Chapter Text
Dad’s alive.
Dad’s alive and in Jefferson City.
Dad’s alive and in Jefferson City and Sam killed a girl.
Dad’s alive and in Jefferson City and Sam killed a girl and he doesn’t feel anything.
It’s shock again, he supposes, same as he’s succumbed to time and time again with Dean. It’s the same numb shadow he lived with after Jess’ death.
Sam hoped for a reprieve then—even with the balm of Dean’s return he had prayed every night that he would wake in the morning to find Jess lying beside him. To find that the fire and the smoke and the ash, which lingered in his nose and throat for weeks, were nothing more than a bad dream. It never happened, of course, and after a month or so he stopped expecting it to happen. Then, finally, the shock wore off and allowed him to grieve.
As they stand beside a slow-moving river across the street from Sunrise Apartments (‘by the river’ Meg said after Sam finished reading out the exorcism, and ‘sunrise’, and if this isn’t the place she meant then Sam doesn’t know what is), Sam wonders how long it will take him to accept the fact that he was wrong—that he gave up on Dad too soon. He wonders if he’ll feel guilty at all when it finally sinks in, or if he’ll just be relieved.
“All right,” Dean says. “So we pull the fire alarm, get out all the civilians.”
It takes Sam a moment to slot back into the conversation, which is worrying. He needs to have his head on straighter than this or he’ll be nothing but a liability. And he needs to keep an eye on his brother. Dean hasn’t shown any further signs of the darkness that took him at Bobby’s, but that doesn’t mean that he’s stable, or that it won’t happen again.
Get it the fuck together, Sam tells himself, and gives his head a tiny shake to clear away some of the fog.
“Okay,” he says. “But then the city responds in, what, seven minutes?”
Still staring at the apartment building like it’s Mecca, Dean nods and says, “Seven minutes exactly.”
Something about the way he says it catches Sam’s attention, and even as distracted as he is, it doesn’t take Sam long to place the familiar tone. Not after having heard it so often before, on hunts that were far less important than this.
“You have a plan,” he says.
“I always have a plan.”
Sam considers pointing out that, while that may be true, Dean’s plans don’t always work, and then says instead, “You’re leaving the Colt in the car.”
That gets him his brother’s eyes, flat and resistant.
This isn’t negotiable, though, not after what almost happened at Bobby’s, and Sam firms his jaw. There’s an implicit understanding between them that they won’t talk about it until after they have Dad back, but Sam can’t stop himself from alluding to the incident as he says, “I don’t want you going into that kind of situation with the gun, Dean.”
Dean’s mouth quirks into something that doesn’t qualify as a smile: something sour and self-deprecating. “You mean you don’t want me armed when I flip out again.”
So much for not talking about it.
“I don’t think you’re going to ‘flip out’ again, dude, but we have to be—”
“Fine,” Dean grunts, turning back toward the apartment building.
Sam regards his brother for a moment, taking in the hostile lines of Dean’s body, and then says, “We have to be careful, man.”
“I said ‘fine’, Sammy,” Dean snaps. He moves suddenly, stalking away from the apartment and back toward the place they parked the car. Sam trots a few steps to catch up with his brother.
“I trust you,” he offers.
Dean utters a disbelieving laugh. “Yeah. Sure.”
“It’s not just—Dean, it’s what they want, for us to bring the gun,” Sam argues. When his brother purses his lips and speeds his steps, Sam adds, “It’s not like I’m asking you to go in there completely unarmed, I just don’t want you bringing the Colt.”
“Oh right, cause all our other weapons are going to do so much against a bunch of demons,” Dean snaps sarcastically.
Sam colors a little at that—it isn’t like he’s going to be any better equipped than his brother, after all—but fighting with Dean isn’t going to get them anywhere. As Dean turns sharply to the side and cuts through a narrow gap in the brush bordering the road, Sam hurries after him and, changing the subject, calls, “So, you gonna fill me in or what?”
Dean tosses a look over his shoulder that makes Sam think the answer is going to be ‘what’ (at least initially, until Sam apologizes and grovels a bit), but after a few more steps his brother grudgingly starts talking.
Like most of Dean’s plans, this one is just smart enough to work. Or, conversely, just risky enough to get them both fucked six ways from Sunday when something goes wrong.
But Sam doesn’t have anything better to offer, so in the end there’s nothing left to do but cross their fingers and pray.
Getting in turns out to be ridiculously easy.
Sam pulls the alarm and then, when the firemen show, Dean distracts them while Sam snags a couple of extra suits from the truck. Visibility drops to practically nil with the masks on, and the water packs are heavy bitches, but since the Colt is sitting safe and snug in the Impala’s trunk, the (freshly blessed) water inside the packs is their only real weapon. Even the holy water won’t do anything but delay the demons—this is going to have to be a snatch and grab job at its quickest.
Sam only hopes Dad’s in good enough condition to run.
They hurry through the ground floor first, keeping behind the main line of firefighters exploring the building ahead of them. Dean takes point, just like always, with his homemade EMF reader out and cupped in one hand. He waves the reader over each door as they pass, and every time it doesn’t go off, Sam feels himself wake up a little more.
Adrenaline will eat through shock anytime.
As they move down the third floor hallway and Sam watches his brother swing the EMF reader from side to side, he even feels a faint stab of pride, despite the severity of the circumstances. The beat up hunk of metal and plastic in his brother’s hand started its life as a Walkman. Worn down by years of rough handling, it was chewing up tapes more often than not when Sam left for Stanford, and he was surprised to see it again in the airplane hangar. Surprised and a little amused by what he saw as Dean’s sentimentality in keeping the machine instead of tossing it out once it broke beyond repair.
Now, for the first time, Sam realizes that he’s been thinking about his brother’s tinkering the wrong way. Dean never saw the Walkman as broken—if he had, he would have tossed it into the nearest trashcan without a backward glance. Instead, Dean accepted the fact that the machine was never going to play another cassette again and then looked past that flaw to craft the Walkman into another, arguably more useful tool.
Sam can’t help seeing echoes of his brother in the transformation.
Dean isn’t ever going to be who he was before Vegas. He isn’t ever going to be that carefree, carnal man. He isn’t ever going to regain his almost naïve trust in strangers—or maybe it was just himself he trusted, and his own ability to punch or talk his way out of any rough spot he landed in.
And Sam loved that Dean, and he misses him, but this version of his brother is stronger—or he will be, once he finishes healing. This Dean has been tempered by what happened to him in Vegas, and if he doesn’t smile quite as widely or laugh quite so carelessly, the rare expressions always feel more genuine. As though Dean actually appreciates each light-hearted moment he’s granted.
And he’s more open with Sam now—has learned to rely on him. Sam doesn’t think that he ever would have been permitted to occupy any place in Dean’s life besides from “kid brother” if Dean hadn’t been forced to it by necessity.
Sam won’t ever stop hating the event or the man who changed his brother into this new version of himself, but he can’t help but be grateful for the survivor Dean has become. Can’t help but be awed by his brother’s unflinching tenacity.
As they round a corner—stepping into yet another empty hallway—Dean unexpectedly comments, “I always wanted to be a fireman when I grew up.”
The words come through a little distorted by the mask over his face, and it’s impossible to read his tone. Sam doesn’t know what to make of the comment—was that sarcasm? An off-handed comment? A genuine confession?
Things are a little tense right now for Dean to be starting a meaningful conversation, but that doesn’t mean he won’t. Makes it a little more likely, actually, because here Dean can expect to be interrupted before things get too intense or painful. Hell, maybe this is Dean’s response to Sam’s question all those months ago: Dean finally opening up and telling Sam what he wants out of life aside from hunting.
Or maybe Sam is overthinking things like always.
“You never told me that,” he says after a beat, and thank God his own voice is just as muffled by the mask as his brother’s, because he’s pretty sure his anxious confusion wasn’t at all hidden.
Dean’s shoulders move in something that Sam initially thinks might be a shrug. A moment later, he realizes that the movement isn’t anything more than Dean bringing the EMF reader to bear on another door. This time, the reader jumps, letting out that shrill, fifties sci-fi noise (which Sam is sure his brother programmed into the thing on purpose, film geek that he is), and Sam’s pulse leaps in response. Dean glances back, his eyes wide and worried behind the Plexiglas visor.
Sam’s sure that his brother isn’t concerned about what they’re about to do, but rather what they’re about to find. As nervous as Sam might be about finding Dad bloody and dying on the other side of the door (and he is nervous, he realizes with a jolt, he’s nervous as hell), it has to be a hundred times worse for Dean. Sam wishes he could say something to reassure his brother, but there’s no guarantee that it wouldn’t be a lie, and anyway there’s no time. Dean is shoving the EMF reader into the bag on his right shoulder and knocking on the door.
There’s no immediate response, so he knocks again, shouting, “This is the fire department! We need you to evacuate.”
This time, there’s the sound of a chain being undone and of bolts snapping, and as soon as the door starts to swing open Sam shoves forward past his brother. If anyone is going to walk into an ambush in there, it’s going to be him and not Dean.
Sam doesn’t plan on going down without a fight, of course, even if it is an ambush, and he has the hose in his hands as he moves. As soon as he catches sight of a target in front of him—a woman, it’s a woman with short black hair—he pulls back the catch on the nozzle and lets her have it. The woman falls back on the table, smoking and yowling like a cat, and clearly too distracted by the pain that the holy water is inflicting to do more than bat ineffectually at the stream with her hands.
Sam can hear his brother moving in behind him, followed by another voice—this one male—raised in pain. He doesn’t think it’s Dean’s voice, but he doesn’t have time to glance back and check either because the flow of water from his hose is slowing. Which means that he’s already running out of juice and it’s time for phase two of his brother’s insane plan.
Although Sam agreed to it when they were still safely outside, now that he’s here he can’t help but wonder whether he’ll be able to get the screaming banshee before him from the table and into the closet while keeping all of his limbs. Still, it isn’t as though he has any other option, so Sam drops the hose and dives forward anyway, trying to get a good grip on the woman’s body.
Behind him, he can hear sounds of a struggle and hopes, fervently, that Dean is doing okay with his own demon. The sound of a door opening and then closing again—the closet, Dean got his in the closet—is a relief, and as his brother shouts, “Come on!” Sam finally manages to get a grip on the woman. Hauling her off the table, he turns toward the sound of his brother’s voice and sees the closet is right where they figured it would be: less than three steps away.
Thank God.
Tightening his grip on the demon, Sam moves forward. Dean yanks the closet door open again—there’s a man inside, fighting to his feet—and Sam tosses the demon in his arms on top of him with a quick, mental apology for the bruises their human hosts are going to get from the impact. The demons are both snarling and furious as they collide in a tangle of limbs, and then Dean slams the door shut, muffling the sound. Leaning against it, he plants his feet and uses his body weight to keep the door closed.
“Hurry up!” he barks, but Sam is already moving, dropping his bag from his shoulder and pulling out an oversized canister of salt. He pops off the top and turns back toward the closet, where the demons are banging on the door furiously enough to jounce Dean forward with each blow. Dean is snarling as he pushes back, straining to keep the door shut and the demons inside, and Sam’s palms are sweaty as he spills a thick ring of salt around the door.
The instant the ring is completed the demons go eerily, uncomfortably quiet. Sam wishes he could believe it meant the demons were trapped, but he knows it’s more likely they’ve abandoned their current hosts to find others—and there’re a shitload of curious bystanders and apartment tenants gathered just outside, which means it’ll only be a few minutes before they have company.
And this time, they won’t have the element of surprise on their side.
The demons might be gone, but Dean still jumps away from the door like he can’t move fast enough. Sam would think it’s because he wants to be out of range in case the demons are playing possum, but from the way his brother is already shedding the bulky, heavy fireman’s gear, Dean’s speed has nothing to do with the demons behind him. Following his brother’s lead, Sam pulls off his own helmet and mask as he jogs over to the front door and relocks it. The more time they can give themselves when the demons show up in their new bodies, the better.
Dean’s out of his fireman’s coat when Sam turns back, and already moving for the mostly-shut door at the far end of the room. Ripping his own coat off, Sam sprints to join his brother, scooping up the bag as he goes by. He’s at Dean’s shoulder when his brother carefully pushes open the door and they see their father at the same moment.
It’s a shock, and not just because Dad looks dead, lying there unmoving and tied spread-eagle to the bed. As he stands there staring, Sam realizes that there was a part of him that didn’t actually expect Dad to be here. A part of him that expected the demons to move him when Meg didn’t come back or call to check in.
Only they hadn’t.
God, is Dad dead? Is that why they didn’t bother moving him?
“Dad?” Dean calls, jerking forward with a sudden lurch. Reaching their father’s side, he grips the front of Dad’s shirt and jacket and bends over to put his ear next to the man’s mouth. He pauses there, hardly breathing himself as he listens with his face creased in concern and his eyes flicking restlessly over Dad’s chest. Dean’s as still as Sam has ever seen him, but Sam can tell that his brother is panicked from the glassy sheen to his eyes.
He realizes that he isn’t going to know what to do with Dean if Dad is dead. Because under no circumstances is Dean going to agree to leave the man’s body here, and they aren’t going to get far trying to lug their father’s dead weight. If it comes down to it, Sam supposes he can probably get the drop on his brother, knock him out cold. He can carry Dean out, anyway, and if Dean won’t ever forgive him for it, at least he’ll be alive.
Then Dean lifts his head, glancing back at Sam for the first time since they entered the apartment. “He’s breathing,” he announces.
Sam sags a little beneath the weight of his relief and watches as his brother starts to shake Dad and call his name. Telling him to wake up. Dad still isn’t responding, which makes Sam’s chest twist anxiously again—Dad’ll be just as difficult to move unconscious as he would have dead—and Dean is looking more panicked than ever.
It’s the time slipping through their fingers, maybe, or the worries over why Dad won’t wake up—if there are fates worse than death, leave it to demons to find them—but whatever the reason, Dean’s movements are franticly sharp as he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a switchblade. He flips it open with an easy, practiced motion and reaches for the rope binding Dad’s right wrist.
“Wait,” Sam hears himself say. “Wait.”
“What?” Dean says, a little breathless as he looks up. The expression on his face says that Sam had better have a good reason for stopping him. He already looks a few degrees past angry at being halted now of all times, but the important thing is that he stopped.
Sam doesn’t want to say it out loud—is worried that it’ll jinx them—but now that he’s considered the possibility, he can’t unthink it. And he can’t just ask Dean to trust him on this one, because Dean looks a few seconds away from slipping into the dark again. The words stick between Sam’s teeth for a moment and then tumble out.
“He could be possessed for all we know.”
Dean’s brow furrows. “What, are you nuts?” he demands, turning back to his work.
Like Dad is above that. Like a demon couldn’t possibly do that to the great John Winchester.
“Dean, we gotta be sure,” Sam argues, desperate.
It’s the sound of his voice that makes Dean hesitate again, but Sam’s pretty sure that it’s the pleading in his eyes that convinces his brother to release Dad and straighten. Although he’s clearly ceding control of the situation to Sam, Dean keeps looking between the two of them with an agonized, fraught expression. His fingers are twitching like they want to move, like they want to be cutting Dad free and hauling him off that filthy bed.
Despite his caution, Sam knows how his brother feels. Once they get out of this—once they know Dad’s safe, that he’ll be fine—Sam’s going to be spending some quality time with a toilet until the tension in his stomach unknots.
Turning away from the wretched tableau in front of him, he digs through his bag for one of the flasks Bobby lent them. Pulling it out, he unscrews the lid and moves forward a step to stand next to the bed across from his brother. It’d be all of a second’s work to tip the flask over, but now that he’s here Sam can’t make himself take that final step. He’s too frightened of the consequences, if he wants to be honest with himself.
He doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle it if Dad steams and starts to writhe at the first flick of holy water.
He realizes after a few moments that he’s looking across to Dean for guidance—that he’s waiting for his brother’s approval, as though that will validate the test. As though it will split the guilt of discovery between them if Dad turns out to be beyond saving. It makes Sam feel all of ten years old, looking to his big brother for reassurance like this, but he can’t help himself.
Dean is responding in kind the way he always does, thankfully—shoring himself up in the face of Sam’s naked need. Most of the wildness fades from his eyes, the darkness edges back again, and his grip on the switchblade eases. Licking his lips, he gives Sam a silent nod. At the implicit command, Sam upturns the flask and empties the water out onto their father’s chest.
There’s no steam. There’s no steam, and the water actually seems to have helped because Dad lets out a groan and moves his head as he starts to come around. He’s clearly been beaten, Sam realizes now that his deeper fears have been laid to rest—there’s blood all over the man’s chin—but it doesn’t look too bad. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Dad doesn’t have sprung ribs or internal bleeding or any of those invisible party favors.
“Sam?” Dad groans, lifting his head and clearly trying to focus his eyes. “Why are you splashing water on me?”
Sam huffs out a breath that isn’t quite a laugh—Dad’s conscious, and he’s talking, and he’s clearly in pain but he’s all right, he’s safe. The knowledge makes Sam feel just as light and buoyant as it always did when he was a kid, when he’d spent a night or longer waiting for Dad and Dean to come back and wondering whether they would. He knows they aren’t out of the woods yet, but God, does it feel good to have Dad back.
“Hey, Dad,” Dean says, leaning in and putting a hand on Dad’s shoulder. “You okay?”
Dad turns his head, but it takes him a couple of seconds to locate Dean and lock his eyes on him. “They’ve been drugging me,” he answers with labored clarity.
Dean doesn’t look thrilled at that news, and Sam isn’t all that happy about it himself. They have no way of knowing whether the drugs Dad has been given are addictive, whether he’s going to be stuck going through withdrawal when they get him away from here. Which means that they’re going to have to batten down the hatches and prepare for the worst. Hole up somewhere near a hospital in case Dad ends up needing one to flush out the toxins.
Dad stirs a little more as Dean bends to the ropes again, and asks, “Where’s the Colt?”
Sam can’t resist a slight, relieved smile at that. If Dad’s worrying about the gun, then he can’t be that out of it. Maybe the demons weren’t giving him anything worse than a mild sedative.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” he says, putting a reassuring hand on his father’s calf. “It’s safe.”
Dean’s knife slices through the ropes on Dad’s right hand and the man moves his wrist laboriously as Dean moves down to get his legs.
“Good boys,” Dad murmurs, wincing a little as the circulation starts to come back. “Good boys.”
Dean finishes cutting Dad free and then spends a couple of moments rubbing frantically at the abraded skin of their father’s wrists, trying to work some feeling back into the man’s fingers. Sam can tell that Dad’s doing what he can to speed things up, but he clearly isn’t in any kind of shape to help with his own rescue. All they can hope for right now is that Dad can soldier through enough not to be a hindrance.
Finally—after a far longer delay than Sam is comfortable with—Dean crouches by the bed and hauls one of their father’s arms around his neck. “Okay,” he says, “Up we go.”
He gets Dad halfway up and then starts to lose him as Dad’s legs give out. Sam sprints around the edge of the bed in time to catch him and then maneuvers beneath Dad’s other shoulder. This time, when both he and Dean pull together, Dad comes up. As the man’s weight comes down on the back of Sam’s neck and upper shoulders, Sam grunts.
“Fuck, you’re heavy.”
“It’s all muscle,” Dad answers.
It’s a joke, but Sam can’t be too cheered by the sign that Dad’s brain is waking up again when the man’s chin is resting on his chest and his limbs are heavy blocks of wood. At this rate, Dad won’t be able to do much more than cling to them as they drag him out of the apartment and down the stairs. If they can navigate the stairs.
As they haul Dad a couple of awkward, heavy steps into the main room of the apartment, there’s a pounding noise on the front door—reinforcements arriving. Looks like Sam doesn’t have to worry about the stairs after all.
“Go, go!” he shouts, pushing against their father’s chest with his free hand to indicate which way he means.
Dean raises the call instantly, backpedaling with Dad and shouting, “Come on! Back, back!”
Between the warnings and the pushing, Dad gets the picture and starts—finally—trying to help them move backwards as an axe crashes through the front door, sending splinters flying into the room. Then they’re back in the bedroom, out of sight, and Sam kicks the door shut behind them. Stretching out with one hand, he twists the lock while calculating the amount of time they have left in his head.
It isn’t much. Not even with two doors between them.
“What now?” he demands, shuffling into the center of the room with Dad’s arm still slung around his neck and Dean supporting the man on the other side.
“The window,” Dean answers almost immediately. “There’s a fire escape. I’ll take Dad. You salt the door—it should give us enough time to get out.”
Sam doesn’t waste time asking his brother if he’s sure—if Dean says he can manage Dad on his own, then he can. Instead, he ducks out from underneath their father’s arm, grabs the salt canister again and, with shaking hands, gets the top off. It doesn’t take him more than a couple of seconds to line the door, but Dean is already outside on the fire escape with Dad before he finishes straightening. The drugs must be wearing off quicker now that the man’s up and moving around.
“Sam, let’s go!” Dean calls, gesturing for him.
Before Sam can move, the tip of the axe comes through the door next to his head and he jerks back against the wall. He watches with wide eyes and a pounding heart as the gleaming metal is worked back and forth, widening the hole as the demon tugs it loose.
“Sam!” Dean shouts again, more frantically, and the sound of his brother’s voice jolts Sam into moving.
Sprinting for the window, he catches up their bag along the way and tosses through before him. Dean catches the bag and then gets out of the way as Sam follows. He spares a moment to grab Sam’s shoulder and haul him back to his feet and then is gone, hurrying to catch up with Dad, who has started to make his slow, painful way down the fire escape. Sam hesitates long enough to empty the rest of the salt out on the windowsill and then goes after them, tossing the canister aside.
The ladder at the bottom of the escape proves tricky for Dad, but they all know it’s their only chance and neither Sam nor Dean is going to be able to carry the man. After some hasty negotiation, Dean goes down first, with Dad following and Sam bringing up the rear.
If they get jumped while they’re strung out and vulnerable, at least Dad won’t get hit. And if he slips, Dean’s confident in his own ability to break Dad’s fall without getting too banged up himself. Sam’s less thrilled with the scenario, of course, but Dad and Dean don’t seem to care what he thinks right now. Sam has to admit to himself that he probably isn’t being as impartial as he should be when faced with the thought of their father’s considerable bulk dropping down on top of Dean and possibly breaking something.
Thankfully, nothing of the sort happens. Dad makes it down without incident, barely staggering when he hits the ground after making the drop. Then Dean is there again, scooping their father up and taking most of his weight. When Sam drops down himself, he can see that Dad’s worn out from the fire escape: trembling and pale beneath the bruises and the blood.
Dean clearly has his hands full with both Dad and the weapons bag slung over his other shoulder, so Sam moves ahead to take point without discussion. He scans the surrounding area as he goes, hurrying down the alley away from the crowd in front of the building. Everything’s clear, thank God, and he’s just turning around to make sure his brother and father are still behind him when something hard and heavy slams into him from the side.
Sam grunts as he collides with the ground, and then the world spins as he’s rolled over onto his back. There’s a weight on him, heavy and making it difficult to breathe, and as the sky tilts into view he gets his first look at his attacker.
It’s a young man, good looking and with short, spiked hair, almost like Dean’s. Leather jacket, almost like Dean’s. Too pretty face, like Dean’s.
His attacker’s eyes are nothing like his brother’s, though: beetle black and sparkling with malicious hate.
Sam tries to throw a punch and finds his fist caught almost carelessly as the demon grins at him.
“Winchester,” it sneers. “I’ve been waiting for a long time for this, you sick, brother-fucking fuck.”
Pain explodes on the left side of Sam’s face, taking away Sam’s vision and replacing it with a white blur. His breath catches in his throat—partly in surprise, because he didn’t even see the punch coming.
“Sam!” That’s Dean’s voice, coming from somewhere far away, but the demon hits Sam again, and again, and Dean must be lost because he isn’t coming, isn’t stopping the demon from hitting him again, and again, and again.
Then a jolt goes through the demon’s body where it’s straddling him and the beating stops. Sam blinks, trying to scrape together enough coherency to move—or, barring that, at least to see what’s going on—but he’s just figured out how to get his eyes open when it starts up again. The sides of his face are blazing, and his neck aches as well from the way each punch snaps his head to the other side, and Dean. Where’s Dean? Dean wouldn’t let this happen if he was here, he’d stop it, he must be hurt, Sam has to find him help him save him—
“He’s going to have what he wants back soon enough, brother-fucker,” the demon snarls as it rocks his face back and forth with the force of its blows. “And then I’m gonna have a taste myself. See what’s so addictive I had to play pretty and bend over anytime he snapped his fucking fingers.”
Sam doesn’t know what the hell the demon’s going on about—he can’t think through the blinding, numbing pain. Can’t think past the certainty that he’s going to die like this.
Even in the midst of his confusion and his panic and his pain, Sam hears the gunshot. It’s too loud to miss, more like a crack of lightning than anything manmade, and then there’s a sharp, ozone scent. The demon’s body stiffens on top of Sam for a moment before slumping off to one side, leaving him blurry-eyed and panting at the sky. His face feels hot and too large. He takes a sharp, shuddering breath and the air stings against his lips. Overhead, the sky is an indistinguishable mess of blue and white.
Sam stares at it in confusion, trying to figure out what just happened, and then Dean is there. Dean is there, calling Sam’s name and pulling at his shirt.
“Sam! Sammy, come on!”
He’s still tugging at Sam’s clothes, and thinking is sort of like trying to wade through molasses but Sam is beginning to suspect that his brother wants him to get up. Surprisingly, the order his brain sends to his legs to comply gets through, and he staggers upright. Dean gets an arm around him, and Sam takes the offered assistance gratefully, relying on his brother for balance and support as his head starts to clear.
His face hurts more than ever now, but Sam will take the pain over confusion any day, and he’s relieved that he can get his eyes to focus when he looks down at the demon’s body. There’s a distant, unimportant burn where Dean’s hand is pressing over the fresh tattoo on his chest, and another one on his hip where his jeans have been rubbing the healing skin in all the wrong ways, but Sam barely notices. He’s too busy staring at the body on the pavement.
There’s a bullet hole in the man’s skull. There’s a bullet hole in his skull and a fine, black dusting of powder on his pretty, startled face, and Sam knows instinctively that Dean used the Colt. He wants to feel angry that his brother lied to him—that Dean brought the gun with him even after Sam explained why that would be a terrible idea. He wants to be frightened by the darkness he can sense moving inside of his brother even now, restless and shifting.
He wants to, but he can’t.
In his numb, shocked state, the only emotion he feels is relief. Relief that he isn’t the one lying dead in a pool of his own blood.
Two bullets left, he thinks disjointedly.
“Come on,” Dean says, voice harsh and urgent. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Sam lets himself be pulled away, helps Dean get Dad back onto his feet. He and Dad are both leaning on Dean as they go, both relying on Dean to get them where they need to be.
And, just like always, Dean does his job.