The Yellowed Wood

Chapter One

He locks the door, bolts it. Lets the pack fall from his shoulder to the floor and drags a stolen salt canister from his pocket. Dropping into a crouch with a protest from his stiff knees and swollen right ankle, he pops the top and upends the container along the threshold, rises with a wince and lays a second line on the sill of the picture window. Establishing a stronghold before he even searches out a light switch.

The switch makes a forgotten, foreign click, and a soft glow illuminates the small, Spartan motel room. He'd been looking for cheap, but honestly would have settled for not outside. His eyes go to the darkest corners first, and he crosses the room with limping but business-like steps, leads with his empty pistol clutched like a club as he flips on the light in the small bathroom.

He finds the room empty, and the gun slips from his suddenly lax fingers, thunks to the thin carpet.

He's alone.

Dean stumbles backward until his back connects with a wall and he sags against it, runs a hand down his dirty face.

He's out.

He really made it out.

He swallows back a choke of emotion, won't allow it to break free. But then he drops his hand away, and the sight of the single bed in the room tears a hole right through him; a sudden, intense longing for his little brother by his side, for the assurance that Sammy is safe.

The very fact it took Dean so long to break free of that place, and that his brother wasn't there to meet him when he got out…it's anything but reassuring. But if Sammy's well and able, he's out there right now, chasing leads and doing everything he can to right this.

The thought makes Dean feel a little less alone.

He works the cell phone free of his pocket, hits 'redial' on a number he's already tried a dozen times since he found the device in the hiker's bag. He'd made a promise to Benny that he intends to make good on, but he needs to hear from his little brother before he can move forward. His compass can't work without knowing where Sammy is. That he's okay.

"This is Sam…"

Dean lets the back of his head smack against the wall, fingers tightening around the phone's plastic casing. He swallows. "Tell me you're gettin' these messages, man. I'm in, uh…" His eyes scour the room, land on a notepad atop the bedside table. "Millinocket. Maine. Pamola Motor Lodge, room 4. Call me at this number." Leaves a variation of the same message on Sam's other numbers.

The phone falls to the floor as soon as Dean disconnects the last call, adding to the trail of discarded items now littering the motel room. His hands go to his face and scrub at his tired, sensitive eyes. These first few hours have been a confusing, exhausting mishmash of new, hard-learned instincts he can't immediately shake and all of the older, more ingrained things he can't quite remember right.

Dean's fingers stumble over bruises, feel out dried mud and blood, and his gaze ticks over to the bathroom. To the shower, which suddenly seems like the most beautiful thing he's ever laid eyes on. He pushes away from the wall and limps a slow, shaky course into the small room. He's been riding a hell of an adrenaline rush for a while now, and there's no denying that he's crashing. Hard. Fast.

He reaches behind the flowery vinyl shower curtain and cranks the hot water, then falls back in a lean against the counter, waits for steam to fill the small bathroom before making a move on any of his ripe-smelling clothing.

His boots seem fused to his feet, and his wrenched ankle makes the process of removing them a real bitch. It's gonna take a lot of time to get them clean again; Dean's pretty sure they could walk out of the room on their own. He kicks them off carefully, nudges them with the foot that isn't throbbing into a muddy pile in the corner.

The jacket takes some effort to work free of his sore, stiff shoulders, and a fiery pain flares in his left forearm, like he's somehow forgotten about his passenger, any more than he's forgotten that they didn't all make it out.

"Keep it down in there," Dean orders hoarsely through clenched teeth, folding over and cupping his right palm over the burning spot.

The fire recedes to a more manageable – but still plenty uncomfortable – ache, and he straightens, dropping his ruined jacket on top of the boots.

He'd never intended for the coat to replace what he'd lost; nothing could. But it now represents and holds the memories of something – of someplace – he never imagined ending up, let alone surviving. The brown leather has been scuffed, has been cut, slashed and clawed, stained with mud and smeared with blood. Not all of it his, but a good deal. Enough.

The odor clinging to the material is…interesting. Sweat, dirt and blood. Death. It's a battlefield stench, calling to mind long days and longer nights, fights to the death and that one time, early on, when he didn't think he had it in him to fight anymore.

It won't be difficult to part with, to leave behind.

Dean strips off his button-down next, the shirt decorated with a few matching tears and bloodstains, and adds it to the pile. He hisses as his charcoal t-shirt catches on a scab on his right shoulder blade – a vicious strike from razor-sharp claws that had easily penetrated three layers of clothing. He grits his teeth and rips the cotton free of the wound, collapsing on a palm against the counter while he waits for the angry twinge to abate. When this pain, too, is manageable, he then raises a shaky hand to wipe away the condensation gathering on the mirror, and immediately recoils.

It's the first real look Dean's gotten of himself since he was spit out of that portal, and it's a shock.

Beneath an unkempt scruff of beard his cheeks are hollow, eyes sunken and bruised in his dirt-streaked, sunburned face. There's a bloody slice along his jaw, and a wide scrape on his forehead, leaving a trail of crimson to stain his eyebrow. He rotates a bit, eyes catching sight of a line of blood running down his back from the reopened wound on his shoulder, and bruises on top of bruises. In various stages of healing and coloring most of his chest and side, yellow and black and every shade between.

Dean hardly recognizes himself. He looks like someone you'd run away from if you had the misfortune of crossing paths.

There exists a level of self-preservation that kicks in when fear wins out over concern and wariness, and Dean has to figure – even keeping to backroads and shadow – that's how he got all the way from the woods to this motel room without cops and cuffs and questions.

The slick feel of the bathtub is an alien sensation under his overworked feet, and hell on his ankle. Dean flattens his palms against the tiles and stands under the hot water, letting the steamy spray scour away most of the blood and dirt and stink, until it runs completely out. By then, he can't really feel the impact of the droplets against his skin, just drops his chin and watches the grimy residue swirl around the drain and his scalded, lobster-red feet.

He's been gone more than a year, according to the newspaper he'd swiped from the motel manager's office. It was May, he thinks, when they stormed Roman Enterprises. When he left his baby in the hands of a demon who once tried to put a hand through him. Sam could be…

No.

He won't even entertain the thought. Won't give up on his brother. Sam certainly wouldn't give up on him.

Dean scrubs what's left of the dirt with cold water and the sliver of motel bar soap. It's not even uncomfortable. The soap is a new experience, though. Or, an old one.

With a thin towel around his waist he goes back to the sink and inspects his fresher wounds. They're clean of dirt but he doesn't have anything in the way of antiseptic or bandages. It's mostly superficial damage, anyway; bruises and shallows scratches that shouldn't even scar, but there's a deeper gouge across his ribs being pulled and aggravated with even the smallest of movements, and at least one cracked bone beneath. Another in his left hand, and he uses his teeth to tear free the sleeve of a white t-shirt to tightly wrap and stabilize the break. He'll get some ice from the machine outside for his ankle.

He's never had much but his meager possessions are now limited to the contents of a swiped hiker's backpack, from which he's already liberated a cell phone, wallet and change of clothes. A pair of jeans that looked small but fit his now-leaner frame just fine, and a warm blue-checked flannel that he drags on immediately, to fight off the chill hanging in the room despite the heater running. He dumps everything else atop the bedspread, swipes what he won't find use for to the floor.

Dean's left with a handful of granola bars, book of matches, a small first aid kit and two knives – a Swiss Army switchblade and cheapish Marine knife. He sends the fingers of his left hand on a cursory examination of the gash on his shoulder and they come away only minimally spotted with blood, so he sets the first aid kit aside. He also finds a map of Baxter State Park, so at least he's got an idea of where he's coming from, even if he's not yet sure where he's going.

His stomach growls low and painful at the sight of the granola bars, and he wolfs them down, follows them with two full glasses of water from the tap. He's still chilled but no longer starving, and a blink turns into a near face-plant onto the bedspread as his exhaustion refuses to be held at bay for another moment.

Dean clears away the mess from the pack but stands beside the bed for a while, doesn't once glance at the clock but knows exactly how much time passes, counting it off on his own breaths. He stares down at the pillows and linens, reaches out and tests the mattress with two fingers, then the flat of his hand, thinking he might sink straight through to the floor. Ends up on the floor anyway, but drags down a pillow, a blanket. Cocoons himself in strange-feeling softness and can't get comfortable, even on the hard floor.

He can't get warm, either, and can't unhear the sounds that have followed him out of Purgatory. Can't block out the noises seeping in through cracks and openings in the door and window. Cars on the freeway, crickets, wind in the trees. Everything new and startling, but not.

It's not long before Dean gives up trying to sleep, despite the fact he's so bone-weary he could cry. He just lies there in the dark, listening. Tense as a board. Alone, and waiting for an attack.

The shrill sound brings him wide awake, bolting upright and swinging the Marine knife in a wild arc over his head.

Heart hammering in his chest, Dean's wide eyes search the immediate area, and it takes a few blinks to make sense of his surroundings – four walls, carpet. Ceiling. Motel room. Not Purgatory. Sunlight streams into the room through a gap in the gray curtains, but if his pounding, spinning head is any indication, he hasn't slept long.

The sound cuts out, and after a brief moment of silence, starts up again.

A phone, ringing.

Dean stares down at the cell phone, on the carpet next to his right leg, and his thundering heart just stops. He drops the knife to the side and presses a button, raises the phone to his ear. "Sam?"

"Dean!"

"Sammy?"

"Dean, thank God. I was in a dead zone, looking for…I just got back to the car, got all of your messages."

A car door shuts with a creak, and Dean smiles at the sound.

"How did you – where are you?" Sam's voice is an unsteady, panicked godsend, and his words trip over one another.

Dean can't honestly remember where he is, only where he was. "Purgatory," he whispers, voice catching as he says it aloud for the first time.

Sam sucks in a breath. When his brother speaks again, his words have lost the shaky edge of panic. Taking the lead. "I know, man. I know. I've been…I've been looking all over for you, for...for a while. You said you're in Maine, right? Millinocket? I'm right nearby, Dean, chasing a lead in Baxter State Park."

The name strikes him, and Dean shoves the covers down and kicks them away from his legs, finds his knees and then his feet, stumble-limps across the room to the discarded backpack and items. And doesn't feel a single pain in his body as he does so, just grounds himself in his brother's voice.

"Dean?"

"Yeah, I'm here. I just…" He finds the map, studies the cover. "That's where I came out."

"No shit." The shake is back in Sam's voice.

"Last night, somewhere in the middle of the woods, 'bout…" Dean drags a trembling hand down his face, overwhelmed by emotion and information. "I don't even know, man."

"S'all right, Dean. Just – just hang tight, okay? Just don't move. I'll be there in fifteen minutes, man. Twenty, tops. Son of a bitch."

There's tangible relief in Sam's voice now, and he talks to Dean the entire way, without expecting a single word of response. He rambles on and on about busted leads and dead ends, and he laughs unsteadily as he recounts a time he almost hit a dog with the Impala, swerved out of the way just in the nick of time.

To be continued...

Author Notes: Sneak attack AU! I've been trying to write this post-Purgatory story - well, not THIS particular story - for a few months now, and it wasn't clicking. This one's for you, Ncakes; you offered an idea and an approach that just made it HAPPEN.