A/N Thanks Roz for inspiring the use of the nails, and Thanks to the Beloved Beist for re-awakening my far too frequently repressed bloodlust

Also many thanks are necessary to those of you who've read, and/or read and reviewed this fic. It wouldn't have been half the fun without such wonderful folks to share it with! Thank You.

And the suffering I've put both CatBeist and Nvrmore through subjecting them with the task of being my betas...You're my heroes. Thank You!

Okay... let the ending begin.

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Pitch black – chpt 6

by: sifi.

--

He fished the keys out of his jeans pocket, the effort to hold his brother over his shoulders minimal despite the distance he'd just carried him. With one hand he opened the driver door then unlocked the backseat, slinging his big brother down into his arms as if he were little more than a child. He crouched, holding him close and stepped into the car, the spirit of which knew more about their family history than Sam himself did.

"I gotcha Dean, I gotcha... I'm gonna get you safe, I swear..." he held him close, the ragged but steady breathing against his neck a marginal comfort.

Tires screamed against the pavement and the sound of a heavy metallic body being maneuvered in a way it was never really meant to, came to his ears. He lowered Dean's torso and head gently to the back seat, dropped the messenger bag onto the floor, his hand on his smoke black .9mm as he heard a car door slam shut and began to back out of the impala.

"Sam!?"

His heart started again and he breathed, "Laura..." he turned unable to hold back the tears as she closed on the car.

"You found him?"

He nodded, "We gotta get him to a hospital... I don't know how he's still alive..."

"Are you hurt?" she asked shining her flashlight on him, noting the blood staining his shirt, face, hands and arms.

He shook his head.

"Oh God..." she shook her head shoving him aside. She lurched into the backseat flipping the overhead light on, and choked at the sight of him, her mind ticking off all the supplies she'd need to try and save his life. Her fingers pressed to his throat, her eyes closed while she counted off his vitals.

"Laura we don't have time for this, we gotta get him to a hospital..." Sam choked leaning into the backseat over them.

"We can't," she gasped scrubbing the tears off her face, leaving it streaked with the blood of the man she loved.

"There isn't any other choice! He's going to lose that arm if we don't do something! We can't fix this!" Sam bellowed furiously, all his fear coming to a head in that moment.

"We can't Sam! Someone leaked a sketch of him to the local cops! I got the notice through my cell phone! Hendricksen is gonna be on his way soon,"

"I don't care! He can't prosecute a corpse! I'd rather see him in jail for life than six feet under! Don't you get it!?" he railed.

She reached into her pocket for her cell phone then quickly handed it to him. On the screen he saw a sketch of his own face, then his mugshot from Folsom Prison beside it.

"They found a body they're identifying as YOU! and they're blaming Dean! they're bringing in Hendricksen and they're going to start a manhunt. You have to clear out of the motel you're at and relocate..." she fished into her pocket again then handed him a key, "...here. I need to get to the hospital and do some shopping..."

Sam took the key, his face crumpled, "I don't care... he needs a hospital... you can't fix this on your own! the only thing that matters is that he survives!" he hollered.

She clasped his face securely in her hands feeling his fear roll back and forth between them, he wasn't making the connection he needed to and she completely understood why, "You don't get it, Sam, someone LEAKED the pictures! Someone who KNOWS he needs a hospital! To HELL with Hendricksen! he doesn't matter... but whatever, whoever did this to him will KNOW where he needs to be! Somewhere WE can't protect him...got it?"

She could almost see the lightbulb go on over Sam's head as he slowly nodded.

"Good, get him into the room, lay him on his back, don't try to remove any foreign objects, elevate his torso and watch for any signs of puking or aspiration, do you know vitals?" she asked but frowned when he shook his head, "You know CPR?"

"Yeah, ABC's and 30 to 2," he nodded.

"Good go! I'll be there as soon as I can," she climbed into the back seat of the car grasping Dean's head lightly, pressing her lips to his temple, "Just keep breathing Dean, keep living, we NEED you!" she willed through hitching breath and tearful kisses that tasted of his blood.

Climbing from the back seat she reached up grasping Sam by the back of the neck until their foreheads met, their pain shared, halved and still squared. "I'll be there as soon as I can..." she wanted to say, "Take care of him, don't let him die, I love him..." but this was Sam, and there was no one on earth more important to him than the man lying in the backseat.

Speechless he nodded, as she kissed his cheek before dashing back to her car and laying a rubber trail in a half circle as she sped back toward the town and the nearest hospital.

--

Sam stepped from the bathroom with the bottom two inches of the ice bucket full of betadine soaked gauze pads. His lips drew tightly together as he watched her chest draw shaky breaths and her throat work while somehow after more than two solid hours of near silent crying, tears were still flowing from her bloodshot eyes. Other than to tell Sam how to help her tend his brother the only words she'd spoken were the first one's she'd said once she'd seen him on the bed, her arm wrapping around his head as she kissed his temple and whispered, "Oh my God... you'll be okay... you'll be alright."

There was a pocket around her and now around his brother as well, a bubble of heat and tension that surrounded them. First things' first... take care of him... heal my love...

"Laura..." Sam's whisper sounded almost childlike in his own ears, tentative, and he couldn't deny it, fearful.

"No," she gasped then shook her head.

"Please..." he dared again.

"I SAID NO!" she barked taking him by surprise. She swallowed hard, "Shine the lamp onto his chest... there's a foreign body in here," she instructed using the nose of the needle holder to open the hole between his connective tissue and the medial border of his left pectoral muscle.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Sam groaned watching blood gurgle out of the widening hole in time with his pulse, as if from a spring as she worked to repair him.

"Swallow it, he needs you," she instructed absently, "lower... shine it right into the hole..." the light moved, tracing the path of the scissor-like instrument, "there, perfect. Come here you little son of a bitch," she breathed, "get that 60 ml syringe filled up with sterile water and a little betadine, do NOT touch the tip!" she ordered angling the instrument downward within the hole to grasp the twig in as firm a place as possible and holding the skin up with a pair of tweezers she pulled the broken but holding together shank of wood from his chest, dropping it into the trashcan. Her hand closed over the syringe she'd requested, clots and stringy bits of his brothers' blood and muscle smeared thickly onto his hand leaving his head spinning.

How many times have we patched each other up? How many times have we had our hands up to the wrists in each others' blood or dad's? Stitches, bandages, triple x, bullet grazes, daeva maulings, psychotic ghost blisters, crystal... I mean strains, sprains and everything in between, this is my brothers' blood, she's doing surgery in a motel room, how did this happen? I really don't feel good at all... he swayed in place, he hadn't even realized he did it until her head snapped around, her eyes pinned him to the spot, the trembling of her lips the only sign of what she might be going through. A chill certainty draped itself over him and he quivered inside his skin, if she ever finds out what did this... but nodded he could hold up.

Through the next hours, as she worked tirelessly, flushing, stitching, cleaning, dabbing his wounds she also continued to check the worst of it, his left arm. It was broken, and deep purple in color. The punctures were oozing something green and festering, it looked like a rotting sausage sewn to his shoulder. The skin was stretched so tight that upper layers were peeling off in places, and the exudate stank of decay. Sam's belt was cinched just before the arm pit, it was his duty to milk his brother's arm, squeeze as much of the blood and pus back down, out of the punctures, and the extra cuts she'd made to help alleviate the pressure and keep the infection from spreading while she kept the intravenous antibiotics pouring into him. He also had to regularly loosen the tourniquet to ensure there wasn't a complete deprivation of blood to the limb, it was a tenuous balance but necessary at this stage.

Whatever he was punctured with, it went through bone, if the infection spreads to his bone... Dear God please, if it's possible we have to save the arm, if we can, he might need to have the radius plated. Anything... just please... she pleaded silently finally rising and removing the brown and red covered latex gloves. Her forearms were streaked with heavy brown flakes of dried Dean and Sam hadn't noticed but her clothes and face had been either oozed onto or jetted across.

"We'll put him in the other bed after I get back," she muttered kneeling at the side of his head, all of her will focused on him, willing him everything she had to spare to help him, just as she'd done before and would do any time he needed it, "You'll heal completely..." she breathed shakily into his ear, her throat closing around the emotion's she held in check for too long already, "Sleep without dreams Dean, just heal and rest..." she pursed her lips against his temple and felt his head try to rock toward her while a slightly heavier breath came from his throat.

"I love you..." she said clearly then looked at Sam who stood nodding while tears finally overflowed his eyes, then forced her self to rise.

"Keep the ice packs at his pressure points, I'll be back in a few minutes," she moved to the door.

"Where're you going?" Sam asked, wondering what could be important enough to take her away from his brothers' side.

"I'm going to step outside, find a nice dark spot where no one can see me and I'm going to cry, probably like a baby, I'm sure it'll get ugly, is that okay with you?" she snipped.

"Do it inside, we don't know what or who they were, or how many more of them there might be. There could be something lurking," Sam muttered running his hand over his big brother's forehead.

She nodded, "Let 'em come."

"Laura..." Sam said softly, the look on his face saying everything else. If something was out there lurking, she'd be on her own. Nothing could or would tear him away from this room or his only everything left.

"Fine... I'll just get the rest of the supplies out of the car," she grunted stepping over the salt line that guarded the doorway. What Sam had said was true, they had no way of knowing what had happened, what kind of creature had done this to Dean and though they could start to speculate on why, until they had solid answers, they were going to take every precaution necessary.

"Bring a gun?" he asked not looking at her.

"I don't need one," she left as he nodded.

"I know you don't," he sighed once the door was shut behind her. With her out of the room his big brothers' stillness was frightening. Needing to feel useful Sam squeezed out a cloth and ran it over Deans' face first, then tentatively dabbed at dried streaks of blood and rubbery flesh that had been cut loose through her ministrations. He was careful to steer clear of the cuts and slices themselves that latticed his chest and abdomen. Several of them had required stitching they were so deep while others little more than antibiotic ointment. What the hell could have done that? Was it really barbed wire? he wondered having noticed many of the same types of cuts had torn through his jeans and subsequently his thighs as well. It looked as if he'd been peppered with chunks of glass or a box of razors and Sam shook his head. When Laura had cut the jeans off him, their removal breaking open the wounds that had scabbed over he'd winced and turned away. She'd sent him into the bathroom to mix more betadine and sterile water. He knew what she was doing, giving him a chance to do something constructive while she did what she had to. When she'd called for him to return, his brother was wrapped snugly from the hips down in a sheet and blanket, ice packs were placed under his knees and armpits, and another atop his right thigh, but if there was one between his legs, Sam didn't know.

"What did this to you Dean?" he asked softly, remembering the doll-like face and the mesh of wire it had wielded in his vision, "How did that... whatever it was, get the drop on you?" he asked softly while mopping away the dirt and blood, looking to find the face he knew so well beneath it all. He looks so vulnerable, so small... would you hate that? Sometimes I still don't know what to make of you Dean... how can one person be such a mass of conflicting characteristics? I used to think I knew you, then when you came to Stanford, "...I thought you were the one who'd changed y'know?... I thought you'd just added another layer of cocky self absorption, but that's just what you wanted me to think isn't it? It's what you've always wanted other people to think... then when you were in the hospital after the cabin, after what that yellow eyed son of a bitch did to you... it wasn't you who'd changed Dean, you've always been so much more than you let anyone see... but I finally got a chance to see it... why did you ever feel you had to hide so much?" he snorked back some tears and wiped others away, rinsing the washcloth then gently rubbing it through his brother's filthy matted hair.

"You can't tell me it was cause dad made you feel that way, you're his first born, that means something, and I hope to hell it wasn't because of me... I hope I never made you feel like you had to be someone different. Maybe I did though, and IF I did... I'm sorry man... Please Dean, you have to recover, I've never known a minute without you in it. You can't leave me," he sat back wringing out the face cloth again, then tilted his chin upward, glaring furiously at the deep dark bruise around the front of his neck, just beneath the fine group of slashes that thankfully hadn't gone very deep, "You have to be okay Dean, we haven't gone through everything we've gone through just to lose you now do you hear me?" I wonder...he thought laying the cloth down on the bed, placing his hands at his brothers' temples, and closing his eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to visualize energy moving between them, flowing through his arms, out his fingertips and into his brother to use to heal himself.

Maybe they're right, maybe the power itself is neutral, maybe I just need to let it flow, here you go Dean, use whatever you need big brother, the sensation was not unlike what he'd felt when the Shtriga got hold of him a couple years ago in Fitchburg but he didn't mind, it was for Dean. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do. Images moved through his mind, the hunts, the adventures, the surprisingly large quantity of good times they'd managed to have over the years with their odd little family. Picnics with Dad, Bobby and his neice Mercy, Shep, Joshua, Pastor Jim and many friends they'd made along the way. There were nightmare images too, things that still haunted his dreams, and maybe even some that haunted his brother as well, rats gnawing on him, blue and gold harlequin clowns with jagged yellow teeth. Scarlet colored lips came before he heard the sound of metal on metal on stone and felt a bullet of raw heat shoot upward through his arm. He screamed with Dean's voice and his eyes shot open.

"Sam?!" Laura breathed, the creasing of her brows, the pull of her mouth and the sight of the ceiling above her told him something had happened.

"Ungh?" he grunted feeling his own brows furrow as he tried to sit up but found he could only do so with her help.

"What the hell did you think you were doing! You big... Stupid... DUMBASS!" her fists twined in his shirt and she shook him even as she practically lifted him off the floor and back onto his feet.

"What happened?" he asked looking around the room at the spilled box of medical and surgical supplies she'd 'influenced' away from a local hospital.

"Sam... God you...! What did you do!? How much did you give him?!" she demanded swinging him around on his gangly and unsteady legs until he sat in a chair.

He shook his head, his brows furrowing while his mouth bowed downward, Did I? he wondered. "I just... I just wanted to help..." he stammered grunting under the weight of his body around him.

"It's not helping if you kill yourself in the process! You don't mess with things you don't know!" she hollered furiously while picking up the supplies and smoothing the salt line.

"What's to know? You do it all the time!" he shook his head feeling angry while he clutched his left arm to his chest, "Damnit..."

She turned on her knees and reached up, cupping his face in her warm shaky hands, her thumb stroked his cheek, "You guys NEED each OTHER! ... you're both..." she shook her head, "Being ALIVE is what matters, you could be on opposite ends of the earth and if something happened to the other, each of you would KNOW..."

She rolled her head on her neck, "Besides, I just channel it," she lied.

"I felt something... I think I felt something that happened to him... I think the punctures were nails or spikes or something, I felt it... it still hurts..." he frowned cradling his arm against his chest even still.

"Where?" she asked, thinking about the four inch piece of steel she'd pulled out of the muscles of his thigh while Sam was in the bathroom, whoever or whatever... they knew enough about anatomy to make sure nothing they did directly killed him.

"The one in the palm," his hand and lower arm spasmed as she held it gently and inspected it for damage, testing the mobility of his fingers and wrist. "Hurt like a son of a bitch."

She spread open his palm jostling the long bones inside just a bit, then squeezed between the four of them fiercely with her thumb and forefinger.

"Aaaahhhow!" Sam barked yanking his hand back with a look of incredulous startlement on his face.

"Gimme," she held out her hand again, taking his into it then worked the bones once more. Sam smiled and breathed easily as the pain disappeared in a flash. She rose to her feet, her finger under his chin while he remained in the chair, "Better?" she asked.

Sam nodded.

"Good, don't do that again... especially alone."

--

A beam of sunlight slid into his eyes startling him awake. "Uhng...how's he?" he asked sitting up just long enough to scrub his face with his hands before moving to Laura's side.

"The infection's stopped spreading I think. His vitals are stable, his temp is holding at about 102.7, at least it's not going up anymore. I need more cold packs, these are pretty much shot. There was another nail through his left thigh, I didn't tell you about it last night, the infection there is already starting to recede, that's a good sign. I'm gonna have to go get some more I.V. antibiotics, he's going through a bag every four hours," she said dryly, her eyes never leaving Dean's face.

He almost looks like he's sleeping, Sam thought briefly, noting how well she'd managed to finish cleaning him up, Course the blankets are tucked up to his chin.

"You should get some sleep, I can keep watch... it looks like the swelling's going down in his arm..." he noted.

"I just bled it out some," she nodded.

"Do you think he'll..." he started to ask but couldn't make his throat work around the words.

"It's too soon to tell, depends on how deep the infection has spread through the bone or IF it's taken hold in there yet... either way, we DO have to get him to a hospital eventually," she nodded.

"How soon do you think he can travel?"

She shook her head, "I'd like to see the fever down a bit more and see him regain consciousness first. Wherever we take him, one of us will have to be there at all times, and it has to be out of this state."

He nodded though she didn't see it, "I'll go get some more ice."

She pulled the blankets down to his waist, removing the spent bags from under his arms, then reached under his legs, for the remaining three bags, one under each knee and the third atop the bruise on his right thigh. Dumping the warm water out of them into the bathroom sink she looked into the mirror, the light glinting off several silver hairs while simultaneously deepening the appearance of the lines around her eyes and over her forehead. I don't care... they can have it all... nothing else matters but these two, she thought with a nod, I have to find out who, or what did this to him, and why. Later, but soon. Searing bile rose in the back of her throat, stinging deep, propelled by fury that someone would inflict such atrocity on what was HERS. Oh God... she lurched for the toilet as a jet of green, yellow, and red splattered in chunks and ribbons against the porcelain, the expulsion a result of the evening's work. I get it Cernunnos, I get why you wanted to delay this, but for him... she couldn't finish the thought. Another squeeze shot another gut-full of infectious ruin into the basin. Ever since she'd manifested a genuine Cone Of Power in the Dryad's glade things had been changing, a careless suggestion tied to an unconscious 'influence' could cause lasting harm. A simple 'dip' into someone's mind could now leave them a vegetable, or run the risk of locking her into that particular experience. Please help me be careful... please help me be helpful...Tremors wobbled her knees while she thought on her deepest desire through the night, the desire to take it from him, take the pain, make the infection go away, ...and you yell at Sam for giving a little of his life energy? Hypocrite. She chastised herself and flushed the toilet, glad to have been able to do something, but unsure if it was enough.

She bent over the sink to rinse her mouth and wondered while she looked into the mirror what exactly she was becoming. She watched her eyes move from their natural light brown, through a deep coffee colored brown before blazing a brief fire of amber only to settle back to her normal color. Not yet, save him first, then vengeance.

"You alright?" Sam asked at the bathroom doorway.

She jumped and he watched color return to her face, for a minute there she'd been absolutely colorless and Sam wasn't sure if she was going to throw up or what.

She nodded joining him in filling the zip-lock bags with more ice.

He wrapped his two bags into towels then wedged them under his big brothers' arms while she placed hers under his knees. With his left leg uncovered Sam was able to see the deep purple edges inside the ring of hot pink that surrounded the puncture wound she'd mentioned earlier. He winced watching as she pressed down in a circle around the furthest edges of the pink area which she'd delineated last night with a pen to keep track of the margins. The infection was clearly fading.

"Uhngh..." he grunted watching light green and red ooze to the surface of the puncture thanks to the pressure she was applying, "God that's gross..." he whispered watching her mop it away wordlessly.

Dean's head whipped to the side and his body jerked. His eyes shot open for a split second as he screamed, "Sammy!" then fell silent and still again, the only sign of his exertion the rapid rise and fall of his chest, and the sound of his ragged breathing.

"T'sokay Dean... I'm here, s'alright, you're gonna be alright, I promise..." he choked tucking the blankets back up to Dean's neck then resting his head on the pillow beside him while petting his sweat soaked hair, "S'gonna be alright, I'm here, I gotcha."

--

end.

Please R&R.

Thanks.

sifi

--

EPILOGUE

The previous evening:

"...forgive me. I just don't understand, after everything... to just... let him go..." he said softly, his fingers stroking her long silky locks while they watched from the window in the loft as the lone survivor limped, hunched, battered and bent out into the forest. They watched him crash head first into a tree and cling to it as if his life depended on it, then after a few moments push himself from the aged creature to continue into the night, led by some inner sense the man at her left could not begin to fathom.

"He alone survived where no others did. Other than that, you need only know that he will lead the way,"

"He may not survive the forest," the man ventured tentatively.

She breathed, the fragile bones of her slight build rising and falling, working to fill her as she tasted the air for a hint of destiny.

"Did you alert the police and tip off the feds?" she asked.

He nodded, "As you instructed. Again, I don't understand... to let him go only to finish what... ahh, I see..." he breathed struck by a sudden insight, the image of the young man she'd spent the afternoon sketching, the one who the double was killed for.

"Mmmm," she breathed, So you think you do. You do not. She smiled but said nothing further.

For hours they stood silent, watching until a faint beam glided through the forest then fell away, and still they stood.

He watched as the timbre of her expression changed and the air grew heavy around them both, he watched her lips turn down and the golden locks he loved so dearly began to flutter around her, charged by her fury. He'd seen it before, most recently with her torment of the keeper who'd let the boy get loose in the first place.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked stepping away from her, unable to bear the intensity of the charge surrounding her.

"He... they... are gone...a veil... I am blind to him! To THEM!" she ground through clenched teeth.

"Gone?" he asked.

"Yes, GONE you idiot! What part of GONE don't you get?! Out of my sight, UNABLE to be FOUND, MISSING! GONE! STOLEN!" she railed, turning toward him, the soft, usually impassive twelve year old face beside him twisted and warped, pure fury blazing through her empty eye sockets as she closed on him, repelling him toward the stairs, "You WILL FIND THEM!"

His feet slid down the first few steps as she continued to drive him backward, bowing, needing to turn and run, but unable to do so for fear of what may come of him if he did, "I'll find them... I swear it," he bowed finishing his descent to the ground level where he followed the trail of blood out into the night.

A/N – yes another one – Thanks again for reading and hopefully reviewing.

Any future War fics will pick up almost exactly where the previous ones leave off, so don't hate me too much for keeping you hanging on the cliff's edge here. Please.

The War Has Begun, and the next installment will be titled: Twilight.

Sincerely,

sifi.