A/N:Contains general spoilers through mid Season 5 up to 'Sam, Interrupted'. You do not have to have seen the episode for the story to make sense, but it of course helps.

Written for a prompt at the hoodie_time Dean focused hurt/comfort comment-fic meme. The request was for an AU tag to 'Sam, Interrupted' where Dean just barely gets Sam out of the hospital after killing the wraith, but doesn't make it out himself. Dean has a very bad reaction to the medication that he's given, bringing back the memories of hell full force, and the hospital staff try to help him cope.

This story does contain hell flashbacks with graphic imagery/torture.

Glenwood Springs Psychiatric Hospital - Ketchum, Oklahoma

With the wraith's influence no longer hanging over them it should have felt like a veil had been lifted. Instead Dean just felt the full weight of reality come crashing back down. He suddenly got why Martin preferred crazy. Crazy was easy.

Surrendering to insanity would be a hell of a lot easier than he and Sam running back out to get their asses once again handed to them. No matter what they did, they weren't going to win. Neither would say it aloud, but they both knew it. Running back towards certain defeat made them the truly crazy ones.

If they instead retreated into themselves they could forget about the whole damn apocalypse, let the angels sort it out. Good in theory, but that would just release another floodgate of nasty. Locking himself up inside his own mind would barely be a step up from hell because Dean carried his own piece of hell inside him. Always would. He pushed it down, ignored it, denied it – whatever it took to make it through one more day, but it was always just below the surface. And it wasn't just hell. It was everything.

No matter how much it hurt at least when they were out there fighting he could delude himself into feeling like he was doing something. In the heat of battle he could forget. Sometimes he could even forget that he knew the fight was futile and that he was useless.

Aside from starting an apocalypse there apparently wasn't anything he couldn't screw up and he couldn't stop what was coming. He couldn't really save anyone. Like his personal delusion had said, he couldn't even save himself. That didn't matter. There was no way out of this fight aside from surrender and even then it wouldn't be over. He couldn't even die. The only choice was to keep fighting.

"Dean, come on!"

His eyes shot up to meet Sam's anxious face. Another hard hit from reality. They had all of a minute, if that, to find a way out of here and hit the road before they were given a permanent padded suite.

"Right. Let's go."

Without further hesitation, Dean followed Sam out of the blindingly white room. None of the hospital staff was yet in view, but the sound of rushed footsteps approaching reverberated through the hallway. That answered the question of which way to go.

A quick glance between them silently confirmed the plan before he and Sam took off in the direction opposite of the footsteps. For the first time he was grateful to be wearing these stupid hospital slippers instead of his usual clunky boots. The slippers made him feel naked, but at least the things did a decent job of dampening the sound of his feet hitting the ground.

They took a sharp turn to get out of view of the main hallway and ran headlong into an orderly. Dean skidded to a stop, almost slamming into Sam's back. The orderly obviously hadn't been planning an ambush because the man looked shocked before quickly composing himself.

"Hey, just calm down there," the man told them in a tone usually reserved for toddlers. "You're alright. I'm just going to get you some help, okay?"

"Actually, we're fine, thanks," Dean replied.

The man nodded slowly. "Sure you are, buddy. Just take it easy. Over here! I got..."

The orderly's call to the other staff members was cut short when Sam's fist caught the guy hard in the jaw. It was too late. The quick footsteps they'd heard a moment ago became pounding strides as the reinforcements closed in on them. They should be running like hell, but Sam was standing there staring between his still clenched fist and the poor sap crumpled on the ground.

"He's fine," Dean hissed to his brother. "Move it!"

Dean wasn't worried about the doctors getting a hold of him. He could talk his way out of anything. It was Sam he was worried about. There was a body back in that room and Sam was already a violent offender in this hospital's book. If the doctors got a hold of his brother there was no telling where they would take Sam.

Worse yet, if Sam was kept doped up with that happy juice the doctors had been shooting his brother up with earlier, Sam would be saying yes to Lucifer with a sloppy grin on his face. It would all be over without his brother even realizing what happened.

He pushed Sam ahead of him and shot a glance over his shoulder just in time to see the nurses turning the corner towards them. They'd found an exit at the end of the hall, but the doctors were too close. Sam didn't seem to notice and Dean used that to his advantage.

Closing the last bit of distance to the fire exit, he shoved open the door and let Sam run through ahead of him. Dean stopped just short of following his brother out. It only took Sam a split second to realize that Dean was no longer behind him.

There wasn't enough time for words. Dean could only catch Sam's confused eyes long enough to silently lie that he knew what he was doing, that this was all part of the imaginary plan. Without waiting for Sam's protest, Dean pulled the door closed again, shutting himself in the hallway just as the small team of nurses and orderlies overtook him.

Dean didn't fight them, not really. Instead he only struggled to hold his ground so that he could block the door long enough for Sam to get the hell away from here. He had a lot of practice blocking doors, though usually he was trying to keep things out, not in. It was surprisingly easy only because the orderlies that were grabbing for him weren't his usual combatants.

If he pulled this stunt against anything else on his brother's tail he would be dead by now or at least a seriously bloody pulp. But these guys were trying to yank him away without hurting him, which just let him buy all the more time for his brother. By the time he felt the sting of a needle jab into his bicep he had to hope that he'd held them off for long enough.

A moment later the hallway seemed to sway. Dean's eyes blinked rapidly as his mind struggled desperately to focus. Instead it just went blank. He took a staggered step away from the door before collapsing limply into the arms of the orderlies.

-----

The room around Dean slowly came into focus. He squinted against the harsh light of the fluorescents that only exasperating his throbbing headache. Vaguely he noted that people were staring at him like he was some animal at the zoo, but he couldn't initially remember why or where Sam was. Sam.

Suddenly Dean shot up in the bed, or tried to. A gentle hand pressed against his chest easing him back down against the mattress. It was just gentle enough that he didn't grab the wrist and break it before bolting out the door. Instead he tentatively took the silent suggestion of remaining in bed, at least until he could figure out where the bed was.

His brow furrowed in confusion as he visually searched the room for a familiar face and didn't find one. Dean's eyes settled on the man sitting in a chair beside his bed. Gradually it came. Doctor Fuller. Wraith. Mental hospital. Sam got out and Dean got the drugs, but not the good ones. He gave a disgruntle sigh and settled back into his pillow. His eyes closed to stave off the wave of dizziness that the abrupt attempt to sit up had caused.

"Eddie, we know what happened with Nurse Erma."

Once the nausea passed he wanted to ask who the hell Eddie was, but the doctor was obviously talking to him and he was too tired to care what the guy called him.

"Uh...you do?" he asked tentatively, more unsure of his own voice than anything else.

Dean's groggy mind grasped desperately to attach the name Erma to a face. When he did he cringed. It was a damn ugly face. If he never saw another wraith again it would be too soon.

"Yes. We know you tried to release Alex and Nurse Erma walked in. Alex became aggressive and killed her."

"He did?"

He'd killed the wraith so who the hell was Alex?

"It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known that would happen. I know things are very confusing right now, but we have a treatment that is going to help you."

Dean's eyes opened and he glared critically at the doctor. "You've got me confused with someone else. There's nothing wrong with me."

"I understand that you believe that, but you're going to have to trust me. Once your medication begins to take effect, you'll see, everything will be much clearer. We'll talk again soon, same time tomorrow."

In the blink of an eye the hospital room was replaced by a more familiar setting. Starkly white walls contorted into towers of bleached bones melded together with discarded, mutilated flesh. His nostrils burned at the heavy, sulfuric scent laced with scorched flesh. The screams tore at his eardrums. He screwed his eyes shut against the sensory assault.

"We'll see how you're feeling...Eddie?"

The words being said didn't register, it was only the voice that he heard. Nasally and assured, accompanied by a crooked, self amused grin on a gruesome, demonic face. The hands of the thing before him adeptly twirled an eternally sharpened razor smeared with his own blood.

When he tried to pull away a strong hand gripped his arm, forcing him back against the unusually soft rack. In an instant he was struck with something he'd never before felt in the heat of the pit. Hope. Somehow he just knew that in this moment he had a fighting chance of escape and he didn't hesitate to snatch that opportunity.

Dean's hand shot out to grab Alistair's arm. He swung the demon that was god here around with a crash into something Dean couldn't see beyond the edge of darkness that surrounded his currently limited vision. The pure sensation of liberation lasted for half a second before more hands grappled at him from the darkness, pulling him back into the depth.

----

Sweat rolled down Dean's glistening brow, stinging his already moistened eyes. The salty mixture of sweat and tears continued their trail down his discolored cheekbone, cutting a line through the caked blood splattered there.

The razor gouged deeper, so deep there was nowhere left to go but back out the other side. Its wielder's arm pushed through the shredded remains of his chest, the blade scratching against his spine through the front of his dismantled ribcage. It was what qualified as a tickle these days but brought a pain vastly more intense than anything the human body was capable of experiencing on earth.

His head tipped back as if to cry out, but he'd lost the voice to scream. He'd already eaten his useless lungs. There were plenty of others damned bastards in the endless chasm still hollering for him. Their agonized cries and desperate pleas to end their own tortures were deafening, coming from nowhere and everywhere, but the unbearable sounds scarcely registered as even background noise anymore.

There was no end for any of them. He was the only one here with a choice. When the gore covered hand finally pulled back out through his split sternum, jarring nerve endings that actual human bodies didn't even possess, he was again asked to make that choice. The now deceptively gentle hand set on the remains of his flayed shoulder, which had been cauterized by the heat from the rack's searing metal.

In the next instant he was made to appear whole again, but the all consuming physical pain and the darker, empty pit inside remained as a reminder. The razor was presented to him, well within his reach. Moments earlier it had been slick with his blood and crusted with bits of his insides. Now it glistened, reflecting the light of the hot embers that engulfed everything in this place.

All he had to do was accept it and tomorrow he could keep his lungs. Tomorrow it wouldn't be him hollowed out, not physically. But they'd win and he knew what he would soon become - just another black eyed son of a bitch.

He lifted his head only enough to display his raw hazel eyes, a rebellious glare tensing his pained features. There was no need to speak it anymore. A sickly smile shone back at him.

"Same time tomorrow, then," the self-satisfied sneer of his torturer announced.

Dean ignored the jolly, singsong tone and instead focused on the fact that every day he didn't pick up that razor was another day that smug bastard didn't get what he wanted. It was only the slimmest of victories. He couldn't do this forever and it felt as if he already had.

His vision of smoldering flesh blurred when a sudden shock of light breached the darkness and bombarded his eyes. A hand again gripped his shoulder, pulling a startled gasp from him. For a moment he thought he remembered this. It was something seared on the back of his mind, but buried too deep to really make out.

A shiver rocked his body as the suffocating heat vanished. The glowing hot metal of the rack was replaced with a warm, but comparatively freezing surface that was nearly soft. Then he remembered.

His racing blood pounded in his ears, unable to move in the confines of the tight space just big enough for his body. Dean's finger's clawed desperately against rough pinewood he couldn't escape, lungs burning again, but this time from exertion and limited air.

He didn't want this, had never asked to be returned to his body. All he'd wanted was an end. He beat harder against the confines, his body too tight for his broken soul let alone the box being too small for his body. The claustrophobic panic dissipated only when he heard a distant voice. He wasn't here alone.

"Eddie, can you hear me?" The tone was gentle and foreign to his ears, which were still numbed from the cries of torment.

The reprieve he had foolishly expected was shattered when he again felt the tug of the restraints, softer this time but unquestionably there. A hand forced one of his forearms still. He tried to move his free arm but the cuffs dug at his wrist.

The drag of a razor down his exposed arm sent hot crimson welling to the surface, the blood seeping down his arm. He couldn't swallow down the cry as the cut of the razor moved over the newly healed flesh that still had all the nerves intact.

A hand set against his collarbone, fingers pressing against his neck before the hand slipped around his throat. The grip tightened, cutting off his air supply, his chest screaming painfully for the air that wouldn't come.

"His pulse is racing, breathing erratic. Eddie, I need you to calm down, can you do that for me?"

"It's Dean you sorry son of a bitch," he rasped. "Can't even remember who you're slicing on? Want my money back..."

"He's hallucinating. You need to listen to me."

"I won't...won't ever," he mumbled as well as his parched lips would allow. "Do what you want, but I'll never do this."

"Oh, but you will, son," a more familiar voice chimed in.

Dean tensed against the onslaught he knew was coming. When the white-hot pain scorched through him his back arched up off the soft surface beneath him, his lungs this time finding the air to raggedly scream. He collapsed back down, panting in exhaustion, tugging weakly at the restraints that held him place.

"We're going to need some sedative here!"

His mind couldn't process the words, but it didn't matter. A few moments later he found what he had been searching for – an end as it all finally bled to darkness.