The Burning Bridge

[ratherastory]

Title: The Burning Bridge
Summary: Written for spn_j2_bigbang. Season 6 AU. With no end in sight on their quest to restore Sam's soul or to figure out just what Crowley is up to in his search for Purgatory, Sam and Dean break off in order to investigate a string of mysterious deaths in which the victims exhibited all the signs of radiation poisoning with no apparent cause before their deaths. The case takes a darker turn, however, when soon after they begin investigating Sam begins to exhibit the same symptoms as the victims. Suddenly Dean finds himself facing the disturbing dilemma of whether it might not be easier to let go of this empty-shell version of his brother and simply let the illness take its course...
Artist: The brilliant and awesomely talented tripoli
Link to Art: http://tripoli.livejournal.com/492758.html
Characters: Dean, Sam, Cas, Bobby, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 21,403
Disclaimer: All recognizable belongs to the CW.
Warnings: Levels of violence commensurate with the show.
Neurotic Author's Note #1: There are several people to thank for this! First off, my fantastically talented artist, tripoli, who illustrated this story in such an imaginative way. I am in awe, because she touched on all the important notes of the story in incredibly creative ways that would never even have occurred to me. There's also rainylemons, who not only beta'd the crap out of this story, but did the usual hand-holding she always does when I wailed unendingly to her about my writing, and once again served as my own personal medical encyclopedia without ever once complaining or balking. I love you, darling! Any mistakes concerning the subject matter found herein should of course be attributed to my lack of understanding, and any remaining grammar/spelling/syntactical mishaps are also all mine. And last but not least, wendy and thehighwaywoman for the herculean task of running the spn_j2_bigbang.
Neurotic Author's Note #2: So this fic has gone through about a million permutations before it ended up here. A long, long time ago, there were conversations with a few people, de_nugis included, about a story about Sam with radiation poisoning. I kept meaning to write it, and even signed up for a prompt by poor shangrilada in order to try to get this done, but it never happened. Instead, I started writing it for the hc_bigbang, but when that challenge didn't work out, I gave myself one last push in order to get it done for the main Big Bang, and here it is!
Neurotic Author's Note #3: Okay, confession time. This story is actually a shameless fix-it attempt on my part. No, seriously, this is the story in which I attempt to fix ALL the things about S6, and a couple of earlier things too. Yeah, I got nothing. On a purely storytelling front, this was a surprisingly difficult story to write, mostly because Soulless!Sam was and continues to be a bit of a mystery to me. That being said, I am quite pleased with how it turned out, in the end. I hope you'll all enjoy it!



Click on the image below for the full art post. :)

---

"So how long is it going to take?" Sam asks.

It's not really Sam, of course. It's the guy who looks like Sam who's been walking around in his body for the last eighteen months or so and who seems to think he's a new and improved version of Sam. Dean disagrees, but it's hard not to think of him as 'Sam,' even if it's not really Sam he sees when he looks into this guy's dead fish-eyes.

"How long is what going to take?"

"Before you stop looking at me like I've grown an extra head. We've known for two weeks now that I have no soul, and it's not like that's changed anything. I'm still the same person I was two weeks ago."

"But you're not the same person you were."

Sam shrugs. "Are you the same person you were two years ago?" he counters, and Dean has to concede the point. "See, that's what I'm saying. We all change, it's inevitable. I just changed more than most people do. It's not my fault you don't like the change."

"You let me get..." Dean stops, blows out his cheeks. There's no point rehashing this stuff with I, Robot on the other side of the table in this diner anyway.

"Turned by a vampire, molested by fairies, sort-of raped by demons. I know, and I get it now, it's bad, I won't do it anymore. Promise."

The real Sam would never have done it to begin with, and if he somehow had, either by accident or because he was under the influence of some nasty supernatural substance, he'd be wallowing in well-deserved guilt by now. But of course this Sam doesn't feel guilt.

"Not really the point, Sam."

"Okay, but seriously, what do you want from me?" Sam takes a sip of his coffee to wash down a bite of the impossibly large ham sandwich he's just ordered.

This Sam eats more meat, too, and drinks his coffee black. Dean doesn't remember the last time that Sam bothered to order a French vanilla anything. For a while, when he was still Sam, it was because they were broke and partly, Dean thinks, because it was a weird way of punishing himself for ending the world. Doing a lifetime of penance by denying himself even the small pleasure of a frappuccino. Ridiculous. Except that this Sam apparently likes his coffee black.

"Do you want me to apologize again?" Sam asks. "Because I can do that."

"I don't want you to apologize unless you actually mean it!" Dean snaps. "There's no point."

Sam just shrugs. "Okay."

"Sometimes I don't get why you're sticking around, to be honest."

"Like I said, it's better with you around. Even Samuel thought I was pretty screwed up in the head, if you recall. I'm not like other people. I knew that even before Cas fisted me," Sam says, ignoring the way Dean chokes on his mouthful of beer at the word. "I stick out. I say the wrong things, push too hard, and people get weird—they clam up and won’t answer questions, if they even stick around that long. I wasn't like that before. I'm a better hunter, but I suck at the people stuff now, and you don't. And the people stuff is important if I want to solve cases."

"So you're staying with me because I'm more sensitive than you?" Dean can't keep the incredulity out of his tone.

"If the shoe fits..."

"Jesus," Dean shakes his head and polishes off his beer before motioning for another one. In another life, Sam would be glaring at him right now for having even one beer at this hour of the day, but this Sam hasn't so much as blinked.

"So you can't give me an estimate?"

"No, I can't give you an ETA on how long it's going to take me to process that you don't have a freaking soul!"

Sam makes a face that's almost a bitch-face but ends up settling halfway between frustration and incomprehension and just kind of looks wrong on his features anyway. "Can we at least keep working in the meantime?"

"What other choice do we have?"

"We could split up, keep working separately, if that's what you wanted."

"Is that what you want?"

"No," Sam says, with the patient air of someone who's had to explain the same thing multiple times. Maybe he has, come to think of it. "I want to work with you. Apart from me, you're the best hunter out there. The Campbells can't hold a candle to you. They might think they’re the second coming just because it's been the family business for generations, but they lack imagination. They're complacent. Overconfident. And Christian's an asshole."

"Not like you?" Dean points out drily, but Sam doesn't rise to the bait.

"Exactly. I'm not overconfident. I know exactly what I'm capable of, no more, no less. I know what you're capable of, too, and you're better than they are. We work well together."

And the thing is, they do work well together. Apart from the fact that Sam gives him the screaming mimis, Dean has to admit that they've solved a lot of cases since Sam came back, since he left Lisa and Ben, and they've solved the cases with a minimal number of casualties. It's nothing to sneeze at, really. They're back to the family business: saving people, hunting things, and isn't that what they always wanted? None of this stupid apocalypse crap hanging over their heads, no angel and demon stuff, just plain, straightforward salt-and-burns, a good old-fashioned skinwalker or two, and no fate of the world hanging in the balance. It even felt good, for a while, just to do what they do best and not have to worry about whether the world was about to end at any given moment.

"Except that we both know exactly what you're capable of." Apparently Dean just can't let it go. "That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence."

"That's why you should stick around. Make sure I don't violate whatever weird code of ethics you've got going on there."

"It's not a 'weird code of ethics' not to murder people!" Dean almost yells, catches himself at the last minute and lowers his voice.

"Collateral damage isn't murder." Sam calmly polishes off the first half of his ham sandwich and turns his attention to the second half. "Anyway, I think I found a case for us."

"Oh, thank God," Dean breathes. "At least it'll get us off of this topic."

"What's wrong with the topic?"

"Apart from it making me want to eat my own gun? Nothing at all. What's the case?" Dean prompts before Sam can ask him to elaborate on why discussing the ethics of letting civilians die is pushing him to the brink of suicide.

"Mysterious deaths in Kansas city," Sam says around a mouthful of sandwich. He pulls out a folded newspaper from where he was apparently sitting on it, and hands it over to Dean. "Page eighteen, bottom right. I've circled it."

It's a tiny article, one of those written by ambulance-chasing journalists who aren't big enough to sign their names to the three-sentence blurb. Still, it's something to start with, at least. Most of their cases come from tiny, vague-sounding articles like these, or from lurid tabloids, or from small-town newspapers when they can't get anything else. Those are harder to come by, though, because their print runs are usually tiny, their distribution strictly local, and they're almost never available in electronic format. Dean honestly doesn't know how hunters managed to do anything before the age of the internet. It's amazing the whole community isn't dead yet through lack of communication.

"So, two victims of radiation poisoning? What makes you think this is our sort of gig?"

Sam finishes his sandwich. "It's not the radiation poisoning, it's the 'unexplained' part that caught my attention. It's not like people develop spontaneous cases of radiation poisoning. There has to be an underlying cause, and the two victims aren't related in any way."

"Huh." Dean tilts his head to the side. "Good point. It's worth checking out, anyway. It's a decent-sized city, too, we'll be able to fit in better. People are less likely to notice you're not working with the full range of human emotion, there, Wall-E."

"Yeah, screw you."

Dean tosses a crumpled ten and a five onto the table. "All right, then. Let's get this show on the road."

~*~

It's a long drive into Missouri, made even longer by the fact that Sam doesn't talk much in the car anymore. He doesn't bitch about the music—although Sam hadn’t been bitching much about the music near the end there, either, Dean has to admit. It's just that, as stupid as it sounds, the quality of the not-bitching has changed. Before he gave the impression of suffering in stoic silence because he was willing to let Dean get away with just about anything short of murder in yet another attempt to make up for the fact that he almost single-handedly unleashed the Devil on the world. It was like drinking his coffee black: an absurd method of self-flagellation. These days, though, Dean is pretty sure that Sam doesn't care if he puts on music or lets the radio stay silent, and wouldn't care if he decided to play 'Barbie Girl' on repeat for sixteen hours straight, and God knows any man in his right mind would have to object to that shit at some point or another.

Sam does talk a little about the case, when he's not taking down notes in a neat, obsessive hand in his new notebook. The notebooks are new, too. The old Sam used to take notes on his laptop, if he took any at all, or else he would add to Dad's old journal. This Sam, though, he has a little notebook for every new case, neatly labelled, and when the case is over he just takes the salient features of the case, notes them in a larger journal, and leaves the notebook itself in storage somewhere.

"It's more efficient that way," he explained to Dean at one point. "That way I know all the information is available, but I don't have to cart it around with me all the time. You ever notice how thin Dad's journal really is? I mean, it's a brick, but there's only about a hundred or so pages in here if you don't include the news clippings. That's after twenty-two years of hunting. You ever wonder where all the rest of his notes went? He kept it like a personal diary, too, in some cases. I'm betting he's got another storage locker or a lock box somewhere out there that we haven't found yet in which he kept all the other pages we just haven't seen."

It does make sense, but it also makes Dean uneasy in a way he can't quite define, the idea that there's this whole chunk of Dad's life out there that he and Sam never knew about, that they might never know about now, since there's no guarantee anyone will ever let them know if something has happened to those extra journals, if they even exist.

Sam is also weirdly pragmatic about taking notes on the laptop. "Sure, it makes a certain amount of sense, but technology isn't reliable. Data storage is changing from day to day. Most people can't read a floppy disk these days, so what's to say that we'll be able to read what's on a USB key in five years? Or ten? And data gets corrupted, gets erased by EMPs. It's not reliable. So you write it out longhand, you guarantee that it survives a much longer time, especially if you keep it in a dry, warm place away from bugs."

"You have spent way too much time thinking about this."

"Knowledge is the key to hunting," Sam says, and for a second he sounds so much like the old Sam that Dean's heart lurches painfully in his chest. When he looks up, though, Sam is bent a little over his notebook, holding his pen neatly between his thumb and index finger instead of resting on his middle finger the way he used to hold it, and the tiny spark of hope that had kindled somewhere inside Dean fizzles out again. "We just need to find a way to keep it all together."

"I think you just summed up most of our problems," Dean mutters.

Sam doesn't bother answering, and Dean keeps driving, both hands on the steering wheel, long after the sun dips low over the horizon and tinges the sky a deep crimson before disappearing entirely, plunging the world in darkness.

~*~

They end up pulling into Kansas City just before ten o'clock the next morning. Of course, it doesn't really matter what time it is, because Sam doesn't sleep anymore. Dean still hasn't figured out how that works. He still eats and does all the other things humans do, still has the same brain, the same everything, except no soul, and Dean can't figure out how he manages to not collapse from lack of sleep. When they do get Sam's soul back, Dean figures he's probably going to be in a coma for half a year or so to make up for it. Then again, he reminds himself, Sam never was all that big on sleep to begin with, so maybe it’ll be okay.

Sam is behind the wheel, ostensibly so Dean can catch a few minutes of sleep, but Dean's never been good at sleeping while someone else drives his baby, especially since that guy is now the soulless douchebag version of his brother. He also doesn't quite trust Sam not to try pushing him out of the moving vehicle as a kind of weird experiment to see at what speeds the human body will and won't survive. He still hasn't forgotten the look of fascination on Sam's face when the vampire turned him all those weeks before—just the thought makes him shiver.

"You want to get us a room?" Sam pulls into a motel parking lot. The neon vacancy sign is buzzing, threatening to fizzle out at any moment. Home, sweet home.

"Should I bother getting you a bed?"

"Better for watching porn that way," Sam grins, and the smile doesn't reach his eyes. Dean shudders. "Yeah, why not. Two queens or a king, the price is the same, and I know you like it better when you can shove your bed against the wall."

"I don't always take the bed by the wall."

Sam shrugs. "You used to take the bed by the door all the time. I get that―easy escape route, and a way of keeping an eye out in case something comes in. I haven't figured out your new pattern yet. It's a little haphazard. Comes and goes depending on how much you drink, I think, but I'm not sure."

"You know, it's really creepy that you're keeping such close tabs on me. I just thought you should be aware of that."

"I thought you liked it when I did that. You like it when Cas keeps tabs on you."

"Cas is an angel, and it's creepy when he does it too."

Sam tilts his head in a way that suggests he's just letting the whole matter drop because he doesn't care about it that much, and Dean heads inside to get a room. The clerk doesn't so much as blink, just hands over two sets of keys—the old-fashioned kind, not even the newer key cards that so many motels are investing in these days. A hand-written sign by the dinosaur-aged computer (Dean catches a glimpse of a window running something DOS-based) informs potential clients of 'Free WiFi! Ask for our password at reception!' and gets a slip of paper with the word 'candybar' as the securest password they could apparently come up with.

"It's like they want to get hacked," Sam sighs as he types the password into the laptop later on, when they're settling in.

Dean kicks off his boots, cracks open a beer. "Who'd want to hack this place anyway?"

"Good point."

"So what do we have on the victims?"

Sam pulls out his notebook and types a couple of words into the search engine on the laptop with his free hand. "As usual, not much to start with. We've got a dead guy who, get this, was actually sentenced to life in jail for offing his kid. Held a pillow over little Allison's face and smothered her in her sleep. I tell you, if this state had the death penalty, this guy would have gotten the chair a hell of a long time ago. Judging by all the comments on the news articles online at the time, he's lucky a lynch mob didn't get him."

"So what killed him?"

"'Doctors baffled by mysterious death' kind of sums that one up. He kicked the bucket about two weeks ago, showed all the signs of radiation poisoning, but no one could figure out where he might have gotten exposed to all that radiation. It takes a lot, especially given how fast he died."

"He was in prison, wasn't he? Wouldn't that mean all the other guys were exposed too?"

"Got it in one," Sam nods. "Except that they weren't. No one there showed a single damned sign of radiation poisoning. They scoured that whole place from top to bottom, transferred out his cell mate and then went over it again with a fine-toothed comb―and squat. Nada. The place is squeaky clean."

"Huh." Dean takes a sip of his beer and scrunches his toes against the bedspread. "So who else died?"

"An accountant who went into surgery for a gallbladder removal. One minute he's recovering from elective surgery with no complications, the next he's covered in sores and losing his hair. He died late last week. It's the guy in prison who got all the press, but because the cause of death was the same this guy got a few lines in the paper."

"So there's more than that one article you showed me?" Dean can't keep the annoyance out of his voice. He's getting well and truly tired of Sam keeping stuff like this from him.

"Just found it now, because it's not exactly about his death. Well, it is, but it's mostly all about the case he was sentenced for. The whole article has a judgey, he-had-it-coming-to-him feel to it. Monster murders his little girl, dies a gruesome death, everybody wins."

Dean swallows a mouthful of bile. "Anyone else?"

"That's it. No deaths, anyway. There's a nurse who's come down with the exact same symptoms, but she's not dead yet."

"Same hospital?"

Sam taps at the keyboard a few times. "As a matter of fact, yeah."

"Yahtzee. There's our connection. Bet you dollars to doughnuts that Robert Latimer there got treated at the hospital before he went all Chernobyl."

"Okay. So, something in the hospital. Any ideas what?"

Dean lies back against the headboard, messes around with the pillows until he's comfortable, and raises his beer bottle to his lips. "Not a clue. It's early days yet. I'm going to catch a nap, because you drive like you've had both your hands surgically removed and replaced with extra feet. Then we'll head over to the hospital, see what's what."

Sam snorts. "You taught me to drive, you know."

"I taught Sam to drive, C3P0. Now shut up. Normal people actually need sleep. Don't do anything too psychotic while I'm out, okay?"

"Define 'too psychotic.'"

Dean flips onto his stomach and pulls his pillow over his head, refusing to dignify that with an answer.

~*~

The good thing about large hospitals is that they're all more or less alike. Same huge administration, same massive amounts of paperwork, same harried and overworked staff who are only too glad to avoid having extra responsibilities placed on their shoulders when they're already swamped with patients and charts and demanding doctors who think that their word is always law even when it conflicts with every other order the poor employee's been given. This means that a kind word here, an offer to keep out of the way there, and most hospital staff will give anyone with an official-looking badge a wide berth. Dean pauses just inside the front entrance, turning to Sam.

"Okay, so let me talk to the people, got it? You just hang back and... try to look like you know what empathy means," he tells Sam, who rolls his eyes.

"You know, I did this for a whole year without you," Sam points out mildly.

"Yeah, and look how well that worked out for you. You told me yourself people don't like to talk to you. I never thought I'd say this, but out of the two of us, I'm the people-person now, and I'd feel better if you weren't either antagonizing the witnesses or screwing them up against the nearest bathroom wall." At the smug look Sam gets at that comment, Dean snorts. "Exactly. We need information, not someone to get you laid. I am seriously starting to feel more sympathy for when Sam used to make this speech."

"I am Sam. "

Dean makes an effort to put all of Sam's current issues out of his mind as they grab their newly-minted CDC badges out of the glove compartment and saunter confidently up to the receptionist. She's busy wrangling two very upset clients and several phone lines while struggling to get her computer to obey her, directs them to the right floor while barely acknowledging their presence. Dean takes that as a good sign. He takes the lead, heading down the almost-empty hallway until he gets to a small, cluttered office where a woman a few years older than him in a lab coat is working at a computer.

"Dr. Rayner?" Dean steps forward, Sam close on his heels, pulling out his badge. "You put in a call to the CDC?"

She shakes her head, surprised. "No, but I was about to. I expect you've heard about what's been happening?"

"Someone else must have put in the call," Sam lies easily. "We were sent down to assist. Or, rather, my colleague here was sent to assist, and I was sent to assist him," he smiles in a way that doesn't quite reach his eyes, but Dr. Rayner doesn't appear to notice.

"Follow me," she gets up and starts walking briskly down the the hall, heels clacking authoritatively on the tile. "You're familiar with the file?"

"We've read it," the lie comes just as easily now as it ever has, "but I'd love to hear your perspective on it. Nothing beats a live voice, you know? I mean, this is pretty unusual, even by our standards. We're just hoping it won't take too long to study what's happening, before this thing has a chance to spread."

Dr. Rayner stops in her tracks and turns back to face them. "You haven't heard, then? We've already had another victim."

Dean shakes his head. "We came by plane, and I guess if someone called or texted it didn't come through. You know technology," he adds with a smile that's calculated to put her at ease without making her feel like he's making light of the situation―trickier than it sounds. "It's meant to make our lives easier but all it does is cause communication glitches and make us work even harder than before."

She rolls her eyes. "Tell me about it. I just wasted half a day on Monday getting malware cleared off my computer. Apparently some people in this hospital think it's funny to keep porn on the shared network so that it'll spread viruses to everyone's computer. Like digital STDs. Anyway, whatever it is, I think it must have to do with the hospital itself―the last two victims both work here."

"So, this is someone aside from the nurse?"

"Cindy, yeah. No, my newest patient is from the administration wing, Mr. Gerard. As far as I know he's had no recent contact with any of the others, which is what makes this so baffling. He's through here," she motions toward an isolation ward. "Cindy's already beginning to slip away from us―by the looks of it she only has a few days left at best. Mr. Gerard is still lucid, though, so you can take an oral history from him if you want. I haven't dealt much with your branch, but I know that some people like to work from scratch, get their own idea of what's what."

"That would be great," Sam interjects. "You said you thought this might be related to the hospital?"

"Not that they're listening to me," the doctor says darkly. "If I'm right they'll have to shut the place down until they figure it out, and we can't afford that, so they're telling me there's no conclusive evidence."

Sam nods, then tilts his head at Dean, his intent clear: keep the doctor and the patient talking while he does a sweep with the EMF. That, Dean can do with one hand tied behind his back. So he gives Sam a nod, takes Dr. Rayner by the elbow, flashes her his most winning smile, and pretends that it's really her leading him to the patient and not him getting her out of Sam's way.

~*~

The patient is an asshole.

That's the conclusion Dean comes to about thirty seconds into his interview with Mr. Gerard, who insists on being called that instead of by a more congenial first name. Dean spots Dr. Rayner rolling her eyes discreetly, even though she struck him as a pretty empathetic sort. Mr. Gerard, though, would try the patience of a saint.

"It's just typical," he complains to Dean, picking at his hospital-issue sheet with hands that are red and blistering in patches near the wrists. His cheeks are flushed with fever, and Dean can see spots on his head where his hair has already begun to fall out. "There are no standards in this hospital. Can't imagine why we haven't been reported for this. Probably that nurse's fault anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if she was at the source of it all."

"Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Gerard," Dr. Rayner says a little sharply. "You and I both know that Cindy was taken ill long after the first patient was diagnosed. Besides, we're focusing on you now, not on Cindy."

"Is she dead yet?"

Dean clears his throat. "Wow, you're not, uh, all that big on the sympathy thing, are you? Anyway, you should know we're not at liberty to discuss the treatment of other patients," he tells him in his best imitation of government authority, and Mr. Gerard subsides a little, which earns Dean a grateful look from the doctor.

"Sympathy is for weak-minded fools who can't get ahead in life."

It's like listening to a really cranky version of Sam these days. "Uh-huh. So why don't you take me back through the last few days, see if we can't retrace your steps, see where this all might have started?"

"I've already been over this," is the petulant reply, and Dean forces himself to smile patiently.

"Humour me."

It's not long before Mr. Gerard runs out of energy, though, and the fever and confusion make it next to impossible to get anything coherent out of him after only a few minutes. Dean shrugs, tucks away his notebook, pretends he can't hear the tell-tale sound of the EMF from a few doors down. Dr. Rayner, on the other hand, hears it just fine.

"I didn't see where your partner went."

"He probably went to check in on the nurse. Cindy, right? Knowing him he's just taking a quick look at her chart, getting a read on things. He'll be back in a second, but I can go find him if you'd like," Dean says, trying to make it sound like it's entirely unnecessary for them to go find Sam. She gets the hint.

"Oh, he can catch up, it's no problem. Did you want to see Cindy as well?"

"No, I'll leave that up to my partner. Actually, I'd rather talk to the rest of the staff, see what her schedule was, if she had any contact with the previous patients."

"Not that I'm aware of, because we did check into that first thing," she says a little defensively, "but I'm sure the staff will be happy to help in any way they can. Hang on," she whips back around as one of the monitors starts beeping alarmingly, darts back to the bed. "Shit," she mutters. "Okay, look, can you manage on your own? I'll be with you as soon as I can."

"Of course. You do what you gotta do. Need help?" Dean offers, praying really hard that she'll say no. He has to stop himself from breathing a sigh of relief when she shakes her head, and beats a hasty retreat before she can change her mind.

Sam meets him out in the hallway. "EMF's off the scale. We've either got a whole slew of spirits or one really nasty one."

Dean grimaces. "Could be either or. This is a hospital, there's bound to be, like, a gajillion spirits wandering around these halls. Death echoes, death omens, you name it."

Sam tilts his head in acknowledgement, but shrugs at the same time. "It's a lot stronger right near the nurse. I figure whatever's going on with her, it's ghost-related."

"Fair enough. You want to go check Pollyanna back there as soon as the doc's figured out how to keep him alive? I'm going to hit up the other nurses, see what they have to say about Cindy's chosen lifestyle."

"On it," Sam doesn't even bother to comment on Dean's phrasing, which is just too depressing for words. The old Sam would have at least made a bitchface at him. "I'll see if I can't get anyone to tell me about local legends about the hospital. There's always something in these places, you know?"

"Try not to antagonize anyone, okay? Or have a quickie in a supply closet, either."

"Try to remember I'm a professional, okay?" Sam mimics his tone with eerie accuracy. "If I'm going to bang a chick I'll at least wait until we're done for the day."

Dean shudders. "I don't want to know. If you do, get yourself your own damned room, or go back to her place. And don't screw with the witnesses."

"Screw you," Sam says mildly, and then he's gone.

~*~

Dean spends a frustrating couple of hours tracking down all the various nurses and aides the unfortunate Cindy spent any time with at all, and the net result is pretty much absolutely zip in terms of useful information. It's not that they're not forthcoming, but they basically don't know anything except for the fact that Cindy wasn't especially social and refused to so much as talk to her coworkers except when it directly concerned their work.

"She was very good at the job," the nurse manager assures him. "Very proficient, her standards of care were high above the norm, but she wasn't—isn't much of a people person," she confesses. "She's not very well-liked among the staff, and a few patients have complained that her bedside manner lacks... warmth, but we've been working on that, focusing on improving her people skills. She's a very skilled nurse otherwise."

"I see," Dean makes a show of noting things down. "She wouldn't have had any reason to come into contact with radioactive materials that you know of, right?"

"No, absolutely not. The only place in the hospital would be in the specialized radiology areas, and she had no reason to go anywhere close to oncology. Besides, radiation therapy isn’t meant to cause this level of illness.”

“So she wouldn’t have been,” Dean digs around in his memory for the right word, “floated there, say?”

“Sometimes our nurses get floated to other floors, but Cindy hasn't been to any other ward except her own in quite some time. She wouldn't go to oncology, anyway, considering her history. We made a point of never sending her there.."

Now that's interesting. "How's that?"

The head nurse looks uncomfortable. "Oh, I've probably spoken a little out of turn. It was all a long time ago, anyway."

Dean gives her what he hopes is a really sympathetic look. "You can count on my discretion. Was there a problem? With a patient, maybe? Another unexplained death?"

"Oh, no," she shakes her head. "Nothing like that. It's... I'm surprised you don't know about this, but I suppose it's not really up the CDC's alley. We don't really like to remind people of the hospital's failings, you know."

"So?" Dean prompts her gently, and she colours a little.

"One of the doctors in the oncology ward was..." she hesitates again, then appears to gather her resolve. "Well, he was what the investigators at the time called an 'angel of death.' They say he may have been responsible for up to thirty deaths over years before he was finally found out. He was very good at hiding what he was doing, we never even suspected. He was using the radiation treatments themselves to hasten the death of his patients, so that no one would catch on. Well, it was a little before my time, but Cindy was here then. She's one of the first who thought something must be wrong, when so many of her patients were dying prematurely."

Yahtzee, Dean thinks. "So what happened? He was arrested?"

"Do you know, I'm not really sure. I assume so, but like I said, it was before my time, and no one here really likes to talk about it. I don't think it ever even made the papers much, even though it would have made a sensation. The hospital kept a tight lid on all negative publicity from that event."

"Okay, well, that's probably not related," Dean reassures her. "You've been a big help, thanks."

"No problem. I didn't think it was related. After all, it was years ago, and none of these poor people were cancer patients, after all. It's just a terrible coincidence."

Coincidence my ass, Dean thinks to himself with a sigh before going to find Sam.

"So we've got ourselves a repeat performance of a bunch of deaths from a million years ago?" Sam asks when Dean catches up to him..

"Doubtful, but it's got to be related. I mean, all those people died of what's essentially radiation poisoning, right?"

"So it's one of the patients, you think? Why now?"

Dean shrugs. "Who knows? Could be something set it off, or maybe it was hanging around the hospital feeling lost and whatever and only recently went bonkers. Could be anything, really."

"So, hospital archives?"

"Tomorrow," Dean confirms. "I'm guessing they're not open after hours."

"So what? We're wasting time, here," Sam says, expression scrunching up in annoyance. "Tell you what, since I don't need to sleep, I'll go in myself, get the ball rolling. At the very least I'll get my hands on a list of his patients, see which of their family members or whatever are still around. I'll piggyback on the wireless, find out what prison the guy's in. We're short on time for interviews, so the faster we get this, the better."

It's impossible to argue with logic like that, even if Dean hates the idea of leaving Sam alone in this place without supervision from someone who's soul-enabled. "Okay, fine. But check in every so often, you hear me? And if you see something weird, or something that needs killing, don't do anything unless you're sure that you won't cause collateral damage," he says, making air quotes for emphasis.

"I got it, you don't need to lecture me like a little kid."

"Little kids don't shoot civilians because they're between them and the monsters. You know what? Forget it. Just stay out of trouble," Dean gives up, throws his hands in the air, stalks back to the Impala without waiting for Sam to say anything.

~*~

Dean hasn't been this happy to see an empty motel room in a very long time. He kicks off his shoes, sheds the suit jacket and pants and hangs them up in the closet. The problem with traveling with only duffel bags is that it wreaks havoc on the dry-clean only stuff, he thinks, glaring at the wrinkles at the bottom of the jacket. He always feels like a monkey in those things, anyway, though it's been long enough that they almost don't feel like a disguise anymore. Besides, he kind of enjoys the automatic respect that the badge and the suit afford him, which he almost never gets when he's in his regular clothes.

"Hello, Dean."

He almost doesn’t hear the quiet gust of air that always announces Castiel's appearance, but it takes all of Dean's self-control not to jump or, worse, whip around and try to bury his knife into the intruder. It helps that he's not currently carrying his knife.

"Jesus, Cas! How many times do I have to tell you not to freaking drop in like that?"

As usual, Castiel just looks exasperated by Dean's insistence on following what he considers useless human protocol. "It wastes time, Dean. Why should I engage in such things when they’re not necessary?"

"Privacy? Personal space? I'm not even dressed, here!" Dean gestures at himself, glad that he's at least still wearing his undershirt and boxers. He takes one look at Cas' face, then sighs in resignation. "All right, fine, whatever. I don't suppose we're ever going to get over this particular hurdle. What do you need now? Got another heavenly weapon that needs neutralising?"

Cas frowns at him. "You requested periodic updates about my attempts to find out about Sam's soul, and about Crowley's attempts to find Purgatory. I simply came to tell you that I have yet to acquire any useful information."

It takes all of Dean's self-control not to snap at him to ask why he bothered coming at all, then. Wasn’t he the one who’d complained that Cas never came around anymore? He clears his throat. "Yeah, okay. Um, thanks, Cas."

"You are welcome."

Okay, it's a little awkward with Cas standing right there in his personal space, especially since Dean usually likes to have a few more layers of clothing between them, as a rule. "You want to maybe sit, Cas? Have a beer?"

"No, thank you. But I will sit," Cas moves over to one of the two wooden chairs in the room and grasps the back, though he doesn't actually sit in it right away.

Dean pulls on a pair of jeans and buttons them before sitting cross-legged on the bed and cracking open a can of beer. It's lukewarm, because of course this craphole motel doesn't have anything like a mini-fridge, but he'll take what he can get. At least Cas is sticking around and isn't demanding that Dean run off to the far end of the country to help with some heavenly matter or other. It feels a little bit like how things used to be, before Sam jumped into the Pit, only without the Apocalypse hanging over his head. It's a nice change, all things considered.

"Hey, Cas, I was wondering..." he starts, fiddling with the tab on the top of his can.

"What?"

"About Sam's soul," Dean says, trying to figure out how to word his question.

"I have no news about that, as I said. I promise I will apprise you of any developments on that score."

"No, no I get that, it's cool," he says hastily. "I just... there's something I don't get. Well, a lot of things I don't get, but this one's bugging me. We think that the same thing that brought Sam back brought back our grandfather, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so how come Samuel still has his soul? I mean, I don't get how something could pull only part of Sam out of the Cage. It just doesn't make any sense, you know? Why Sam? Why Samuel? Why not any other hunters? Why Sam specifically, if it was so hard that he couldn't bring all of him back?"

"You assume the rescuer was male."

Dean huffs in exasperation. "Can we not worry about pronouns for a minute? Why does Samuel still have his soul but Sam doesn't?"

Castiel looks away, and Dean could swear that he actually looks uncomfortable. Probably because he doesn't like not having all the answers for once, Dean thinks uncharitably.

"I don't know," Cas confesses after a moment. "I only know of two ways for a soul to be brought back, and neither applies to Sam. The first way is how we rescued you from Hell: and no such attempt has been made. No attempt had been made to harrow Hell for well over a thousand years before we rescued you and I pulled you from the Pit."

Dean resolutely does not think about that. "What's the other way?"

"A soul in Hell may be brought out by a demon, but I think it unlikely that Samuel was also in Hell. He would have been there for thousands of years the way you reckon time, undergoing torture. He would long since have turned into a demon."

"So is there a third option?"

"Heaven," Cas says succinctly. "If your grandfather was in Heaven, which is the more likely scenario, then a deal made with a demon could easily bring him back. Both you and your father made similar deals, and your soul and Sam's soul were restored to you upon your resurrection."

"So... it would have to be a demon?"

"No angel would make such a deal—we are not in the habit of trading one soul for another. I know of no other creature that is interested in human souls the way we are."

"Okay, so if it was a demon, how come Sam's soul wasn't part of the bargain?"

"I don't know," Cas says, a hint of exasperation coming through. "If I knew, then I would tell you. The only explanation I can think of is that Lucifer was simply too powerful in his own domain to allow the most important part of Sam to be taken from him when the extraction took place. It was not simply Sam's soul that descended into Hell, remember, it was all of him: he jumped in voluntarily, while he was still alive. Perhaps Lucifer allowed his body to be taken knowing that whoever was trying to take Sam away would not notice the lack of a soul before it was too late."

Dean lifts the can of beer to his mouth only to realize that it's empty, and crushes it in his fist before reaching for another one. "This sucks."

To his surprise, Castiel shrugs and nods. "As you say." He glances out of the window at the sky, as though trying to read something in the clouds gathering overhead. "I am afraid I've stayed too long. There are other matters that require my immediate attention."

"Yeah, okay. Don't be a stranger, Cas," Dean starts, but Castiel is already gone. "Fine," Dean mutters under his breath, and whips his empty beer can at the wastebasket with a little more force than is strictly necessary. "Don't let me keep you or anything."

~*~

A shower goes a long way to making him feel slightly more human, but even after that Dean is out of sorts, staring disconsolately at his reflection in the mirror. He hasn't shaved in a few days, and he's hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed and doing his very best impression of a hobo. Shaving would probably help with that, he thinks.

He's in the midst of rummaging through his duffel bag when his phone rings, and when he sees Sam's name on the call display he snatches it off the bedside table. "Everything okay?"

"Just fine. I think I got something, I'll be back in about fifteen minutes. Were you going out?"

"Yeah, maybe, but I'll wait." Dean finds his cannister of shaving cream, gives it an experimental shake, then sighs. "You mind if I borrow your shaving cream? I just ran out."

"Knock yourself out. Just replace it later."

"Right."

It's hard to even say thank you, even though Dean is pretty sure it's kind of dickish of him not to afford the guy who's mostly his brother even that small courtesy. His cannister of shaving cream joins the two cans of beer in the wastebasket, and he unzips Sam's duffel, going through his stuff a little more carefully than his own. At the very least, he can respect the fact that Sam has always liked to keep his stuff in a specific order. Still, duffel bags aren't exactly the easiest thing to search, and he ends up pulling out a lot of Sam's clothes and laying them aside carefully in order to get at his toiletry kit, and that's when he notices that Sam has added a new pocket to the inside of his bag, neatly sewn in place.

He shouldn't be snooping around, especially since it's something that Sam clearly wanted to keep secret, but now that he's seen it he can't bring himself to leave it alone. This Sam is an enigma at the best of times, totally unreadable, and if this can give Dean even a clue about how his mind works, then so much the better, he tells himself. He jams a couple of fingers into the narrow opening, feels them close around something that feels like cord or very supple wire, and tugs until it comes free to land in his palm.

He stares at the object for what feels like a really long time. It's not like he doesn't know all of its contours by heart, though, the number of years he wore it around his neck, fiddled with it when he was nervous, wrapped his hand around it whenever he needed to anchor himself with something familiar. Where the hell would this Sam have found his amulet? More importantly, why would he have kept it all this time? Dean juggles it in the palm of his hand. It feels warm in his grasp, as though it was jammed up against a radiator for a while and absorbed some of the heat. Dean has no idea what to even begin to do with it now that it's here. He hasn't thought about it since he tossed it, almost two years ago now, give or take a few weeks.

By the time Sam comes in he's shaved and buttoning up one of his good shirts. "Took you long enough," Dean says, maybe a bit more gruffly than he intended.

"You're the one with the car. I didn't exactly want to run back here, sweat is a bitch to get out of these suits."

"So what's this?" Dean holds up the amulet, letting it dangle at the end of its cord.

Sam looks at him like he's lost his mind, then carefully plucks the amulet from his fingers. "Uh, it's the amulet I gave you when we were kids. You having some kind of amnesia problem?"

"Don't be a smartass. I mean, where did you get it? How the hell did you find it? Why do you even have it?"

Sam seems completely unconcerned, even though Dean thinks his own heart might be in danger of exploding on the spot, it's beating so hard. "I've always had it. I mean, I remember picking it up out of the trash can when you threw it out, and then I kept it. I don't really remember why I did it, but I remember that it was important, or something."

Dean shakes his head. "But... okay. But you—Sam jumped into the Pit with it, right? Or did he leave it behind?"

"No, I had it in my pocket. Just, when I got out of Hell, I still had it. I was in a field, naked as a jaybird except for that. It was around my neck." Sam shrugs. "I figured it had to have come with me for a reason, except nobody could tell me what that reason was."

"And you... what? You just shoved it into your bag and never bothered to tell me about it?"

Sam just looks confused. "I put it somewhere it wouldn't get lost, and I pretty much didn't think about it after that. Are you upset? You seem upset."

"I'm not upset!" Dean snaps. "I just want to know why you kept this a secret!"

"I didn't keep it a secret," Sam insists. "I didn't think it was important. I mean, you said yourself it was useless, right? It's a worthless piece of junk, and you threw it away. I just kept it because it was the only physical thing that came out of Hell with me, and I figured someday we might need it for something. Why are you getting all bent out of shape?"

Dean blows out a long breath. "You know what? Never mind."

Sam holds it out. "Technically, I guess it's yours. Did you want it back?"

"No," he shakes his head. "I shouldn't have been messing with your stuff anyway. Keep it."

"Okay," Sam kneels next to his bag and puts it back in the little pocket. "I don't care if you look through my stuff, there aren't any secrets in here. If I had secrets, which I don't, I'd hide them way better than that. I just didn't want it to get lost, which is why I sewed it in there. So, we going out?"

Dean doesn't feel remotely like going out now, but he's already gotten dressed and shaved and it seems like a waste at this point. "Yeah, sure. You spot any good bars around?"

Sam flashes him another of those grins that give Dean the creeps, because they're always accompanied by that same fish-eyed stare. "Yup. Plenty of cute girls, it doesn't look half-bad in terms of the selection, and it's not expensive. I'll fill you in on what I found out while we're there. First round's on me, though by the looks of it you've got a bit of a head start," he jerks his head toward the wastebasket with the two empty cans in it. Two years ago, that would have been Sam's way of implying that Dean was drinking too much. Now, though, it's a straight statement of fact, and all it does is depress Dean more.

"All right then, Dexter, lead the way to the inexpensive booze."

~*~

"So I think we're actually dealing with the spirit of the doctor himself," Sam tells him over their first round of drinks. "The list of victims is almost longer than my arm, but none of them really fit the profile, you know? I don't think any of them knew what he was up to."

Dean pops a handful of peanuts and finds himself wishing they were pretzels. There's a couple of cute girls in dresses that reveal way more than they hide sitting at the bar a few feet from their table giving both of them a very appreciative once-over, but he barely spares them a glance.

"Yeah? Okay. Why the doctor? I'm guessing that he's dead?"

"Yup. Committed suicide when he found out that the authorities were onto him. I guess he figured he wouldn't stand a chance in court, so he sneaked into the radiology section and basically nuked himself, the same way he was doing to his patients, only a lot more. Died pretty horribly within a week, according to hospital records. Let me tell you, it's not a nice way to go."

"Okay. So Doctor Mengele goes nuts, kills a bunch of patients, then offs himself. You think he's trying to carry on where he left off?"

"Sounds like it to me. It makes more sense than it being one of his patients, don't you think?"

"Victimology is off, though," Dean points out. "Why not go after cancer patients like he was doing when he was alive? I mean, remember that ghost nurse who was killing off the guys in that prison? That made a lot more sense."

"She was killed in a prison riot."

Dean isn't even sure how that's relevant. "Okay, whatever. We'll look into your doctor. It's easier than tracking down all eleven billionty of his patients, anyway."

"Tomorrow, right?" Sam shoots him a look that Dean can only describe as predatory. "I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure those two girls over at the bar are game for pretty much anything tonight. Be my wingman?"

The thought turns Dean's stomach. "Uh, pass. I've had a couple too many, I think," he gestures futilely at the table, even though he hasn't had nearly enough alcohol to get more than a little buzzed. "You, uh, go on and do... whatever, though. You know, if it floats your boat, or... yeah. Just don't bring them back to the room, all right?"

Sam shrugs. "Suit yourself, bro. You go get your beauty sleep, and I'm going to go score. Don't wait up!"

"Never do anymore," Dean mutters, tossing a couple of bills on the table to cover his tab. Sam can pay for his own damned drinks.

The night air feels a lot better on his face once he's outside and free from the cloying atmosphere of the bar—too much perfume and cigarettes all mingling together. Maybe bars aren't really his scene anymore, he thinks, trying not to let the notion depress him too much. He takes a roundabout route back to the motel, reluctant to simply give up and go to bed right away, but eventually he finds himself standing in front of the door to the room and almost entirely sober, the moon high in the sky overhead.

Dean empties what's left of his flask, decides he'll refill it in the morning, crawls under the covers of his bed, and falls asleep almost immediately. He jerks awake again sometime later, both surprised to find that it's still dark and surprised that he managed to fall asleep at all. He sits up blearily, trying to figure out just what it was that woke him, until he registers the sound of quiet coughing and the toilet flushing in the bathroom. He makes a face, but swings his legs over the side of the bed, pushes himself to his feet to go knock on the door.

"Okay in there?"

"Fine," Sam's voice is a little strangled. It's a sound Dean knows well, and means Sam has been throwing up. It's more than a little weird that he still sounds the same, even if it's not really Sam in that body anymore. "Must've eaten something bad."

Dean nudges the door open when he finds it unlocked. Sam is head-down over the sink, rinsing out his mouth. "You sure? You've had a cast-iron stomach since you came back. I mean, Sam was always eating these froufy little salads, but you've pretty much been eating whatever without any problems."

Sam reaches for his toothbrush and smears toothpaste over it, making a face at himself in the mirror—probably because his mouth still tastes like puke. "No idea. Whatever it is, something's not agreeing with me. Feel like crap."

Worry-about-Sam appears to be hard-written into Dean's genetic code or something, because he takes a step forward into the room, already checking Sam over for visual cues that he's sick. It's a little hard to tell, because this Sam has none of the usual tells that Dean usually looks for. He's flushed though, his cheeks beginning to blossom bright red with what could be a fever, and there are reddish patches appearing on his neck.

"You look like you might have a fever," he concedes. "Maybe you picked up a bug at the hospital? I didn't even know you could get sick. How does that work?"

"Beats me," Sam says, his words distorted around his toothbrush. "It's not like I came out of Hell with an instruction manual, you know?"

"Guess not. Normally I'd tell you to get some sleep, but..."

"Yeah," Sam spits the toothpaste into the sink. "I'll just do some research, or whatever. Keep myself busy. We have Advil, it should take care of whatever this is. Go back to bed, I don't want to deal with you tomorrow if you're a crabby, sleep-deprived zombie."

"Yeah, fuck you too," Dean says without energy.

If Sam doesn't want his help, then screw him, he thinks, and simply goes back to bed and pulls his pillow back over his head so that he doesn't have to be aware of the light from the laptop, glowing softly from the next bed for the rest of the night, reminding him of his failures with every passing second.

~*~

Dean sleeps badly, kept awake by the sound of Sam shuffling to the bathroom every few minutes. Eventually, though, he does manage to fall into a slightly deeper sleep, unbroken by outside noises. When he wakens the next morning, he finds Sam has ditched the laptop in favour of staying in the bathroom. Dean finds him sitting on the floor next to the toilet, leaning against the grimy tiled wall, his eyes closed against the harsh glare from the overhead light. Dean hesitates in the doorway, watching curiously as Sam's chest rises and falls evenly, one arm draped over his middle. He looks terrible, sweaty and flushed, his hair clinging to his face, and there are red patches of skin on his arms and legs that look like they're beginning to blister.

"Sam?" he says softly, almost reluctant to wake him if this is the first time Sam has managed to sleep in over a year and a half.

Sam's eyes snap open immediately, though. "What?"

Dean moves closer and sits on the edge of the tub beside him. "You look like shit, dude."

"Feel like shit," Sam confirms. "Was up half the night losing everything I ate for the past two years, or what felt like it anyway."

"Ugh," Dean musters a little bit of sympathy. "Just puking? Or—"

"Or," Sam agrees, and Dean winces.

"I never even heard you."

"You sleep like the damned dead," Sam mutters, licking his lips in a futile attempt to moisten them.

In spite of his better judgement Dean leans over and brushes the back of his fingers against Sam's forehead. "Yeah, I've felt ovens less hot than that. You still sick to your stomach? Okay," he blows out a breath, worry warring with tired resignation somewhere near his sternum. "Figures we wouldn't get out of this unscathed. You thinking what I'm thinking?"

Sam tries unsuccessfully to push himself further upright, subsides again and lets his eyes close. "Symptoms are about right. Was looking them up last night, before my intestines decided they'd rather be on the outside of my body. Fever's getting worse, too," he says matter-of-factly, as though he's discussing some random guy off the street instead of describing symptoms that mean he might very well die in a couple of days.

"Hospital it is, then. Think you can make it to the car if I help you? Sam," he snaps his fingers above Sam's face when he doesn't answer, and waits a tense moment before Sam's eyes flutter open again.

"What?"

"You with me? I asked if you could get to the car on your own power."

Sam isn't quite focusing on him, though. "I, um... I was trying to think if... What were you saying?"

"Fuck," Dean mutters to himself. "Okay, we're getting up. On three. Ready? One, two, three!"

He doesn't wait for Sam to be ready, just shoves an arm under Sam's shoulders and hauls him to his feet. Sam wavers a bit but rallies after a few seconds, letting Dean take some of his weight.

"Feel like shit," he murmurs, almost to himself. He sounds surprised, like he doesn't really understand what's going on, and it occurs to Dean that in the few months they've been together he doesn't remember Sam so much as getting the sniffles. He has no idea what sickness is like if your soul isn't in the same zip code as you are, and maybe Sam has no idea either. What a fucking mess this is turning out to be, he thinks to himself.

It takes a little bit of coaxing and a whole lot of careful manoeuvring to get Sam all the way into the passenger seat of the Impala. It's not that he won't cooperate—he’s actually being more compliant than Dean remembers him ever being when he was sick before, back when he still had his soul on board—it’s that he's not really lucid enough to follow Dean's instructions, keeps getting confused and trying to go back to the room and forcing Dean to shove him in the right direction. If Sam were a little smaller, or at least didn't have fourteen tons of muscle on him, this might be easier, Dean thinks darkly.

By the time they get to the hospital Sam's got his wits back about him, though for how long is anyone's guess. He gets whisked away from Dean on a gurney the minute the doctors find out what his symptoms are, leaving Dean with yet another pile of paperwork to fill out. At least he already knows the doctor who'll be treating his brother, he tells himself, and resists the urge to kick the nearest wall or, worse, to simply leave all the paperwork there and go find the nearest bar to lose himself in the bottom of a glass.

It's only about forty minutes later, but it feels like an eternity by the time Dr. Rayner comes out to talk to him, her expression grim.

"I am so sorry," she blurts, and he can only nod.

"Yeah."

"If you need anything, to contact his family or to arrange for anything at all, please let me know, I'll be happy to help."

"It's fine. He doesn't really have any family, but I'll stick with him. We need to figure out what's causing this, though. Uh, is he awake? I need to talk to him, figure out just what he was doing before he got sick."

"He's awake, but we haven't been able to bring down his fever much. He's... I'm afraid it looks worse than the others," she confides in a low tone. "Each patient has been exhibiting signs of higher and higher levels of exposure to whatever's been causing this. I can't even begin to explain it, it makes absolutely no sense. The progression of symptoms should be the same, not exponential."

He gives her arm an absent pat. "You're running bloodwork, I assume?"

"Of course."

"Okay, let me know what you find. I'm going to see if he can talk to me, try to get something that makes sense out of all of this."

"I don't know how this could have happened," she all but wails, wringing her hands. "He can't have been so close to the source of contamination. Unless he went somewhere without you?"

"He might have. I'll see what I can find out, and I'll keep you informed."

He already knows the labs aren't going to find anything, but at the very least it'll keep her out of his hair until he's able to deal with the ghost that's causing this. He barely listens to her assurances, simply walks away from her and heads directly into the exam room where they're holding Sam until they can get a bed ready for him upstairs. Sam's lying on the same gurney, eyes open but glassy with fever, staring at the ceiling. Dean pulls up a chair but doesn't sit, leans on the back of it.

"Hey. How you doing?"

Sam turns his head a little to face him, and Dean winces as he sees a patch of skin beginning to blister and peel along his jawline. "Pretty sure this is bad," Sam rasps. "They can't even tell why I'm not unconscious yet. Maybe it's the whole soullessness thing."

"You've been unconscious before, can't be that."

"Guess I'm just resilient," Sam fiddles a little with the IV sticking into his arm until Dean reaches out and puts a hand over his to stop him. "I think it's ghost fever."

"What?"

"You know, like a Buruburu," Sam says, fingers moving restlessly under Dean's. "The crazy doctor commits suicide by extreme radiation poisoning, and now something's set him off and he's making the rest of us relive what he felt when he died."

"Shit," Dean has none-too-fond memories of that particular experience. "But a salt-'n'-burn should work, right? Torch the remains, problem solved?"

"Probably," Sam agrees, but his voice is fading. "Bobby knew, last time. Helped figure it out. You should call him, ask him about it."

"The last time, as I recall, you both came up with the idea of scaring the ghost to death. Not your best plan ever, if you want my opinion."

Sam chuckles at that. "Guess not. Probably won't work here anyway. Just... keep your options open. Hey, you got the laptop?"

"I put it in the car. Didn't want to leave it in the motel, so it's in the trunk."

Sam nods. "Bring it before you go? I'm going to keep looking, see if there's anything we missed."

Dean's stomach clenches unpleasantly. "How about you concentrate on getting better, huh?"

"That's exactly what I'm doing," Sam points out, infuriatingly reasonably for a guy whose brain appears to be cooking in his head. "As long as I'm awake, it makes more sense for me to keep researching than just to lie here and stare at the ceiling. It's not like I'm going to sleep, right? So unless I'm unconscious, I may as well make better use of my time."

"Fine. I'll be right back."

By the time he gets back they're already wheeling Sam up to his room. Dean follows close on their heels, leaves the laptop on the table by the bed. Sam's eyes are closed, forehead dotted with beads of sweat. Even if he's not sleeping, Dean figures it's better if he rests. Can't put Sam's soul back in his body if it's dead, he tells himself, and resists the urge to smooth Sam's hair away from his face.

~*~

Sam's notes on the doctor himself are frustratingly cryptic, but Dean does at least get the name he wants: Peter Donnelly. It takes a little more digging in the archives at the records office, but eventually he gets the right plot number for where the murdering son of a bitch got buried—bought by his family even if he was a psychopath with a God complex, apparently. There's not much to be done right now, though. It's the middle of the damned day, and desecrating graves in broad daylight is not something Dean is willing to try just yet, not even when Sam's body is on the line. Instead, he calls Bobby.

"And you're only telling me this now?" comes the incredulous response.

"Chill, Bobby, it's been barely a few hours. I was finding out where they buried the douchebag so I can go toast his remains as soon as it's dark," Dean rolls his eyes but keeps his hand up to shield what he's saying from casual eavesdroppers. It's not that he's particularly concerned, especially since he ducked around a corner into a deserted alleyway, but you can never be too careful these days. There's no telling who might be listening anymore. "I just wanted to make sure all our bases were covered, you know? Ask if there's anything I'm missing. I mean, last time I kind of wasn't paying all that much attention to how you fixed the problem."

"Yeah, you were a hot mess, as I recall," Bobby says, not unkindly.

"Bite me, I was infected by a ghost. So am I missing anything?"

"Well, you can never really go wrong with salting and burning, that usually does the trick. Just make sure the ghost ain't anchored by something else. The only way to find that out is if you burn 'im and he sticks around anyway. You figure out why he picked Sam and not you?"

Dean shrugs even though he knows Bobby can't see him. "No idea. It's pretty random, seems to me. A death row inmate, an accountant, a nurse, some random dude from the hospital administration, and now Sam? I got nothin'. It might as well have been me, the only big difference between Sam and me lately is that I've got a soul and he doesn't. Oh, and he's way more OCD and I'm better-looking."

Bobby snorts. "You're cracking jokes now?"

"Better than the alternative," Dean paces along the alley, checks behind him, paces the other way again. "I gotta go, Bobby. I'm gonna check on Sam, go back when it gets dark and torch this sucker."

"You want me to come down?"

Dean hesitates. There's nothing he wants more right now than for Bobby to drop everything and come running, for there to be someone else in this whole mess who's not an angel or a soulless dickbag to talk to. "Nah, we're good. I'll call you later, let you know how it went. Thanks, Bobby."

"You're welcome, kid. Be careful, you hear?"

"Always am," Dean lies.

Sam's fever is up by the time he gets back to the hospital, and the patches of blisters and peeling skin have multiplied. He doesn't respond to Dean's voice at first, so Dean just sits next to his bed and pulls the laptop onto his knees, waiting for him to wake up or for it to get dark out, whichever comes first. Sam's not asleep, but he's not really conscious either, shifting uncomfortably on the bed that's slightly too small for him and murmuring something Dean can't make out under his breath.

Once Dean has well and truly lost track of the time, Sam stirs again, eyes opening. He twists on the bed to look at Dean, eyes still glassy, his expression a little bewildered. Carefully he raises a hand toward his head, rakes his fingers over his scalp, and comes away with a handful of hair.

"Oh," he says softly. "Damn."

"Fuck," Dean is up and out of his chair in a flash. "Sammy?"

That gets him a weird look before he realises his slip of the tongue, but he doesn't acknowledge it and neither does Sam.

"Guess I'm getting worse."

Dean looks out the window to where the sun is only just beginning to creep toward the horizon. "Almost time. The minute I can get out there without being seen, I'm on it, okay? Sam? Hey," he says, when Sam doesn't answer. "You still awake?"

Sam's staring straight ahead though, and doesn't appear to have heard him at all.

"Sam? Shit!"

The next thing Dean knows Sam's eyes have rolled back into his head and his whole body threatens to come off the bed as his back arches.

"Hey! I need somebody in here!" Dean yells, forcing himself not to grab Sam's shoulders to pin him down while he seizes. He knows just enough about first aid with seizures to know not to touch Sam, even though every single other instinct is screaming at him to haul Sam into his arms and never let him go again. "Somebody get a doctor in here!"

The room fills almost instantly with nurses, Dr. Rayner close behind them, pulling her stethoscope from around her neck and barking orders. A moment later Dean finds himself unceremoniously shoved into the hallway and watches helplessly as the doctor draws the curtain around Sam's bed to afford them some privacy.

"Fuck," he says to the nearest wall, then spins on his heel and all but sprints for the elevator. Waiting for sunset be damned, he's going to go dig up the dickbag right now and make him wish he'd never existed.

~*~

It takes a little time for him to gather up his supplies and change into less-recognizable clothes, and by the time he's wandered through all the various plots in the cemetery it's almost dark anyway. Who knew the cemetery was this goddamn big, anyway? It makes no sense. He doesn't bother calling Bobby, just picks up his spade once he's found the headstone he's looking for, and starts digging in earnest.

Digging up a grave is never as easy as they make it look in the movies, especially when the grave is old and the grass has grown in thick and even on top of it. It goes faster with two people, but even then it takes a long damned time, and if you're in the middle of a graveyard with lots of foot traffic, keeping your activities a secret is a damned sight harder. Luckily no one wanted to give the good doctor a burial plot with a view, and so the grave is way at the far end of the lot, which at the very least means Dean doesn't run much risk of discovery.

It takes him the better part of an hour to break through enough of the sod to start digging properly, and by the end he simply kneels on the ground and tears it away in strips. The earth underneath is mercifully relatively loose and not like the solid mounds of clay that they've sometimes had to deal with, but it's still a bitch to shovel. He plants the spade into the ground, shoves it all the way down with his foot, and tries to establish a steady rhythm, wishing not for the first time that Sam was here, or Cas, or Bobby, or anybody who could be his back-up.

Mostly he wishes it was Sam—the real Sam, not the robot version that he's been dragging around with him for the past few months only so that it won't use his brother's body to commit atrocities or contract STDs because this version of Sam doesn't fucking know any better. There are times when he still misses Sam so much it's like a hole has been dug out of his chest where his heart is meant to be, only made worse by the presence of this damned stranger wearing his brother's face.

"Son of a bitch," he stops for a minute to catch his breath, mops the sweat from his forehead. "Burial was too good for you, you psychopath."

It's pitch black by the time his spade hits wood, and he drops to his knees and uses his hands to brush away the dirt from the surface of the coffin, then uses the spade to stab at it repeatedly until the already rotting wood gives way, pries it open, hoists himself back out of the grave in order to retrieve his salt and lighter fluid.

"Burn in hell, dickbag," he says to the dried-up remains beneath him, pouring the salt more than a little generously over the desiccated corpse. He pours out all the lighter fluid too, just for good measure, before lighting a match. "And I actually know what that's like, so it ain't no joke. If you weren't in Hell before, you're definitely going there now. Fucker."

The corpse goes up in a really satisfying way. It'd be more satisfying if Sam were here to witness it with him, but at least this means that Sam's going to live to see the morning. Otherwise, if Dr. Rayner is to be believed, Sam's not going to make it more than another couple of days, and Dean isn't really sure what to make of that, if anything.

He pulls out his phone on the way back, dials the number of the hospital, where he's told that Dr. Rayner has gone home for a few hours of much-needed sleep. "I'll put you through to the on-call doctor."

The minute the strange voice comes over the line Dean is already barking questions. "What's the patients' status?"

"I'm afraid I can't discuss that over the phone," comes the careful answer.

"One of them is my partner, damn it. I'll be back at the hospital in less than an hour, and all I want is a damned update. Can you give me that or do I need to go over your head?"

"I realise that you're upset, but there's not need to take that tone with me," the doctor replies snippily. "I'm afraid that the news is not good—we've had two more deaths since you were last here."

Dean's heart lurches unpleasantly in his chest. "Sam?" he asks quietly, hoping his voice won't betray him.

"He is still alive, I would have told you right away, but I'm afraid Ms. Carter and Mr. Gerard didn't make it. The illness was too severe. Look, I don't want to do this over the phone, but... you must realise as well as I do that your partner is exhibiting symptoms of exposure to a lethal dose of radiation. I'm afraid that no matter what we do..." he trails off.

"Yeah, okay. Give me half an hour, there should be someone with him."

He hangs up before the doctor has a chance to answer, heads back to the motel to wash off the grave dirt and change his clothes, even though every instinct is yelling at him to get back to Sam as soon as he can. He's pulling on his jeans, cursing as they stick to his still-damp skin, when he realises that he should call Bobby, give him an update on how Sam is doing.

"Jesus, boy," is Bobby's reaction. "Why didn't you tell me it was this bad?"

"Oh, I don't know, Bobby, maybe because I've been busy trying to fix this!" Dean snaps, shoving his feet back into his boots, the phone wedged between his ear and shoulders.

"All right, keep your shirt on," Bobby's tone turns soothing—well, as soothing as Bobby ever gets, anyway. "Look, I'm coming down. It ain't that far, maybe a five, six hour drive tops. You hang in there, all right? Tell Sam I'm comin', and tell him not to give up."

Dean takes a deep breath and nods. "Yeah, okay. Thanks, Bobby."

"No problem, kid. You know I won't leave you in the lurch when the chips are down."

And he's pretty much the only one, Dean thinks tiredly as he hangs up. He stays where he is for a moment, allowing himself the brief luxury of feeling every aching muscle, exhausted right down to the marrow of his bones. He doesn't know exactly when their lives got this shitty, that they only have Bobby to count on when they're in trouble anymore. There was a time when they had other allies—Ellen and Jo and Ash, Rufus and Pamela—but apparently allying yourself with the Winchesters is a goddamned curse.

For a second he's tempted to just stay here and wait for Bobby. It's not like the replicant back at the hospital gives a good goddamn about whether or not Dean is there by his bedside to hold his hair back while he pukes, or to watch while his intestines liquefy. This version of his brother doesn't care about anyone, definitely doesn't care about him, no matter what he might say to the contrary. Hell, this version of Sam doesn't know why the old Sam would have pulled that fucking amulet out of the trash and kept it all this time, and didn't care enough to keep it himself, just shoved it out of sight at the bottom of his duffel bag.

On an impulse, Dean gets up and goes over to the bag, unzips it and dumps the contents onto the floor, not caring this time about keeping Sam's things in order. He pulls out the amulet, holds it in his palm again, and wonders just what Sam was thinking when he picked it up from where Dean had thrown it away, what he was thinking keeping it after all this time. That Sam—his Sam—is long gone, though, and it doesn't look like he's ever coming back, especially not if the thing using his body dies.

And for one brief, treacherous moment, Dean finds himself wondering if that might not be for the best after all.

~*~

Sam is awake when Dean gets back to his hospital room, but he doesn't recognize Dean at all. His hands are completely wrapped in gauze, and there are more bandages visible under his hospital gown. More of his hair has fallen out in the meantime, and Dean can see his scalp has turned red and blistered and is even oozing in places.

"How you doing, Sammy?" the nickname slips out again in spite of himself.

Sam turns his head a little bit, and a few strands of hair cling to the pillow, left behind as he moves. Dean tries not to cringe. Christ, maybe death would be a mercy, at this point. "I don't know," he slurs, but Dean gets the impression he never even heard the question. "I'd tell you if I did," he says, confirming Dean's suspicion.

"What don't you know?"

Sam doesn't answer, and Dean lets himself sink into the chair by the bed, rubbing a hand over his mouth as he tries to gather his thoughts. It's fucking unfair, is what it is. Every time he thinks he might be close to getting his brother back, something else happens to yank Sam further out of his reach. Even now, with Sam lying less than a foot away, he might as well be light-years away from where Dean is.

"Seriously, was I a mass murderer in a past life?" he mutters, staring at his hands. He's a little surprised to see he kept the amulet, wound the cord around his wrist without even realizing it. He doesn't remember doing it, but somehow it's comforting to see it there, and he nudges it further up on his wrist so that the amulet itself rests nestled in the palm of his hand, warm and a little reassuring just by the mere fact of its existence.

He looks up at the ceiling, then. "Hey, um, Cas? I don't know if you're really busy or whatever but... Sam's dying. I'm kind of running out of time, here. I don't even know if you can help, or what but I could really use..." he doesn't bother finishing his sentence.

For a while he stays silent, hands clasped between his knees. "Bobby will be here in the morning," he tells Sam's unresponsive form. "We'll look into it again, I swear. I mean, if it's ghost fever, then all we need to do is figure out how to destroy whatever it is that... God, I don't know. I don't know how this sort of thing works. Guess I should have paid better attention to what you were doing, but I was sort of too busy nearly dying. I never really said thank you for that either, did I? You must have been pretty goddamned worried, if what I'm feeling is anything to go by. Sam?"

Sam doesn't answer, but his lips are moving silently, talking to someone or something Dean can't see.

"I don't even know why this ghost picked you, you know?"

This time he hears Cas' arrival, a quiet gust of air in the doorway. "I didn't know," are the first words out of his mouth as he comes into the room. Dean decides not to point out that he totally used the door this time, and why can't he always do it? Cas comes to stand next to Sam's bed, both hands on the railing, and looks down at him, expression unreadable.

"Can you—can you heal him?" Dean asks, scarcely allowing himself to hope. Except he must have been holding out some hope because his stomach drops when Cas shakes his head.

"This is of supernatural origin, and almost entirely outside of my power. I can try, but at best I will be prolonging his life for a few hours."

Dean nods. "Do it. Please. Even a few hours is better than nothing." Or a few hours might just be prolonging Sam’s suffering, but he’s not quite ready to let this thing run its course. Not when there’s still a ghost of a chance he might be able to get his Sam back.

"Very well."

Dean gets up and paces across the room and back, fiddling with the amulet in his hands. "I don't know what to do anymore, Cas. I torched the remains, but there's something else going on here, something that's keeping him sick. What the hell am I supposed to do? I can't even tell how this goddamned psychotic ghost even picked his victims. I mean, the only thing they all had in common is that they were all varying levels of dicks without much of a conscience while they were alive. But it's not like it's Sam's fault he has no soul," he exclaims, tempted to kick the foot of Sam's bed out of frustration.

"True," Cas says, and something in his voice makes Dean look up sharply. He's only seen that expression on Cas' face a handful of times, but he knows it means that Cas is hiding something from him.

"Something you want to share, Cas?"

"No," Castiel shakes his head to emphasize his words. "It's bears no relevance to the situation at hand."

Dean gives him a flat look. "Yeah, are you lying to me, Cas?"

"I promise you, it has no relevance."

"But you are keeping something from me. Cas, come on, throw me a bone, here. Is it about Sam's soul? It is, isn't it?" he insists when Cas won't meet his gaze. "Cas, you can't keep this from me if you've found something out! Don't you trust me?"

"It's not that," Cas says. "It would serve no purpose to tell you what I know, it would only be damaging. It will not help us recover Sam's soul, nor will it help us to find a cure for his current condition."

"For fuck's sake!" Dean turns away, throwing his hands up, but he keeps his voice down to a heated whisper, at least trying to be mindful of the other patients in this wing, of Sam lying far too still in his bed even though he's probably beyond hearing them at this point. "Cas, whatever it is, I promise I won't be mad, okay? Okay, no, I don't promise that, but I promise I won't be mad forever. Come on, we've been helping you, haven't we?" He knows how desperate he sounds, but he can't bring himself to care at this point. "You can't know for sure this won't help, can you? Please!"

Cas leans further over Sam's bed, and places a hand on the top of his head. He closes his eyes, and for a moment a hushed stillness falls over the room, as though all its occupants are holding their breath. Then Sam stirs on the bed. He opens his eyes, frowns a little bit when he makes out what's directly in front of him.

"Cas?"

"I am here, Sam," Cas says. "Dean wishes me to impart something, and I will respect his wishes, but as it affects you too I must ask if you, too, wish to hear it."

"Are you doing this?" Sam's gaze flickers toward Dean, and he looks lost and even a little frightened, which is more than Dean knows how to deal with.

"No, Sam. This is the result of a spirit, not divine intervention. Do you remember?"

"I remember. Hurts, though," Sam murmurs.

"Cas, if we're caring and sharing, now's the time," Dean prompts.

Dean has never seen Castiel steel himself for anything before, but there's no mistaking that's what he's doing. He keeps both hands on the rail of Sam's bed, gripping it tightly, though not quite enough to break or bend it, looks down at the floor for a moment, then looks up again and turns to face Sam directly.

"Sam, it was I who raised you from perdition."

~*~

"What?" Dean is the first to recover, but he still can't wrap his mind around what he's hearing. "Cas, what are you talking about?"

Castiel doesn't answer for a moment, and Sam breaks in, voice even weaker than before. "No offense, Cas, but you kind of botched the job."

"I know, and I am sorry for it," Cas says, still looking only at Sam, like he can't bear to even turn and face Dean. "When –when God brought me back, not only hale and whole again but more powerful than ever before, I thought... I became arrogant, and I thought I knew what God's purpose for me was. I thought that it was unjust that you should suffer unending torment because of your bravery and selflessness, and so I descended into Hell to find you. It took over ten years for us to reach you," he says to Dean, though he still won't quite look him in the eye, "and that was with an entire garrison of angels. It was sheer hubris that made me think that I could descend to the furthest depths of Hell alone, unaided, and simply pluck Sam from Lucifer's clutches."

"Cas..." Dean's voice catches and breaks. The words that were on the tip of his tongue disappear entirely, and Castiel keeps talking as though he never spoke.

"It never occurred to me that your soul might remain if I brought your body back to the surface with me. I only realised that something was terribly wrong once we had already breached the borders of this realm, and you did not immediately return to Dean. And... although I suspected, it was not until I tried to sense the soul within you and found none that my suspicions were confirmed. I never at all sensed that your soul remained within the Cage with Lucifer. If I had, I promise I would not have left it behind. I was convinced that you were whole."

"Guess not," Sam manages. It sounds like it hurts him to talk.

"Evidently, and... I am sorry for it, truly."

Cas does sound sorry. Actually, he looks absolutely fucking destroyed, and that's probably the only thing preventing Dean from emptying an entire clip's worth of ammunition into him. Well, that and the fact that he didn't bother carrying a piece into the hospital.

"Fucking hell, Cas!"

Castiel does turn to look at him now. "I'm sorry. I meant only to help."

"I hate to break it to you, Cas, but this is one hell of a fuck-up," Dean snaps. "You... fuck, Cas, he threw himself into Hell to save the world, and you—you let him wander around without a soul for nearly two years? More importantly, you knew—you knew he was alive and you never so much as bothered to tell me?" He turns away, stalks to the door, comes back. "Nothing, for a whole year?"

"Sam told Bobby he didn't wish to disrupt your new life," Cas says a little desperately.

"Eavesdropper," Sam murmurs, which, okay, it makes Dean feel a little better that Cas wasn't talking to everyone except for him during that year.

"I thought you were happy," Cas takes a step toward him, away from Sam's bed, but stops when Dean jerks back, unwilling to let him get any closer just yet. "I thought you finally had the life you wanted for yourself, and... I thought you would be hurt by this—damaged—version of your brother."

"Bullshit," Dean snaps. "Admit you were just too chickenshit to come and tell me how badly you fucked up. After everything, everything we've been through, are you seriously telling me that you didn't trust me enough to come to me with this? You had to hide what you did?"

Cas looks away again, and that's the last straw. Dean crosses the narrow distance between them and grabs him by the wrist. Cas could easily snap his neck if he wanted to, but Dean is counting on the fact that he won't.

"Come on, Cas, you at least owe me an explanation!"

Instead,, Cas starts as though Dean's just electrocuted him. His eyes grow wide, the blue even more startling this close up, and he looks down at where Dean's fingers are wrapped around his forearm, the little bronze amulet brushing agains his skin.

"Where did you get that?"

"Sam had it in his bag. What the hell, Cas? Hey," he tries to pull away, but in the time it's taken him to even utter the words Castiel has reversed their positions and is now gripping his arm so tightly it hurts. "Ow, Cas! Let go!"

Instantly Castiel releases him. "My apologies," he says even as he slips the amulet off Dean's wrist, holding it in his hand, unwittingly mirroring Dean's earlier pose, just out of Dean's reach. "It's warm," he says, with not a little wonder in his tone.

"Doesn't that mean that we're near God?"

"I don't know. I don't think so," Cas confesses. "It grew somewhat colder when I took it from you. I think, rather... Here," he holds it out to Sam, lays it gently in his bandaged hand. "Do you feel that?"

Sam's eyes have drifted closed, but he rallies a little. "'s warm," he murmurs. "Like when I was wearing it. Thought it was always like that."

"No. It was always cold when I had it with me and, I believe, when Dean used to wear it. This is a new occurrence."

Dean reaches out carefully to brush just one finger against the amulet loosely clasped in Sam's hand and has to bite back a gasp of surprise when he feels just how hot it is. "It's a lot hotter now. What does it mean?" he asks, completely forgetting that less than two minutes ago he was ready to punch Cas into next week.

"I―think it might be Sam's soul," Cas says, and the wonder in his voice has only grown. "I think that, somehow, it's housed in this, at least temporarily."

"You're kidding me."

Sam's fingers curl around the amulet protectively. "He might be right. I dunno, but it feels familiar..."

"Sam, are you sure?" It all feels a little unreal, after all this time, to think that they might have been carrying Sam's soul around at the bottom of his goddamned duffel bag. Typical, Dean thinks. "Sam?"

Sam forces his eyes open. "'m thirsty," he rasps, and Dean reaches for the cup of ice chips on the table by his bed, holds a spoonful to his lips.

"Are you sure it's right?"

Sam swallows another spoonful of ice chips before answering. "Dunno. I'm not even sure of my name right now, to be honest. Can't think straight."

"So, can you put it back in him, if it's his soul?"

Castiel looks perplexed for a moment. "I don't think it's within my power to simply―put it back in, as you say. But, perhaps a ritual of some kind? A binding, maybe. But Sam would have to be a willing participant―give his consent."

That gives Dean pause. It's not like Sam has been all that enthusiastic about the notion of getting back his soul after it was all screwed up in Hell. Sam seems to read his mind.

"Didn't you say it might kill me?"

"When I thought it had spent all that time in the Cage with Lucifer. But if it came with you, trapped in the amulet, when I first brought you out, then there is no reason to suppose that it is any more damaged than when it went in."

"So it's safe?" Dean asks, trying not to betray how relieved he is.

Cas tilts his head. "Inasmuch of anything of this nature is safe. But I would have to devise a ritual, and we would likely need help. These things are complex, and Sam will not be able to assist us much in the ritual itself."

"Bobby's already on his way. He'll be here in a few hours. That give you enough time to figure something out?"

"I can try."

"That settles it, then," Dean practically feels like sobbing in relief, except that there'll be time for that later. "I mean, you want this, right Sam? Sam?" Sam's eyes are closed again, and this time he doesn't respond when Dean gives his arm a careful shake. "Sam, come on. Hey, we need to know you're on board, here. Sam? Fuck!"

"He's unconscious," Cas tells him, entirely unnecessarily. "There is no guarantee this will work," he cautions him again. "And the damage to his body may be too extensive to repair. You said that the spirit targeted him because of his lack of empathy?"

Dean holds up his hands in a gesture of impotence. "Maybe? It's the best theory I've got so far, and the other victims are all dead. I have pretty much nothing to go on except the hope that shoving his soul back inside him will give him a fighting chance. And if not... at least he'll have his soul for a little while, at least."

~*~

By the time Bobby gets there the first rays of dawn are coming through the window of the hospital room, and Sam is still unconscious. Bobby comes up behind Dean's chair, startling him a little when he puts both hands on his shoulders and squeezes comfortingly.

"How's he doin'?"

Dean shakes his head. "He had another seizure about an hour ago. They're talking intubation, but there doesn't seem to be much point. The doctor says he's going to slip into a coma soon and then he, uh, he just won't wake up again," he says, and is proud that his voice doesn't shake a damned bit.

"I'm sorry, boy."

"No, we're not giving up yet," Dean says. "There aren't any other cases of this, which means I got the bastard good when I torched the remains. We just—we just need to fix Sam, and Cas thinks he can do it. It's because he has no soul right now, right? So when we get it back—"

"Dean, boy," Bobby interrupts gently. "You really think you're going to get it back sometime in the next few hours?"

Dean's eyes are burning from fatigue and unshed tears, but he holds up the amulet and dangles it in front of Bobby's face. "He had it with him the whole time, stupid robot asshole. He never said anything. Sam kept it after—after I got rid of it. God only knows why, if it had been me and he'd done something like that I probably would have left it where he dropped it."

"You ain't makin' sense."

"No, I understand that," Dean rubs at his eyes. He's so damned tired. "I... Cas thinks it's Sam's soul, trapped in here," he closes his fist around the amulet. "I don't even know how, but it was the only thing that came out of Hell with him. Maybe it's because we're soul-mates, you know? We were always supposed to be together, and the necklace was the only thing Sam had down there in the Cage that was still connected to me. It's just a theory—I got more questions than answers, to be perfectly honest with you."

"You think your angel will be able to explain it better?"

"He's not my angel," Dean says mutinously. "And no, probably not. I barely understand it when he talks. Mind you, you speak Japanese, so you might have an edge. He's trying to come up with a binding ritual for this. If Sam were here he'd be all over this. It's the kind of thing he used to love messing around with, you know?"

"Yeah, all right. You think he might need help?"

Dean lifts one shoulder to show just how much he knows about that. "Worth asking him, I guess. I think he's using the motel room as a base of operations. I gotta stay here, Bobby. In case... uh, in case it doesn't work, or... if we're too late. I know it's not Sam, not right now, but... I don't know, I don't want him to be alone, you know?"

Bobby pats his shoulder. "I know. No one should have to die alone. It ain't wrong to sit with him, even if he ain't exactly like the brother you remember."

Sam hasn't so much as twitched in the last hour or so, but his breathing's getting more laboured, the beeping of the heart rate monitor increasingly erratic. Dean wants nothing more than to grab the hand that's lying nearest him on the bed and simply hang on and never let go, except that it might hurt Sam and he can't bring himself to do that.

"You know, I always thought he didn't have any feelings at all," he says quietly. "It was easier to think of him that way, like he's not a person at all. But he was scared, Bobby. I saw it with my own eyes. He was afraid, just like anyone else when you tell them they're probably going to die. It's why he didn't want his soul back."

"I could have told you that," Bobby remarks, but he manages not to make it sound like the rebuke it should be.

"I think you did tell me, I just wasn't listening," Dean sighs, fiddling with the edge of the sheet on Sam's bed. "It's just that he didn't care about other people, didn't care about me―and that's what was so hard to take, you know? I just—I waited so long to get him back, and he acted like I didn't matter at all, and it made me so goddamned angry. Shit, I don't know."

"You boys do have a knack for gettin' yourselves tied up in knots over each other for no good reason," Bobby says, voice uncharacteristically gruff. "I tell you one thing, even without a soul, your brother still valued you more than anyone else in the world. It's why he wouldn't let any of us tell you he was alive. 'Course, I didn't know that at the time, but it don't take a genius to figure out that he never wanted you to know he wasn't right."

Dean twists a little in his chair to look up at him. "Bobby, he let me get turned by a vampire."

"Well, think about it from the perspective of a man who ain't got a soul. Humour me," Bobby says when Dean gives him a skeptical look. "No empathy means he doesn't care about how you feel, but he does care about your safety. Otherwise he'd have just left you to be killed by those djinn all those months ago. He knew there was an antidote, so he made the decision based on that."

"God, that is so twisted I don't even know where to begin."

"I know it don't make much sense, boy, but I'd take heart, anyway. It means that, somewhere in there, your brother still loves you."

~*~

It's nearly seven o'clock in the morning when Castiel returns. "Is there any change?"

"No, none. Well, if you count getting incrementally worse, then I guess maybe there is," Dean says. "Please tell me you've got good news."

Cas goes to stand next to Sam's bed, places a hand on his forehead again, apparently concentrating on something. "Bobby has been assisting me in my research. We think we have come up with a ritual that will allow Sam's soul to reintegrate his body, but it requires some fine-tuning. You are right," he says abruptly, removing his hand from Sam's head. "His condition has deteriorated since I was last here."

"Tell me something I don't know."

Castiel pauses to look at him, tilting his head. "Was that a rhetorical statement, or do you wish me to instruct you in something about which you know nothing?"

"Rhetorical statement, Cas. But thanks anyway. You're getting better at spotting those," Dean offers by way of a token compliment, but Cas brightens perceptibly.

"Thank you."

"So how long until you and Bobby have fine-tuned this ritual of yours, do you think?"

"A few more hours. We have found some texts that are proving invaluable in our research."

"Where the hell did you get access to texts? We never got around to the local library here, but occult texts aren't exactly run-of-the-mill in these places."

"I simply transported us both there and back here."

"Of course you did," Dean pinches the bridge of his nose.

"I thought that I might do the same with Sam, but I fear he may be too weak by then. I don't wish to place any additional strain on him, given how much of an ordeal the binding ritual may end up being for him."

"How dangerous is it?"

Castiel looks worried. His expression doesn't change much, but Dean flatters himself that he knows his friend well enough to be able to tell when he's worried. "Very dangerous, I suspect. Manipulating that much energy and simply transferring it into such a fragile vessel..."

"Whoa. What do you mean, 'that much energy?' What sort of energy are we talking, here?"

Castiel gives him a considering look. "I forget how little you know, sometimes."

"I'll try not to take that personally," Dean glances at Sam, just to make sure he's still breathing. "Educate me, here, Cas. What energy?"

"From Sam's soul. Each soul is like... like a small nuclear reactor. It's an improper simile, but it will suffice for the purposes of my explanation. It contains the potential to unleash a tremendous amount of energy. It's why souls are so prized, you understand, why demons make deals to obtain them. It's why Raphael is currently winning the war in Heaven—he has more souls on his 'side,'" Cas actually raises his hands to make quotation marks in the air, and Dean has to stifle a laugh.

"What, you mean it's like having an arsenal of nukes? Mutual assured destruction and all that?"

"It's a close enough analogy. Souls are extremely volatile—they are not meant to be used in any way other than to inhabit a human body and give it life the way no other creature in God's creation has."

"Makes sense. So... what are the risks?"

"A soul needs to be handled with care. If not, it can—well, it can explode."

Dean feels his eyes grow wide. "As in, kaboom?"

"Precisely."

"How big an explosion are we talking, here? I mean, any explosion is bad, but... what sort of collateral damage are we talking about if this little experiment goes bad?" Cas does that uncomfortable squirmy thing he does when he's thinking about keeping something from Dean. "Come on, Cas, level with me. What's on your mind?"

"If something were to go wrong... you understand that not all souls are created equal?"

Dean refrains from rolling his eyes. "No, Cas," he says patiently. "I don't understand that at all. How about you explain it to me?"

The angel appears to be fumbling for his words. "What it means is that... while most souls are roughly equal in potency, and each is priceless in terms of its value in the eyes of our Father, there are a few souls which have far more latent power than the rest. Sam's is one of those. So is yours."

"Ours? Why? Is it because we're vessels?"

"Partly," Cas confirms. "It also has to do with how you have lived your lives, with your own strength of character, and with forces that were put into motion thousands of years before you were even born. It's difficult to explain. Suffice it to say that, if I mishandle Sam's soul, the results might be disastrous."

"Okay, then," Dean breathes. "So, we're going to do this very, very carefully?"

"Very gingerly,"comes the agreement. "I will also require your permission with regards to your own soul."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Bobby explained your hypothesis that Sam's soul was bound into the amulet because it was the only thing of you that was contained in the Cage along with him. I think you were right, and that has given me reason to believe that your soul may prove to be the crucial element that will allow us to remove Sam's from the amulet and allow it to return to its proper vessel."

"Uh-huh." Dean's pretty sure he has no idea what the hell Cas is going on about. "So... what does that mean?"

"I need you to let me touch it."

"Touch it?"

"Touch it," Cas nods. "I promise to be very gentle."

"It didn't look all that gentle when you shoved your hand right into Sam's ribcage and felt around in there. Is it going to be like that?"

"Not exactly."

Dean lets his head drop into the palm of his hand. "But if we don't do it, then Sam dies."

"Yes."

He takes a deep breath. "All right, then, let's do it."

~*~

There's a ridiculously long list of supplies to obtain for the ritual, even if, from what Dean can tell, it mostly sounds like Castiel is going to shove his hand right into Dean's sternum and use himself as a conduit for Sam's soul to come out of the amulet. Even though he wants nothing more than to stay right next to Sam until the last possible minute, even Cas and Bobby can't gather everything as fast as if he helps them, so Dean reluctantly drags himself away from the hospital with a promise to come back as soon as possible.

Castiel tries to reassure him that Sam is still okay enough to hang on for the little amount of time that it'll take in order to prepare for the ritual, but it's not like Cas is infallible, and Dean can't help but worry that he's wrong this time, that he's going to come back and find that Sam has gone, without anyone there to be with him. He blinks away the sudden image of Sam standing in the muddy street in Cold Oak, sinking to his knees just a fraction of a second before Dean can get to him... the terrible, rattling exhale that signed his death. He can't think about that now, he tells himself sharply. Sam isn't going to die, not today, and not on his watch. Not if they can finish this ritual.

He tries to hurry, but sometimes these things can't be hurried, and Dean isn't sure that he's not going to lose his mind at the end of all of this. By the time he gets back to the hospital room with a couple of plastic bags full of stuff that he really hopes no one will ask about, it's well into the early afternoon.

"We should wait until twilight," Castiel says. "It's only a few hours more, but the time is better for a ritual such as this. If we had a little more time, I would suggest even waiting until just before sunrise, when the power flow would be waxing instead of waning, but all we truly require is that it be in flux."

"Am I supposed to know what you're talking about?"

Bobby interjects. "I can explain, if you'd like."

Dean shakes his head. "Thanks anyway. Maybe later. Right now, I don't think anything you say would come out sounding like English to me anyway. You sure we can wait?"

Castiel nods. "We must. To perform the ritual now would be too dangerous, even by the low standards we have set for ourselves. Don't worry, Sam is resilient. He will stay strong until tonight."

Dean nods, rubs a hand over his mouth. "Should we start setting up? I mean, it's in a few hours, but there's a lot of stuff here. Maybe we should get a head start on the rest of it."

"Might not be a bad idea," Bobby interjects. "We could start by smudging the place, get it cleansed. It won't hurt, and the sooner we can start, the sooner we'll be able to help Sam."

As if sensing that they're talking about him, Sam shifts on the bed with a low moan, and Dean moves up. "Sam? How you doing, dude? You hanging in there?"

Sam stirs a little, features pulling into a frown of pain, but he doesn't open his eyes. Dean smooths a hand over his head, comes away with a handful of his hair and winces before dropping it into the small waste basket by the bed. "Damn it. I'm sorry, Sammy. We're trying to fix this, but it's going to take some doing. I know you're somewhere in there, and that you do want this, on some level. I swear, we get this done, you'll be fine. Cas was wrong about your soul, Sammy, it's just fine. It's been up here with you the whole time, you hear me?" he says softly, leaning down in order to speak directly in Sam's ear. "That means Lucifer never got his filthy hands on it, and you're safe. I promise, we'll keep you safe."

Bobby clears his throat. "Give an old man's heart a break, would you, boy? Come help me pour some salt lines or something."

"Yeah, okay," Dean nods, tearing himself away from the bed. "What do I do?"

"Would have been better if we could do this elsewhere," Bobby mutters. "But I guess beggars can't be choosers."

"If I could, I would have chosen a more suitable venue," Cas says. "But I dare not risk moving Sam in his present condition. The strain would be too great."

"All right, enough jabbering," Bobby jerks his head at Dean. "Sooner we start, the sooner we'll be done."

It's actually sort of soothing to lose himself in the preparations for a ritual. It's familiar territory, even if the ritual itself is new. There are herbs to burn, chalk lines to draw on the ground, sigils to make. Dean's been in the game long enough to know that most of it is for show, the trappings just a way to get the human mind to focus properly in order to channel all the necessary energy to complete the ritual successfully. It's not so much the components themselves, but the intent behind them, which is why black magic components are always gross and creepy (he'll never really get over the cat-killing thing), and regular magic components are new age hippy-sounding crap like herbs and crystals and whatever. He consoles himself with the thought that Cas knows what he's doing, including warding the room door so that the hospital staff just sort of… forget it’s there, at least for the time being. By the time he and Bobby are done, he’s feeling a lot less like his heart is trying to climb its way out of his body through his mouth.

He glances at Sam, still motionless on the bed, rubs his hand over his mouth. "We doing this, or what? You need me to block the door or something?"

"That won't be necessary," Cas tells him. "I will ensure we are not interrupted."

Dean has never really liked being on the receiving end of stuff like this, but he finds being a passive participant isn't exactly all it's cracked up to be, either. Bobby's left to read out the incantation in Enochian—annoyingly, Cas claims his accent is better—while Cas rolls up his sleeve in a gesture that's worryingly similar to the one that preceded him driving his fist right into Sam's sternum.

"I really hope you're not about to―oh, God," Dean slams his eyes shut and braces himself when Cas does exactly that.

It hurts like nothing Dean has ever experienced before, including the forty years he spent in Hell. He remembers Alastair setting him on fire simply to watch his flesh melt off his bones, and this feels a thousand times worse, like the fire is burning him from the inside out. He barely has time to draw breath to scream before light flares behind his eyelids, so bright that it floods out all remaining thought. Then, blessedly, everything goes dark again.

When he comes to, the first thing he's aware of is just how cold, hard, and really uncomfortable the floor is. He shifts, is surprised when his fingers brush against the rough fabric of a carpet. He forces his eyes open, blinking against the light.

"Ow." His eyes focus just long enough to identify Castiel kneeling next to him on the floor. "Sam okay?"

"He's alive," Cas confirms. "For now, at least."

Cas props him up, and Dean has to bite back a groan. They're at Bobby's, up in the bedroom he's always shared with Sam whenever they come here. Better than the motel, he thinks groggily. At least Cas moved them somewhere familiar.

"God, everything hurts. D’ it work?" he tries to get up, ends up listing against Cas' chest and just stays there for a second. Just until he catches his breath, he tells himself. Besides, Cas is kind of comfortable.

"I believe so," Cas doesn't appear to mind that Dean is using him as a buttress. "We won't know for certain until Sam wakens, and I don't think we should force him. He's still weak, the shock of waking prematurely might prove too much."

"Okay," Dean agrees easily. "Why are we here? I mean, not that I mind, but..." he flaps a hand, indicating their surroundings.

"Bobby suggested that remaining at the hospital would be too risky, especially if Sam begins to recover quickly. His condition would normally have been fatal. Bobby has remained behind, and said he would arrange to have the rest of your things brought over soon. Can you get up?"

"Yeah, Cas, sure," Dean nods, even though it makes his head throb, but his legs don't work quite the way he remembers them working. "Crap."

Cas pulls him to his feet, braces him while the feeling returns to his legs and the pounding in his head recedes back down to a dull ache. Sam is lying on the bed, feet hanging off the end the way they always do when he and Dean stay here, because that bed's been too small for him since he was eighteen years old. He looks the same as in the hospital, still swathed in bandages, hair missing in large clumps, but he's breathing more easily than he has in days and looks as though he's no longer in pain. Dean staggers toward the bed on legs that still refuse to hold him up properly until Cas shoves a chair at him. He drops into it with a sigh of relief, carefully places his hand on top of one of Sam's bandaged ones.

"I will return to check on you as soon as I can," Cas surprises him by laying a hand on his shoulder—a gesture that's startlingly human. "There are matters that I must attend to right now."

There's a familiar gust of wind, and suddenly Dean is alone in the room with his unconscious brother. "Sammy?"

Predictably enough, there's no answer. So Dean slides down in the chair until he's a little more comfortable, and settles in to wait.

~*~

Dean's back has seized up in a really unpleasant way when he wakens again, sprawled awkwardly over Sam's bed, head pillowed on his arms, ankles wrapped uncomfortably around his chair legs. He blinks, eyes adjusting to the darkness in the room, trying to figure out what woke him. A quiet moan from the bed answers that question not half a second later.

"Sammy?" He reaches over to switch on the light, squinting as it threatens to blind him, and immediately regrets it when Sam flinches away, head jerking back on his pillow. "Hey, take it easy, it's just me."

"Dean?" Sam sounds like he's been gargling with broken glass. "What―"

Dean carefully puts a hand on top of Sam's bandaged one to keep him from doing anything too stupid, like try to get up. "How you doing, Sammy? You remember anything?"

For all he knows, it's not really Sam. The ritual might not have worked at all, and this might be exactly the same guy as before, dragging his brother's body into death with him. The amulet is lying on the side table, glinting dully in the light from the lamp he just switched on. It's stone cold to the touch when Dean brushes his fingers against it. Sam opens his mouth, throat working, and only manages a pained croak.

"Okay, hang on, I'll get you some water." Dean stumbles to the bathroom on shaky legs, but just the act of moving gets the circulation going in his limbs, and the stiffness in his back loosens with every step. By the time he gets back with a full glass, he feels almost human again. "Can you sit up if I help you?"

Sam nods, so he carefully slides a hand under his shoulders to prop him up, is pleased when Sam does most of the work of sitting up by himself. The water's gone in seconds, in spite of Dean's repeated attempts to get him to go slowly. Sam stares at his hands, still wrapped in so many bandages he looks like a mummy.

"What'd you do?" he asks, and Dean's heart sinks.

"You don't remember? We did a ritual..."

Sam shakes his head. "You promised. You promised you wouldn't try to get me back."

Dean is going to have a heart attack before he hits thirty-five, the way it keeps trying to leap into his mouth. "No—no, that's not it. That's not it. Sammy, Sam, you were already back. You were already back, don't you remember? We just... you... I don't know where to start. You wouldn't let me get turned by a vampire, would you?" his eyes sting, and he has to swallow a sudden lump in his throat.

Sam slumps against him a little, still obviously exhausted. "Not making any sense," he mutters, letting his head rest on Dean's shoulder. "What's wrong with you?"

Dean huffs a laugh. "Absolutely nothing. You feeling okay?"

"Tired. How'd I get back?" Sam's already slurring his words.

"Cas got you out. He kind of screwed it up, though, but it's fixed now."

"Cas is alive?" Sam jerks a little, twisting in his arms, then hisses as the movement pulls at his still-blistering skin. "I saw Michael kill him... right before Lucifer... God, Dean, I'm so sorry."

"Hey, hey, no, none of that," Dean tightens his hold. "We're all fine, you hear me? All of us, every single one. Me, Cas, Bobby, everyone's fine, we're all still here." He smooths a hand over Sam's head, winces a little when he comes away with another handful of hair, sparser than before. "Come on, let's get you lying down again. We'll catch you up later, once you've had some sleep."

Sam lets himself be eased back onto his pillow just as a familiar rustle of wings sounds just behind Dean's chair. "Cas?"

Dean doesn't look away from where he's tugging the blankets back up over Sam's chest. "Welcome back. You dealt with your Heaven thing?"

"For now. Raphael's forces are in retreat."

"How'd you manage that? I thought you were outgunned up there?"

Cas lets out a sound that's perilously close to an uncomfortable cough. "They may have been led to believe that I had Sam's soul with me. I am afraid the deception will be short-lived, however. How are you feeling, Sam?"

Sam tries to sit up again until Dean loses patience and holds him down with one hand on his chest. "Uh, confused, mostly. What's my soul got to do with anything?"

"Long story," Dean interrupts before Cas can launch into an explanation Sam's already too exhausted to process. "Short version: souls are kind of like weapons of mass destruction where Heaven's concerned, and yours is extra special. It's not important right now."

"Huh." Sam nods, eyes closing. "Hey, Cas..."

"Yes?" Castiel moves to lean over the bed, and Sam makes a visible effort to stay awake.

"If it'll help—you can use my soul, if you want. For your—thing. I want to help. 's my fault it all went wrong..."

"It's not your fault," Cas says sharply, and even Dean flinches at his tone. Cas must notice, because his voice is softer when he speaks again. "The blame for this doesn't lie with you, but nonetheless, I appreciate your offer, Sam." Cas takes a breath, as though he's about to say something else, then visibly changes his mind, closing his mouth again.

"What is it?" Dean nudges him, but Cas just shakes his head.

"Nothing of import. I'm sorry to leave you again so soon, but I... have something I must attend to immediately. I am sorry, though."

Somehow, Dean doesn't think he's apologising for leaving. "What for?"

To his surprise, Cas smiles at him a little sadly. "For forgetting my true allies for a time. I have to go. There are some important changes I need to make. I will be back as soon as I can."

"It's still creepy, how he does that," Dean says when he's gone, and Sam huffs a laugh.

"Nice, though, that he's still here." He shifts his weight in the bed, clearly uncomfortable.

"You need anything? More water?"

Sam shakes his head and doesn't answer. He opens his eyes, gaze flicking over to the little bronze pendant on the night table, and still says silent, though he doesn't try to go back to sleep. Dean isn't sure he gets it, but he does know one way to try to fix this. He picks up the pendant, holds it up so that it catches the light.

"This what you wanted?"

"Thought I lost it," Sam answers, but he shakes his head anyway.

"Guess not," Dean tries to smile at him and only half succeeds.

He swallows hard, reaches up to pull the pendant back over his head, feels it settle comfortably in the hollow at the base of his neck just above his breastbone, nestled where it always belonged. Sam's watching him carefully, expression guarded even under the bandages. Dean eases himself back into his chair, drops his hand back over Sam's.

"Get some sleep. We'll deal with the rest of it in the morning. No," he shakes his head when Sam opens his mouth to protest. "I'm not going anywhere, promise," he says, and that does the trick.

Sam settles back with a small sigh, and within minutes he's asleep, breathing peacefully. Dean allows himself a smile, then, and smooths a hand over Sam’s forehead, where the skin is beginning to heal.

“Sleep tight, Sammy.”

~END~