ratherastory (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ratherastory) wrote2012-04-18 05:34 pm
ratherastory) wrote2012-04-18 05:34 pm
Entry tags:
Of Old Time, Which Was Before Us
Title: Of Old Time, Which Was Before Us
Summary: Sam messes up his brain one too many times. The boys cope, more or less.
Characters: Dean, Sam
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 4,857
Disclaimer: It all still belongs to the CW
Warnings: Swearing, nothing much more
Neurotic Author's Note #1: So somewhere last night I got bitten hard by this random plot bunny. I decided to sleep on it since I have other things I needed to be writing, but it refused to let go, so I wrote it in order to get back to those other things. Here it is.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Title is taken from Ecclesiastes 1:9. Nothing like a little Old Testament to make this really feel like Supernatural, am I right? :P
It seems vastly unfair, even by Winchester standards, that after surviving Hell, the Great Wall of Sam and the fall thereof, more concussions than you can shake a stick at including one that put him in a coma, and the application of decidedly non-therapeutic levels of electroconvulsive therapy, that in the end Sam's brain would be taken out by something as tiny as a virus.
The worst of it is, it wasn't even all that obvious at first. After the initial terrifying few days of fever so high the hospital had to keep him wrapped in cooling blankets along with an awe-inspiring number of meds being pumped into his IV and the addition of mechanical ventilation ("To give his body a break so it can fight off the infection," the specialist told Dean, which, really? How could a body need a break from breathing?), Sam started getting better. His fever dropped, the seizures stopped, and the doctors began saying things like "cautiously optimistic," which in Dean's world meant "as good as cured, just give him time." Then Sam opened his eyes, even squeezed Dean's hand and managed a weak smile in return for the grin Dean was pretty sure would cause his face to split right open.
It was after that that the trouble started. Sam slept a lot, which was normal. Then he started asking questions—also normal. It was just the kind of questions he was asking that wasn't so normal.
"What happened?" he asked the first day he could talk, and Dean did his best to explain about encephalitis and fevers and all the crap that goes along with it. Sam nodded, his eyes slipped shut, and that was the end of it, until the next day.
"'m I in a hospital?" he asked when he woke up, and Dean worried a bit at his lower lip.
"Yeah, Sammy. You had encephalitis, remember?"
Sam just blinked slowly at him. "Okay."
The next day it was the same question, and when the nurse came in, the same nurse who'd been coming in every day at the same time, Sam smiled, noted her name tag, thanked her nicely for her help and introduced himself. Again. She gave Dean a rueful grin.
"Sam and I have been getting acquainted every day like this."
After that, the doctors began making noises about running tests. Sam tried to put on a brave face, but Dean hasn't known his brother all these years that he can't tell when he's scared out of his mind, so he sat right next to his gurney and laced their fingers together. He kept his grip tight even when Sam got agitated and squirmed restlessly, heels scraping against the thin sheet on the gurney. He rubbed a circle on the back of Sam's hand with his thumb, stroked his hair once just before Sam was taken away for scans—just the other side of the door, but it might as well have been a mile away.
"How old are you, Sam?" the neurologist called in to consult asked him, and Sam looked at him as though he was out of his mind.
"Twenty-two. Uh, I think. I lost some time, right? Maybe my birthday went by. Is it May? I could be twenty-three by now."
Dean's mouth went dry.
Sam looked over at him. "Why are we here?"
Dean made an abortive attempt at swallowing, rubbed a hand over his mouth. "You were sick, Sammy. You don't remember?"
Sam shook his head. He looked small, Dean thought sadly, small and scared and entirely unlike himself. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be, it's fine. Not your fault. We'll figure it out, I promise," he said, and he meant it, even if he had no idea what they were going to do about it.
~*~
Almost worse than realising his brother has a hole in his brain the size of a golf ball is realising just what that means. A chunk of Sam's life is gone, along with all of his memories and, it seems, the ability to retain anything new at all. In another life, Dean would have been grateful, maybe, to find himself backed into a wall, the decision to stop drinking made for him. Except that it quickly becomes obvious that quitting the booze isn't going to happen overnight, isn't going to happen just by gritting his teeth and working through it on his own. It means he has to leave Sam, and as much as it tears him up inside, leaving him for that amount of time all by himself. True to form, Sam puts on another brave soldier face.
"Hey, it's fine," he says softly, staring at his hands, clasped loosely in his lap. "Just think of it like leaving a dog at home. No sense of time, right? You'll go, you'll do what you need to do, and it's not like I'll ever know the difference. It'll be like no time at all went by. You're doing all the hard work."
Dean reached over and squeezes his knee. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
Sam nods, takes a deep breath, like he's steeling himself. "Or you could, um, not. Not come back."
"Sam—"
"No," Sam interrupts. "I mean, not like that. But let's face it, I'm all fucked up, here. I can tell so much has happened, even if you won't tell me. You could—you could go, live a better life. And—and the hospital staff could tell me you visited, and I'd never know. I'd never know, and it would be okay."
"You fucking moron," Dean pulls Sam into a gentle headlock, ruffles his hair. "Like I'd ever leave you by yourself. The only reason I'm not punching your lights out is that you won't remember it in a few hours. You're going to be impossible now that I can't teach you anything anymore, aren't you?"
Sam chokes on something that's halfway between a sob and a laugh. "Don't you forget it. No really," he looks up with a watery grin. "You can't forget it, because I will."
The jokes dry out along with Dean. Rehab is quite possibly the single worst thing he's had to endure since Hell. He spends days out of his mind, shivering and puking and stewing in his own bodily fluids and hating the whole damned universe, and the only thing that keeps him from walking away is the thought that Sam is still sitting in his hospital room and staring out the window and has no conception of what's happening around him. For all Dean knows, there could be someone in there taking advantage of him, abusing him, and Sam won't remember, is defenseless against predators of any kind now.
He drags himself out of rehab the minute he can, earlier than any of the doctors want, but they don't really understand what he's up against. Don't understand why he needs to be out. He takes all the pamphlets about meetings and accepts the prescription for Antabuse with alacrity. After that, the rest is a piece of cake. Sam is exactly where he left him, sitting in the wheelchair that's still slightly too small for him. He looks a little better than when Dean left, a little less hollow-eyed, a little less pale. He smiles when he sees Dean, only to have the smile falter a moment later.
"You look like shit. What happened to you?"
Dean just shakes his head. "Not important, I'll be fine. You ready to blow this joint?"
Sam's smile turns even more uncertain. "I suppose it would be unhelpful to say I don't remember?"
He nods, chews on his lip. "Okay, simpler question. How are you feeling right now?"
Sam half-shrugs. "Fine, I think."
"No headaches? Muscle pain? Blurry vision? Anything?"
"No," Sam shakes his head. "No, I feel fine. Maybe a little wobbly, but the therapist says I'm improving a lot. She said I could probably do the rest on my own at home."
"Okay, then," Dean exhales slowly. "Doctor tells me you're good to go, so if you feel ready, we'll go."
That's when Sam's smile widens into the most brilliant grin Dean has seen on him in years, and for the first time in a very long time, Dean allows himself to entertain the hope that, just maybe, things might turn out okay after all.
~*~
Sam copes.
Bless the kid, he's always been more adaptable than Dean, for all that he was a stubborn little shit when they were growing up, always balking at the slightest change, throwing hissy fits whenever Dad uprooted them again. Used to quote statistics about stability and childhood development and correlations to grade point averages in high schoolers until John would lose his temper and threaten to smack the statistics out of him. Even so, Sam was always the one who made new friends. Sam was the one who maintained a 4.2 grade point average because he always took the extra credit assignments and took all the AP classes even when they weren't sticking around for more than a few weeks. Sam was the one who went to Stanford, who got himself a girlfriend (who would have been a fiancée, maybe even his wife). Sam's the one who learned to deal with psychic powers, who survived after his brother died when Dean never knew how. Sam who kicked his addiction, Sam who saved the world and got his head broken as a thank you and even then managed to bounce back.
So Sam copes. It's not a great system, but it works well enough. He writes things down, obsessively. Every time he does something. He has checklists, and he keeps them all in a floppy plastic forest green binder that he carries everywhere with him, along with a small black notebook in which he scribbles down everything he thinks might be important to remember. He writes himself a one-page letter to remind himself of the important things he needs to remember upon waking up: he's twenty-nine years old now, he and Dean aren't hunting anymore. His brain is damaged beyond repair. Dad is dead. The world nearly ended, and it was his fault. Dean tried to convince him not to write that part down, but Sam insisted, so Dean insisted he at least include that he might have nearly ended the world, but he also saved it, so Sam dutifully writes that down too. Castiel is an angel, and he's their friend, supposing he ever shows up again (Sam doesn't remember Castiel at all, and Dean doesn't know if he should be overjoyed or crushed).
Dean finds himself a job taking calls for an airline, booking tickets, making and changing reservations, keeping track of seating and specials. He takes the job because the pay is decent, the benefits are awesome and allow him to include Sam as a 'domestic partner' (hey, he's never balked at insurance fraud before, why should he start now?), and the company is trying out this new pilot program that lets their employees set up a home office and work from there. A tech comes out to the tiny house he's renting with Sam and sets up a computer, a fax and a phone in the spare room that's not too much bigger than a large storage closet, shows Dean how to work his headset and how to troubleshoot common problems, then gives him the toll-free number for the help desk.
"You're all set," he claps Dean on the shoulder. "Don't hesitate to call if you have any problems."
Dean steals a glance at Sam, who's watching a rerun of Bewitched on TV. He's halfway tempted to ask if the help desk can fix holes in brains, but he resists the impulse. It's not fair to any of them, to say shit like that.
They calculate that Sam can, on a good day, retain new information for a few hours. It's not much, but it's a start, something they can work with. Dean becomes accustomed to the constant beeping of his phone line in his headset, and it's surprisingly not too bad for the most part. Sure, customers are assholes a lot of the time, but compared to creatures that are actively trying to rip out his throat or angels that like to fuck with people's minds, it's actually kind of soothing to deal with run-of-the-mill douchebags for a while.
Sam's phone buzzes quietly at irregular intervals during the day. It's all programmed reminders—take your pills, check on Dean, make lunch—and Dean doesn't even hear it half the time when he's already on the phone with a client. He goes about his days as best he can, and if he's quieter than he's ever been, well, Dean figures he's entitled. He doesn't even freak out as often as Dean would have thought he might, except for one memorable time when he finds Sam still in his pajamas one morning, sitting on his bed and attempting to muffle his sobs into his sleeve.
"Dad's dead," is all he can manage when Dean sits next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Dad's dead and I forgot and I'm never going to remember any of it!"
"Aw, Sammy..." Dean hauls him into his arms, lets Sam cry until his shirt is soaked through and Sam's exhausted, tucks him back into bed and then spends the entire morning struggling to get through his calls.
By the time he's allowed to break for lunch (only two hours left, he reminds himself, because he works seven to three and gets an hour for lunch) he feels like a wrung-out dish cloth, but Sam is making sandwiches in the kitchen. He holds up his phone and waggles it when Dean comes in.
"Did you turn off some of my alarms?"
Dean nods. "Just one. You weren't feeling good this morning, so we decided to let you sleep in. You remember?"
Sam shakes his head. "No. I made you black forest ham with mustard and cheese. You still like that, right?"
"Yup. Exactly right."
Sam chews on his lip. "We don't have any more beer. I don't remember finishing it."
"I don't drink anymore, Sammy."
Sam's lip is bright red now, looks like it might split open under his teeth. "Oh. Right. Right, I didn't write that down. I should write it down," he fumbles for his notebook until Dean puts a hand on his wrist.
"Save your ink, Sammy, it's not that important."
Sam huffs in exasperation. "It is important," he insists, and Dean pretends not to notie when his voice breaks a little. "I should know these things. I should recognise myself when I look in the mirror, but all I see is this guy who looks like he could be me. I should know how old I am. I should... I can't even remember where the kitchen is," he concludes miserably.
"You're standing in it, doofus," Dean pokes him gently in the ribs. He should have known it would be a bad day.
"I know that," Sam snaps. "I just... I can't think where it is if I'm not here."
Dean blinks a little, hesitates before asking, "How about the bedroom? Can you tell me how you get to your bed?"
Sam shakes his head, eyes bright, cheeks flushed with frustration, and so Dean tries another tack.
"Okay, but what if you needed to fetch a sweater? What would you do?"
Sam tilts his head, considering, then turns, heads out of the kitchen, and Dean hears him trot up the stairs, rummage in his room, then come back down a minute or so later, holding out his ratty old grey hoodie. Dean grins.
"See? I don't need you to draw me a freaking architect's map of the place. You know your way around, and that's all you need. Trust me, okay?"
That gets him a nod, a deep inhale and exhale as Sam finds his balance again. Then, "Uh, Dean? Did I actually need a sweater? It's kind of hot in here."
It doesn't matter if Sam can't figure out why Dean bursts into laughter at that, because he joins in anyway after a few minutes.
~*~
If this door is closed, it means Dean is working. Check the time on your phone. Dean works from 7:00am to 12:00pm and from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. Don't hesitate if there's an emergency, but otherwise this is how we pay the bills, so don't interrupt.
The sign is in Sam's handwriting, but Dean hates it anyway, like he's personally responsible for keeping him locked out of this part of his life, confused and alone for hours at a time. They've found a bunch of cheap DVDs of some TV shows that Sam used to watch when he was younger, and sometimes he watches those. He doesn't like watching new shows unless all the episodes can stand on their own without prior explanation, and even then he tends to go back to their DVD collection.
"I don't know. I could be watching the same episode over and over again, and who would tell me?" he says once when Dean suggests he try a new sitcom or something. The only thing keeping Dean from smacking his brother sometimes is the thought of causing even more brain damage.
Sam goes to see his neurologist once every two weeks like clockwork. They have him down as part of a research thing on memory loss and the formation of new neural pathways, which is just a fancy way of saying that Sam's brain is learning to compensate for the giant hole the encephalitis chewed in it. It means they doesn't have to pay for any of the testing the hospital does, but in return he has to jump through a whole bunch of hoops every time he goes so they can compile data and compare it to previous sessions, or whatever. Sam goes by himself, he takes his phone and his notebook and a paper with directions, and he always makes it home all by himself even if Dean is usually a nervous wreck by then, even over a year after he's been doing it with no problems at all.
Sam goes for walks, too. The first time is an accident—he simply forgets whatever it was he was meant to be doing and goes out the front door, and Dean doesn't realise until well over an hour had gone by that he's gone. He spends the next few hours frantically searching the neighbourhood, is seconds away from calling the police to declare Sam missing, like some wandering Alzheimer's patient, until he comes back and finds Sam in the living room going through their stack of DVDs like he hasn't been gone for a second, let alone half the damned day. Dean is going to kill him.
"Jesus fucking Christ where were you?" Dean's never been more relieved or more furious in his life, not even when he found Sam at that motel waiting for Ruby to help him end the world.
Sam looks up, startled. "What?"
"I've been looking for you all goddamned afternoon!" Dean snarls, ready to grab him by the neck and shake him until his teeth rattle for fucking wandering off and just—leaving. Leaving without so much as goddamned note.
"'m sorry," Sam looks stricken, and all of Dean's anger melts in about three seconds flat.
"Where. Were. You?" Christ, he wants a drink. Hasn't wanted one this badly in weeks.
Sam shakes his head, eyes wide, face draining slowly of colour. "I don't know. I didn't know I was gone. God... I don't know where I was." He's trembling now, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that, yet again, Dean Winchester has screwed up royally by scaring the piss out of his brain-damaged kid brother.
Dean Winchester: one; Universe: seventeen billion. Fuck.
He takes a breath. "Okay. It's okay, I didn't mean to upset you. I was just worried, okay? I didn't know where you were, and I got worried. Are you okay?"
Sam glances down at himself, apparently taking stock. "Yeah."
Dean forces himself to exhale slowly. "Okay, then. No harm, no foul. But I need you to set some more reminders on your phone, okay? Just... I need you to check in every so often, reassure me you're not dead in a ditch."
Sam nods, tight-lipped and wide-eyed, and pulls out his phone just as it beeps, making him jump a little. The corners of his mouth twitch, and he turns it so the screen is facing Dean.
It's six pm. You should be making dinner. Check your binder for what you're making tonight.
Dean sighs. "You want to order a pizza?"
"Okay."
After that, though, Sam starts going on walks by himself. He takes his phone, programs an alarm to go off halfway through his walks, and calls religiously each time. Once one of their neighbours catches up to him on her morning jog, and from what Dean gathers later they make perfectly nice small talk until she asks him where he lives. Dean gets a call, then, from Sam.
"Um, Dean, am I supposed to remember where we live? There's a lady here—Dottie—and she asked but I don't... um. Maybe you should talk to her."
Dottie is perfectly nice, but not especially helpful. It's not like she knows about Sam and how his brain works, Dean tries to remind himself. "Hi, Dottie, I'm Sam's—this is Dean. Is there any trouble?"
Dottie has a friendly voice. "No trouble, no. He just says he doesn't know where he lives, so I said he should call home and have someone help. Was that all right?"
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "That's fine. Sam can get home on his own, he just won't be able to tell you his address or how to get here. You just let him finish his walk, he's got a routine, it'll be fine. Thanks for stopping, though."
When Sam gets home forty-five minutes later, he doesn't remember ever meeting Dottie at all.
~*~
Dean gets called in for a training seminar at work. It's a three day thing, regular working hours and he gets paid for his travel time back and forth each day. In theory, it shouldn't be a big deal, except for how it is. He sticks up a bunch of extra Post-It Notes in the house for Sam, little reminders that he probably doesn't need, checks about thirteen times that they still have a full fridge and pantry so that Sam has no reason to go out very far. Sam doesn't try to reassure him that he'll be fine, mostly because Dean knows he's terrified that he won't be fine and he doesn't want to lie about it.
He's a little surprised when it actually seems to go well. The training itself is boring but not hard—just new software that's being installed to make reservations easier—and he finds he doesn't mind the company of his otherwise unknown coworkers. They're nice enough, come from all different walks of life, and he even finds himself bonding with a woman a couple of years younger than him who took the job so she could stay home with her special-needs kid. Her name is Katie, she's a skinny blond thing with blue eyes bigger than her head, and Dean likes her. It's been a while since he's met someone uncomplicated who wants absolutely nothing from him except company while they eat their sandwiches.
"Henry does a lot better when I'm home," she tells Dean during their lunch break the first day, after they introduce themselves. "We have a routine, he likes having me around. It does us both good, to be honest. I hated being away from him."
"I'll drink to that," Dean tells her, raising his juice box, and that gets a laugh. They spend the next two lunch periods eating together, she gives him her email address, and it takes him a while to figure out that he's just made a friend—the first one in years.
He's brimming with excitement on his way home, can't wait to tell Sam that they've just been invited to their very first barbecue. Sam's always liked that normal shit, getting together with neighbours, making friends, whatever. He just hasn't been able to because they don't get out much, and maybe that's the problem, Dean thinks as he steers the Impala back into the driveway. They've been too isolated, too used to keeping to themselves because of what they do—but of course they don't do that anymore, they're never going to hunt again, not with things the way they are.
"Sam?" He drops his keys in the bowl on the table in the front entrance, surprised not to find his brother in his usual spot watching TV at this hour. "Sammy?"
The house is completely dark, and still. Sam's keys are still in the bowl, though, and he knows Sam wouldn't leave without them—there's a note taped to the inside of the front door reminding him not to—so that means he's still home. Unless he got really confused and... Dean shakes off the thought. He'll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
"Sammy?"
He jogs up the stairs, trying to keep his heart from leaping into his mouth with anxiety when Sam doesn't answer him. When he does find him, he doesn't know whether to be relieved that Sam is no further than his bedroom, or really fucking worried that he's sitting on the floor next to his bed, head ducked down, thumb pressing against the old scar on his palm in a gesture Dean hasn't seen in nearly two years. Dean decides to go with really fucking worried. He lowers himself to his knees, tilts his head until he can see Sam's face.
"Hey, talk to me. What's going on with you?"
Sam doesn't answer right away, and when he does, his voice is reed-thin, so quiet Dean can barely hear him. "I, uh... I'm afraid. I'm afraid and I can't remember why. I don't know why this is happening..."
"You seeing anything that shouldn't be there, Sammy?" He's relieved when Sam shakes his head, then carefully moves to sit next to him, is thankful when Sam presses closer to him rather than pulling away. He takes Sam's hands, strokes his own thumb gently over the scar. "How'd you remember to do that?"
"I don't know," Sam leans his head on Dean's shoulder. "I don't remember. I don't even know how long I've been sitting here. What if I forgot something important? What if something happened to you and I'm just too fucked up to notice? I can't... I hate this," he mumbles, burying his face in Dean's shoulder. "
Dean smooths a hand over his hair. "Yeah, I know."
"I don't even know what day it is."
"It's Friday the twentieth. It's five o'clock. Your alarm's going to go off, except I'm pretty sure you left your phone downstairs," Dean keeps stroking his hair, practically willing Sam to relax. "You remember that woman I met at work? Katie?"
"No."
Dean ignores the petulant tone. He figures Sam's entitled, every so often. "That's fine, I told you about her yesterday, and I'll remind you tomorrow. She's about your age, married, has a kid named Henry who's autistic. They live pretty close by, as it turns out. We're going to their place for a barbecue on Sunday. You like barbecues, right?"
"Have we ever had a barbecue?" Sam's voice is muffled by Dean's shirt, but Dean's always been able to figure out what Sam is telling him anyway.
"At Lisa's, but you wouldn't remember that. You liked it, I promise."
"You should go without me."
Dean snorts. "Not likely."
"I'll just embarrass you."
"And that will be different from our whole lives how?"
That gets him a quiet wheeze of laughter. "Such a jerk."
Dean squeezes his shoulders. "Yeah, well, you're still a bitch, too. Good thing that some things about you never change. What would I do then?"
"I don't know. Have a better life?"
Dean snorts, then shifts so he can pull them both upright. "Okay, pity party's over. Boo-hoo, Sammy has a hole in his head, isn't it sad. Come on, swiss-cheese-for-brains, you're supposed to be starting supper."
To his credit, Sam makes an effort to pull himself together. "I don't remember where my list is."
"Tell you what. Let's live dangerously tonight and improvise. See what's in the fridge, cook with that."
Sam stares at him flatly. "Fine, but don't blame me if I forget what I'm cooking halfway through and then it ends up burnt or inedible."
"It's cute that you think your cooking is edible."
To his surprise, Sam grins at him. "I don't remember you complaining."
"Little shit."
Dean swats his shoulder lightly, finds himself grinning at Sam's retreating back as he makes his way to the kitchen to start up supper, and for a moment he lets himself think that he might just be the luckiest guy alive.
Summary: Sam messes up his brain one too many times. The boys cope, more or less.
Characters: Dean, Sam
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 4,857
Disclaimer: It all still belongs to the CW
Warnings: Swearing, nothing much more
Neurotic Author's Note #1: So somewhere last night I got bitten hard by this random plot bunny. I decided to sleep on it since I have other things I needed to be writing, but it refused to let go, so I wrote it in order to get back to those other things. Here it is.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: Title is taken from Ecclesiastes 1:9. Nothing like a little Old Testament to make this really feel like Supernatural, am I right? :P
It seems vastly unfair, even by Winchester standards, that after surviving Hell, the Great Wall of Sam and the fall thereof, more concussions than you can shake a stick at including one that put him in a coma, and the application of decidedly non-therapeutic levels of electroconvulsive therapy, that in the end Sam's brain would be taken out by something as tiny as a virus.
The worst of it is, it wasn't even all that obvious at first. After the initial terrifying few days of fever so high the hospital had to keep him wrapped in cooling blankets along with an awe-inspiring number of meds being pumped into his IV and the addition of mechanical ventilation ("To give his body a break so it can fight off the infection," the specialist told Dean, which, really? How could a body need a break from breathing?), Sam started getting better. His fever dropped, the seizures stopped, and the doctors began saying things like "cautiously optimistic," which in Dean's world meant "as good as cured, just give him time." Then Sam opened his eyes, even squeezed Dean's hand and managed a weak smile in return for the grin Dean was pretty sure would cause his face to split right open.
It was after that that the trouble started. Sam slept a lot, which was normal. Then he started asking questions—also normal. It was just the kind of questions he was asking that wasn't so normal.
"What happened?" he asked the first day he could talk, and Dean did his best to explain about encephalitis and fevers and all the crap that goes along with it. Sam nodded, his eyes slipped shut, and that was the end of it, until the next day.
"'m I in a hospital?" he asked when he woke up, and Dean worried a bit at his lower lip.
"Yeah, Sammy. You had encephalitis, remember?"
Sam just blinked slowly at him. "Okay."
The next day it was the same question, and when the nurse came in, the same nurse who'd been coming in every day at the same time, Sam smiled, noted her name tag, thanked her nicely for her help and introduced himself. Again. She gave Dean a rueful grin.
"Sam and I have been getting acquainted every day like this."
After that, the doctors began making noises about running tests. Sam tried to put on a brave face, but Dean hasn't known his brother all these years that he can't tell when he's scared out of his mind, so he sat right next to his gurney and laced their fingers together. He kept his grip tight even when Sam got agitated and squirmed restlessly, heels scraping against the thin sheet on the gurney. He rubbed a circle on the back of Sam's hand with his thumb, stroked his hair once just before Sam was taken away for scans—just the other side of the door, but it might as well have been a mile away.
"How old are you, Sam?" the neurologist called in to consult asked him, and Sam looked at him as though he was out of his mind.
"Twenty-two. Uh, I think. I lost some time, right? Maybe my birthday went by. Is it May? I could be twenty-three by now."
Dean's mouth went dry.
Sam looked over at him. "Why are we here?"
Dean made an abortive attempt at swallowing, rubbed a hand over his mouth. "You were sick, Sammy. You don't remember?"
Sam shook his head. He looked small, Dean thought sadly, small and scared and entirely unlike himself. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be, it's fine. Not your fault. We'll figure it out, I promise," he said, and he meant it, even if he had no idea what they were going to do about it.
~*~
Almost worse than realising his brother has a hole in his brain the size of a golf ball is realising just what that means. A chunk of Sam's life is gone, along with all of his memories and, it seems, the ability to retain anything new at all. In another life, Dean would have been grateful, maybe, to find himself backed into a wall, the decision to stop drinking made for him. Except that it quickly becomes obvious that quitting the booze isn't going to happen overnight, isn't going to happen just by gritting his teeth and working through it on his own. It means he has to leave Sam, and as much as it tears him up inside, leaving him for that amount of time all by himself. True to form, Sam puts on another brave soldier face.
"Hey, it's fine," he says softly, staring at his hands, clasped loosely in his lap. "Just think of it like leaving a dog at home. No sense of time, right? You'll go, you'll do what you need to do, and it's not like I'll ever know the difference. It'll be like no time at all went by. You're doing all the hard work."
Dean reached over and squeezes his knee. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
Sam nods, takes a deep breath, like he's steeling himself. "Or you could, um, not. Not come back."
"Sam—"
"No," Sam interrupts. "I mean, not like that. But let's face it, I'm all fucked up, here. I can tell so much has happened, even if you won't tell me. You could—you could go, live a better life. And—and the hospital staff could tell me you visited, and I'd never know. I'd never know, and it would be okay."
"You fucking moron," Dean pulls Sam into a gentle headlock, ruffles his hair. "Like I'd ever leave you by yourself. The only reason I'm not punching your lights out is that you won't remember it in a few hours. You're going to be impossible now that I can't teach you anything anymore, aren't you?"
Sam chokes on something that's halfway between a sob and a laugh. "Don't you forget it. No really," he looks up with a watery grin. "You can't forget it, because I will."
The jokes dry out along with Dean. Rehab is quite possibly the single worst thing he's had to endure since Hell. He spends days out of his mind, shivering and puking and stewing in his own bodily fluids and hating the whole damned universe, and the only thing that keeps him from walking away is the thought that Sam is still sitting in his hospital room and staring out the window and has no conception of what's happening around him. For all Dean knows, there could be someone in there taking advantage of him, abusing him, and Sam won't remember, is defenseless against predators of any kind now.
He drags himself out of rehab the minute he can, earlier than any of the doctors want, but they don't really understand what he's up against. Don't understand why he needs to be out. He takes all the pamphlets about meetings and accepts the prescription for Antabuse with alacrity. After that, the rest is a piece of cake. Sam is exactly where he left him, sitting in the wheelchair that's still slightly too small for him. He looks a little better than when Dean left, a little less hollow-eyed, a little less pale. He smiles when he sees Dean, only to have the smile falter a moment later.
"You look like shit. What happened to you?"
Dean just shakes his head. "Not important, I'll be fine. You ready to blow this joint?"
Sam's smile turns even more uncertain. "I suppose it would be unhelpful to say I don't remember?"
He nods, chews on his lip. "Okay, simpler question. How are you feeling right now?"
Sam half-shrugs. "Fine, I think."
"No headaches? Muscle pain? Blurry vision? Anything?"
"No," Sam shakes his head. "No, I feel fine. Maybe a little wobbly, but the therapist says I'm improving a lot. She said I could probably do the rest on my own at home."
"Okay, then," Dean exhales slowly. "Doctor tells me you're good to go, so if you feel ready, we'll go."
That's when Sam's smile widens into the most brilliant grin Dean has seen on him in years, and for the first time in a very long time, Dean allows himself to entertain the hope that, just maybe, things might turn out okay after all.
~*~
Sam copes.
Bless the kid, he's always been more adaptable than Dean, for all that he was a stubborn little shit when they were growing up, always balking at the slightest change, throwing hissy fits whenever Dad uprooted them again. Used to quote statistics about stability and childhood development and correlations to grade point averages in high schoolers until John would lose his temper and threaten to smack the statistics out of him. Even so, Sam was always the one who made new friends. Sam was the one who maintained a 4.2 grade point average because he always took the extra credit assignments and took all the AP classes even when they weren't sticking around for more than a few weeks. Sam was the one who went to Stanford, who got himself a girlfriend (who would have been a fiancée, maybe even his wife). Sam's the one who learned to deal with psychic powers, who survived after his brother died when Dean never knew how. Sam who kicked his addiction, Sam who saved the world and got his head broken as a thank you and even then managed to bounce back.
So Sam copes. It's not a great system, but it works well enough. He writes things down, obsessively. Every time he does something. He has checklists, and he keeps them all in a floppy plastic forest green binder that he carries everywhere with him, along with a small black notebook in which he scribbles down everything he thinks might be important to remember. He writes himself a one-page letter to remind himself of the important things he needs to remember upon waking up: he's twenty-nine years old now, he and Dean aren't hunting anymore. His brain is damaged beyond repair. Dad is dead. The world nearly ended, and it was his fault. Dean tried to convince him not to write that part down, but Sam insisted, so Dean insisted he at least include that he might have nearly ended the world, but he also saved it, so Sam dutifully writes that down too. Castiel is an angel, and he's their friend, supposing he ever shows up again (Sam doesn't remember Castiel at all, and Dean doesn't know if he should be overjoyed or crushed).
Dean finds himself a job taking calls for an airline, booking tickets, making and changing reservations, keeping track of seating and specials. He takes the job because the pay is decent, the benefits are awesome and allow him to include Sam as a 'domestic partner' (hey, he's never balked at insurance fraud before, why should he start now?), and the company is trying out this new pilot program that lets their employees set up a home office and work from there. A tech comes out to the tiny house he's renting with Sam and sets up a computer, a fax and a phone in the spare room that's not too much bigger than a large storage closet, shows Dean how to work his headset and how to troubleshoot common problems, then gives him the toll-free number for the help desk.
"You're all set," he claps Dean on the shoulder. "Don't hesitate to call if you have any problems."
Dean steals a glance at Sam, who's watching a rerun of Bewitched on TV. He's halfway tempted to ask if the help desk can fix holes in brains, but he resists the impulse. It's not fair to any of them, to say shit like that.
They calculate that Sam can, on a good day, retain new information for a few hours. It's not much, but it's a start, something they can work with. Dean becomes accustomed to the constant beeping of his phone line in his headset, and it's surprisingly not too bad for the most part. Sure, customers are assholes a lot of the time, but compared to creatures that are actively trying to rip out his throat or angels that like to fuck with people's minds, it's actually kind of soothing to deal with run-of-the-mill douchebags for a while.
Sam's phone buzzes quietly at irregular intervals during the day. It's all programmed reminders—take your pills, check on Dean, make lunch—and Dean doesn't even hear it half the time when he's already on the phone with a client. He goes about his days as best he can, and if he's quieter than he's ever been, well, Dean figures he's entitled. He doesn't even freak out as often as Dean would have thought he might, except for one memorable time when he finds Sam still in his pajamas one morning, sitting on his bed and attempting to muffle his sobs into his sleeve.
"Dad's dead," is all he can manage when Dean sits next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Dad's dead and I forgot and I'm never going to remember any of it!"
"Aw, Sammy..." Dean hauls him into his arms, lets Sam cry until his shirt is soaked through and Sam's exhausted, tucks him back into bed and then spends the entire morning struggling to get through his calls.
By the time he's allowed to break for lunch (only two hours left, he reminds himself, because he works seven to three and gets an hour for lunch) he feels like a wrung-out dish cloth, but Sam is making sandwiches in the kitchen. He holds up his phone and waggles it when Dean comes in.
"Did you turn off some of my alarms?"
Dean nods. "Just one. You weren't feeling good this morning, so we decided to let you sleep in. You remember?"
Sam shakes his head. "No. I made you black forest ham with mustard and cheese. You still like that, right?"
"Yup. Exactly right."
Sam chews on his lip. "We don't have any more beer. I don't remember finishing it."
"I don't drink anymore, Sammy."
Sam's lip is bright red now, looks like it might split open under his teeth. "Oh. Right. Right, I didn't write that down. I should write it down," he fumbles for his notebook until Dean puts a hand on his wrist.
"Save your ink, Sammy, it's not that important."
Sam huffs in exasperation. "It is important," he insists, and Dean pretends not to notie when his voice breaks a little. "I should know these things. I should recognise myself when I look in the mirror, but all I see is this guy who looks like he could be me. I should know how old I am. I should... I can't even remember where the kitchen is," he concludes miserably.
"You're standing in it, doofus," Dean pokes him gently in the ribs. He should have known it would be a bad day.
"I know that," Sam snaps. "I just... I can't think where it is if I'm not here."
Dean blinks a little, hesitates before asking, "How about the bedroom? Can you tell me how you get to your bed?"
Sam shakes his head, eyes bright, cheeks flushed with frustration, and so Dean tries another tack.
"Okay, but what if you needed to fetch a sweater? What would you do?"
Sam tilts his head, considering, then turns, heads out of the kitchen, and Dean hears him trot up the stairs, rummage in his room, then come back down a minute or so later, holding out his ratty old grey hoodie. Dean grins.
"See? I don't need you to draw me a freaking architect's map of the place. You know your way around, and that's all you need. Trust me, okay?"
That gets him a nod, a deep inhale and exhale as Sam finds his balance again. Then, "Uh, Dean? Did I actually need a sweater? It's kind of hot in here."
It doesn't matter if Sam can't figure out why Dean bursts into laughter at that, because he joins in anyway after a few minutes.
~*~
If this door is closed, it means Dean is working. Check the time on your phone. Dean works from 7:00am to 12:00pm and from 1:00pm to 3:00pm. Don't hesitate if there's an emergency, but otherwise this is how we pay the bills, so don't interrupt.
The sign is in Sam's handwriting, but Dean hates it anyway, like he's personally responsible for keeping him locked out of this part of his life, confused and alone for hours at a time. They've found a bunch of cheap DVDs of some TV shows that Sam used to watch when he was younger, and sometimes he watches those. He doesn't like watching new shows unless all the episodes can stand on their own without prior explanation, and even then he tends to go back to their DVD collection.
"I don't know. I could be watching the same episode over and over again, and who would tell me?" he says once when Dean suggests he try a new sitcom or something. The only thing keeping Dean from smacking his brother sometimes is the thought of causing even more brain damage.
Sam goes to see his neurologist once every two weeks like clockwork. They have him down as part of a research thing on memory loss and the formation of new neural pathways, which is just a fancy way of saying that Sam's brain is learning to compensate for the giant hole the encephalitis chewed in it. It means they doesn't have to pay for any of the testing the hospital does, but in return he has to jump through a whole bunch of hoops every time he goes so they can compile data and compare it to previous sessions, or whatever. Sam goes by himself, he takes his phone and his notebook and a paper with directions, and he always makes it home all by himself even if Dean is usually a nervous wreck by then, even over a year after he's been doing it with no problems at all.
Sam goes for walks, too. The first time is an accident—he simply forgets whatever it was he was meant to be doing and goes out the front door, and Dean doesn't realise until well over an hour had gone by that he's gone. He spends the next few hours frantically searching the neighbourhood, is seconds away from calling the police to declare Sam missing, like some wandering Alzheimer's patient, until he comes back and finds Sam in the living room going through their stack of DVDs like he hasn't been gone for a second, let alone half the damned day. Dean is going to kill him.
"Jesus fucking Christ where were you?" Dean's never been more relieved or more furious in his life, not even when he found Sam at that motel waiting for Ruby to help him end the world.
Sam looks up, startled. "What?"
"I've been looking for you all goddamned afternoon!" Dean snarls, ready to grab him by the neck and shake him until his teeth rattle for fucking wandering off and just—leaving. Leaving without so much as goddamned note.
"'m sorry," Sam looks stricken, and all of Dean's anger melts in about three seconds flat.
"Where. Were. You?" Christ, he wants a drink. Hasn't wanted one this badly in weeks.
Sam shakes his head, eyes wide, face draining slowly of colour. "I don't know. I didn't know I was gone. God... I don't know where I was." He's trembling now, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that, yet again, Dean Winchester has screwed up royally by scaring the piss out of his brain-damaged kid brother.
Dean Winchester: one; Universe: seventeen billion. Fuck.
He takes a breath. "Okay. It's okay, I didn't mean to upset you. I was just worried, okay? I didn't know where you were, and I got worried. Are you okay?"
Sam glances down at himself, apparently taking stock. "Yeah."
Dean forces himself to exhale slowly. "Okay, then. No harm, no foul. But I need you to set some more reminders on your phone, okay? Just... I need you to check in every so often, reassure me you're not dead in a ditch."
Sam nods, tight-lipped and wide-eyed, and pulls out his phone just as it beeps, making him jump a little. The corners of his mouth twitch, and he turns it so the screen is facing Dean.
It's six pm. You should be making dinner. Check your binder for what you're making tonight.
Dean sighs. "You want to order a pizza?"
"Okay."
After that, though, Sam starts going on walks by himself. He takes his phone, programs an alarm to go off halfway through his walks, and calls religiously each time. Once one of their neighbours catches up to him on her morning jog, and from what Dean gathers later they make perfectly nice small talk until she asks him where he lives. Dean gets a call, then, from Sam.
"Um, Dean, am I supposed to remember where we live? There's a lady here—Dottie—and she asked but I don't... um. Maybe you should talk to her."
Dottie is perfectly nice, but not especially helpful. It's not like she knows about Sam and how his brain works, Dean tries to remind himself. "Hi, Dottie, I'm Sam's—this is Dean. Is there any trouble?"
Dottie has a friendly voice. "No trouble, no. He just says he doesn't know where he lives, so I said he should call home and have someone help. Was that all right?"
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "That's fine. Sam can get home on his own, he just won't be able to tell you his address or how to get here. You just let him finish his walk, he's got a routine, it'll be fine. Thanks for stopping, though."
When Sam gets home forty-five minutes later, he doesn't remember ever meeting Dottie at all.
~*~
Dean gets called in for a training seminar at work. It's a three day thing, regular working hours and he gets paid for his travel time back and forth each day. In theory, it shouldn't be a big deal, except for how it is. He sticks up a bunch of extra Post-It Notes in the house for Sam, little reminders that he probably doesn't need, checks about thirteen times that they still have a full fridge and pantry so that Sam has no reason to go out very far. Sam doesn't try to reassure him that he'll be fine, mostly because Dean knows he's terrified that he won't be fine and he doesn't want to lie about it.
He's a little surprised when it actually seems to go well. The training itself is boring but not hard—just new software that's being installed to make reservations easier—and he finds he doesn't mind the company of his otherwise unknown coworkers. They're nice enough, come from all different walks of life, and he even finds himself bonding with a woman a couple of years younger than him who took the job so she could stay home with her special-needs kid. Her name is Katie, she's a skinny blond thing with blue eyes bigger than her head, and Dean likes her. It's been a while since he's met someone uncomplicated who wants absolutely nothing from him except company while they eat their sandwiches.
"Henry does a lot better when I'm home," she tells Dean during their lunch break the first day, after they introduce themselves. "We have a routine, he likes having me around. It does us both good, to be honest. I hated being away from him."
"I'll drink to that," Dean tells her, raising his juice box, and that gets a laugh. They spend the next two lunch periods eating together, she gives him her email address, and it takes him a while to figure out that he's just made a friend—the first one in years.
He's brimming with excitement on his way home, can't wait to tell Sam that they've just been invited to their very first barbecue. Sam's always liked that normal shit, getting together with neighbours, making friends, whatever. He just hasn't been able to because they don't get out much, and maybe that's the problem, Dean thinks as he steers the Impala back into the driveway. They've been too isolated, too used to keeping to themselves because of what they do—but of course they don't do that anymore, they're never going to hunt again, not with things the way they are.
"Sam?" He drops his keys in the bowl on the table in the front entrance, surprised not to find his brother in his usual spot watching TV at this hour. "Sammy?"
The house is completely dark, and still. Sam's keys are still in the bowl, though, and he knows Sam wouldn't leave without them—there's a note taped to the inside of the front door reminding him not to—so that means he's still home. Unless he got really confused and... Dean shakes off the thought. He'll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
"Sammy?"
He jogs up the stairs, trying to keep his heart from leaping into his mouth with anxiety when Sam doesn't answer him. When he does find him, he doesn't know whether to be relieved that Sam is no further than his bedroom, or really fucking worried that he's sitting on the floor next to his bed, head ducked down, thumb pressing against the old scar on his palm in a gesture Dean hasn't seen in nearly two years. Dean decides to go with really fucking worried. He lowers himself to his knees, tilts his head until he can see Sam's face.
"Hey, talk to me. What's going on with you?"
Sam doesn't answer right away, and when he does, his voice is reed-thin, so quiet Dean can barely hear him. "I, uh... I'm afraid. I'm afraid and I can't remember why. I don't know why this is happening..."
"You seeing anything that shouldn't be there, Sammy?" He's relieved when Sam shakes his head, then carefully moves to sit next to him, is thankful when Sam presses closer to him rather than pulling away. He takes Sam's hands, strokes his own thumb gently over the scar. "How'd you remember to do that?"
"I don't know," Sam leans his head on Dean's shoulder. "I don't remember. I don't even know how long I've been sitting here. What if I forgot something important? What if something happened to you and I'm just too fucked up to notice? I can't... I hate this," he mumbles, burying his face in Dean's shoulder. "
Dean smooths a hand over his hair. "Yeah, I know."
"I don't even know what day it is."
"It's Friday the twentieth. It's five o'clock. Your alarm's going to go off, except I'm pretty sure you left your phone downstairs," Dean keeps stroking his hair, practically willing Sam to relax. "You remember that woman I met at work? Katie?"
"No."
Dean ignores the petulant tone. He figures Sam's entitled, every so often. "That's fine, I told you about her yesterday, and I'll remind you tomorrow. She's about your age, married, has a kid named Henry who's autistic. They live pretty close by, as it turns out. We're going to their place for a barbecue on Sunday. You like barbecues, right?"
"Have we ever had a barbecue?" Sam's voice is muffled by Dean's shirt, but Dean's always been able to figure out what Sam is telling him anyway.
"At Lisa's, but you wouldn't remember that. You liked it, I promise."
"You should go without me."
Dean snorts. "Not likely."
"I'll just embarrass you."
"And that will be different from our whole lives how?"
That gets him a quiet wheeze of laughter. "Such a jerk."
Dean squeezes his shoulders. "Yeah, well, you're still a bitch, too. Good thing that some things about you never change. What would I do then?"
"I don't know. Have a better life?"
Dean snorts, then shifts so he can pull them both upright. "Okay, pity party's over. Boo-hoo, Sammy has a hole in his head, isn't it sad. Come on, swiss-cheese-for-brains, you're supposed to be starting supper."
To his credit, Sam makes an effort to pull himself together. "I don't remember where my list is."
"Tell you what. Let's live dangerously tonight and improvise. See what's in the fridge, cook with that."
Sam stares at him flatly. "Fine, but don't blame me if I forget what I'm cooking halfway through and then it ends up burnt or inedible."
"It's cute that you think your cooking is edible."
To his surprise, Sam grins at him. "I don't remember you complaining."
"Little shit."
Dean swats his shoulder lightly, finds himself grinning at Sam's retreating back as he makes his way to the kitchen to start up supper, and for a moment he lets himself think that he might just be the luckiest guy alive.
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