And the earth was reaped -- chapter 8/10
He doesn't know what wakes him, but at least it's a slow process this time; he becomes aware of things gradually instead of everything battering his senses at once. First thing he notices is his shoulder, and there's no nice way to describe it, it just hurts like a bitch. Dean grumbles something even he can't make out and then groans even louder when rolling slowly onto his back just makes it hurt more.
Sound is next thing that registers. There is quiet breathing next to him, the clattering of dishes a room over, and the sound of the occasional car passing by outside. Footsteps slowly shuffle down the hall and stop. When he finally succeeds in forcing his tired eyes open he can make out a blurry shape leaning against the side of the door. It takes a few blinks until a blond head comes into focus-and then Yanni is smiling down at him from across the room, head tilted slightly to the side with his eyebrows raised in a silent question. But Dean is still too groggy to figure out what he is being asked, so he settles for a smile of his own before he closes his eyes and tries to remember what-
Sam!
If rolling onto his back a moment ago hurt, sitting up in a flash has him in agony. He grunts out in pain before he can swallow down the noise. His eyes squeeze shut and he can sense the world around him starting to spin. A warm hand appears on his shoulder and steadies him until he can finally open his eyes again. Yanni's smile has turned into a frown and he pokes his finger accusingly into Dean's good shoulder. Dean ignores the boy's worried face and takes a look around, realizing that he is sitting on his cot in their sleeping-room. He remembers falling asleep next to his brother, then there is a short flash of Bobby telling him to "move, ya idjit", his bed, warm, laying down…
"How is he?" His voice sounds weird, even to himself, but he ignores that too. He does, however, move more carefully now as he slowly turns on the cot and slides his feet out of the bed.
Yanni has his arms crossed in front of his chest and is watching him with a disapproving scowl on his face. Dean knows the teen isn't too happy about him getting out of bed in his condition and if it wasn't for his brother he would have gladly just turned around and gone back to sleep. Yanni reads his determined (stubborn) expression and rolls his eyes, then his scowl softens and the smile is back. Even before he starts signing slowly, Dean already knows that Sam must be better than last night. Yanni wouldn't be at ease and smiling like that if he wasn't.
[He fine. He sleep.]
He underlines 'sleep' with a pointed glare at Dean.
"I hear you, kid, but I need to see him." Dean grumbles softly under his breath and slowly scoots closer to the side of his cot. Yanni gives an exasperated sigh but moves closer without hesitating, pushing his shoulder beneath Dean's good one and does his best to help him stand. Which, once Dean is upright and standing on his own feet, isn't much since the teen is a few significant inches smaller than him. Not to mention his slender build which doesn't leave him with enough strength to support Dean's heavy weight on his own. But they manage somehow, shuffling down the hall in a slow but steady pace.
The hospital room is quiet; there is only a small lamp on one of the desks casting weak shadows on the wall and the floor. There is a long, dark lump on the far side of the bed. Dean can make out a familiar tousled head and he slowly limps toward it, sinking into the chair next to the head of the bed. Yanni steps back from him and pats his shoulder slightly, then disappears out of the room.
Sam is lying on his side, arms still stretched out in front of him. They are the only part of his body that is not covered in blankets, apart from his head. White bandages cover his wrists and the better part of his hands, and Dean releases a relieved sigh when he gets a good look at Sam's fingers. Despite the plastic bands biting into his skin deep enough to cut through to the bone they don't seem to have suffered from the loss of circulation; they don't look swollen and have no blues tinge to them, which Dean takes as a very good sign.
There is an IV snaking into Sam's left arm, connected to a bag that's been put on a nail on the wall behind him. The bag isn't labeled, but Dean thinks it's some of their last painkillers or maybe something to keep him hydrated. Sam's eyes are closed, his face completely relaxed, his breathing deep and even. Several bruises cover his skin, the most prominent ones beneath his left eye and what he can see of Sam's throat. They almost look like strangulation marks, which, knowing his brother's tendency to be strangled by just about every thing both living and dead, wouldn't come as a great surprise to him. He takes a look at the scruff Sam usually tries to pass off as a beard after days of hiking through the woods, and knows his brother will be itching to take care of some grooming stuff once he is lucid enough to remember how to spell his first name.
All in all Sam looks exhausted and beaten, but nothing at all like what Dean's fears had been conjuring up in his nightmares for weeks.
Thank God…
Something suddenly moves next to him and he whirls around to-
-cry out in pain and double over. Fuuuuuu…
When the dark spots vanish from his vision he finds Yanni looking at him with wide eyes, a blanket clutched in one of his hands. The kid's face instantly moves into an apologetic grimace and his right hand starts rotating over his chest in quick, clockwise motions. It takes Dean a moment to realize the teen is saying 'sorry' over and over again. It's the first sign he's learned from him after scaring the boy half to death by pulling a gun on him when he didn't hear him approaching from behind.
Dammit…
Dean fights for a moment to get his breath under control, and then forces a smile at him. "'s okay, 'm fine." He huffs out, but even as he's saying he sees that the kid doesn't buy it. Yanni holds out the blanket to him as another apology, then retreats out of the room so fast that Dean cannot ask him to stay. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, staring at the blanket in his lap for a moment. They know the kid is traumatized, something must have happened to him before they found him that has turned him into a nervous, skittish person. Sudden moves, loud noises, even a raised voice can sometimes be enough to send him running and then it takes Bobby hours to coax him back from wherever he is hiding. Dean runs a tired hand over his eyes and closes them for a moment. Man, Bobby's so going to kick his ass for that…again.
"Dean?"
The whisper is so low he almost misses it, but then his head whips around to look at the bed so quickly he feels another stab of pain lance through his shoulder and the black dots are back again. He is pretty sure he's groaning in discomfort and he really needs to work on keeping those reactions inside.
"Dean, you okay?" Sam seems to exhale the words rather than speak them; they are badly slurred, barely recognizable. He is squinting up at him blearily, lips parted slightly as he breathes, not as deeply as before. His brows are drawn together into a frown and as Dean watches Sam's eyes squeeze shut in pain as he takes a deeper breath which he gasps out in a breathless moan a second later. "Fuuu…"
Dean carefully leans toward him, resting his hand on Sam's shoulder. "Take it easy, your ribs are cracked." He squeezes the shoulder gently, smiling sympathetically when Sam fights his eyes open and blinks up at him, panting softly.
"'sucks…"
Dean wants to answer him, crack some wise-ass comment about Sam using his body as a punching bag but finds himself unable to, he almost chokes on the words when there's only one thought ringing loudly inside his mind.
Thank God, thank God you're here.
Uhm…
Has to be the sleep deprivation that is finally catching up with him. Or the pain meds (he didn't take)-
"What happened to your shoulder?"
Sam' words are still garbled and he is apparently having a hard time to get them out between his clenched teeth. But he is looking up at Dean with as much a worried expression as he can manage at the moment. His eyes are glazed over with pain and he isn't moving anything besides his lips, obviously trying to keep as still as possible. Dean knows from years of painful experience how much cracked ribs hurt even when you are sitting upright with nothing putting pressure on them. Lying on his side with his arms stretched out in front of him has to be pulling at all kinds of muscles inside his chest - and it must be pure agony for his brother. And there is nothing he can do to help him.
Dean pulls his hand away from Sam's shoulder and slowly leans back inside his chair, watching his wheezing sibling for a moment, not really sure how much to tell him. He finally settles for as close to the truth as he can get without freaking his brother out. "I, uhm, I got into a little something outside a bar a few days ago. Turns out I don't have eyes on the back of my head…" He freezes as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Damn. He meant it as humor, but it falls flat. The first thing they talk about is that he needs someone to have his back. After everything they've been through, after what he did back then…
Sleep deprivation. Obviously.
Sam is squinting worriedly at him, and Dean knows the pain in the ass is seeing right through him. He doesn't even need to use his goddam mojo from the looks of it. Freakin' empaths. And freakin' Sam for being their freakin' king or something.
But Sam is not the only one who can do read his brother, Dean is not defenseless this time; there is something he can do to get out of this. He lets out a deep breath and looks down at his sibling without blinking. "'Or something'?" He quotes Sam from the night before and is rewarded with a small flinch and a brother who suddenly drops his gaze and won't meet his eyes anymore.
Gotcha.
"Sam, what happened to you, who did this?" He gestures vaguely at Sam and the bed. "You forget everything I told you? When they get you, don't fight them; stay low, don't draw attention to yourself. What did you do to piss them off like this?"
He has learned enough during his stay on the slave-trucks to know that the demons need their future vessels intact and won't hurt them (much) unless they need to intimidate the newcomers. Knowing his brother he thinks it's safe to assume that Sam stepped between one of them beating a helpless prisoner. And he is okay with that, even if it means that Sam is going to be in some serious pain for the next couple of weeks. Protecting others comes with the job description, comes to them as natural as breathing, so he can't really blame him, but it doesn't stop the lecture because Sam needs to take care of himself too, especially now-
"They took the necklace."
Dean's thoughts stutter to a stop.
Necklace? What-
And then he remembers.
He remembers that night: making up his mind, the fear (panic!), not wanting to go but having no other option, the need to save them, buy them time-
"No." Owen was shaking his head over and over again, arms crossed in front of his chest, mind made up. He was blocking the only exit out of the room by simply planting his big frame in the small opening. 'Small' because Owen had to be the biggest human alive- he even had a few inches on Sam.
"Don't be an idiot, man, it's our-your- best hope, and you know it." Dean was packing his bag, stuffing things into it he knew he wouldn't need where he was going but would take with him just to prove to himself (and the others) that he was indeed serious about this. He'd leave them the Impala, he'd already made up his mind about that. She was way faster than the SUV they'd come across the week before and she'd get them away from there. He hated leaving her behind, hated that he didn't even have time to say his goodbyes to her, but, to be honest, the car wasn't foremost on his mind.
He needed to be gone before Sam was back.
"Did you tell him?" Owen was still blocking the door, but something in his stance had changed. If Dean didn't know better he'd think that the older man looked resigned. Dean shook his head slightly, not looking at the other, scanning the small bedroom he was currently sharing with his brother. The brother he was going to leave behind.
The brother he would never see again-
He remembers how he'd taken his necklace off and left it on Sam's pillow, then put the keys to the car next to it, a message his brother would understand.
It's the hardest thing he has ever done.
I'm sorry…
Sam is watching him silently, no doubt picking up on something again. Dean looks back at him, takes in Sam's pale face, the worried gaze, his brother, right there. And then he suddenly just smiles. For a second he forgets all appearances; Dean's eyes meet Sam's, and for a short, long overdue instant, the connection between them flares, he shares a heart-to-heart moment with his brother. A brother who is out of his mind due to heavy painkillers so he hopefully won't remember any of it but, hell yeah, in Dean's book it still counts. And so he keeps smiling at his brother until Sam's expression changes from worried to slightly freaked.
"You 'kay?"
He doesn't get to answer, suddenly the light is switched on (another single light-bulb with barely enough power to brighten the room) and he turns his head to find Bobby in the open doorway, holding a bottle of water, a cup, and a new bag for the IV.
"He awake?" Bobby gestures toward the blankets and at Dean's nod the older hunter comes in and gets over to the bed, looking down at their patient. "How are you feeling, kid?"
Sam is looking up at Bobby with a weird expression, a mix between disbelief, hope and something almost like horror and Dean is once again reminded that the last thing his brother heard about their old friend is the fact that Bobby died in a fire that destroyed his salvage yard. They had spent the following night sharing memories about Bobby and the place and the weeks they spent with him while their Dad was gone on hunts. They had never talked about the older hunter after that. Right now, in his still fevered condition, Sam is probably thinking he is faced with a ghost- which, considering everything they know about what's out there…
"Bobby?" Sam's voice sounds troubled, worried, and he starts to move slowly, tries to sit up. Dean winces, opening his mouth to calm him down, but before he can say anything, Bobby crouches down in front of the bed and smiles at Sam, slowly reaching out to gently squeeze his shoulder.
"Yeah, son, it's me, I ain't dead."
Sam keeps staring at him suspiciously, clearly unwilling to trust his eyes, and Dean almost expects him to ask for a tire iron as a weapon to defend himself with. But then Sam seems to reach a conclusion and his pale face lights up with a tired, yet relieved smile. "Greatly exaggerated…." He croaks out hoarsely and Bobby seems to get whatever meaning is behind those words, grinning back at the injured young mean and giving his shoulder another pat.
"Damn right." He checks Sam's temperature with the back of his hand, and just for a moment Dean is reminded of his father looking after a sick Sam. He pushes that thought away as far as he can, tells it to back off and stay gone and thank God, when he looks again it's Bobby who leans back, asking his brother how he is feeling.
Sam thinks about his answer for a moment and Dean knows that look, knows Sam is going to say something along the lines of feeling 'okay' or 'not bad-' in short, he's going to lie to them, but then his brother looks up to Bobby and then simply shakes his head slightly.
"Been better…" he mumbles quietly and although he clearly looks the part, Dean doesn't feel very good about his brother admitting that he is anything but fine. It makes him look too vulnerable and weak for his liking and that's just not something Dean associates with his brother. Bobby doesn't look too happy either, but he doesn't say anything, just nods.
"Get some rest, Sam."
Bobby starts checking the bandages on Sam's hands and Sam watches him, still looking relieved to see the man, alive and whole. But Dean can see he is slowly losing the fight against his exhaustion. A few blinks later and Sam's eyes don't open again, his body gradually relaxing into the mattress beneath him. Bobby treats his wounds expertly, changes the IV-bag and then gets to his feet, groaning softly when his knees pop audibly in protest, then turns toward Dean. The older hunter's face is serious and Dean just knows he won't like whatever comes next.
"We need to get him mobile; they're coming. Maro's picked up some rumors, seems like they'll get to this block tomorrow or the day after that. We need to get moving." For a moment he doesn't sound like the man Dean has known for years, there is a note of seriousness to his voice that had not been there before The Storms. And he knows why. People are dependent on Bobby these days; he is responsible for their safety and well-being and, like everything else, he takes that responsibility seriously. And if the news is true and the scavengers are closing in on them, they need to get going. No, scratch that, they should be gone right about now.
This is so not good, moving Sam in his condition is a worry on one level, but the troops once again advancing in their direction when they thought they had covered their tracks was an alarming turn of events. If Sam in his weakened condition is spotted by a tracker there will be no way of protecting him without risking the discovery of the rest of them. Bobby will not take this risk and Dean agrees silently.
He scans his brother for a moment, then looks up at the older hunter, clearly unhappy with what he is about to say. "When are we leaving?"
Bobby notices his worried expression and grimaces slightly, as close to an apology as he is ever going to get. "Afternoon ideally, I'll have the kids pack the truck. Sam and Yanni are going with me, you think you're up to looking after the others?"
No, he isn't up to that, he doesn't want to get separated when Sam is in no condition to defend himself. He really, really hates this plan. And he hates it even more 'cause he knows it's the only way this is going to work, Yanni will be able to shield Sam's presence from any demon patrol they might meet and Bobby needs Dean to look after the rest of them. He doesn't have a choice. And it sucks. He nods slightly but doesn't make an effort to hide just how much this goes against every fiber of his being. Bobby gives him a short nod.
"Let him rest. We'll wrap his ribs later so he can move. Maybe Andrew can help him with the pain then."
Dean's eyes drift back to his sleeping sibling and he leans back in his chair, trying to get at least a little comfortable. Damned chairs weren't made for bedside vigils, but then again even the damned chairs in the many hospitals they've been in never were anything but uncomfortable. He closes his eyes and lets his thoughts drift for a moment, but Bobby's voice pulls him back.
"Try to get some rest, Dean, you look like death warmed over; kids need you rested and sharp out there, we can't lose you because you ran yourself ragged."
Dammit…
He doesn't really remember the trip back to his bed, there is warmth and a comfortable mattress beneath him and then his eyes don't want to stay open anymore.
chapter 9