See first chapter for header and disclaimer. Thx.

For this chapter, there are a few spanish words. I do not speak Spanish, save a couple years in high school. I can follow it in a conversation but so cannot speak it. No intention to offend whatsoever.

Chapter Six

Dean watches Sam slip around the door frame like a snake down a staircase. He half-lunges forward but stops when a spear of light stabs him in the eye. Didn't get the drapes closed all the way. It's just a little chink in their fortress, but all Achilles had was one. He presses back against the wall with a too-hard thump, air whooshing from his lungs as the bathroom snicks shut.

Holding Sam back when he's got his mind set has never been one of Dean's fortes, anyway.

Sam's in there with...it. Dean's hand tightens around the worn hilt of the knife in his waistband, silver over consecrated iron, smelted over black flame. Wouldn't kill a demon, but it'd hurt like hell. Taking care to duck the chink in the drapes, the motes of dust large enough to glow, explosions of color on the fringes of his peripheral vision, he starts toward the door only to fall back against the wall panting.

He tries shaking his head, but only ends up on his knees. It's taking longer to catch his breath than it should, and for the first time in two days, he can't even feel his cracked ribs. Numb isn't necessarily a good thing, he thinks, too aware of a sticky trickle over his lip and down the back of his throat, tang of copper on his tongue.

He's torn between breathing and coughing, ends up choking.

The world shifts into a nightmare all black and white like memory with the negative reversed. The heat kicks in and blows the curtain aside a little farther. The sliver of light becomes a quasar, microwaves popping and sizzling through the synapses in his brain. His head falls against the wall with a thud, and in its wake, there's an echo strangely reminiscent of the Bionic Woman's super power sound effects. It'd be cool if it didn't hurt so goddamned much.

Blinded, Dean falls back against the closet door. He presses his thumbs into his eyesockets, but that only blocks out the light. The burn's already on a bullet train down through his nervous system, sparks showering out behind it. If this is an acid trip, he needs to come down...yesterday.

"Sammy," he pants, sliding down the wall. He can barely even hear himself. No way Sam notices through the door and the wall, but Dean can't do more than breathe through the pain, gasping, and hee-hee-heeing. He's not too manly to try lamaze breathing if it will help.

It doesn't.

Instead, something snaps. Maybe the bullet train jumps its track. Maybe Dean does. Clenching his jaw, Dean's head snaps back on his neck and cracks into the wall, not just blinding white on the overhead projector screen but stars in the darkness behind it.

Dean hisses through his teeth, and the sound's like water splashing into a fountain. Dean hates fountains. Has ever since that time when Sam was three and almost drowned in one trying to get pennies to buy gumballs. Sam's never asked for gumballs since then, and Dean can't remember being all that fond of them himself, but damn if he can't taste them now, warm on the roof of his mouth and thick down his throat. Doesn't taste anything like blood.

But it is.

He swallows convulsively around a tightening choke he can barely breathe past. His heart feels like one of those toys full of colored balls that pop around erratically when it's pushed across the floor.

"Sammyyy..." Sam's in the next room. Dean remembers the door opening, Sam sliding through, but he's not supposed to be there. He's not supposed to because...

Inhale. Exhale. Swallow. Inhale. Because. Exhale. Swallow.

Well, he's just not.

"Sammmyyy." Dean strains an arm up, tries to open the door, but the first stream of light through the crack pushes him back like a vampire dodging beams of sunlight. What hits him in the face makes a thunderclap in the back of his mind and sizzles in his ears.

Looking down doesn't help. Salt crystals crunch under his knees like gravel, loud enough to feel in his teeth. His hand's still on the door, but he can't feel it, just the army of ants in golf shoes that burrow under his skin.

"Sammmyyy..."

He wants to say it hurts. He'll admit it, just this once if someone would just make it stop. But he can't form the words, tongue thick and useless behind teeth coated with super glue. He opens and closes his mouth, panic rising in his chest, but he can't speak.

He reaches for he door handle one last time, and a bulb pops its filament behind his eyes. For a second, everything's brighter, God taking a photograph, and there's just dark.

oOo

At least it's not blood. Sam's not sure what it is smeared over every wall and surface of the room, pretty sure, but it's not blood. Some of the symbols he knows, and some he recognizes without knowing off the top of his head.

Sam hadn't even known Dean could make one from memory, let alone so many, but there's not a book open in the room, not enough light to read if there was. Dean always has had a better head for patterns and numbers than words. He always knows exactly what he's doing as long as no one asks him to explain, because the words might fail him. Sam figures that comes from a long life of instructions that started with, "Dean, shut up and listen."

'Like your life depends on it,' was never spoken, but implied and understood. Their lives have always depended on action, not words. They don't waste words justifying what they do. At least, Dean doesn't, and Sam usually doesn't ask him to.

But this? Sam needs an explanation for this.

Mirna, the nice Honduran cleaning woman they'd met on their first morning here, glares up at him, bound, gagged, and sopping wet inside the bathtub.

At least now he knows where Dean got all the chocolates.

Sam wasn't far from collapsing to begin with, but the sight of that sweet lady reduced to a quivering mess is enough to sap the last bit of resolve he's got. He drops to his knees beside the bathtub, his skin loose on his bones, sliding over his muscles like he's sloshing through space, a slight time delay on his sense perception. It's nauseating, but he's not fed or hydrated enough to puke.

Mirna cringes away from him as he reaches toward her. It's impossible to see the tears for all the wet, but her face is tight around the gag in a way that he knows she's crying hysterically. She shudders with cold and fear, eyes accusing as she chokes.

God, Sam was in the room when this happened. Out of his mind, but in the same room, and he didn't know.

"It's okay," he lies, voice soft. It's not okay. He hesitates only a moment, hand hovering over the gag before he pulls it back. Sam trusts his brother over anyone else in the world, would stake his life on Dean's word, but this woman's no demon. Doesn't matter how many sigils paint the walls and how much holy water's been poured over it, a demon's not going to just sit cowering in a bathtub, bound with old rags.

The gag slips from her mouth, and Sam's stomach lurches as the deep red marks in the corners of her lips become visible. Her knees and elbows are bruised purple from thrashing against the hard sides, and Sam wishes he had a blanket to put over her. Instead, he tries to support her, his palm on her cheek, thumb rubbing circles over the constriction marks in an attempt to get circulation moving again. His other hand fumbles with the knot at her ankles.

"It's okay," he soothes. "I've got you."

She spits on him, and he doesn't jerk away. He just blinks, opens his eye enough to glimpse the mucus in his eyelashes before wiping it away. He can't be angry with her, doesn't have the presence of mind to figure out what he feels, so he lets her feel for the both of them as her tears flow hot over his fingers. Numb on the outside and twisted inside like broken glass in the belly of a python, he goes back to the knot while she hisses and sobs an endless stream of Spanish profanity mixed with what sounds suspiciously like prayer.

Sounds like she's speaking tongues. Only his two semesters of High School Spanish say otherwise.

Sam swallows his apologies, nothing he can say to make it better. His nerves frayed and stretched, Sam jumps when the bathroom door squeaks.

"Sammyyy." It doesn't even sound like Dean, raspy, with a low rumble that makes Sam's blood curdle. It reminds him of The Shining, one of Dean's favorite Jack Nicholson flicks. If only this was just another one of Dean's movie trivia moments. He really hopes Dean's not sharpening up an axe on the other side of the door, but he can't for the life of him figure why Dean hasn't busted it down already. It's not even locked. He'd expected some kind of fight, still half-expects Dean to come in and drag him out by the hair. The suspense isn't helping Sam get a grip. Not in the least.

Sam hisses, burning his fingers as they tangle in the rope, and he's probably tightening rather than loosening. It's just the kind of week he's having, but he hurries anyway, expecting Dean to intervene at any second.

He doesn't, and that worries Sam more.

"Sammyyy." The words grate over a some old scab in his memory. "Sammyyy."

"El Diablo," Mirna hisses, her whole face trembling. "El Diablo." Her eyes are frantic, darting around the room, each roll of her gaze tightening a coil inside her that Sam can feel beneath his fingers.

"No, no es El Diablo," he insists, trying to draw her attention to his face. He hopes the expression on his face is closer to sincere, or at the very least, endearing, but he's got a feeling it's twitching toward big bad wolf, what with his breath coming in pants and his bangs puffing up and down in the current. "Mi hermano," Sam huffs. "Esta enfermo."

"Di-A-BLO," she insists, lunging toward him. He falls back just in time to avoid being headbutted. "Ojos del Diablo."

Devil eyes. She would think that. Somehow he doesn't think telling her that Dean's eyes are red with blood and not evil will win him any confidence points.

"Enfermo," he says quietly, going back to the binding. "Muy, muy enfermo."

He prays he's not lying. Dean's sick. He has to be sick. Sam has to get him to a doctor, but at the moment, keeping them both out of jail takes precedence.

"Sammyyy..." Dean groans.

Sam's eyelashes are heavier than his fingers. "I'm right here, Dean," he half-sobs. Dean knows he's here. Why isn't Dean here? "I'm just helping out housekeeping. I told you about leaving your underwear soaking in the sink." He doesn't know who he's kidding, but he can't take the lost sound in Dean's voice.

"Sammyyy, come out..."

"Dean, I'm right here...Ah,screw it." Sam fixes an apologetic gaze on Mirna and stands, leaning heavily on the sink. He can't concentrate on ropes when Dean's tying him in knots with his voice.

He pulls the door, half-expecting Dean to plow him down the second he does. When it scrapes over grains of scattered salt and opens into the main room, his breath is sucked from his lungs just as effectively as if Dean had tackled him.

Fever aches, wobbling legs, and all, Sam would much prefer a linebacker full body block to finding Dean collapsed on the carpet, blood seeping from his nose and eyes.

"Dean!" He doesn't even register the salt digging into his knees when he drops beside his unconscious brother. He threads a hand behind Dean's head, swallowing a retch as it just lolls into his grasp without a jerk or protest. A cold film of sweat rubs seeps into the cuts in Sam's fingers, burn in the places his nails were pulled loose digging Dean out of that hole. He can just hear a rasping gurgle of breath over his own heartbeat, can feel a spark of a pulse beneath his fingertips.

"Oh, God..." He falls forward, almost on top of Dean as Mirna runs out of the bathroom, the still-knotted rope dangling around one leg. Sam must've gotten it loose enough for her to kick free. Before Sam can regain his balance and sit upright, she's across the room, hand on the doorknob.

The door's no sooner open than she disappears, too suddenly, snatched from the entry. Her scream is stifled then lost in a flurry of footsteps that grows steadily louder.

"S.W.A.T. Team! Drop your weapons!"

It seems Dean's paranoia wasn't entirely delusional, after all.

Sam doesn't even remember taking the knife from Dean's hand, but he regrets it when red dots appear across his chest. His fingers refuse to release it, not fast enough, and before he can even register just how screwed they are, the S.W.A.T. team opens fire.

TBC

A/N: BWahahaha! That has got to be the most evil cliffie I have ever left. And to top it off, I have bad news. It seems I've over-extended myself with holiday fics, this story, and work. I'm pitching pebbles into buckets like crazy, but like Forrest Gump says, "Sometimes, there just aren't enough rocks." I'm aiming for updating this story once a week, but I can't make promises as the Holiday deadlines draw near.

I also think I'm going to write a few oneshots based on the story I posted the other day. For those of you who haven't read it, it's called "Sole Survivors." Please do be going and reading. I think it's the best thing I've written, like ever. I lurves it so.

Oh, and don't forget to review. Smishes to all.