Sam Interrupting
K Hanna Korossy

How do you get up in the morning?

Dr. Cartwright's calm voice rolled through his mind with every step he took, no matter how much Dean pushed it back.

To feel like six billion lives depend on you? God.

Dean pressed his lips together, gripping the silver-plated scalpel more tightly in his hand. He didn't have time for this; he was on a hunt. With Martin unwilling—or unable—to back him up, it was just him and Sam against a thing that sucked people's brains out. He didn't have time for the whole head-shrinking bit.

But he couldn't shake the question. How do you get up in the morning?

Sweetheart, I have no idea.

The sound of running feet struck his ears. Dean immediately jumped into an open doorway, pressing himself back into the shadows as several orderlies rushed past. Something was going on…and he was willing to bet it was Sam having found the wraith. As soon as the orderlies turned the corner, Dean silently followed.

Yup, they were heading to the west wing. Dean's stomach knotted: either Sam had found and killed the wraith and the hospital was going nuts over a patient killing a doctor…or the wraith had turned on Sammy and the alert was for an injured patient. Suddenly, the plan to split up wasn't looking so hot.

Dean hid again as another orderly joined the first two, then trailed them probably closer than he should have, pushing down the itch to outrun them and see what was going on. But just when he felt like he was going to burst with the not knowing, he rounded the corner and there they were.

Sam was the first one he saw. His brother dwarfed the two orderlies who were dragging him away, but Sam wasn't fighting their grip. In fact, he looked…horrified. Dean tried to catch his eye but failed before Sam was led down the hall.

The doc looked shaken and scratched but in one piece. Moreover, the cut on his cheek wasn't smoking or bubbling. Frown deepening, Dean glanced over to where Martin was pressed into a nearby alcove, practically shaking. Martin caught sight of him, and his weary face drooped even more. He shook his head: the doc wasn't the wraith.

But how…? Crap. That meant Sam had attacked an innocent guy, probably nearly killed him, on Dean's say-so. Which hadn't even been right. How could he have made a mistake like that?

Maybe he really was crazy…

No. No time for that now. He had to make sure Sam was okay.

Dean was surprised to find they'd taken Sam back to his room. They were in there a long time with him, though, and Dean chewed a finger and waited out of sight down the hall. No yelling or cries: that was good. The long silence? Not so much. He should be in there; Sam was his responsibility, his to look after.

That's a crushing weight to have on your shoulders. How do you get up—

The door opened and a nurse—Karla?—and the two orderlies stepped out and locked the door behind them. As soon as they were out of sight, Dean hurried to the door with a purloined paperclip already in hand, Dr. Cartwright forgotten.

Turned out Sam was feeling no pain. Or any kind of rational thought, for that matter. He was as high as a balloon and about as vulnerable. Dean shook his head, letting it hang between his shoulders. He'd have to stay there overnight to just keep an eye on the guy.

As it turned out, bedding down with someone who was seeing pink clowns and yellow eyes was a pretty good distraction. Dean didn't even think about the good doctor's words all night.

00000

He was going crazy.

Yeah, the realization was terrifying, and shattering, and humiliating. But it was also less of a surprise than he'd expected. All that pressure you're putting yourself under, all that guilt? It's killing you. Sam had known that, been worried about him the last few weeks. Dean had known that.

He'd known that. He just hadn't expected…this.

You can't save everybody. You can't. Hell, these days, you can't save anybody, Dean.

Dean stared blankly at the puzzle laid out in front of him. Wasn't it kinda cruel, giving difficult puzzles to mental patients? Like they didn't already have enough pieces to put together? Sam was the one who liked puzzles, anyway, not him. Sammy, whom he'd left sleeping peacefully hours before, exhausted after a night of hallucinations and then the crash as the drugs wore off. At least he had a reason to be acting nuts. Dean had been the one who was supposed to be keeping it together.

That was before he'd been thraped by the lady doctor who apparently only existed inside his head.

The crazy part was, that wasn't even crazy. The doc, or hallucination, or whatever, had just been telling it like it was. Dean knew he had to save the world, stop the Apocalypse, but he'd already failed and that wasn't looking to change anytime soon. He'd shot Lucifer in the head with the Colt, and it hadn't done a thing. There was no Plan B.

You couldn't stop Sam from killing Lilith, and, oh yeah, you broke the first seal. All you do is fail.

All of this had been his fault. If he'd just gotten to Cold Oak a little sooner, or not distracted Sam… He'd failed his most important duty that night, let his little brother be killed. Even though Dean had brought him back, he'd done it at a cost that had left Sam alone, vulnerable. And placed Dean himself neatly in the demons' hands down below, primed to break the first seal. Sam finishing the job had just been further failure on Dean's part.

You can't save anybody, Dean.

How was anyone supposed to live with that, a job that was so important and so impossible?

The world is gonna burn and there is nothing you can do about it.

Sam walked into the common room, stopping to talk to someone.

Dean looked away. It was insane. It was too much. The monsters were everywhere and nobody else could see them. But he could. He could, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. This was his punishment. Dean rocked in his seat, biting the inside of his lip and clutching a puzzle piece that didn't fit anywhere. This was Hell.

Sam suddenly started yelling and darting around. It looked like he was fighting a crowd, fist cocked and swinging over and over, face twisted in fear and rage. But there was nobody there.

Nobody Dean could see, anyway. Wasn't he the one who was supposed to see invisible monsters? He tensed, instinct screaming at him to go help Sam but not having a clue how to fight something that wasn't there.

More orderlies came and grabbed Sam. He fought them but he was fighting sloppy and they restrained him, dragged him away.

Dean should've probably helped. Even if Dean was nuts, Sam was still his little brother, his job. If Sam was freaking out, Dean couldn't afford to. But…he frowned. If Sam was crazy, too, maybe…maybe something else was going on here besides just a hunter gone around the bend. What if…?

The pieces clicked into place like tumblers. No. They weren't here because the world was burning and they'd lit the match; they were here for a job. This was a hunt. Sam wasn't crazy.

Maybe Dean wasn't either, then.

He stood, shaky but resolute. He needed to help Sam…but first he had to go talk to Martin.

00000

Even as he broke out of the loony bin and loped for the car with Sam at his heels, Dean couldn't help but wonder if he didn't belong back there.

You are going crazy, the doc had said. And, yeah, okay, so she hadn't been real, but if his own head was telling him that, maybe he should listen. God knew, some of the other stuff she'd said was true. He had gotten Ellen and Jo killed. He had failed Sam. He had doomed the world, and had a snowman's chance in Hell of saving it. All he did was fail. Even as he joked about shrinks sucking, he thought maybe it was time to stop pretending he was any better.

Sam's footsteps behind him slowed, then stopped. As Dean looked back, his brother sighed, shaking his head, expression troubled.

"Sam, you okay?"

"No. The wraith…she was right. Most of the time I can hide it. But…I am angry," Sam said despairingly. "I'm mad at everything. I used to be mad at you and Dad, then…Lilith, now it's Lucifer, and I-I make excuses, I blame Ruby, or the demon blood, but it's not…their fault, it's not them, it's me. It's inside me. I am mad…all the time. And I don't know why."

"Stop," Dean said flatly. "Just stop."

He told Sam to bury it. To forget it. To move on. It was the same advice his dad had given him, probably the opposite of what the shrinks would say, but the Winchesters didn't live in their world.

He felt himself straighten as he said it.

Dangerously codependent, Fuller, the real doc, had diagnosed them. Probably also true in the real world. But with the life they led, depending on each other was how they survived. Okay, so it had led to a trip to Hell for Dean and some seriously bad decision-making on Sam's part. It meant one hurt when the other hurt, and bled when the other bled, and that they felt cut in half when they were alone.

But it also meant that when Sam doubted himself, Dean became all the more certain. When Dean was scourging himself with guilt, Sam believed it wasn't their fault. And when they questioned their own sanity, the other was there to say, it's not just you, I see it too. It made them stronger because they were both needed by the other, and if those doctors with their dozen years of college didn't get that, well… Didn't make it any less true. Just meant it was the way Winchesters worked.

"Are you with me?" Dean finished quietly.

Sam's face twisted, still struggling.

"Man, are you with me?" Dean asked more urgently. Because as lousy as the odds were against them, they still had a chance if they were in this together.

"I'm with you," Sam said reluctantly.

"Good." He could tell Sam wasn't completely sold, but Dean would believe it for him until he was. He reached for the car door. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Sam got in the car without another word.

How do you get up in the morning?, the halluci-doc had asked.

Dean glanced at Sam slumped tiredly in the passenger seat beside him.

And smiled.

The End