Disclaimer: I don't own anything Supernatural and I am not making any profits off of this story. It all belongs to the CW and Eric Kripke so, please don't sue and please don't be offended by the language or situations the characters find themselves in.

Chapter 6

Darkness, murky and thick like oil.

It was swirling all around him, sticky and opaque.

Surrounding him in pitch black.

Everything felt heavy to Sam Winchester where he lay trapped between the unconscious and conscious worlds.

The fever still had him in it's unmerciful grip.

He couldn't move.

His body felt like it was being weighed down my all the gravitational force the Earth itself possessed.

He may not have been able to move but Sam could still feel everything around him.

His head pounded in time with the beat of his lethargic heart. His jaw ached at the corner of his mouth. His neck twinged every once and a while. His ears were filled with a low humming buzz that stop and started intermittently

No matter how hard he tried he couldn't get his eyelids to budge.

Not even a tiny bit.

It was as though some invisible force was holding them shut.

These were some of the physical things Sam could feel in his current state.

But the thing Sam felt most that no drug or medicine administered to him to combat.

Fear.

He was terrified beyond words.

The full horrors of everything that had happened still held to him much like the murky blackness of his unconsciousness.

He was scared and he wanted the one person who could chase it all away.

He wanted his brother.

He needed Dean.

Where was Dean?

With these questions swirling around in his head, Sam felt an unknown force pull in back into the dark abyss of full unconsciousness.

The blackness took over completely and snubbed out any further thought from Sam's subconscious.

He simply floated away into an almost comatose-like state of being.

Back in the world outside, the door to Sam's hospital room slowly and quietly opened allowing a petite woman in a white coat and ghostly pale young man in a brown leather jacket to enter.

" He's stable for now but his fever is still too high. We'll be monitoring your brother very closely. These next few hours are critical Mr. Godfrey and you may need to prepare yourself." Said the Doctor as she eyed her patient's older brother, who's eyes had become clued to the form of the young man laying completely motionless and deeply unconscious on the hospital bed.

Dean stood there and felt a frigid chill grip his heart at the Doctor's words.

He'd heard them yes, but his gaze just took in the sight of his little brother.

Sam lay there unnaturally pale with only a light flush of rosiness to his skin because of the fever that still gripped him.

There were tubes and wires stuck all over his body that led to the monitoring equipment that beeped softly on one monotonous drone.

Dean swallowed thickly and nodded without taking his eyes off of the too still form laying on the hospital bed.

The doctor took this as her cue to leave and with a lingering look at the wreck of a young man standing before his brother's hospital bed she ducked out of the room.

Dean didn't even notice the doctor's departure. With his eyes transfixed on Sam's sleeping for Dean dragged himself over to the small plastic chair at stood beside the hospital bed. He sank down into the chair wearily and promptly buried his face in his hands. He breathed in deep through his fingers. Then with every ounce of threadbare will he had left in him Dean reigned in his emotions, silencing the urge to dissolve into despair. Taking in another deep breath the older brother unburied his face from his fingers and brought his itchy red eyes back to Sam's too still form.

Dean dragged his chair closer to the side of the hospital bed and then slowly reached out for Sam's pale hand that rested on top of the hospital sheets and comforter. With reverent care he picked up the limp appendage and wrapped his own hand around it. It was deceptively cool to the touch seeing as to how Sam was being internally ravaged by fever. Still, Dean held on to his brother's hand going so far as to cover it with his other hand.

" Hold on Sammy, don't you dare give up. Don't you dare." Whispered Dean as he gently squeezed Sam's lax hand.

With a shaky sigh, Dean settled in for the long night that was ahead. He wouldn't be getting any sleep he knew, he could live with that. What he couldn't live with was something happening to the young man who was currently laying before him on the hospital bed, senseless to the rest of the world and gripped in a dangerous fever.

The hours began to slowly pass by with no signs of awakening from Sam. Dean sat there for all those hours that passed not taking his eyes off of Sam. The paleness in his baby brother had however, given way to a rosey flush as the fever progressed. The doctor and nurses had returned to check on Sam and had given him new medicine through the IV he was hooked up to.

Then more waiting followed with only the soft sounds of Sam's slightly labored breathing combating the other wise near dead silence of the room.

Dean sat still clutching Sam's hand as the events of the day kept playing out in his head.

His brother had almost died today, still could. And back at the Roosevelt Asylum, he had been the one goading Sam on, giving him the gun, daring him to pull the trigger, that combined with Ellicot's evil meddlings with Sam's head had brought the boy to his knees. Dean winced as he shifted in his chair, the movement pulling on his own rock-salt ravaged chest. He knew he should get his injury looked at seeing as to how he was in a hospital, but this would bring about suspicions that neither he nor Sam needed at the moment. So he soldiered on and bit his cheek against the pain.

His sole priority was Sam, not himself. He needed his brother to beat this freak illness. He needed his brother to get through this so that he could apologize for everything he had done to worsen the misery Ellicot had already piled onto Sam.

If Sam didn't pull through, Dean wouldn't be able to either.

That left two lives teetering dangerously on the outcome of the coming hours.