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In the back of Dean’s mind, somewhere beyond the haze of delirium, Sammy was talking to him. He knew this, somewhat. He could feel, or rather knew he should feel, the hand that was crushing his chest, shaking in the effort of keeping all his blood inside him, keeping him alive. And in that haze was where Dean sat, hovering on the brink of the edge, a deep pity sitting heavy in his heart. He knew he was dead, or rather might as well be. He wanted more than anything to float back into his body, reach up and brush away Sammy’s tears, like he used to as kids. He wanted to embrace his baby brother, let him know it was okay, he was ready. He needed to let him go.
Instead, he watched, helpless, through the film across his eyes, as Sammy cried, begged, screamed for help. Dean couldn't help but wonder how many times he had put Sam in this position. How many times had he nearly died? Only just over the amount of times he had actually died, now that he thought about it. He stopped counting how many times that happened sometime after twenty seven.
For a second, he slipped, stumbled, his heart dropping and extra two notches as he dangled over the edge before righting himself. The feel of Sammy slapping his cheek forced his eyes back open, still filmy, but in the two seconds he was gone Sam seemed to have aged an extra ten years.
It was that moment that he decided he couldn’t leave. Not yet.
It wasn’t that he feared death. Having experienced it repeatedly, it has the effect of getting somewhat tedious after a while. Painful, yes, but years of arriving in Heaven with the line ‘Only here for a bit, someone’ll bring me back soon ’ had taken its toll and Dean just wasn’t scared anymore. He wasn’t even scared of going back to Hell. Something was sending him to Heaven, and he had a feeling that if they wanted him there so badly, he wasn’t going downstairs any time soon.
No, he couldn’t leave for a much more dire and infinitely more terrifying reason. A reason so prominent an issue that it made his gut clench and heart stutter at even the thought of it.
He couldn’t abandon Sammy. Not again.
You see, Dean was an adaptor, had to be. Moving around his whole life, it became instinct to instantly fit in, take control, thrive and survive in any conditions. He had grown used to the threat and action of death and resurrection to the point that it definitely did not have an effect on him like it did the first few times.
Sammy was not an adaptor. Even as a kid, he would whine and complain about it being too hot or too cold or being too hungry or his bed not being comfortable. The place could be a five star hotel with mile long swimming pools and endless sun and free food and the kid would still find something to pick at. He liked originality, clarity and consistency - he avoided change like the plague. Which was always funny to Dean, considering Sammy was the one who had left them and changed his entire life around.
Sammy had never gotten used to Dean’s tendency to die on a semi-regular basis. Every time Dean came back, he was met with those drunken eyes that hadn’t slept in days and messy hair that hadn’t been showered in more. He still hugged him like he thought he was gone for good this time, then hit him, scolding him for being so reckless and getting himself killed, again, because ‘I can’t keep doing this, Dean!’
So, no. Dean wasn’t going anywhere.
He could feel himself slipping, though. His body was numb, blocking out Sammy’s crushing pressure on his chest and the blood pooling around him, warm, soaking into his clothes. Vaguely, he could still feel Sammy’s free hand on his cheek, tapping on his cheekbone every time Dean’s eyes started to slip with him.
Dean could feel the tug on unconsciousness in his gut, reaching up from the abyss and wrapping around his chest, pulling, luring him in. And he had to admit, in the furthest, darkest corners of his mind he tried to ignore, a part of him was tempted to just let it. He was tired, exhausted, all the time and a lifetime of nightmare-less sleep sounded more like Heaven than Heaven was. To keep pulling away, fighting off the darkness, it just seemed pointless, hopeless, meaningless.
But then his eyes opened, just catching the bloodshot hazel ones through his pinprick, blurred vision and a new wave of strength, if just, lifted him up just about enough to keep him clawing his way away from the edge.
He would not abandon Sammy.
Focusing, he shifted his right arm, slightly, his palm dragging across the rough floor, saturated with thick liquid, until he found a sharp object, about the size of his palm - a rock. The surface was slick, and his entire body trembled with the effort of it, but he curled his fingers around it, allowing the sharp edge to dig into his palm, dragging slightly. Pain shot through his arm, hitting his heart like a punch but he could feel himself becoming slightly more lucid. The blur sharpened slightly, and he could definitely feel Sammy pressing on his chest now.
“Dean, you gotta stay with me, alright? You gotta hold on.”
If Dean wasn’t focusing so hard on digging this rock into his palm and keeping awake, he would’ve rolled his eyes at the classic Sam Winchester cliche line. Trust his baby brother to make a chick-flick moment out of his final moments.
Although, he supposed that, even if he did die, these wouldn’t be his final moment because he’ll be back within a week, maybe a month.
Sammy shifted, glancing over his shoulder. He was gesturing with his free hand at something, speaking incoherently. Dean frowned, if mentally, watched as Sammy seemed to argue with the other person Dean couldn’t see. After a while, Sammy’s shoulders slumped, and he fixed back on Dean.
“Okay, um...Dean? Can you hear me?”
Nodding failed, speaking was unthinkable. So he fixed Sammy with his hardest stare, trying to transfer that yes, he was here, he understood.
Sammy swallowed. “I, uh, I gotta go. I’m going to get help. I’ll be right back, okay? I’ll be right back.”
In a moment of pure primal fear, the jolt in his heart sent energy to his left arm, which lifted with speed that surprised both him and his brother, so he could grip Sam’s shirt with trembling fingers in a message clearer than anything he could say - Stay. Please.
Sammy looked over his shoulder, chewed his lip, and glanced back. The pound of Dean’s heart increased as Sam pried his fingers away from his shirt, letting it flop against the saturated shirt on his chest he had been using to keep him alive, and stood. Dean threw his best glare, a warning of don’t you fucking dare leave me here alone. Don’t you dare abandon me.
Of I don’t think I can hold on by myself.
But his mental screams fell on deaf ears as Sammy threw one last sympathetic look at him and took off into the warehouse in a stumbling run, the echo of his footsteps fading into the silence.
Well, shit.
Dean swallowed his panic, grimacing at the metallic taste that flowed over his tongue and dragged thickly down his throat. Trying to relax, he allowed his gaze to fix, relatively, on the roof just visible above him.
The warehouse ceiling wasn’t very interesting. Each rusted beam was coated in cobwebs and dripping with something that definitely wasn’t water. The metal plating on top of these beams was also rusted, and peppered with what looked suspiciously like bullet holes, allowing streams of moonlight to filter through, like sunlight from underwater. Dean watched, numb, tingly, as a spider crept from a dark corner, scuttled across the beams, weaving in and out of the shadows, until crawling through one of the bullet holes and escaping into the crisp night air. If it weren’t for his own pool of blood keeping him warm, Dean would’ve shivered in the chill that caused his dragon’s breath.
Again, Dean slipped at the edge, nearly sending himself over, and he tightened his grip on the rock he hadn’t noticed had relaxed, digging it into his slick palm and allowing the shoot of pain to drag him back into reality.
Gotta stay awake. Gotta stay with Sammy.
He stared at one of the bullet holes in the ceiling, fuzzed around the edges, allowing it to become the eye of the swirling room around him. A focal point that wasn’t spinning, wasn’t aching his eyes to look at. Something to hold his gaze until Sammy got back.
Just gotta hold out until Sammy comes back.
From where his left hand rested against his chest, he could feel the blood seep out of the wound in his chest. Whether it was a stab wound or claw marks or another bullet, he couldn’t tell, nor could he remember. As far as he was concerned, this was his life, always had been. His mind was cotton and honey, sluggish and stuffy right behind his eyes and at the base of his skull, blocking off memories. In a way, he was grateful. He knew he had been to Hell, to Purgatory, had lived and loved and lost and yet he couldn’t remember. No faces of agony floated before closed eyelids he had to wrench back open with another squeeze of the rock.
Stay awake. Stay with Sammy.
-----
The second the pain stopped working was the second he knew he was fucked.
Dean squeezed the rock with stiff, bloody fingers, and let out a childish whimper that choked in his throat when he didn’t feel the usual shoot of pain that used to bring him back up from sinking, drowning.
He couldn’t fucking breathe.
His chest was numb but he could hear the rattle in his lungs, the scrape of stale oxygen that refused to meet said rattling lungs. He knew something was seriously wrong, obviously, and that his injury was the reason for it.
Blood was still creeping out from under the shirt, and Dean wondered how he could bleed any more. There was a certain point where the amount of blood he’d lost would kill him, or at shove him into the abyss, but here he was, swimming in crimson ink, still staring with crusty eyes at the central bullet hole in the rusted ceiling with the dripping beams and the spiders.
He tried to ignore the spiders, tried not to count them like sheep, because he had to stay awake until Sammy came back with help, patched him up and took him back to the bunker so he could finally sleep because mother of all that’s unholy, did he need a few more than four hours.
Sammy had been gone for a while.
At least, it felt like he had. Dean was absolute shit at time management, even when not bleeding to death. As kids, the days, weeks, that John was gone dragged by like years. Years of go to sleep, Sammy and no, you can’t have the rest of the cereal and yes, Dad’s coming back, stop asking. When Sammy had left for actual years, Dean felt like a lifetime had passed between that and the next time he saw Sammy, where he’d wrestled him to the ground with a greeting of ‘easy, tiger’ like they had never been separated.
And then there were the times where he could be driving for five minutes and he could blink and be in a different state. Where he’d come home from a hunt for maybe an hour and be heading out on a new one within a day he didn’t remember passing. Where he could close his eyes for literally one second, the next Sammy shaking him awake the next morning.
Basically, it seemed like Sammy had been gone way too long for ‘right back’, but he also could’ve been gone only a few minutes, so he tried not to panic too much. The blood seemed to flow with each slowing beat of his heart, and he was trying to keep all his blood inside of him, so an elated heartbeat definitely wouldn’t help that.
He had long since discarded the rock with vibrating fingers. His pulse thrummed at his fingertips, and his veins felt like wires, buzzing, vibrating with electricity, with effort of keeping all his remaining blood flowing through him. His eyes rolled, straying from the bullet hole every now and then, and his stiff eyelids threatened to slip close and stay that way every time he dared to blink. At this point, he couldn’t feel anything but the buzz in his body, couldn’t even tell if he was breathing anymore.
Since the long term memory part of his mind had been stuffed, more followed suit, shutting down pain receptors and intelligent thought. In fact, he only remembered one phrase.
“I’ll be right back.”
He’s coming back. Sammy’s on his way with his lifeline and soon this will be nothing but another dark story to keep him interesting at parties. Another feign of vulnerability and fragility to pick up girls at the bar. Something he’ll tease Sammy about to other hunters for the rest of eternity.
“His lazy butt took forever to get back to me while I was freaking dying! Probably got distracted by a library or something.”
And Sammy would roll his eyes and laugh into his beer, throw a banter punch into his forearm and tell him how it actually happened for the fifteenth time over, clearing his name.
That's how it’s happened the last fifty thousand times he’s hung from the edge of the abyss and bounced back alright. This time wouldn’t be any different.
At least, that’s what he kept telling himself as he ignored his the shadows in the corners of the spinning room were becoming the shadows in the corners of his vision, black splotches rotating in a dizzying floral circle in the centre of his vision that simply refused to clear with each aching blink. And if he had the energy, he’d probably freak out about that.
But he didn't, so he didn’t.
He simply let his eyes slip closed, staring at the imprint of the glowing bullet hole scorched into the back of his eyelids, because he was in good hands. He would bounce back, like he always did, because Sammy would be there. Sammy would come back.
He promised.