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He feels like a machine, too cold, too artificial, every worn-down piece moving in an automatic, mindless dance of pulleys and gears. No - he feels like a defective machine, like some worker on the assembly line got drunk and put his parts together in the wrong order, because things beneath his skin are grinding and tearing that should never have touched in the first place. He knows he shouldn't be up and walking, not with blood still trickling into his mouth, but all higher functions have been routed to autopilot and he's in the car before the smell of sulfur can dissipate on the air.
Sam follows him out, but doesn't try to get in the car; he circles to the driver's side and leans in the window, grabbing a fistful of Dean's jacket.
"Dean," he says, begging, almost crying. "Please, we have to get you to a hospital."
Dean turns the key in the ignition, and his vision flares white-hot as the pounding in his head quickens to match the roar of the engine. He gives Sam a few seconds to back off, gently tapping out each second against the steering wheel, but Sam just keeps pleading with him, every word sinking into the louder mechanical sounds of the Impala and Dean's too-sluggish heartbeat.
He hits the gas. Sam's reflexes are a beat too slow, and he's still clutching Dean's jacket as the Impala lurches into drive; he goes face-first into the gravel and stays there, unmoving, as the dim red glow of the tail lights washes over him. Dean watches him in the rearview mirror, waiting for him to get up. When that doesn't happen, he gives in and hits the brake, stopping the car just where the driveway meets the road.
Sam looks up. His face is bleeding, and so is the hand he lifts to touch his split lip, but he looks okay; by the way he's moving, nothing is broken, and the lip will heal.
Dean doesn't peel out onto the road, tempting an idea as that is. Instead, he just slowly releases the brake and lets the Impala glide out onto the cement, driving away as slowly as the car will allow.
---
He makes it to the hospital. He even manages to park the car, walk into the ER, and stay upright long enough to take a clipboard full of forms from the receptionist before he collapses, coughing up blood.
They give him a private room, and there's a lot of fuss with clipboards and consults that reminds him a bit too much of his last hospital stay. The first two days, they do a lot more tests than really seem necessary, but by the third day they seem resigned to scratching their heads and letting a morphine drip make him comfortable. In fact, the morphine drip makes him feel like a million bucks; he isn't in any pain, and he isn't particularly lucid, either. The day shift is a really hot nurse who never gets tired of answering his unnecessary pages, and they don't make him choke down any of the hospital food. All in all, it isn't the worst week he's ever spent in bed, if just because most of that week is a doped-up blur.
When he wakes up mid-afternoon on day seven, he's entirely too coherent, and the room smells like Sam's cheap cologne.
He pages the hot nurse. She goes through the daily ritual of adjusting the curtains in a way that shows off her ass to best advantage, and he wouldn't dream of stopping her, so he waits until she's done before he asks: "Hey, did someone change my cocktail?"
She's at his side in record time. "Are you in pain?"
"Yes," he lies. At least, he thinks it's a lie; he is in pain, but it isn't the bleeding-out-of-every-pore kind of pain he was in when he arrived, so he probably doesn't need the morphine. Depending on the answer to the next question, though, he might just want it. "Did I have a visitor?"
The nurse glances around, as though the visitor in question might still be in the room - invisible, or just particularly well-hidden. "Not that I'm aware of. Are you expecting someone?"
"Not really," he says, and it's true; after a week, he hadn't really been expecting visitors, not anymore. He'd figured that if Sam was coming, he'd come as soon as he could. He hadn't guessed that it would take Sam a fucking week to get brave enough to show up, or that Sam would sneak in while he was asleep; Dean can't decide whether or not he's pissed at Sam for not giving him the opportunity to kick him out.
The nurse has that sterile smell that characterizes hospitals, and her presence is washing away every trace of Sam's cologne.
He gives her a dismissive smile, but she lingers, not getting the hint. "Do you have any family I can call for you?"
He just smiles a little wider and says, "Oh, I've got family," and maybe she finally clues in, because a few seconds later he's alone and the reek of soap and rubbing alcohol is gone.
So is the cologne.
On a hunch, he scoots down the bed a bit - his whole body is on fire the second he starts to move, so maybe the morphine is still warranted, after all - and he turns his face against the bedsheet, right where a permanently empty chair is turned toward him. There it is, right there; Sam rested a hand here, Sam was in the room, Sam found him and came to check up on him.
He wants to tear off every patch and needle and tube and get out of bed, to go find Sam, to shout himself hoarse, to bloody his knuckles. He wants to confront Sam and make him hurt, almost as badly as he wants to make sure Sam is okay, that none of the thousand fucked-up things he can envision are actually taking place.
More than anything, he just wants to lie right where he is and let the drugs work their magic, and so he does, for another two weeks.
Not once does Sam's smell invade the room again.
---
His fraudulent insurance must be really damned good, because even after three weeks, they don't want to let him go. Two different doctors tell him that they still haven't figured out what's wrong with him, and that he shouldn't even be thinking about getting up out of bed; he seriously considers telling them that a demon played psychic kick-the-can with his insides, but then they'd probably find a different room for him, something with padded restraints. He hasn't been on morphine for over a week, and he hasn't taken any vicodin in a couple days, and even so, he isn't in a whole lot of pain - in general, he doesn't actually feel all that bad for a guy supposedly on his deathbed. Maybe the oh-so-helpful doctors just want to keep running tests on him until they find something they can publish.
He says goodbye to the hot nurse, signs all the waivers, and checks himself out.
The Impala is still exactly where he left it (long-term parking, now that's good planning). He drops down onto the front seat, tosses his hospital paperwork into the back, and just sits there for a while with his hands on the wheel, not sure where to go.
He finally opens the glove compartment to get out a map. The first thing he notices is that the compartment looks a little emptier than it did before; the box full of IDs is still there, and the maps all are in place, but something is missing. The back seat looks a little emptier too, actually, and as soon as that registers, he's out of the car and fumbling with the keys in his haste to unlock the trunk.
A couple guns are missing, a few boxes of ammo, an axe.
All of Sam's stuff is gone.
"Son of a bitch," he says, slamming the trunk shut. He should've known there was a reason Sam didn't wake him up; the guy wasn't paying a visit, he was making a stop for supplies.
He checks the box of IDs when he gets back in the car, and sure enough, all of Sam's are gone.
Maybe it's starting to hit him, finally - maybe now that he's drug-free, sitting here in a car that bears no trace of any presence but his own, maybe now it's starting to sink in. It sure feels that way, because his throat is closing and his chest is tight and his head aches like it's going to split right open, and the world, well, the world is starting to blur and blend together, until all he can see is one bright wash of color.
When he can see again, when he's got it at least that together, he turns the key and goes back on autopilot.
He isn't particularly surprised when he winds up back at the cabin. He doesn't want to be there, but he has to be, he has to see it just so he knows that it's real, that he isn't going crazy, that he hasn't made it all up under the influence of severe pain and strong drugs.
The inside is cleaner than he remembers; it looks like someone came through and wiped everything clean, every surface that could possibly bear a fingerprint. The only evidence of human traffic is in the bloodstains, wide and dark - on the walls, on the floor. He touches a hand to a spot near the far wall and remembers landing there, falling hard and staying down, turning in, toward the room -
- and Sam was there, right there, with the demon.
With Dad.
He doesn't look at that bloodstain. He can't.
He slides down the wall and sits there, one hand pressed to a dark patch where his blood seeped into the floorboards, until the sun sets and the whole cabin is pitch dark.
A year after Sam left for college, Dad let Dean go on his first solo trip, working a haunting in the Alleghenies. The Impala creaked to a halt near the top of a particularly steep road, and started to roll backward; Dean could see a car at bottom of the road, coming up toward him, and all he could do was frantically pump the gas, his mind completely blank save for an endless loop of oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck - and then the other guy finally swerved aside, passing him in left lane. The car rolled to a stop in the tiny cement valley between two hills, no harm done.
Dean sat there with his hands white-knuckled over the wheel, breathing harder than a marathon runner.
In that moment, he missed Sam. He'd worked hard at not missing Sam, but right then, he missed Sam so bad it hurt; he needed someone in the car next to him to tell him to get her back in gear, already - to remind him that whether he turned around or went ahead, he had to go uphill, so he might as well get a move on. He needed Sam to help him laugh it off, even if that just meant that Sam would be laughing at him.
He finally got the car back in gear, and the Impala made it over the hill on the second try. He didn't have any more problems taking the car uphill after that, and by the time he got to the haunted house, he wasn't even clutching the wheel anymore.
But he still missed Sam like an ache in his chest, and for the next two years, that ache never entirely went away.
He sits there in the dark cabin, waiting for his chest to ache just like that, but it never does.
---
When he gets back in the Impala, he has a destination in mind.
He'd probably be better off getting back up on the horse: finding a newspaper, circling unusual events, hunting down something with teeth and fangs that he could pump bullets into until he felt a little better. For the first time as far back as he can remember, though, he doesn't want to hunt; just the thought of picking up where he left off makes him feel a little nauseous.
So instead, he pulls out a map, circles a familiar stretch of road, and goes looking for Roy Le Grange.
When he gets there, the lot is empty and the tent is falling down on one side; evidently the church has come upon hard times, now that the whole 'ritual sacrifice' element has been eliminated. He ducks into the tent, half-expecting Roy to be sitting on the stage with a bottle of something or other - it'd be a stereotype, but Dean wouldn't blame him. The tent is empty, though, and the poles creak and waver in even the lightest of breezes, so he gets the hell out of there and tries the house instead.
No one ever comes to the door. He busts the lock and lets himself in, light-footing it through the house until he finds Roy sitting alone in the living room where he used to receive guests, nodding to a beat that Dean can't hear.
"Hey, um - Mr. Le Grange?" Dean takes one slow step forward, and then another, a little bit creeped out. "I don't know if you remember me, I'm-"
"Dean," Roy says, his voice raspy from apparent disuse. "Of course I remember you, son. I never forget a voice, and I'd hardly forget yours."
"Right." Dean doesn't move a single inch closer. "I'm hoping you can help me out - I'm trying to find Layla, maybe you remember her?"
Roy just sits there, utterly silent, still nodding to the beat; Dean waits for what feels like an hour, wondering if Roy is going to speak again at any point in time. Finally, Roy tells him an address - no editorializing, no fuck you very much for ruining my life, just the address - and stands, shuffling out of the room without even bothering to ask Dean to leave.
Dean doesn't waste any time getting back to the car and speeding off; he's been less spooked by ghosts.
---
Layla's mom opens the front door just a crack and glares out at him, clearly recognizing him the instant she sees his face. She doesn't seem particularly grief-stricken or overly tired, just angry - which, if nothing else, tells him that Layla isn't yet on her deathbed.
He clears his throat, wishing he'd thought to wear a tie or something like that, something from the impress-the-mother catalog. He hasn't changed out of his traveling clothes, and in his haste to get here, he hasn't showered in at least two days; even a little soap and water would've made a better impression. "I'm here to see-"
"Well, you aren't here to see me, so it doesn't take a genius to figure out what you want." She looks him over. "You seem pretty hale, don't you?"
He has to make a real strong effort not to grind his teeth. "Listen, I feel real bad about that-"
"I'm sure you do." The door closes a fraction of an inch before he can lean his weight against it to keep her from closing it further. She shoves at the door a little, her scowl deepening when her full strength doesn't budge the door at all. "I'm not letting you in to see my daughter, so you might as well go."
"But she's here?" He tries to look over her and into the house, but all he can see is floral wallpaper and carpeted stairs. "Layla, she's in there?"
She shoves at the door again. "Do you have a hearing problem? I said-"
Suddenly she moves aside, and the door swings open under Dean's weight, almost too quickly for him to catch himself. Layla is there, one hand holding her mother at bay, the other reaching out to clasp his arm and draw him into the house.
She looks sick, in a bone-deep way she didn't before.
There's a wrenching sensation in his gut, a sense memory of how it'd felt to realize for the first time that her death would be his fault. He hasn't actually prayed all that often, but he's never lost track of how much time she has left; he knows without having to stop and think about it that she only has one good month left in her - two, if his occasional chats with higher powers did any good. Two months, at the outside, because of what he did.
Layla lets go of her mother to wrap her arms around him, and her head comes to settle on his chest as she says, "I thought I might see you again."
He very nearly gets sick right there on the carpet, but her fingers gently press into his back, steadying him.
---
He goes with her to church every day. Layla's church is a lot dressier than any of the masses Dad ever dragged him to; she doesn't say anything when he wears jeans to the first service, but the looks he gets from the rest of the congregation are telling enough. The next time it's slacks and a tie, and little old ladies beam at him and ask to be introduced to Layla's new friend.
Being in a church without some ulterior motive feels strange. With Dad, mass was always about swiping the holy water or meeting up with some in-the-know priest. With Layla, though, services are just about praying, and he does - after awhile, he does; he prays. He doesn't really pray with intent or direction, he just closes his eyes and thinks about how thin she feels in his arms, and the way he felt all alone in the mountains, and the grateful look on Dad's face as Sam cocked the gun; he thinks about those things until they all swirl together in his head, until he feels cold and disordered on the inside and his mouth flexes against the remembered taste of blood. She touches his arm whenever it's time to sit or stand, and he lets her lead him through the motions, focusing solely on emptying his head of all the reasons he's tracked her down in the first place.
He stays in the guest bedroom. Her mom has some choice glares to offer when that first comes up, but she doesn't argue with Layla too much; "I'm dying" is a pretty big trump card, and it's always in play, even though Layla never thinks she's using it. After the first week or so, her mom actually starts to thaw, and then things start to feel uncomfortably domestic.
Sex never becomes an issue; he couldn't even if she wanted to, not when she looks brittle enough to shatter in his hands. On the third night of his stay, she crawls into his bed and falls asleep with her head on his chest, and it's the same every night after: her ear pressed over his heart, his arms around her as gently as he can manage. After a while he gets used to getting only brief snatches of sleep, to waking up in the middle of the night again and again, afraid he's going to roll over and hurt her - even though she isn't actually that fragile, even though he's always been a still sleeper.
If Layla's mother knows that her daughter doesn't sleep in her own bed, she never lets on.
Layla holds on for a lot longer than he thought she would, months longer than the four weeks he'd given her in his head. He doesn't know if he'd have come if he'd known she'd hang on for so long; he probably would've, given the frame of mind that spurred him to her in the first place. Regardless, he doesn't regret coming, and it never occurs to him to leave, and when they finally have to move her to the hospital, he takes up residence in the waiting room and the cafeteria and the chair by her bed.
A few days after the move, he wakes up from an unexpected nap to the feel of her fingers lightly stroking his hair. When he looks up, she says: "Dean, why did you come?"
He isn't a big enough asshole to lie to her, not now, but his throat just works without forming any words until he finally manages to say, "My - my family-"
She rests a hand over his. "Did something happen to your brother?"
Yes, he wants to say. Yes, something did happen to his brother, something he overlooked or ignored until it was too late to intervene, and now he can't even bring himself to miss to Sam, he can't -
Except he does miss Sam, he must - because there's an ache forming in his chest, and he knows the feeling isn't entirely for Layla.
"No," he says, and he doesn't know if that's the truth or not, only that it feels unexpectedly right. "My dad - he's dead, somebody shot him."
"You were there," she says, and it isn't a question; she knows where this is headed, or at least, she thinks she does.
"Yeah, I was there." He gently disentangles his hand from hers and reaches up to scrub at his face, trying to cover his eyes - but his voice cracks and his hand shakes, giving away whatever unwanted emotion it is he's trying to hide from her. "I couldn't do a damned thing to stop it."
She plucks at his fingers, and he reluctantly lets his hand fall down onto the bed.
"I'm sorry about your dad." She silently rubs his hand for a moment, not looking at him - trying to give him some space, maybe. "But, Dean, why are you here?"
There's a word right there on his tongue, a word from all those months in church, a word from his mission-driven childhood, and he lets it loose before he can stop himself.
"Penance," he says, and laughs - because it's crazy, and just maybe, so is he.
Almost immediately he's shaking his head, trying to soften the impact of that. "I mean - you know I want to be here-"
And he does, and it's not only because she's dying.
"I know." She gives his hand a faint squeeze. "But then, you can be pretty stupid sometimes."
He bends his head back down to the bed. This isn't like in church, there's nothing comforting about it, but he's praying anyway. He's praying, because everything in his mind is swirling and grating and tearing him up like a demon's invisible hand wreaking havoc on his insides, and his mouth forms silent strings of disconnected words meant for no one in particular.
He doesn't really believe that anyone is listening, and he never has, but Layla believes so strongly that he has to hope she's right, for her sake.
"I'm sorry," he says, his voice muffled against the bedsheets. He wants her to be angry with him, but instead she touches his head and says a lot of soothing things he knows aren't true.
She pats the space next to her on the bed, but he doesn't get in with her. Instead, he scoots a little closer and lays his head on the mattress, and she just rests her hand on his head until her mom comes in and asks for some time alone.
Layla dies two days later. He sticks around for the funeral, lets her mom hug him goodbye, and then he's on the road, headed west.
---
Bobby opens the door but doesn't let him in, which pretty much confirms Dean's hunch that Sam has been there.
"I thought you might know where to find my brother," he says, cutting right to the point; if Bobby isn't going to say hello, neither is he.
"Yeah?" Bobby leans too casually in the doorframe, folding his arms. "What makes you think that?"
Dean forces a smile. "I left him out in the middle of nowhere with a body, who else was he going to call?"
"That's more or less what he said." Bobby nods slowly, and moves aside to let Dean in - but before Dean can get inside, there's a flurry of motion at farthest corner of his vision.
"Dean," Sam says, from somewhere behind him, in the drive.
Sam is here - Dean didn't expect that. From the sound of his voice, Sam is no more than a few steps away; all Dean has to do is turn around and his brother will be in his arms. Maybe then, he'll start to remember what it feels like to be whole - maybe just looking at Sam will make that possible, and all Dean has to do is turn.
But he can't make himself do it.
When he looks up, the door is closed and Bobby is gone, leaving the two of them alone. Sam is between Dean and the Impala. There's nowhere to go but where Sam is, and Sam is breathing so fast that the sound of it is sharp in Dean's ears.
But he can't give in, he can't, because they were so perfectly in tandem, Sam and Dad; because Dad begged, and Sam pulled the trigger, and Dean could only lie there and watch. Because he couldn't do a thing, and he spent months holding a dying woman because that felt like his due; because Sam hasn't paid any dues yet, and he damned well ought to.
He wants to hit Sam so bad his hands are already curled into fists, but he can't do that, either, because he remembers what Sam looked like facedown in the gravel, and he knows he's already gotten in as good a shot as he's ever going to get.
He doesn't know what to do, and he doesn't think he'll ever know, not so long as he can close his eyes and picture the way Dad looked with Sam's bullet in him.
Sam's hand tentatively grazes his shoulder. When Dean doesn't immediately jerk away, Sam turns him around by force, pulling him into a painfully tight hug. Dean still wants to deck him, to make a run for it, to find some other way of punishing himself so that he doesn't have to punish Sam instead - but he hugs back anyway, because if he doesn't, Sam will leave.
Sam is thin, a lot thinner than he used to be, and that summons up too many still-sharp memories to deal with just now. Dean pulls back as quickly as possible, and he doesn't quite look Sam in the eyes, but he's still gripping Sam's shoulder when he says, "Get your stuff. There's a poltergeist in Green Bay."
Sam doesn't move. "You want me to go with you?"
"Well, there's space," Dean says, trying to keep his voice casual. "Some dumbass cleaned all his crap out of the car, so there's even room for your clothes."
One corner of Sam's mouth lifts just a little, and for a moment, Dean thinks he's about to get hugged again. Instead, Sam rushes to the house, like he's afraid Dean is going to change his mind at any moment.
He stops in the doorway and turns back to look at Dean. "You won't leave while I'm inside, right?"
"Don't be an idiot," Dean says, and Sam is gone, disappearing into the house.
Dean doesn't get back into the car and drive away, tempting an idea as that is. Instead, he leans against the hood until Sam comes back, and he doesn't even turn the key in the ignition until Sam is settled in the seat beside him.