Author's note: So we come to the end of this journey. Sam and Dean will be continuing theirs in Season 7 in a week or so! Thank you firstly to Susan for doing such a fantastic beta job under adverse conditions. What would I do without you! Thank you also to those of you who have reviewed. Hearing that people were enjoying the story made me very happy!

Chapter 9

The next three days were the most miserable and anxiety-ridden that Sam could remember. He had carried his brother into their motel room under cover of darkness. If Dean had been conscious, Sam would have been able to tease him mercilessly about thresholds and wedding nights as he lowered him gently onto the bed, but the older man's utter stillness robbed the situation of any humour.

Sam spent every minute of the next 72 hours second-guessing his decision not to take Dean to the hospital, his fingers hovering restlessly over the 911 button on his speed dial. If his brother's injuries hadn't included a bullet wound, he wouldn't have hesitated to call for help, but, as it was, the police would have instantly been involved, and Dean's shiny new status as one of the nation's most wanted made it just too great a risk. Hick country sheriffs were one thing, but Henricksen and the FBI had shown a disconcerting tendency to descend with frightening speed at the merest whisper of their presence, and Sam doubted his ability to effect an escape from a top-security facility. Since death from lethal injection further down the road would be just as permanent as death from blood loss now, he'd risk summoning professional help only if he were sure there was no choice. That left Sam riding the knife edge of that decision for agonising hours, his brother's life in his hands either way.

At first, he had been busy cleaning his brother up and assessing his injuries, searching for anything serious that he'd missed. Mottled bruising of lurid hot reds and purples seemed to cover Dean's entire torso, interspersed occasionally with sharp red slices and, off on one side, yet eye-catching in its swollen grotesqueness, was the bullet hole. Dean's whole body was a road map, signposting each painful encounter with the entity. Sam carefully shunted aside the knowledge that most of the damage had been inflicted by his hands. There was no time for indulging in guilt or in the memory of his helpless terror, his body not under his control, fighting for just a modicum of ascendancy over the hitchhiker to prevent his brother's death.

Next, he had to focus on disinfecting, debriding, stitching, and perhaps most importantly, getting liquids and antibiotics into the unconscious man. Sam was reassured by the lack of any life-threatening damage, and although he knew the cumulative effect of smaller wounds and hypovolemic shock could kill, it was impossible to believe that Dean Winchester would die of blood loss. His big brother was way too tough for anything less than a catastrophic injury to take him out. However, that confidence was to be tested, shaken, and ultimately severely pummeled almost into submission as Dean lay utterly unresponsive for long days and even longer nights. Sam watched him breathe, a hand resting on his brother's arm, ostensibly to test for fever. He fought, sometimes unavailingly, against sleep, afraid of the nightmares that lay in ambush, but more afraid that, if he shut he eyes for even a nap, Dean would slip away, unanchored by his presence.

Dean's freckles stood out against the stark pallor of his skin, eyes sunk deep in shadowed hollows. His continuing dehydration showed in his dry, cracked lips and the skin stretched too tightly, almost translucent, over sharp bone structure even with his features unnaturally slack. The unrelenting silence quickly became oppressive, but it didn't occur to Sam to turn on the TV, and he remained oblivious to the muted voices next door and the random banging of doors as he concentrated on the softest susurration of breath and the slightest expansion of his brother's rib cage. It was only on the third day, when Dean's marble complexion became tempered by a more natural tinge of colour, and his unnatural stillness relaxed into a more normal attitude of sleep, that Sam abruptly transitioned from listening to talking.

Like a dam giving way under intense pressure and spewing forth the jagged debris of faulty construction before being washed clean by the cathartic force of water, he choked out a miserable mixture of apology and narration. Sam needed to talk to his brother, to unburden himself of the filthy embrace of the confederate spirit, the entity's foul memories and evil intent. Dean unconscious sometimes made an easier audience than a Dean awake and conversing.

"I tried to fight him," Sam concluded in a whisper, "but it was like...like...I don't know, like climbing a sheer cliff which had no handholds and I had no hands anyway. Or like trying to explain the colour blue to someone blind since birth." How in the hell could one put words to something that was so alien to the human psyche? "It was like being in a sensory deprivation chamber, yet being arbitrarily force-fed sensory input that wasn't mine." He laughed deprecatingly. "I could come up with a dozen metaphors, but none of them would come anywhere near what it was like."

He was seized by a sudden aching desire to talk to his father, to benefit from John Winchester's experience to reconcile his own memories. Suddenly needing some kind of response from his brother, Sam shook his arm lightly, "Damn it, Dean, wake up! You're freaking me out. Just open your eyes and tell me not to be a whiny girl."

There might have been a twitch in Dean's left pinky, but otherwise he seemed to sleep on undisturbed. "You'd wake up if Dad were here to order you," Sam grumbled. "I guess this is something else he and I would have had in common. We could bond over being possessed and trying to kill you." It wasn't even remotely funny, and Sam's voice broke on the last word. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, breathing deeply to regain his composure. But apparently the shakiness in his voice succeeded where a direct command did not.

"Sam?" That breath of sound wasn't truly a question or even an acknowledgment, merely the first thought to cross Dean's mind as he surfed the borders of consciousness, but Sam had never been so happy to hear his name. A bubble of totally unexpected, and maybe inappropriate, laughter rose up and caught in his throat, tickling until he let it escape. Dean was ever and always Dean, and Sam's fear that his brother would see Marston superimposed on his features was apparently without foundation.

One long sweep of eyelashes inched back, and a squint of irritable green surveyed him. Apparently he passed muster, because they started to slide shut again, and Sam quickly interspersed an objection. "You can sleep all you want in a minute, just drink something first." He supported Dean's head and attempted to get as much of the rather stale glass of water down his brother's throat as he could without drowning him, then the older man curled up on his less injured side. Sam crawled on the covers next to him, eschewing his own queen-size bed, partly out of the hope that his proximity would alert him if Dean needed help, but mainly because he lacked the energy to move further.

For the next couple of days, Dean was, for the first time ever, a model patient, neither complaining nor pushing himself prematurely. Sam had expected that the lack of life-threatening physical injuries would cause his brother to downplay the severity of his condition. He suspected that this unnatural cooperation could be attributed to the seepage of his own guilt and worry through the still-active link between them. Dean clearly didn't want to intensify these negative emotions and limited his frustration to the development of chronic eyeroll syndrome, elevating it to Olympic heights. He slept for long periods and seemed subdued in the short spaces between. Sam didn't push for an explanation, content with monitoring his brother's condition remotely, by means of the bond. It made doling out the painkillers especially a timely affair. Dean would direct his gaze heavenward, but throw back the pills without protest.

The link was a source of constant fascination for Sam, providing him with hours of research, experimentation and entertainment. It was also preferable to his alternate choices of talk shows, game shows and watching Dean snore. His most fertile periods of analysis came when Dean was asleep, which restricted his brother's worth as a guinea pig, but had the advantage of allowing Sam to continue unscathed.

He had discovered that distance affected the intensity of the bond, though he hadn't been far enough away to see if it would fade entirely. He was slightly ashamed to admit that he could awake Dean from a deep sleep by projecting fear and panic. However, he hadn't learnt anything new about his brother. The link had enabled him to confirm things he'd strongly suspected, that Dean didn't hate being fussed over quite as much as he always professed, in fact, it wasn't a surprise to find that much of what the older man said camouflaged what he really felt. It took little to make him content - give him food and his brother's company and he was content, even if a stream of sarcastic comments dripped continuously from his lips.

What he had yet to determine was how much Dean knew that he didn't. It seemed that Dean had more control over the link than he did. Maybe as the instigator of the bond, he had the equivalent of a faucet at his command, controlling the flow of information, because sometimes Sam could feel a trickle of emotion from Dean that was abruptly cut off. But Dean had remained silent on the topic and, as the itch of Sam's curiosity remained unsatisfied, the younger man was becoming more irritated.

Finally, he grew tired of waiting for his brother to broach the topic. On the third day after Dean's return to consciousness, he insisted on celebrating his ability to sit up at the table instead of remaining in bed with real food. Sam had reluctantly complied and returned with an artery-clogging, cholesterol-laden breakfast of bacon, sausage, eggs, biscuits, and hash browns all slathered in gravy that was a truly disgusting, undetermined gray. Sam's own more modest breakfast of an omelet lay untouched on his plate, but his mouth was watering as he experienced Dean's unfettered enjoyment in his food.

"So, is this thing permanent?" he asked abruptly, gesturing back and forth between them, his hands flailing and inexact.

Dean smirked, and Sam recoiled from the glimpse of half-masticated sausage and gravy it afforded him. It also gave a warning of Dean's deflection of the inquiry. In a voice usually reserved for demanding and tantrum prone six-year-olds, Dean explained sweetly, "Of course, Sammy, we'll always be brothers."

He seemed to have forgotten that Sam could now read the affection and sincerity that ringed the words. Sam returned the saccharine smile with a scowl, for form's sake, and decided on a change of tactics. "You know, Dean, I can practically taste every mouthful you're eating there. So what happens the next time you pick up some skanky waitress for the horizontal tango? Do I get my own free porn channel?"

Dean didn't look the slightest bit disturbed by the notion of anyone witnessing him in his priapismic glory, and Sam realised his error. "Okay," he amended quickly. "What if I pick someone up and bring her back to the room? How would you enjoy the show?"

"Dude, ewww!" Dean looked horrified. "Thanks for the visual. Now I have to spork my eyes out."

Sam shoved the victory smugly down the link. "So unless both of us are prepared to take a vow of chastity - and you know which of us will find that easier - then we need to do something about this thing." He repeated his earlier gesture, but this time with more assurance.

Dean looked as if he were contemplating drowning himself in his gravy in preference to having the conversation. Sam could now read nothing but the simple fact of his brother's presence through the link.

"Most of the effects should fade within a few weeks or a month," Dean eventually stated.

Sam raised an eyebrow. "'Most' meaning what exactly?"

"I'm not exactly sure. It's not like I've done this before."

"What the hell were you thinking? It was blood magic. That's not something you mess with half-assed." Sam pushed back from the table, abandoning his omelet. Motel rooms didn't lend themselves to pacing, and Sam's long legs made it a total exercise in futility, so he relieved his frustration by kicking the ugly floral wallpaper before turning back.

As expected, Dean's temper rose up to meet his, although it was still restrained, his tone as dry as dust and just as gritty. "Do you have any better suggestions, even now with your perfect 20/20 hindsight? Marston wasn't a demon. There were no convenient exorcism possibilities. So tell me, college boy, what would you have done?"

Dean had twisted in his chair to keep his brother in sight, and the flavour of his pain seeped through to Sam, temporarily derailing his anger. He stalked over to their medical supplies, pulling out pain medication and slamming it down on the table.

"Take your damn pills," he ordered curtly. Dean eyed him defiantly, ignoring the white tablets until Sam geared himself up for battle, at which point his brother tossed them into his mouth, chasing them down with a mouthful of water.

"I wouldn't have messed around with something I didn't fully understand." Sam resumed the argument without missing a beat.

"I understand just fine, Einstein. I understand that it worked, I understand that we're both alive, and that beats the goddam alternative."

"If it's so wonderful, why haven't you used it before? Why isn't it written in Dad's journal?"

"It's not exactly a recipe for frigging tomato soup, Sam. It's not like it has a lot of applications, and the people I can use it on are limited to you, you and, oh, let me think, you."

Sam didn't even know why he was still pushing the issue. An amorphous anger, mostly directed at himself, swelled and surged inside, and he needed to lash out, the words spewing out like hot lava, a pyroclastic flow designed to destroy everything in its path, Dean merely an inadvertent casualty.

He wrinkled his nose in a snarl, ignoring Dean's sarcasm with the ease of long practice. "And what if it hadn't worked? You nearly bled yourself dry as it was. What if you'd lost control? Failed blood magic will always rebound on its caster. It would have killed you!"

"It didn't," Dean replied shortly. He pushed the plate away, his appetite lost under the onslaught of his brother's sudden hostility.

"It could have done," Sam insisted stubbornly.

"What the hell's your problem? I didn't have a choice!"

"Yes, you did have a choice, Dean. You made me a promise!"

This final attack decimated the last of Dean's defences and suddenly, as something twisted inside him, Sam could feel the pain curdling around every word he'd used to break his brother open. He'd got what he'd been angling for, and now wished he hadn't.

Dean had somehow risen to his feet without Sam noticing the movement; he was just suddenly staring into those familiar green eyes, frozen in position as the depth of love and fierce loyalty radiated from Dean's spirit to his own, and his suggestion unearthed the darkest, most primal depth of innate protectiveness. The desperate fear coated with stubbornness he saw reflected there echoed in the link. Both stated silently, but as clearly as if shouted from the rooftops, that Dean would die for him without hesitation, might die with him, would probably die without him, but there was no way on God's green earth that he would kill him.

Sam's heart felt that it might explode from the weight of everything Dean was feeling. He turned away blindly, taking the few steps necessary to collapse on the bed, burying his face in his hands. He could feel the progression of Dean's emotions - anger and fear ceding without a struggle to confusion and, inevitably, to concern. He didn't have to see or hear to sense his brother's shaky progress across the floor until the bed dipped beside him. There was a brief moment of resigned, exasperated affection, then realisation and the channel clamped shut.

It was as if a tremendous pressure he'd been bracing himself against was removed, and he slumped forward at its loss. Dean grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and pulled him back, steadying him and leaving a hand casually on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." The litany of apologies was easier to start than to stop, and Sam wasn't even sure if he was apologising for his actions while possessed by Marston, for provoking the fight, or for asking Dean to kill him.

Dean shoulder checked him gently. "Drama queen."

The warmth of that teasing permeated his mind with a sense of, not forgiveness, but the belief that there was no need for forgiveness. Sam marveled at the ease of that, but for Dean it was just that easy.

A sharper elbow caught his side, and he looked up to see Dean mournfully gazing at his congealed food. "I was enjoying that," he said, aggrieved, apparently willing to bear a grudge for the loss of his food.

'Idiot,' Sam thought as hard as he could down the link while aloud he pointed out, "I'm sure that gray slop tastes just as good the second time around. I'll heat it in the microwave." He wasn't quite so sure the fluffy goodness of his omelet would withstand the radiation. He scraped up the most tasty remnants gingerly, while Dean's enjoyment seemed unabated. He shoveled it into his mouth as if the greasy slop would make a run for it if he paused for more than a second between mouthfuls.

"Dean," he began tentatively, and, at the resulting look of wariness, he raised his hand appeasingly. "I swear I'm not looking for a fight. You did what you had to, I get it. You have amazing instincts, and you trusted them, and you were right to do so. But what if Marston had been right and depossessing him killed me?" He could feel Dean flinch, even though his brother seemed carved of marble. "He really thought it would, you know, it wasn't a bluff."

Dean shook his head in denial, his face washed a shade paler, his realisation churning Sam's stomach. "What the hell were you thinking? Why didn't you tell me?" he forced out. "You told me to keep going."

Unlike earlier, Sam quickly moved to defuse this anger, while offering another oblique apology of his own. "Because contrary to the crap I was spouting earlier, I really do trust you. Besides, anything was preferable to what he had in store for me. Anyway, that wasn't my point," he continued hastily as Dean appeared less than mollified. "If it had killed me, with you doing blood magic, would it have killed you too?"

Dean didn't bother with an answer, just stared at him inscrutably.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Sam looked away for a moment, struggling with acceptance of that concept. He soon looked back, the next question too important to leave unanswered. "And now?"

Dean gave a half-grin. "If I say yes, will you stop asking me to shoot you?"

"Dean!" Sam hated the fact that it sounded like the whine of a six-year-old, but it was easy to fall back on what worked.

"I don't know." Dean allowed Sam to feel the honesty of that answer, and his utter unconcern with that possibility also seeped through.

"That's..." Sam struggled to find the words, but he was sure Dean could read his distress. "That's not what I want." It was the understatement of the century.

Dean's push of sympathy was at odds with his slightly smug response. "Well, you'll just have to take good care of yourself in the next few months, just in case."

"What about the other way round. What happens if you...you know."

Dean hesitated. "At the time, yeah, there was a good chance, but now, no." He couldn't explain why he was so sure about that. He just knew that there was no way he was taking his brother down with him. He would find a way to break the link before that happened.

Sam muttered something unintelligible, but Dean didn't need to understand it to read the dissatisfaction with his answer.

"You know, there is a bright side to all of this," he pointed out cheerfully.

Sam looked across at him suspiciously, "Oh, yeah?"

"It's cheaper than the lo-jack I've been promising to get you." Dean was quite happy to sacrifice a little privacy for the security of knowing that the next time some cannibalistic, inbred psychopaths kidnapped his brother, he'd be able to immediately zero in on his location. That indelible sense of his brother in his mind was a comforting sensation, and he was in no hurry to lose it. The second best thing about the link, in Dean's opinion, was that they shouldn't have to talk about crap like this again. He was hoping that Sam would read his mind on this and let it go. Apparently, the message got through.

"I should change your dressing." Of course, Sam's choice of alternative activities left a lot to be desired. Dean wanted to protest, but wound care was serious business in the Winchester household, and the last thing he wanted to do was to compound Sam's guilt by allowing any of his injuries to fester, so, with an aggrieved sigh, he submitted to his brother's ministrations.

Sam was far from satisfied with their conversation, but he would gain nothing by pushing Dean further. He allowed himself to relax and to enjoy the relative peace that enveloped them. There had always been a deep connection between them, so this link wasn't really anything new, and it was an excellent opportunity to learn more about what made his brother tick. He knew exactly where he wanted to start.

"So, Dean, tell me more about New Orleans."