‘unknown entity’ part had almost made him laugh, as he remembered the stringy, multiple snake-headed ‘entity’ that he and Sam had killed. “Is my brother okay? Is Sam here?”
The condom-people exchanged another look and Dean could almost feel pity in the air. Had he asked that before?
“We need to proceed. Now.”
They weren’t talking to him anymore, apparently having decided that his contribution to the matter was overrated. They just started moving around his bed, pulling and prodding things that Dean would rather leave un-prodded and before he could get his wits enough to say anything else, Dean found himself on his side, knees tucked in and head pushed down to meet them. It was almost pleasant, close to a fetal position, if it weren’t for the unfamiliar hands holding him down and stopping him from uncurling.
“Wha... what t’hell are you doing?”
“Deep breaths, Mr. Nimoy,” was his only answer as something cold was swabbed across his lower back, quickly followed by a small pinch “This will all be over in a second. Just remember, deep breaths.”
Alastair was the only demon in Hell with access to electricity. While the rest of the pit lay in the gloom or depended on fires to illuminate the place, Alastair had lamps and electric wiring.
“Keep breathing, Mr. Nimoy. Nice and slow.”
One day, when he was feeling particularly artistic, he had stripped an electric wire, cut Dean’s stomach, pulled out his guts and patiently fed the wire inside. When he flipped the switch and lit it, it was almost pretty the way the pale stretch of intestine started to glow like a Christmas decoration.
“Deep breaths... you’re doing fine. Almost done now.”
The feeling of electricity spearing and cutting him in half was about the same Dean was currently experiencing. A hot knife, burrowing itself deeper and deeper inside of him, until Dean was sure the tip would scratch his skull. “Arrrgh! God... stop, please stop!”
There was a clattering sound at the back of the room, large metal pieces being introduced to the pristine floor, making everyone jerked at the sounds, including the person currently stabbing him in the back. Someone mumbled an apology somewhere in the room but Dean didn’t really hear it, he was too busy drowning in the whoosh of blood filling his ears and the screams trapped inside his throat.
The hands restraining him in that awkward position pulled away and Dean realized it was over. The pain was still there. He could still feel the needle inside his spine. His throat felt blocked, filled with cement...
“Deep breaths,” the voice continued, soothing and instructional, like Dean would forget the frigging basics or something. “We’re done.”
And like those two words were a blessing of sorts, Dean finally felt himself slipping away. It should have been restful, it should have been peaceful, but the only thing he was aware of was that he couldn’t stop himself from being pulled under and that he was in the hands of these people and there was something wrong with him. It didn’t feel like falling asleep at all; it felt like he was falling into a deep hole in the ground.
On to part 2