A Womb of His Own - 8/21
Masterpost
Death arrived a few hours later with an old-fashioned doctor’s bag in hand. Dean asked him about what Cas had said - about the pain and agony - because it was one thing to decide it was worth the risk, but it was another to actually watch your brother fall apart because of a choice you’d made on his behalf.
“Now, Sam,” Death said as he opened the briefcase, “I’m going to put up a wall to block your memories of the cage. It might feel a little itchy. Do me a favor. Don’t scratch the wall.”
“Or what?” Sam panicked.
“Trust me, you’re not going to like what happens.”
Sam turned his green-brown-yellow-blue eyes on Dean. “Don’t do this, please, Dean, don’t let him -”
Dean squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “It’s just like we talked about. I’m here. It’s okay.” Dean kept uttering reassurances that couldn’t be heard as Sam’s begging turned into screaming and Death pushed a small ball of light into his chest.
And then everything was silent.
“What happened?” Dean demanded. “Is he okay?”
“I’m going to go now, Dean,” Death said. He snapped his bag shut and got to his feet. “I suggest you make this the last time we meet until you’re ready to take the big leap.”
He sat at Sam’s bedside for three days. He felt a little guilty that he wasn’t spending time at the hospital, but Bobby’s condition had stabilized, and he had a whole team of doctors and nurses. Nobody knew anything about Sam.
On the second day, Rufus turned up. Dean had called to tell him about Bobby but hadn’t expected that Rufus would come all the way to South Dakota after finishing a case. Knowing he was with Bobby made Dean feel better about sitting vigil at Sam’s side.
On the third day, Rufus forcibly removed him. He said Dean was torturing himself, and he was, just for more reasons than Rufus realized. Putting Sam’s soul back in was the right thing to do, even if Sam ended up a drooling, catatonic mess and even if Sam looked at him with disgust for the way he’d taken advantage of his soulless libido. Dean wanted to be there to see his brother’s eyes open for the first time, but Rufus insisted he sleep for a few hours and take a shower.
They were sitting in the living room, talking over the latest news on Bobby, Rufus trying to remember what the doctor had told him about the something branch of the hepatic artery, when the door to the basement creaked. Sam walked slowly into the living room, then gave Dean a hug that started with his arms and ended in a full-body crush with their faces pressed together at the cheek. Dean didn’t need Cas to tell him Sam’s soul had rightfully been restored. He knew just from the feel of Sam’s arms around him. He wondered how he could have ever found that other guy attractive or desirable, when this Sam was so much better. This Sam was pale and dirty, but his eyes radiated sincerity. He was so perfect, in fact, that Dean would have gladly traded all the sex he’d had with that other guy just to be able to hug this one. He wondered how long it would take for Sam to call him out on what had happened, and whether or not this would be the last hug they ever shared.
And then Sam said he didn’t remember anything after the big showdown at Stull cemetery, and Dean bit his lip, thinking how lucky he was to have dodged that bullet.
Sam gave Rufus a tentative smile, clearly glad to see him but nervous how he’d react to the whole resurrection thing. Rufus gave one of his cool looks and some throwaway line and clapped him on the back, and then he took off to go back to the hospital.
Sam looked at Dean in confusion. “Did I - is he mad at me for something?”
Yeah, Dean thought, you almost killed his best friend. But he couldn’t say it because Death had pressed upon them the importance of Sam not scratching the hell-wall, and he wouldn’t have said it anyway because that other guy wasn’t Sam, and Sam shouldn’t have to be remorseful over something that wasn’t his fault.
“Bobby, he’s - Lucifer - I remember seeing Lucifer -”
“He’s alive.” How neatly he could circumvent the truth. “He’s in the hospital, but he’ll be home soon.”
“Cas?” The name came out broken. Sam was nearly in tears.
“Shady but okay. He thinks God put him back together.”
Sam perked up a little. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Dean assured. “So you shouldn’t think anymore about it. You did what you had to do to stop Lucifer, and everybody came out alive. This calls for a drink.”
Sam insisted on seeing Bobby before he was released from the hospital. That posed a problem, since Sam was under the impression that Bobby’s hospitalization was the result of Lucifer trying to snap his neck. Instead, Sam walked into the room to find Bobby’s whole stomach covered in gauze.
“I don’t understand.”
“This wasn’t because of you. He got stabbed.”
Sam grabbed the chart from the end of the bed and flipped through it. “By somebody who knew what they were doing, apparently. Says here it started at the intestines and went up into the liver. Bobby’s lucky he didn’t bleed out. Liver wounds are pretty serious.”
Dean yanked the chart out of Sam’s hands and put it back. “You’re not supposed to be looking at that.”
“Since when do you care about rules?” Sam asked. He moved closer to the head of the bed and put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder. Bobby was totally out of it, and Dean was grateful he didn’t have to worry about him saying anything to bring the hell-wall down or to make Sam feel like shit.
Sam, of course, was doing a good enough job stoking the fire on his own. “How did this happen, Dean? Who did this to him?”
“Nobody we need to worry about. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back.”
Sam looked partially mollified.
On the way out, Sam paused in front of a calendar at the nurses’ station. He made a face but didn’t say anything. When they stepped inside the elevator, Dean made a point to look straight ahead.
Sam didn’t immediately bounce back from the resouling. He spent the next day sleeping - eighteen hours total. The day after that, he was awake but tired. He didn’t complain - that wasn’t his style - but Dean and Rufus could see it. They tried to devise activities that didn’t require much more than sitting. “Sam, could you read this and then give me the breakdown?” and “Hey, man, we really ought to clean the guns.”
Sam grumbled and moped until he joined Dean outdoors without an invitation. They chopped wood for the fireplace, salvaged parts from the junkers sitting around the lot, and shoveled snow off the driveway. Dean knew it was because Sam wanted to feel useful and didn’t want to be babied, and felt bad for Bobby. Even though Sam’s body had about twenty more pounds of muscle on it than it had had before he died, Sam only lasted thirty minutes before he said that hauling downed branches across the yard was making him light-headed.
That night, Sam was back to inside work, bitching about washing dishes and doing laundry like he was their housewife. Dean noticed he wasn’t really eating much. It wasn’t unusual for Sam to forego a manly slab of meat in favor of some rabbit food, but even Sam’s salad remained on the plate, the grape tomatoes just pushed in circles through spoonfuls of dressing.
“You’re not hungry?” Dean finally asked.
“I’m starving, but I feel like I’m going to throw up,” Sam said with a frown. “Maybe I’m getting the flu or something. Or -” he paled slightly - “you don’t think it’s Lucifer, do you?”
Castiel gave Dean an epic glare, probably his best to date, when Dean summoned him.
“Don’t say, ‘I told you so.’”
“Fine,” Castiel replied, rolling up the sleeve of his trenchcoat. “How about, ‘You were repeatedly warned’?”
Dean glared back. “Just go fist him already, would you?”
“Don’t I get a say in this?” Sam called from the sofa.
“No,” Cas and Dean answered in unison.
Cas gave Sam a thorough look before he shoved his arm inside, a look that seemed like it penetrated his soul just as well as his arm. Something primal inside Dean wanted to shove Cas for looking at Sam like that.
By the time Castiel withdrew his arm, Sam’s forehead was covered with sweat. He flopped backwards on the sofa with an audible groan, clutching his chest where Cas had reached into him. Cas took a moment to rearrange his clothing, saying nothing to either brother as he did. Finally, he led Dean around the corner.
“What is it?”
“Sam’s soul is intact. It’s damaged, but it’s there, and the wall appears to be holding.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Cas gave a glance toward the rest of the house. “Maybe we should go outside.”
“Just spit it out, Cas.”
“Dean,” his voice had dropped several decibels, “did your brother fornicate with another man?”
Dean looked down at his boots, his face reddening.
“Dean.”
“Yes,” he hissed. “What does that have to do with his soul?”
“It has nothing to do with Sam’s soul,” Cas reported, and he took a dramatic pause during which Dean wanted to wring his neck. “It has to do with the other soul I found in there.”
“The other - excuse me?”
“Sam’s body is harboring another soul. It has much less power, less energy, but it’s there.”
“You mean, like, Death made a boo-boo?”
Cas gave him with the same kind of look Dad used to give him when he tried to blame Sammy for things like the toilet being backed up because a miniature monster truck had gotten flushed. As a preschooler, Dean thought that Dad was some kind of psychic because he could always tell Dean was lying and that Sammy wasn’t to blame. It wasn’t until he was older that he figured out it was stupid to implicate a baby who couldn’t even crawl.
“I mean, like Sam’s body is housing new life.”
“Dean, have you seen the -” Rufus stopped mid-sentence. “Columbo,” he greeted. Cas, eyes perpetually squinty, just nodded back. “Sorry to interrupt the knitting circle, ladies, but I’m trying to get Bobby’s room ready. You know where the wheelchair is?”
“Basement,” Dean answered. “He didn’t want it where he’d have to see it and be reminded.”
“Yeah,” Rufus drew out the syllable. “He’s gonna love this.” If there was an underlying message of it’s all Sam’s fault, Dean ignored it. “Well, okay, I’ll let you two do your thing.”
“We’re not doing a thing,” Dean called after him. He turned back to Cas. “Could you - could you repeat what you just said? Explain it to me like I’m an idiot.”
Cas gave him a look that said it wasn’t hard to do. “There is another soul, another life inside Sam. It probably happened because Sam’s homosexual fornication occurred when there was a gaping hole inside his body where his soul had once been. If you hadn’t shoved Sam’s soul back inside him, the new soul might have just withered, or it might have taken root and become Sam’s over time. But now -” Cas shook his head as if to say I told you so yet again - “now your brother has the pleasure of gestating a new life.”
“Okay, first of all, could you please never say ‘homosexual fornication’ to me ever again?” Dean snapped. “And second of all, what do you mean, ‘gestating new life’? Dudes can’t get pregnant, Cas. Sam’s got the wrong plumbing.”
“Souls don’t live inside uteruses.”
“But you said -”
“There’s not really a precedent for this, Dean,” Cas snapped. “I don’t know if it’ll take on human shape, or if it will remain pure energy, or if Sam’s soul, as it continues to heal, will expel it or absorb it. You just - this is why you shouldn’t go messing around with things you don’t understand.”
“Well, excuse me, but when we had the whole ‘here’s why you shouldn’t put his soul back in’ talk, you never mentioned I should be worried about him getting knocked up!”
“Uh, guys?” They looked over to see Sam standing in the doorway to the living room. His hands were shoved in his pockets, and from the confused expression on his face it was pretty clear he’d at least heard the last part.
Dean turned around to get some explanation from Cas, but the asshole had already winged out. “Baby!” he yelled at the empty space.
“Yeah, apparently,” Sam said, misunderstanding. “Who’s knocked up?”
“I…uh…” Dean racked his brain for the best way to explain the situation. “Maybe you should sit down.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you should start talking.”
“The thing is, you just - what you just heard - that’s all…” Dean didn’t even try to finish the sentence. He gave Sam his most winning smile, the one that got him out of parking tickets from chick cops and that made Bobby roll his eyes fondly. Sam glared harder.
It was like home.
“I can’t tell you much,” Dean said, and he could see Sam start to open his mouth to protest. “No, trust me, it’s for your own good.”
“That sounds convenient,” Sam said. “And you know, it’s funny, but I’m pretty sure it’s about a year and a half later than I remember. You don’t know anything about that, do you?”
Dean sighed. Keeping that part from Sam had been impossible to begin with. “You didn’t just come back. You’ve been back over a year.”
“Was I in the panic room the whole time?”
“No, you were hunting.”
“Oh.” Sam frowned. “Bobby - has he been in the hospital for….”
“Five days. He’s supposed to come home tomorrow.” Dean ran a hand through his hair. Stupid decisions once again. He probably should have figured out his story before he had Death cram Sam’s soul back in. “Don’t ask me anymore. It’s for your own good.”
Sam, of course, immediately asked a question. “What were you and Cas talking about?”
“There’s another soul inside you,” Dean admitted, because, yeah, Sam probably needed to know that, even if he didn’t need to know how it got there.
“Is it Lucifer?” Sam asked with terror.
“No,” Dean assured him, resisting the urge to smooth Sam’s hair from his face. They didn’t do that anymore. “No, Lucifer’s safe in the cage. He’s never coming back out.”
“Is it Adam?”
Fuck, the last thing Dean needed to be reminded of was that some Winchesters were still playing sub to certain archangels.
“I need a drink.”
Sam followed him into the kitchen. “Do you think we can get his body back? The way you got mine back?”
Dean cringed, thankful he was staring at the meager contents of the refrigerator with his back to Sam. Death had only offered to save one of them, and, yeah, Dean was always going to pick Sam. Because Adam was already dead. Because Sam died to save the world. Dean wasn’t going to apologize for the fact that he loved Sam more.
“It’s not Adam,” he said, handing Sam a beer.
“Whose is it?”
He was a nosy and dogged bastard, but Dean loved him more, all right. “It’s nobody’s, Sam,” and if his voice sounded more annoyed than sympathetic, well, that was Sam’s fault for his relentlessness.
“I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to.” Dean took his beer and went into the living room, turning on the television to let Sam know the conversation was over.
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