Supernatural: Sunny Day (Everything's A-OK)
TITLE: Sunny Day (Everything's A-OK)
GENRE: Gen
CATEGORY: Angst, Drama, H/C, Brotherly love
RATING: PG-13
SEASON: Two (after Simon Said)
PAIRING: none
WORD COUNT: 6074
SUMMARY: Sam had a choice to make. He could move Dean and paralyze him or he could leave him where he was to die.
DISCLAIMER: Supernatural, its characters and situations, are copyright Eric Kripke and Warner Bros. Entertainment (The CW). No infringement on, or challenge to, their status is intended. This piece of fiction was written strictly for the entertainment of other fans, and I am gaining no form of compensation for it.
MORE DISCLAIMERS: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or actual places and locations, is purely coincidental.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Eternal thanks to switch842 and xxamlaxx for the great betas. And thanks to the folks at little_details for their help with, well, the little details.
This was written for an anonymous prompter over at hoodie_time. The full text of the prompt was:
Gen. Set during Season 1 or 2 please.
Sam had a choice to make. He could move Dean and paralyze him or he could leave him where he was to die.
Obviously, Sam moved him. And now Dean is taking his inability to ever walk again hard.
The brothers work hard to get past the huge problem they're going through. Imagine Sam's surprise when it turns out Dean doesn't blame him; he's just upset Sam is now saddled with a brother who will slow him down.
To that anonymous prompter, I'm sorry it took me so long to get this written. I hope you're not upset about how long it is, and I hope it's at least a little of what you were looking for.
WARNINGS: (highlight to read) language
Oscar Evans had never been a pleasant man.
He'd built himself a two-story white farmhouse with a wrap-around porch on the top of a hill near Mulberry Grove, Illinois in 1872. His land was isolated, surrounded on three sides by heavy woods and on the other by an overgrown fencerow. His neighbors were few and far between, and the closest to him had been two miles away, but that had been fine with Oscar. It had been fine with those would-be neighbors, too, because by all accounts, Oscar Evans had been the single least-friendly person who'd ever lived in or around the small farming town. More than once, he'd chased some well-intentioned townsperson asking after his health or charitable churchgoer bringing a pot of soup off of that wrap-around porch with a loaded shotgun.
Local legend had it that the only things Oscar Evans had ever really loved were his privacy and his house, and he hated everyone he thought was trying to take either of those things away from him. Since he viewed stopping by to say hello as an invasion of his privacy and setting foot on his porch as an invasion of his home, he ended up hating, well, everybody.
He'd disappeared some time around the turn of the century, and no one had cared. There were no stories in the newspaper about his death. No notices in the church bulletin, no obituary, no funeral, and no grave. There wasn't even a death certificate on file at the courthouse. He'd just vanished.
All of the people who'd tried to live in the clapboard-sided farmhouse since his disappearance had ended up leaving, usually after some particularly nasty - and usually fatal - 'accident.' The Millers had moved into the empty house in 1912, but left after their ten-year-old son fell down the basement stairs and died. The Blankenship family tried again in 1929, thinking the abandoned house would be a good place to wait out The Great Depression. They'd lost two children and a father before they finally moved out in 1933. The Cooks in 1946 were followed by the Devlins in 1947 - both families escaped without any untimely deaths, but they were all so frightened that they'd left Mulberry Grove. The Devlins had left Illinois entirely, and they'd been the last people to try to live there.
Every person who'd lived in the home had left behind some story: strange noises, furniture moving by itself, lights turning off and on. Fires flared to life in a sealed fireplace. Hands touched their skin in the basement, or grabbed their legs as they walked up the stairs. Cabinet doors opened and dishes threw themselves to the floor.
Oscar Evans had not been a pleasant man, and he'd turned into an even more unpleasant spirit.
"Ya know, for a guy who's supposed to love his house so damn much, he sure is a lousy housekeeper."
Sam Winchester watched his brother step over the shattered dishes on the kitchen floor - the remnants of the Devlins' last attempt at a meal sixty years earlier - and rolled his eyes.
"Poltergeists aren't really known for their cleanliness, Dean."
"Yeah, I know. It just doesn't make much sense." Dean pulled open the door in the far wall of the kitchen, the basement door, and shined his light down into the darkness. "Why go to all the trouble of haunting his house to protect it if he was just gonna trash the place?"
Sam followed Dean down the darkened stairs, leaving the door open behind him to allow at least a small amount of light to filer in. According to most of the former tenants' and owners' stories, the majority of dangerous paranormal activity had taken place in the basement, so that was where they'd start their search. "Because he's not thinking of that. All he knows is that he wants them out of his house."
A loud clatter, a muttered curse, and then a louder thump told him that Dean had tripped over something at the bottom of the stairs and then kicked it out of his way. He managed to hold back the laugh, but he couldn't stop the smile, and he felt confident that with how dark it was in that basement, he didn't need to worry about Dean seeing him.
"Wipe that stupid grin off your face," Dean said. "And get down here."
Sam swallowed the smile and hurried down the last few steps to join his brother at the bottom. They shone their flashlights in different directions, scanning the rough stone walls and dirt floor for any evidence of what might have happened to Oscar Evans. Because of the adversarial relationship he'd cultivated with his neighbors, none of them had noticed him being gone, or bothered to look for him when they realized he was. It was more than possible that he'd died in the house he'd loved so much, and been left there to rot.
"You check that half," Dean said, waving his arm toward the far side of the basement. "I'll check this one. We don't find him down here, we move upstairs."
Sam moved slowly across the basement floor, shining his flashlight through the dust-laden darkness, checking every surface as he went, and keeping his shotgun at the ready. The rusty, filth-encrusted tools sitting on the shelves and scattered around on the floor were vibrating with energy as he passed them. He could hear Dean on the other side of the basement, picking his way through a hundred years' worth of discarded junk, heading for the area under the stairs.
"You think we're getting close?" Sam asked.
He stepped back in surprise when a hammer that had been lying on a table near his elbow suddenly jumped up and flew across the room. He jerked his head around to follow its flight path and cringed when he heard a muffled thump and an angry, "Ow, shit!"
"Dean?" he called out as he turned back toward the stairs.
"Yes," Dean said, his voice tight. "We're getting close to pissing Oscar off."
They were too exposed, too vulnerable, especially in the darkness. Being on opposite sides of the basement left them both open to whatever Oscar could throw at them - quite literally. Sam hastened his steps on his way back to Dean's side. He could see the tools moving, rocking back and forth, as the beam of his flashlight bounced across them. There was a sproing sound from somewhere behind him, and then a handsaw was whizzing past his head, only inches from his ear.
"Dean, duck!"
The crash from under the stairs was loud enough that it echoed across the basement, and the "Fuck!" his brother shouted out sounded almost panicked. Sam lifted his shotgun again and ran around the corner of the stairs.
The handsaw had hit the wall with enough force to bury itself in the crumbling mortar between the rough stone blocks. The weight of the handle had pulled it down far enough that the blade, wall, and floor formed a rough right triangle with each other.
Dean's neck was in the middle of that triangle, less than an inch from the saw's teeth.
"Jesus, Dean!" Sam cried out, running forward. "Are you all right?"
Dean swallowed carefully. "Fine," he croaked out.
"Okay, don't move."
"Wasn't planning on it."
Sam glanced around the basement warily. He could still hear the tools and trash moving around, and he could almost feel the air crackling with energy around him. He didn't want to put his gun down, because it would leave them unprotected, but there was no way he could dislodge the saw and free Dean one-handed. He shook his head, went to one knee, and put both the shotgun and the flashlight on the ground next to him.
He wrapped both hands around the handle of the saw, braced his feet against the floor, and pulled. It wobbled and shifted a bit, but it didn't come free. He felt Dean's arm stiffen against his leg, and he looked down at his brother's face.
"You cut me, I'm gonna kick your ass."
"I could just leave it there."
"No!" Dean cleared his throat, then took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Just get me out of this before Oscar throws another hammer. Those damn things hurt."
Sam tightened his grip on the handle of the saw and tugged on it again. It moved that time, just a bit, but enough to reassure him that it was going to come out. Two more hard tugs had it on the verge of completely free. The whole process had taken only seconds, but to Sam, kneeling over his trapped brother with his back unprotected from anything the hateful spirit might feel like throwing, it felt like more time than they could afford.
"Here we go."
One last hard pull, and the saw blade dislodged from the wall. At the last second, Sam saw the way the end of the blade was falling away from the wall and arcing down toward Dean's neck. He shot his right hand out and grabbed for it just as Dean flinched back. The blade stopped only millimeters from Dean's skin, and Sam let out a sigh of relief, then straightened up and tossed the saw behind him.
"What the hell'd you do that for?" Dean demanded as he pushed himself up from the floor.
"You're welcome."
"Yeah, thanks. But you threw the damn saw back to … shit!"
Dean's eyes widened, and he scrambled back on his hands and feet. Sam heard a commotion behind him, loud and chaotic, like everything in the basement was flying toward them, but he didn't waste time turning around to see if it really was. He grabbed his gun and flashlight before throwing himself into the small space beneath the stairs. He landed awkwardly, half on top of Dean's legs and half-sprawled on the pile of dirt, and threw his arms over his head.
The crash was enormous, the stairs shook violently above them, and pieces of wooden shrapnel rained down around them. After the commotion had ceased, when the only sounds in the basement were his and Dean's ragged coughs, Sam lifted his head and turned his flashlight back toward the open part of the basement. The dust that had been stirred up by the spirit's fit was already settling back down, and the beam of the flashlight cut through it easily. The remains of the workbench littered the floor around them, and a huge, jagged chunk of it had embedded itself deep in the dirt floor, right where Dean's chest had been only seconds before.
Dean pushed himself to sitting and leaned against the stone wall at his back. "God damn it, Oscar, knock this shit off!"
Dean pulled his own shotgun out from behind him, where it had fallen when he'd dodged the saw, and hefted it in his right hand. "Well, this sucks. We're pinned down under here, he's not manifesting so we can shoot him, and we've got nothing to fight him with. We sure as hell can't go back out there with him doing this."
Sam started to push himself up from the floor, but stopped when something hard and brittle snapped under his hand. He aimed the flashlight at the pile of dirt beneath him and smiled.
"We don't have to."
"What?" Dean turned his head toward him.
Sam pushed up to his knees and shone the light down on the pile of bones he'd been lying on.
"Say hello to Oscar."
It wasn't the first time he'd had to do it - hell, it wasn't even the first time that year, or the first time that month. Six months earlier, it had been a heart attack caused by a seriously over-clocked taser. Six weeks earlier, it had been a demon that sliced him open from the inside out before another demon rammed a semi into their car. There were a dozen other instances in the years that had come before: broken and dislocated bones, bullet wounds that came dangerously close to vital organs, impalements, stabbings, severe head wounds...
But it didn't matter how often he did it. Because it wasn't getting any easier to do, he still hated it every bit as much as he ever had, and he wasn't getting any better at keeping it from happening in the first place.
Another small-town hospital, another emergency waiting room, another hour that had come and gone with no news about Dean.
Sam let his head fall forward and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. It wasn't supposed to be like this. This job wasn't supposed to be the one that took either one of them out. It was just a routine haunting, nothing but the cranky, irritating poltergeist spirit of a miserable human being. They were supposed to be back at the motel, washing the few cuts and scrapes they'd picked up in the basement, maybe holding ice on the deeper bruises.
He wasn't supposed to be sitting in a hospital waiting room not knowing if his brother was even alive.
And if he'd been paying attention like he was supposed to, he wouldn't be.
"Sam Henson?"
Sam jerked his head up expectantly, but sighed in disappointment when he saw a balding dark-haired man with a thick mustache standing in front of him. The patch on the shoulder of his brown uniform said Bond County Sheriff, and Sam vaguely remembered having talked to him before he'd left Oscar's house. He gave the man a half-smile before leaning back in his seat and looking down at the floor.
"How's your brother?"
Sam shook his head slowly. "I don't know. They haven't told me anything yet."
The sheriff actually looked sympathetic about that, and for a second, Sam wondered why. But then he remembered where the were. They'd started out in one small town, ended up at a hospital in another, and the entire county couldn't have had a population of 20,000 people. The sheriff wasn't acting sympathetic, Sam realized.
He actually cared.
"I'm real sorry, son. But I need to ask you a couple of questions. You understand? That's okay?"
Sam nodded, and the sheriff sat down in the chair across from him.
"I know you boys aren't from around here, because I've never seen that car of yours before."
"Kansas," Sam answered automatically. "We're from Lawrence, Kansas."
"So what brought you to Mulberry?"
"Our dad ..." Sam swallowed hard and forced himself to look the man in the eye. "Our dad just died. It was a car wreck; we got t-boned by a semi. We, um, after the funeral, we decided to go on a road trip."
The sheriff's expression softened considerably. "It's just you two boys, then? Just drivin' around the country? How long's it been?"
"Not long," Sam answered. He glanced up at the admit desk and chewed absently on his thumbnail. "Six weeks."
He noticed that the sheriff wasn't actually writing anything down and he breathed a little easier. He wasn't investigating them at all. He really was just there to make sure they were okay.
"You were with your dad when he died? In the car with him?"
Sam nodded again. He was saying too much, and he knew it, but he was too worried, he'd been left alone in that waiting room for too long, and if he didn't talk to someone soon, he was going to lose it. His knee was bouncing up and down, and he was biting his nail so far back that it hurt.
"I got banged up some, and Dean ... he almost didn't make it. After he got better, we got the car fixed, and we just ..."
A hand on the top of his knee stilled its jittering. He looked down at it, then up at the kindly face of the man it belonged to.
"What were you doin' in ol' Oscar's basement?"
Sam let out a small chuckle that he knew sounded as nervous and borderline-hysterical as he felt. How often did he get to tell the truth?
"Looking for ghosts."
The sheriff shook his head sadly, but he didn't look the least bit surprised by Sam's words. "When did you realize it was fallin' down?"
'Too late to do anything about it,' Sam thought. 'I should have known what it was. I don't know why I didn't. I thought it was Oscar throwing furniture around upstairs. I didn't understand what it was until the basement windows were rattling and the ceiling started collapsing, after Dean lit the bones, and we were trapped under the stairs, and Dean was shoving me toward the bulkhead and yelling, and we were running, and he was right behind me and then he wasn't anymore and I turned around and saw him on the floor and that beam was across his back and he wasn't moving and I knew he was hurt, I knew I shouldn't move him, but the whole house was coming down and if I'd left him behind ...'
"When it fell on Dean," he whispered.
The hand on his knee tightened, but he didn't look up.
"Is there anyone you need me to call for you, son? You boys shouldn't be alone right now."
Sam shook his head again. "No. There's no one. It's just us. Our dad was ... he was the only real family we had left."
"Do you want me to stay with you?" the sheriff asked, and Sam couldn't help but smile. A cop being concerned about him and Dean instead of trying to arrest them was a new experience. "You boys aren't gonna be in any trouble around here, so don't you worry about that. Truth be told, the county should've pulled that house down years ago. They knew it wasn't safe, and they knew kids were goin' in there lookin' for Oscar's ghost. I'll make sure to put in a word for you with the County Board, see about gettin' your brother's bills paid up."
"No," Sam said quickly. "You don't have to do that. We went in there and didn't get out when we should have. It's my ... our own fault."
"Are you here for Dean Henson?"
Sam jumped to his feet in surprised. He'd been so distracted by his conversation with the sheriff that he hadn't even heard the doctor walk in. He nodded his head quickly and silently; he couldn't seem to make his mouth ask any of the questions that were swirling around in his head.
The doctor was shorter than him, as most people were, but taller than the sheriff, and skinny. He had dark red hair, and his skin was peppered with bright freckles. He gave Sam a halfhearted smiled before he started answering the questions that Sam hadn't asked.
"He's alive, awake and alert."
"Good," Sam muttered to himself. "Good."
"We've gotten him stabilized, but I'm afraid the preliminary workup doesn't look good."
No.
"There is significant damage."
No.
"He has no movement or sensation at all below his lower back."
No.
"We're going to fly him out to a larger hospital. We've done all we can for him here."
No.
"But you should know right now that there is a very real possibility that your brother will never walk again."
"No."
It was so quiet that he barely heard it himself, and he wasn't sure why he said it that way. He should have yelled it, screamed it so loudly that the gods themselves heard it and responded, but he couldn't. He knew the doctor and sheriff were both staring at him, puzzled by his reaction, but he didn't look at them. He couldn't see anything but the blank wall between them, the space where Dean should have been standing but wasn't, and according to that doctor, never would be again.
He barely felt the hands on his arms that led him to the ugly, scratchy orange chair and gently urged him to sit down. He barely felt them on his back, rubbing up and down, or on his neck, pushing his head down between his knees. He barely felt anything except the pounding of his own heart in his chest - not the pain that he knew he should have felt, or the grief, or the shock. He was numb, inside and out.
He couldn't be doing this, breaking down like a weepy child in the waiting room. Dean was waiting for him somewhere in this hospital, and he had to get over himself and go to him.
"No, I'm okay," he said, waving them both off as he sat back up. "I'm okay, I'm just …" He looked the doctor straight in the eye, dug out every last ounce of anger he could find, and glared at him. "You're wrong."
The doctor started to puff up in indignation, but the sheriff had the good sense to step between them quickly. "Doc, a minute?"
They walked out into the hallway together, to where Sam couldn't hear what they were saying, but he didn't care. The doctor was wrong, that was just all there was to it. There was no way in hell that Dean would never walk again, that he was going to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Sam wasn't going to put him in some sort of rehab center or nursing home. Dean was going to be just fine. He had to be.
Sam had screwed up at Oscar's house, sure, but he hadn't paralyzed his brother. He'd been sloppy, but he hadn't really hurt Dean when he dragged that twisted, mangled, splintered beam off of him. He'd underestimated the spirit's power and the lengths he'd go to keep people out of his house, but he hadn't completely severed Dean's spine when he threw him across his shoulder and ran like hell.
He hadn't done that to Dean, and he refused to believe that he had.
Except for the fact that the doctor had just told him that he did, and whether or not he believed it didn't matter.
"Sam?" The sheriff was suddenly crouched in front of him, with one rough, calloused hand on his arm, and he shook himself out of his thoughts and turned his attention to him. "Son, are you sure you're okay?"
Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
"Mr. Henson," the doctor began. He hadn't moved from where he was standing, just inside the door, but after a quick, hard look from the sheriff, he walked stepped forward and sat in the chair at Sam's side.
"Sam," he said, and his voice was softer than it had been before. "I might have spoken a bit more harshly than I intended earlier."
Sam gave him a hard look out of the corners of his eyes, but didn't turn to face him.
"We are operating under a worst case scenario with your brother right now, but the truth is that we don't know for sure. At this point, it does appear to be a complete injury below the T12 vertebra, but it might not be."
Sam straightened in the chair and turned his head. "So he might not be paralyzed?"
The doctor shook his head. "No, right now, he is paralyzed. As I said, there's no sensation or movement below his lower back." Sam sank into his chair again, his momentary hope deflated. "What we don't know is if it's permanent. He might regain some function, or none, or all. There's just no way of knowing right now."
Sam lifted his shoulders slightly. "So he might get better?"
The doctor nodded his head, and what might have been the ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of his lips. "It's possible," he admitted. "But for the sake of preventing any further damage, we're treating it as a complete, unstable spinal fracture. All I wanted to do was impress upon you, and him, that he might not ..."
Sam shot up out of the chair. "You told him already?"
The doctor nodded. "Of course I did. He knows everything that's being done, and why. He's taking it very well, I'd say. He understands how lucky he is to be alive."
Sam's heart skipped a beat when he heard that, and he shook his head vehemently. The words 'lucky' and 'alive' didn't go together in Dean's brain anymore, not since their dad died.
Not since Dean hadn't.
"I need to see my brother," he announced.
The sheriff's gentle hand was on his arm again. "Are you sure, son? You don't need another minute?"
Sam shook his head firmly. "I'm fine," he said again. "I just really need to see Dean. Right now."
He had a pretty good idea of what would be going on in Dean's head, but he didn't want to walk into the room blind. He stayed in the hallway for a few moments, looking through the exam room's open door but keeping himself just out of sight, and studied his brother. Dean's movements and expressions always gave him some sign of where his head was, but it took Sam about two seconds to realize that he couldn't rely on either of those things to read him the way he usually did.
The injury itself made it impossible for Dean to move anything below the middle of his back. In addition to that, to prevent any further damage, he'd been strapped on to a backboard and a high collar around his neck kept his head immobile. He was just lying there, staring straight ahead at the small television that hung from the ceiling near the far wall.
The stillness bothered Sam more than he'd be able to let show, because it wasn't Dean. Dean wasn't still, ever. Not even in his sleep.
Sam took a deep breath, pushed the last of his own emotions aside, and stepped into the room.
"Hey, Dean," he said, forcing as much cheer into his voice as he could.
"Hey," Dean answered. "Was starting to think you were gonna stand out there and stare at me all day."
Sam snorted out a half-laugh. He should have expected Dean to know he was there.
"How are you feeling?"
"Half of me can't feel anything." Sam heard the hollowness in his voice and stepped closer to the bed, close enough that he and Dean could see each other. "Other half's drugged. Feel great."
Sam looked down at his brother and shook his head.
"Don't brush me off, Dean," he said. "I need to know how you feel."
Dean sighed and closed his eyes. Sam could see the shrug in his mind's eye, knew that if he could, Dean would running his fingers through his hair and turning away. "I don't feel anything."
That was what he was afraid of.
Sam turned away and looked out the window into the darkness of the pre-dawn morning. He wanted to push for more, to ask if Dean was just talking about physically because he was pretty sure he wasn't, but it was all he was going to get out of him, and he knew it. Feelings weren't something Dean did well under the best of circumstances, and circumstances at that moment were about as far from 'best' as they could possibly be. Sam shoved his hands in his pockets, rolled his shoulders back, and looked down at his brother again.
"I talked to your doctor."
"Kinda figured that." Dean opened his eyes, and Sam could tell that he had to force himself to keep them that way. To anyone who didn't know him, Dean looked tired. But Sam could see the defeat in those eyes, the absolute lack of caring, the total surrender. "Didya hear they're gonna put me on a helicopter?"
"Yeah. If it helps, I told them to sedate you."
"St. Louis," Dean continued. "They want to fly me to St. Louis."
"No," Sam answered quickly. He stepped forward and reached for Dean's leg, but pulled back at the last second. "Springfield. I told them that we've got an uncle there."
"We don't know anyone in Springfield," Dean pointed out.
Sam nodded. "Yeah, I know. But it's better than going back to St. Louis. And the sheriff is convinced that we need ..."
"Sheriff?" Finally, Dean looked at least mildly interested in something he'd said, but he'd gone from ambivalent to frantic in less than a second. "If the sheriff's been poking around, Sam, you need to get the hell outta here."
"It's okay."
"No, it's not," Dean argued. "Cops and us, we don't mix. As far as he knows, we just knocked a house down."
"As far as he knows," Sam interrupted, "we're just a couple of brothers on a road trip who decided to stop at an old house and look for ghosts."
He saw Dean's face harden, saw his shoulders stiffen, saw him shift his hands slightly, as if he was about to push up from the bed. Quickly, but carefully, Sam laid his hand on Dean's shoulder.
"Don't move," he ordered. "And relax. He didn't even blink when I said it. I guess it's pretty common around here."
Silence descended, and Sam watched Dean's face for some indication of what was going on in his head. For a second, he thought he saw fear, maybe even a little panic, but before he could say anything about it, it was gone, and Dean's eyes were closed again.
"So." Dean cleared his throat before opening his eyes and looking back up. Every emotion that Sam thought he'd seen was gone. "Guess this is where we do that goodbye thing, huh?"
Sam stepped back in surprise. "What? No."
"Well, I'm going to Springfield, right? And you're going to …?"
"Springfield." Sam wrapped his hands around the rail on Dean's bed and leaned forward. "Where did you think I was going?"
"Well, we were going to Kentucky, right? After we were done here?"
"We were," Sam said with a slow nod. "Now we're not. Dean I ..." He struggled to find the words to express what he was feeling. He'd known that Dean was more resigned than he should have been to the whole situation, but to hear him talking like that was upsetting to say the least. "I go wherever you go. How could you even think I wouldn't?"
Dean closed his eyes again, and Sam finally saw it for what it was: all the times that Dean would have turned away, all the times he'd have hidden, all the times he'd have declared the conversation over and walked away from it. He couldn't do any of those things, any of the things he'd been doing for the past six weeks, so he was doing the one thing he could.
"There's a job to do."
"Screw the job!" Sam said. "The job can wait, or someone else can take care of it. I'm not leaving you."
"You're gonna have to some time," Dean argued. He opened his eyes again, but he didn't manage to keep the raw pain out of them that time. "Don't have room for a ramp and a wheelchair in the car."
Sam pushed away from the bed and raised his arms in frustration. "Then we quit!"
"I can't ..." Dean swallowed whatever else he'd been about to say, but Sam wasn't going to let him off that easy.
"You can't what?"
"I can't ... anything! I can't hunt. I can't walk. I can't even take a piss by myself!"
Dean started to close his eyes one more time, but Sam leaned back down.
"Don't you dare," he said. "Don't you shut me out. Now, you can lay here, and you can play your part and you can convince all of these people ..." He gestured at the hallway and waved his arm around. "That you're just taking this all in and it's not bothering you, but you can't do that to me. I can see what you're doing, Dean. I can see what you're feeling. And you're terrified."
"Shut up, Sam."
"No! This shit's scary, Dean. You're allowed to be afraid of it. I'm afraid of it, and it's not even happening to me. And yeah, I'm scared. I'm scared that you're never going to walk again, that you're not going to fight it, that you're going to figure out it's my fault, and ..."
"What?" Dean blinked up in confusion. "Your fault? What the hell, Sam? You didn't do this."
"Yes, I did," Sam said, with a quick nod. "Oh, yes, I did. Because when that house came down, and that beam hit you ... I had a choice. Pull you out and hurt you or leave you there and lose you. And I can't ..." It was his turn to close his eyes, as he pushed his hair away from them. He took a deep shaky breath before continuing. "I couldn't leave you behind then. Why the hell do you think I'd do it now?"
"This is forever, Sam."
Sam shook his head vehemently. "You don't know that. No one knows that. This could be everything, yeah, but it could be nothing. It could be permanent, or it could be temporary. But whichever way it goes, I swear to you, Dean. I will be there." He leaned back down over the rail. "And I will only ever ask one thing from you."
"What's that?"
"Fight this," he answered. "Get pissed and fight it."
"What if I lose?"
"Then you lose," Sam said with a shrug. "And we get a house in Sioux Falls, with a ramp and a big bathroom. And we get one of those vans with the lift on it, and we retire. We live."
"You gonna wipe my ass for the rest of my life, Sam?"
"You've been wiping mine since I was six months old." He tapped Dean lightly on the chest with his fingers. "Maybe it's time to repay the favor."
Silence fell again, but it was more relaxed and comfortable than it had been before. Sam glanced out the window at the sunrise that was just starting to tint the cloudless eastern sky with streaks of pinks and yellows. It was going to be a beautiful, bright, sunny day. When he looked down again, he saw that Dean was smiling.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"Dude, how many people do you know can say they got sidelined by Oscar the Grouch?"
Sam snorted in amusement.
"Hey, ya think when we get that house up by Bobby, we can get matching striped sweaters?"
Sam laughed out loud.
"You have to be Bert, though."
"What?" he asked. "Why am I Bert?"
"You're the only one of us ever had a bottle cap collection."
"I was six!"
"And Bert was your hero."
Sam just shook his head again. The seriousness of the situation hadn't escaped either of them, but if they could joke with each other, then it meant it wasn't as hopeless as they'd feared.
"You ready to fight this, Dean?"
"Dean Henson?" Sam turned to greet the nurse that had just entered the room. As she walked past him and around the foot of Dean's bed, she held up the syringe in her hand. "Your brother told us about your problem with flying, and we don't want you getting anxious or trying to move, so I'm just going to give you a shot to help you relax. The helicopter should be here in about ten minutes."
Sam caught the panic that flashed in Dean's eyes, and he couldn't stop himself from wrapping his finger's lightly around his brother's. The nurse noticed the exchange, and she smiled sweetly.
"It'll be okay, Mr. Henson. You're just going to go to sleep. When you wake up, you'll be settled in your bed in Springfield, and your brother will be right beside you. Are you ready?"
Sam saw the questions in Dean's expression then, and he smiled reassuringly. "Yes, Dean. I'll be there."
Dean took as deep a breath as he could. "Yeah," he said softly. "I'm ready. Let's do this."
The last face Dean saw before he closed his eyes was the first face he saw when he opened them again, and in that moment they both knew that somehow, someway, everything was going to be okay.
~ fin ~
GENRE: Gen
CATEGORY: Angst, Drama, H/C, Brotherly love
RATING: PG-13
SEASON: Two (after Simon Said)
PAIRING: none
WORD COUNT: 6074
SUMMARY: Sam had a choice to make. He could move Dean and paralyze him or he could leave him where he was to die.
DISCLAIMER: Supernatural, its characters and situations, are copyright Eric Kripke and Warner Bros. Entertainment (The CW). No infringement on, or challenge to, their status is intended. This piece of fiction was written strictly for the entertainment of other fans, and I am gaining no form of compensation for it.
MORE DISCLAIMERS: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or actual places and locations, is purely coincidental.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Eternal thanks to switch842 and xxamlaxx for the great betas. And thanks to the folks at little_details for their help with, well, the little details.
This was written for an anonymous prompter over at hoodie_time. The full text of the prompt was:
Gen. Set during Season 1 or 2 please.
Sam had a choice to make. He could move Dean and paralyze him or he could leave him where he was to die.
Obviously, Sam moved him. And now Dean is taking his inability to ever walk again hard.
The brothers work hard to get past the huge problem they're going through. Imagine Sam's surprise when it turns out Dean doesn't blame him; he's just upset Sam is now saddled with a brother who will slow him down.
To that anonymous prompter, I'm sorry it took me so long to get this written. I hope you're not upset about how long it is, and I hope it's at least a little of what you were looking for.
WARNINGS: (highlight to read) language
Oscar Evans had never been a pleasant man.
He'd built himself a two-story white farmhouse with a wrap-around porch on the top of a hill near Mulberry Grove, Illinois in 1872. His land was isolated, surrounded on three sides by heavy woods and on the other by an overgrown fencerow. His neighbors were few and far between, and the closest to him had been two miles away, but that had been fine with Oscar. It had been fine with those would-be neighbors, too, because by all accounts, Oscar Evans had been the single least-friendly person who'd ever lived in or around the small farming town. More than once, he'd chased some well-intentioned townsperson asking after his health or charitable churchgoer bringing a pot of soup off of that wrap-around porch with a loaded shotgun.
Local legend had it that the only things Oscar Evans had ever really loved were his privacy and his house, and he hated everyone he thought was trying to take either of those things away from him. Since he viewed stopping by to say hello as an invasion of his privacy and setting foot on his porch as an invasion of his home, he ended up hating, well, everybody.
He'd disappeared some time around the turn of the century, and no one had cared. There were no stories in the newspaper about his death. No notices in the church bulletin, no obituary, no funeral, and no grave. There wasn't even a death certificate on file at the courthouse. He'd just vanished.
All of the people who'd tried to live in the clapboard-sided farmhouse since his disappearance had ended up leaving, usually after some particularly nasty - and usually fatal - 'accident.' The Millers had moved into the empty house in 1912, but left after their ten-year-old son fell down the basement stairs and died. The Blankenship family tried again in 1929, thinking the abandoned house would be a good place to wait out The Great Depression. They'd lost two children and a father before they finally moved out in 1933. The Cooks in 1946 were followed by the Devlins in 1947 - both families escaped without any untimely deaths, but they were all so frightened that they'd left Mulberry Grove. The Devlins had left Illinois entirely, and they'd been the last people to try to live there.
Every person who'd lived in the home had left behind some story: strange noises, furniture moving by itself, lights turning off and on. Fires flared to life in a sealed fireplace. Hands touched their skin in the basement, or grabbed their legs as they walked up the stairs. Cabinet doors opened and dishes threw themselves to the floor.
Oscar Evans had not been a pleasant man, and he'd turned into an even more unpleasant spirit.
"Ya know, for a guy who's supposed to love his house so damn much, he sure is a lousy housekeeper."
Sam Winchester watched his brother step over the shattered dishes on the kitchen floor - the remnants of the Devlins' last attempt at a meal sixty years earlier - and rolled his eyes.
"Poltergeists aren't really known for their cleanliness, Dean."
"Yeah, I know. It just doesn't make much sense." Dean pulled open the door in the far wall of the kitchen, the basement door, and shined his light down into the darkness. "Why go to all the trouble of haunting his house to protect it if he was just gonna trash the place?"
Sam followed Dean down the darkened stairs, leaving the door open behind him to allow at least a small amount of light to filer in. According to most of the former tenants' and owners' stories, the majority of dangerous paranormal activity had taken place in the basement, so that was where they'd start their search. "Because he's not thinking of that. All he knows is that he wants them out of his house."
A loud clatter, a muttered curse, and then a louder thump told him that Dean had tripped over something at the bottom of the stairs and then kicked it out of his way. He managed to hold back the laugh, but he couldn't stop the smile, and he felt confident that with how dark it was in that basement, he didn't need to worry about Dean seeing him.
"Wipe that stupid grin off your face," Dean said. "And get down here."
Sam swallowed the smile and hurried down the last few steps to join his brother at the bottom. They shone their flashlights in different directions, scanning the rough stone walls and dirt floor for any evidence of what might have happened to Oscar Evans. Because of the adversarial relationship he'd cultivated with his neighbors, none of them had noticed him being gone, or bothered to look for him when they realized he was. It was more than possible that he'd died in the house he'd loved so much, and been left there to rot.
"You check that half," Dean said, waving his arm toward the far side of the basement. "I'll check this one. We don't find him down here, we move upstairs."
Sam moved slowly across the basement floor, shining his flashlight through the dust-laden darkness, checking every surface as he went, and keeping his shotgun at the ready. The rusty, filth-encrusted tools sitting on the shelves and scattered around on the floor were vibrating with energy as he passed them. He could hear Dean on the other side of the basement, picking his way through a hundred years' worth of discarded junk, heading for the area under the stairs.
"You think we're getting close?" Sam asked.
He stepped back in surprise when a hammer that had been lying on a table near his elbow suddenly jumped up and flew across the room. He jerked his head around to follow its flight path and cringed when he heard a muffled thump and an angry, "Ow, shit!"
"Dean?" he called out as he turned back toward the stairs.
"Yes," Dean said, his voice tight. "We're getting close to pissing Oscar off."
They were too exposed, too vulnerable, especially in the darkness. Being on opposite sides of the basement left them both open to whatever Oscar could throw at them - quite literally. Sam hastened his steps on his way back to Dean's side. He could see the tools moving, rocking back and forth, as the beam of his flashlight bounced across them. There was a sproing sound from somewhere behind him, and then a handsaw was whizzing past his head, only inches from his ear.
"Dean, duck!"
The crash from under the stairs was loud enough that it echoed across the basement, and the "Fuck!" his brother shouted out sounded almost panicked. Sam lifted his shotgun again and ran around the corner of the stairs.
The handsaw had hit the wall with enough force to bury itself in the crumbling mortar between the rough stone blocks. The weight of the handle had pulled it down far enough that the blade, wall, and floor formed a rough right triangle with each other.
Dean's neck was in the middle of that triangle, less than an inch from the saw's teeth.
"Jesus, Dean!" Sam cried out, running forward. "Are you all right?"
Dean swallowed carefully. "Fine," he croaked out.
"Okay, don't move."
"Wasn't planning on it."
Sam glanced around the basement warily. He could still hear the tools and trash moving around, and he could almost feel the air crackling with energy around him. He didn't want to put his gun down, because it would leave them unprotected, but there was no way he could dislodge the saw and free Dean one-handed. He shook his head, went to one knee, and put both the shotgun and the flashlight on the ground next to him.
He wrapped both hands around the handle of the saw, braced his feet against the floor, and pulled. It wobbled and shifted a bit, but it didn't come free. He felt Dean's arm stiffen against his leg, and he looked down at his brother's face.
"You cut me, I'm gonna kick your ass."
"I could just leave it there."
"No!" Dean cleared his throat, then took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Just get me out of this before Oscar throws another hammer. Those damn things hurt."
Sam tightened his grip on the handle of the saw and tugged on it again. It moved that time, just a bit, but enough to reassure him that it was going to come out. Two more hard tugs had it on the verge of completely free. The whole process had taken only seconds, but to Sam, kneeling over his trapped brother with his back unprotected from anything the hateful spirit might feel like throwing, it felt like more time than they could afford.
"Here we go."
One last hard pull, and the saw blade dislodged from the wall. At the last second, Sam saw the way the end of the blade was falling away from the wall and arcing down toward Dean's neck. He shot his right hand out and grabbed for it just as Dean flinched back. The blade stopped only millimeters from Dean's skin, and Sam let out a sigh of relief, then straightened up and tossed the saw behind him.
"What the hell'd you do that for?" Dean demanded as he pushed himself up from the floor.
"You're welcome."
"Yeah, thanks. But you threw the damn saw back to … shit!"
Dean's eyes widened, and he scrambled back on his hands and feet. Sam heard a commotion behind him, loud and chaotic, like everything in the basement was flying toward them, but he didn't waste time turning around to see if it really was. He grabbed his gun and flashlight before throwing himself into the small space beneath the stairs. He landed awkwardly, half on top of Dean's legs and half-sprawled on the pile of dirt, and threw his arms over his head.
The crash was enormous, the stairs shook violently above them, and pieces of wooden shrapnel rained down around them. After the commotion had ceased, when the only sounds in the basement were his and Dean's ragged coughs, Sam lifted his head and turned his flashlight back toward the open part of the basement. The dust that had been stirred up by the spirit's fit was already settling back down, and the beam of the flashlight cut through it easily. The remains of the workbench littered the floor around them, and a huge, jagged chunk of it had embedded itself deep in the dirt floor, right where Dean's chest had been only seconds before.
Dean pushed himself to sitting and leaned against the stone wall at his back. "God damn it, Oscar, knock this shit off!"
Dean pulled his own shotgun out from behind him, where it had fallen when he'd dodged the saw, and hefted it in his right hand. "Well, this sucks. We're pinned down under here, he's not manifesting so we can shoot him, and we've got nothing to fight him with. We sure as hell can't go back out there with him doing this."
Sam started to push himself up from the floor, but stopped when something hard and brittle snapped under his hand. He aimed the flashlight at the pile of dirt beneath him and smiled.
"We don't have to."
"What?" Dean turned his head toward him.
Sam pushed up to his knees and shone the light down on the pile of bones he'd been lying on.
"Say hello to Oscar."
It wasn't the first time he'd had to do it - hell, it wasn't even the first time that year, or the first time that month. Six months earlier, it had been a heart attack caused by a seriously over-clocked taser. Six weeks earlier, it had been a demon that sliced him open from the inside out before another demon rammed a semi into their car. There were a dozen other instances in the years that had come before: broken and dislocated bones, bullet wounds that came dangerously close to vital organs, impalements, stabbings, severe head wounds...
But it didn't matter how often he did it. Because it wasn't getting any easier to do, he still hated it every bit as much as he ever had, and he wasn't getting any better at keeping it from happening in the first place.
Another small-town hospital, another emergency waiting room, another hour that had come and gone with no news about Dean.
Sam let his head fall forward and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. It wasn't supposed to be like this. This job wasn't supposed to be the one that took either one of them out. It was just a routine haunting, nothing but the cranky, irritating poltergeist spirit of a miserable human being. They were supposed to be back at the motel, washing the few cuts and scrapes they'd picked up in the basement, maybe holding ice on the deeper bruises.
He wasn't supposed to be sitting in a hospital waiting room not knowing if his brother was even alive.
And if he'd been paying attention like he was supposed to, he wouldn't be.
"Sam Henson?"
Sam jerked his head up expectantly, but sighed in disappointment when he saw a balding dark-haired man with a thick mustache standing in front of him. The patch on the shoulder of his brown uniform said Bond County Sheriff, and Sam vaguely remembered having talked to him before he'd left Oscar's house. He gave the man a half-smile before leaning back in his seat and looking down at the floor.
"How's your brother?"
Sam shook his head slowly. "I don't know. They haven't told me anything yet."
The sheriff actually looked sympathetic about that, and for a second, Sam wondered why. But then he remembered where the were. They'd started out in one small town, ended up at a hospital in another, and the entire county couldn't have had a population of 20,000 people. The sheriff wasn't acting sympathetic, Sam realized.
He actually cared.
"I'm real sorry, son. But I need to ask you a couple of questions. You understand? That's okay?"
Sam nodded, and the sheriff sat down in the chair across from him.
"I know you boys aren't from around here, because I've never seen that car of yours before."
"Kansas," Sam answered automatically. "We're from Lawrence, Kansas."
"So what brought you to Mulberry?"
"Our dad ..." Sam swallowed hard and forced himself to look the man in the eye. "Our dad just died. It was a car wreck; we got t-boned by a semi. We, um, after the funeral, we decided to go on a road trip."
The sheriff's expression softened considerably. "It's just you two boys, then? Just drivin' around the country? How long's it been?"
"Not long," Sam answered. He glanced up at the admit desk and chewed absently on his thumbnail. "Six weeks."
He noticed that the sheriff wasn't actually writing anything down and he breathed a little easier. He wasn't investigating them at all. He really was just there to make sure they were okay.
"You were with your dad when he died? In the car with him?"
Sam nodded again. He was saying too much, and he knew it, but he was too worried, he'd been left alone in that waiting room for too long, and if he didn't talk to someone soon, he was going to lose it. His knee was bouncing up and down, and he was biting his nail so far back that it hurt.
"I got banged up some, and Dean ... he almost didn't make it. After he got better, we got the car fixed, and we just ..."
A hand on the top of his knee stilled its jittering. He looked down at it, then up at the kindly face of the man it belonged to.
"What were you doin' in ol' Oscar's basement?"
Sam let out a small chuckle that he knew sounded as nervous and borderline-hysterical as he felt. How often did he get to tell the truth?
"Looking for ghosts."
The sheriff shook his head sadly, but he didn't look the least bit surprised by Sam's words. "When did you realize it was fallin' down?"
'Too late to do anything about it,' Sam thought. 'I should have known what it was. I don't know why I didn't. I thought it was Oscar throwing furniture around upstairs. I didn't understand what it was until the basement windows were rattling and the ceiling started collapsing, after Dean lit the bones, and we were trapped under the stairs, and Dean was shoving me toward the bulkhead and yelling, and we were running, and he was right behind me and then he wasn't anymore and I turned around and saw him on the floor and that beam was across his back and he wasn't moving and I knew he was hurt, I knew I shouldn't move him, but the whole house was coming down and if I'd left him behind ...'
"When it fell on Dean," he whispered.
The hand on his knee tightened, but he didn't look up.
"Is there anyone you need me to call for you, son? You boys shouldn't be alone right now."
Sam shook his head again. "No. There's no one. It's just us. Our dad was ... he was the only real family we had left."
"Do you want me to stay with you?" the sheriff asked, and Sam couldn't help but smile. A cop being concerned about him and Dean instead of trying to arrest them was a new experience. "You boys aren't gonna be in any trouble around here, so don't you worry about that. Truth be told, the county should've pulled that house down years ago. They knew it wasn't safe, and they knew kids were goin' in there lookin' for Oscar's ghost. I'll make sure to put in a word for you with the County Board, see about gettin' your brother's bills paid up."
"No," Sam said quickly. "You don't have to do that. We went in there and didn't get out when we should have. It's my ... our own fault."
"Are you here for Dean Henson?"
Sam jumped to his feet in surprised. He'd been so distracted by his conversation with the sheriff that he hadn't even heard the doctor walk in. He nodded his head quickly and silently; he couldn't seem to make his mouth ask any of the questions that were swirling around in his head.
The doctor was shorter than him, as most people were, but taller than the sheriff, and skinny. He had dark red hair, and his skin was peppered with bright freckles. He gave Sam a halfhearted smiled before he started answering the questions that Sam hadn't asked.
"He's alive, awake and alert."
"Good," Sam muttered to himself. "Good."
"We've gotten him stabilized, but I'm afraid the preliminary workup doesn't look good."
No.
"There is significant damage."
No.
"He has no movement or sensation at all below his lower back."
No.
"We're going to fly him out to a larger hospital. We've done all we can for him here."
No.
"But you should know right now that there is a very real possibility that your brother will never walk again."
"No."
It was so quiet that he barely heard it himself, and he wasn't sure why he said it that way. He should have yelled it, screamed it so loudly that the gods themselves heard it and responded, but he couldn't. He knew the doctor and sheriff were both staring at him, puzzled by his reaction, but he didn't look at them. He couldn't see anything but the blank wall between them, the space where Dean should have been standing but wasn't, and according to that doctor, never would be again.
He barely felt the hands on his arms that led him to the ugly, scratchy orange chair and gently urged him to sit down. He barely felt them on his back, rubbing up and down, or on his neck, pushing his head down between his knees. He barely felt anything except the pounding of his own heart in his chest - not the pain that he knew he should have felt, or the grief, or the shock. He was numb, inside and out.
He couldn't be doing this, breaking down like a weepy child in the waiting room. Dean was waiting for him somewhere in this hospital, and he had to get over himself and go to him.
"No, I'm okay," he said, waving them both off as he sat back up. "I'm okay, I'm just …" He looked the doctor straight in the eye, dug out every last ounce of anger he could find, and glared at him. "You're wrong."
The doctor started to puff up in indignation, but the sheriff had the good sense to step between them quickly. "Doc, a minute?"
They walked out into the hallway together, to where Sam couldn't hear what they were saying, but he didn't care. The doctor was wrong, that was just all there was to it. There was no way in hell that Dean would never walk again, that he was going to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Sam wasn't going to put him in some sort of rehab center or nursing home. Dean was going to be just fine. He had to be.
Sam had screwed up at Oscar's house, sure, but he hadn't paralyzed his brother. He'd been sloppy, but he hadn't really hurt Dean when he dragged that twisted, mangled, splintered beam off of him. He'd underestimated the spirit's power and the lengths he'd go to keep people out of his house, but he hadn't completely severed Dean's spine when he threw him across his shoulder and ran like hell.
He hadn't done that to Dean, and he refused to believe that he had.
Except for the fact that the doctor had just told him that he did, and whether or not he believed it didn't matter.
"Sam?" The sheriff was suddenly crouched in front of him, with one rough, calloused hand on his arm, and he shook himself out of his thoughts and turned his attention to him. "Son, are you sure you're okay?"
Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
"Mr. Henson," the doctor began. He hadn't moved from where he was standing, just inside the door, but after a quick, hard look from the sheriff, he walked stepped forward and sat in the chair at Sam's side.
"Sam," he said, and his voice was softer than it had been before. "I might have spoken a bit more harshly than I intended earlier."
Sam gave him a hard look out of the corners of his eyes, but didn't turn to face him.
"We are operating under a worst case scenario with your brother right now, but the truth is that we don't know for sure. At this point, it does appear to be a complete injury below the T12 vertebra, but it might not be."
Sam straightened in the chair and turned his head. "So he might not be paralyzed?"
The doctor shook his head. "No, right now, he is paralyzed. As I said, there's no sensation or movement below his lower back." Sam sank into his chair again, his momentary hope deflated. "What we don't know is if it's permanent. He might regain some function, or none, or all. There's just no way of knowing right now."
Sam lifted his shoulders slightly. "So he might get better?"
The doctor nodded his head, and what might have been the ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of his lips. "It's possible," he admitted. "But for the sake of preventing any further damage, we're treating it as a complete, unstable spinal fracture. All I wanted to do was impress upon you, and him, that he might not ..."
Sam shot up out of the chair. "You told him already?"
The doctor nodded. "Of course I did. He knows everything that's being done, and why. He's taking it very well, I'd say. He understands how lucky he is to be alive."
Sam's heart skipped a beat when he heard that, and he shook his head vehemently. The words 'lucky' and 'alive' didn't go together in Dean's brain anymore, not since their dad died.
Not since Dean hadn't.
"I need to see my brother," he announced.
The sheriff's gentle hand was on his arm again. "Are you sure, son? You don't need another minute?"
Sam shook his head firmly. "I'm fine," he said again. "I just really need to see Dean. Right now."
He had a pretty good idea of what would be going on in Dean's head, but he didn't want to walk into the room blind. He stayed in the hallway for a few moments, looking through the exam room's open door but keeping himself just out of sight, and studied his brother. Dean's movements and expressions always gave him some sign of where his head was, but it took Sam about two seconds to realize that he couldn't rely on either of those things to read him the way he usually did.
The injury itself made it impossible for Dean to move anything below the middle of his back. In addition to that, to prevent any further damage, he'd been strapped on to a backboard and a high collar around his neck kept his head immobile. He was just lying there, staring straight ahead at the small television that hung from the ceiling near the far wall.
The stillness bothered Sam more than he'd be able to let show, because it wasn't Dean. Dean wasn't still, ever. Not even in his sleep.
Sam took a deep breath, pushed the last of his own emotions aside, and stepped into the room.
"Hey, Dean," he said, forcing as much cheer into his voice as he could.
"Hey," Dean answered. "Was starting to think you were gonna stand out there and stare at me all day."
Sam snorted out a half-laugh. He should have expected Dean to know he was there.
"How are you feeling?"
"Half of me can't feel anything." Sam heard the hollowness in his voice and stepped closer to the bed, close enough that he and Dean could see each other. "Other half's drugged. Feel great."
Sam looked down at his brother and shook his head.
"Don't brush me off, Dean," he said. "I need to know how you feel."
Dean sighed and closed his eyes. Sam could see the shrug in his mind's eye, knew that if he could, Dean would running his fingers through his hair and turning away. "I don't feel anything."
That was what he was afraid of.
Sam turned away and looked out the window into the darkness of the pre-dawn morning. He wanted to push for more, to ask if Dean was just talking about physically because he was pretty sure he wasn't, but it was all he was going to get out of him, and he knew it. Feelings weren't something Dean did well under the best of circumstances, and circumstances at that moment were about as far from 'best' as they could possibly be. Sam shoved his hands in his pockets, rolled his shoulders back, and looked down at his brother again.
"I talked to your doctor."
"Kinda figured that." Dean opened his eyes, and Sam could tell that he had to force himself to keep them that way. To anyone who didn't know him, Dean looked tired. But Sam could see the defeat in those eyes, the absolute lack of caring, the total surrender. "Didya hear they're gonna put me on a helicopter?"
"Yeah. If it helps, I told them to sedate you."
"St. Louis," Dean continued. "They want to fly me to St. Louis."
"No," Sam answered quickly. He stepped forward and reached for Dean's leg, but pulled back at the last second. "Springfield. I told them that we've got an uncle there."
"We don't know anyone in Springfield," Dean pointed out.
Sam nodded. "Yeah, I know. But it's better than going back to St. Louis. And the sheriff is convinced that we need ..."
"Sheriff?" Finally, Dean looked at least mildly interested in something he'd said, but he'd gone from ambivalent to frantic in less than a second. "If the sheriff's been poking around, Sam, you need to get the hell outta here."
"It's okay."
"No, it's not," Dean argued. "Cops and us, we don't mix. As far as he knows, we just knocked a house down."
"As far as he knows," Sam interrupted, "we're just a couple of brothers on a road trip who decided to stop at an old house and look for ghosts."
He saw Dean's face harden, saw his shoulders stiffen, saw him shift his hands slightly, as if he was about to push up from the bed. Quickly, but carefully, Sam laid his hand on Dean's shoulder.
"Don't move," he ordered. "And relax. He didn't even blink when I said it. I guess it's pretty common around here."
Silence descended, and Sam watched Dean's face for some indication of what was going on in his head. For a second, he thought he saw fear, maybe even a little panic, but before he could say anything about it, it was gone, and Dean's eyes were closed again.
"So." Dean cleared his throat before opening his eyes and looking back up. Every emotion that Sam thought he'd seen was gone. "Guess this is where we do that goodbye thing, huh?"
Sam stepped back in surprise. "What? No."
"Well, I'm going to Springfield, right? And you're going to …?"
"Springfield." Sam wrapped his hands around the rail on Dean's bed and leaned forward. "Where did you think I was going?"
"Well, we were going to Kentucky, right? After we were done here?"
"We were," Sam said with a slow nod. "Now we're not. Dean I ..." He struggled to find the words to express what he was feeling. He'd known that Dean was more resigned than he should have been to the whole situation, but to hear him talking like that was upsetting to say the least. "I go wherever you go. How could you even think I wouldn't?"
Dean closed his eyes again, and Sam finally saw it for what it was: all the times that Dean would have turned away, all the times he'd have hidden, all the times he'd have declared the conversation over and walked away from it. He couldn't do any of those things, any of the things he'd been doing for the past six weeks, so he was doing the one thing he could.
"There's a job to do."
"Screw the job!" Sam said. "The job can wait, or someone else can take care of it. I'm not leaving you."
"You're gonna have to some time," Dean argued. He opened his eyes again, but he didn't manage to keep the raw pain out of them that time. "Don't have room for a ramp and a wheelchair in the car."
Sam pushed away from the bed and raised his arms in frustration. "Then we quit!"
"I can't ..." Dean swallowed whatever else he'd been about to say, but Sam wasn't going to let him off that easy.
"You can't what?"
"I can't ... anything! I can't hunt. I can't walk. I can't even take a piss by myself!"
Dean started to close his eyes one more time, but Sam leaned back down.
"Don't you dare," he said. "Don't you shut me out. Now, you can lay here, and you can play your part and you can convince all of these people ..." He gestured at the hallway and waved his arm around. "That you're just taking this all in and it's not bothering you, but you can't do that to me. I can see what you're doing, Dean. I can see what you're feeling. And you're terrified."
"Shut up, Sam."
"No! This shit's scary, Dean. You're allowed to be afraid of it. I'm afraid of it, and it's not even happening to me. And yeah, I'm scared. I'm scared that you're never going to walk again, that you're not going to fight it, that you're going to figure out it's my fault, and ..."
"What?" Dean blinked up in confusion. "Your fault? What the hell, Sam? You didn't do this."
"Yes, I did," Sam said, with a quick nod. "Oh, yes, I did. Because when that house came down, and that beam hit you ... I had a choice. Pull you out and hurt you or leave you there and lose you. And I can't ..." It was his turn to close his eyes, as he pushed his hair away from them. He took a deep shaky breath before continuing. "I couldn't leave you behind then. Why the hell do you think I'd do it now?"
"This is forever, Sam."
Sam shook his head vehemently. "You don't know that. No one knows that. This could be everything, yeah, but it could be nothing. It could be permanent, or it could be temporary. But whichever way it goes, I swear to you, Dean. I will be there." He leaned back down over the rail. "And I will only ever ask one thing from you."
"What's that?"
"Fight this," he answered. "Get pissed and fight it."
"What if I lose?"
"Then you lose," Sam said with a shrug. "And we get a house in Sioux Falls, with a ramp and a big bathroom. And we get one of those vans with the lift on it, and we retire. We live."
"You gonna wipe my ass for the rest of my life, Sam?"
"You've been wiping mine since I was six months old." He tapped Dean lightly on the chest with his fingers. "Maybe it's time to repay the favor."
Silence fell again, but it was more relaxed and comfortable than it had been before. Sam glanced out the window at the sunrise that was just starting to tint the cloudless eastern sky with streaks of pinks and yellows. It was going to be a beautiful, bright, sunny day. When he looked down again, he saw that Dean was smiling.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"Dude, how many people do you know can say they got sidelined by Oscar the Grouch?"
Sam snorted in amusement.
"Hey, ya think when we get that house up by Bobby, we can get matching striped sweaters?"
Sam laughed out loud.
"You have to be Bert, though."
"What?" he asked. "Why am I Bert?"
"You're the only one of us ever had a bottle cap collection."
"I was six!"
"And Bert was your hero."
Sam just shook his head again. The seriousness of the situation hadn't escaped either of them, but if they could joke with each other, then it meant it wasn't as hopeless as they'd feared.
"You ready to fight this, Dean?"
"Dean Henson?" Sam turned to greet the nurse that had just entered the room. As she walked past him and around the foot of Dean's bed, she held up the syringe in her hand. "Your brother told us about your problem with flying, and we don't want you getting anxious or trying to move, so I'm just going to give you a shot to help you relax. The helicopter should be here in about ten minutes."
Sam caught the panic that flashed in Dean's eyes, and he couldn't stop himself from wrapping his finger's lightly around his brother's. The nurse noticed the exchange, and she smiled sweetly.
"It'll be okay, Mr. Henson. You're just going to go to sleep. When you wake up, you'll be settled in your bed in Springfield, and your brother will be right beside you. Are you ready?"
Sam saw the questions in Dean's expression then, and he smiled reassuringly. "Yes, Dean. I'll be there."
Dean took as deep a breath as he could. "Yeah," he said softly. "I'm ready. Let's do this."
The last face Dean saw before he closed his eyes was the first face he saw when he opened them again, and in that moment they both knew that somehow, someway, everything was going to be okay.
~ fin ~