Chapter X
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"I'm living in an age
That screams my name at night
But when I get to the doorway
There's no one in sight."
- My Body is a Cage, Arcade Fire
/
Imagine a world with no responsibility. No comprehension of right or wrong, good or bad. No conscience. We all lived in a world like that once, when we were children; still too young to realize how the world worked; still unable to grasp the idea of death; still too innocent to understand evil. I tried to recall that time now, that time I spent in such a soft, comforting snow globe of a world. But I couldn't remember, and as I stared up at the yellowing ceiling above me I wondered why memories were so tricky. We always seemed to recall the things we wanted to forget, while the important memories slipped through the cracks of our mind, like sand in an hourglass.
I couldn't sleep because every time I closed my eyes the darkness of my eyelids would transform into an image of Dean beneath me. I recalled the angry swirl of emotions I had felt, wondering how they had come and gone so quickly. Recalling my actions filled me with remorse, but I knew I couldn't erase what I had done. I wondered if he was okay, but the thought of returning to his apartment brought only dread. I didn't want to see the bruises on his face or whatever expression it would reveal, because I knew it wouldn't be a very welcoming one. Dean had done nothing but try to help me, and how had I repaid him? I didn't want to think about it... So instead, I stared up at the shelter's ceiling and fought the exhaustion I felt, thinking of Meg and my stepfather. And in the background, an image of the coffin holding my mother being lowered into the ground, repeated over and over like a broken film strip.
Turning onto my side, I glanced at the clock on the side table. 3:09AM. I wished there was a window in this room, because without one it seemed more suitable as a closet. I wasn't claustrophobic but I suddenly felt the urge to see the night sky, even if there were no stars. I suddenly wondered what would happen if all the lights in New York simultaneously shut off. I wondered if the stars would appear immediately, or if they'd slowly fade into existence. Perhaps they'd continue to hide.
Knock. Knock. Knock. I sat up in bed immediately, wondering who would be visiting at this bizarre time. Then again, New York City
was the city that never slept. I convinced myself it was probably just someone looking for an empty room and didn't know the rules around here. A closed door meant occupied. "Room's taken!" I called out, flopping back down onto the mattress and letting out a frustrated sigh. I kicked the sheets tangled around my legs, hating that the shelter wasn't air conditioned.
The knocking came again, this time quieter. "Sam, open up."
I sucked in a breath. That was unmistakably Dean's voice. Sitting up again, I stared at the door, the thin crack of light pouring in from the bottom crack darkened by a shadow on the other side. I opened my mouth to say something, perhaps to lamely tell him he had the wrong room, but nothing came out. Not a word.
The knock came again. This time it was a simple 'thud', like maybe Dean had let a fist fall against the door. A long sigh came next, and then more words. "Open the door, Sam."
I really didn't know what to expect. Would he be angry? Disgusted? Would he have a gun pointed at my head seconds after I opened the door? It was difficult to tell by only listening to his voice. I supposed the only way to know was to see him, to read his expression and interpret his actions. I supposed I had to open the door.
I swung my legs over the bed and got to my feet, the wooden floorboards groaning beneath my weight as I covered the short distance to the door. I flicked the light switch on before I placed one hand on the doorknob and twisted the lock with the other. Then I took a step back as I swung the door inwards, making sure to stare down at my feet instead of at the man standing in the doorway. He walked in and I was forced to take a step back, my eyes still glued to the floor. The door clicked as it closed behind him.
I felt fingers on my chin and then my head was being roughly tilted upwards. My eyes met Dean's for a moment, but it was too fleeting for me to discern what emotions they held. I couldn't hold his gaze and the room suddenly felt stifling, my lungs screaming for fresh air. I couldn't do this. I tried to get around him, to open the door again-
"Hey, hey, hey," he said as he caught my shoulders and prevented me from escaping. "Stop it." He took my face between his hands and forced me to face him. "Listen to me, Sam. You didn't do anything wrong, okay? You didn't hurt me."
"I made you bleed, Dean," I said, my hands shaking as I kept my eyes cast downward. "I
did hurt you."
"Well, I let you," he said firmly. "You don't think I could have stopped you if I had wanted to?"
I allowed my gaze to shift, to look at the dark bruise stretching across the edge of his face. I followed the blue and black trail, his eyes returning to my vision but my own still unwilling to meet them. "But your head... The counter..."
He chuckled, releasing my face and allowing his hands to drop by his sides. "You're not as strong as you think you are, Sammy. I'd give it a few years before you can pack enough to knock the wits from a man. Though you did come pretty close."
Without the support of his hands I felt my head slump downward again. "Look, I'm not..." I closed my eyes. "What I did, it's not... Not something I ever thought I'd do. It was just- I'm not..." My eyelids slid open once more as I raised my head, trying to explain, and suddenly I was staring directly into his eyes.
"Gay?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
I shrugged, glancing away. "Yeah. That. And..." I didn't know how to word it. "Aggressive, I guess."
He laughed. "Don't worry, Sam. And I think I prefer women myself."
I stared at him, the expression on my face probably mirroring the confusion in my mind. "I don't understand..." My voice trailed off.
He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "When I asked you to screw me, I thought it would help," he explained. "If you had the control, if you were given the power instead of the reverse, I thought it would help you get over what happened to you."
I scoffed and shook my head, looking away from him. "Do you know how insane that sounds?"
"Did it work?"
I returned my gaze to him. He was watching me with unblinking eyes, true sincerity in his expression. I could see now that, in his own warped way, he really had meant to help me. I couldn't stop myself from letting out a laugh at the absurdity of his reasoning. "I don't think something like that is really fixable."
But even as I said this, I knew it
had helped somewhat. I felt lighter now, like the world wasn't about to crash down on my head in a giant wave, threatening to drown me. I don't know exactly why, but what had happened between me and Dean, no matter how messed up it was, had healed me in some way. Not fully, of course – I doubted I'd ever be able to recover fully from that moment in my life – but enough to make me smile slightly as I stood before him. To smile in a way I hadn't been able to for weeks. Perhaps even years.
Maybe it was the fact that I had reached rock bottom. I had never felt so disgraced after what I did to Dean. Now that I knew I hadn't hurt him in the way I thought I had, it was like I was already on my way up. Like no matter how bad things got, I knew I'd already sunken to the lowest point of my life, and that it was impossible for me to return to that place after being there once.
"Honestly, who are you?" I asked him, though I knew he wouldn't be able to answer. There were no ill feelings festering in my voice. I said it jokingly, almost in awe. Here was a man who had appeared in my life out of nowhere, just when it had started to fall apart, and now he seemed to be the only one helping me shoulder the weight, keeping the pieces from disassembling completely. I wanted to thank him, but I didn't quite know how. "Is Meg still at your apartment?" I asked him instead.
He seemed to ponder the change in subject for a moment, but then pressed his lips together as if to dismiss any comment he had about it. "When I left she was still passed out. Guess what I gave her was stronger than I intended."
I frowned. "I still need to ask her some questions. When will she be up?"
"Before sunrise, for sure."
Nodding slowly, I pondered what to do. "Maybe we should head to your apartment now. Get there before she wakes up."
"Sure," he agreed.
I grabbed the backpack I had begun to tow around, which held my sparse wardrobe and few toiletries. When I went to move around him again, reaching out to turn off the light, he caught my wrist in his hand. "Hey, we're cool, right?"
I looked at him in the sudden darkness. His outline was barely visible, my eyes trying to adjust again to the lack of light. My loss of vision made me increasingly more aware of his fingers on my wrist. "Yeah," I replied, my words carrying more confidence than I felt. "You've helped me out a lot. With Meg and..." I trailed off, still a bit uncomfortable with some sections of our past. "I guess I should be thanking you."
He let go of my wrist and my arm swung back to my side. "No need," he said, probably smirking. "That's what friends do for each other, isn't it? Kidnap your father's mistress... Shoot the thugs that mess with you... Stop you from doing it with a club ho but let you screw my brains out... I could go on."
"Please don't." I couldn't help but snort. When stated out loud and so simply, it really was all absurd.
"Well, you seem to be the only friend I've got at the moment," he said suddenly, his voice becoming serious.
I wished I could see his expression, but it was too dark. So I cleared my throat instead. "Don't forget Ash and Jo," I reminded him, not knowing how else to reply.
"Ah, of course," Dean breathed in, the natural sarcasm I was starting to become familiar with returning to his voice. "The bartender with an IQ of 180 and the cheerful prostitute. What a team we make."
I laughed again. He was right, but just then I jumped as another knock sounded on the door right next to me. "Sam, you in there?" It was Jo. I immediately pulled the door open and the girl rushed in, her face pale in the light that poured in from the hallway. "Thank God! I've been knocking on door after door." She glanced at Dean but seemed to be too much in a rush to say a greeting. "Listen, there's two cops downstairs looking for you. They're talking to the shrink lady right now, but I heard them mention your name more than once. Sam Winchester. They know you're here."
My body went numb. Police officers? There were a number of reasons why they could be here. Were they investigating my disappearance? Did they discover my mom's death was not a suicide and came to question me? Had they connected Vince and his pal's murders to me? Did they know me and Dean had kidnapped Meg?
"They say what they were here for?" Dean asked Jo. She shook her head.
"I just heard Sam's name," she answered. "Why? Did you do something bad, Sam?"
I heard Dean curse beneath his breath and I felt the urge to do the same, only louder. I was torn between the good scenario and the bad. I felt like I should slip out of the shelter unnoticed, but another part of me wondered if the officers were here because they knew what a scumbag my stepfather was. Maybe I was to be a witness against him. Maybe I could bring my mother's killer to justice by a means other than bloody revenge. After all, it was highly unlikely that he had the
entire NYPD bought and paid for.
...wasn't it?
Without discussing it with the others, I pushed past Jo and began to head downstairs. Dean called behind me, his tone firm, but I ignored him. I stopped on the top steps of the stairs, squatting down to glance between the banister posts and to gain a glimpse of the officers. Their backs were turned towards me as they spoke with Ellen, whose face looked grim as she nodded her head, arms crossed on her chest.
I felt Jo behind me, her breath tickling my hair, and Dean crouched next to me on the steps. "Are you fucking crazy?" he hissed. "We've got to get out of here."
"What if they're here to help?" I whispered, my eyes not leaving the two officers. Both had guns strapped to their belts.
"Trust me, they're probably not."
"How do you know?" I asked angrily, but just then Ellen spotted me and suddenly pointed in my direction. As the officers simultaneously turned around, fear spread throughout my chest as I recognized the face of one. His name was Carl. In the past, he had dropped by our house on a few occasions to speak with John. I knew he worked for my stepfather.
"Run!" I yelled, just as the two men reached towards their belts and gripped their guns. I pushed Jo back down the hall, the girl stumbling as she was forced to turn around and start running. I felt Dean behind me and prayed that he was following. My focus was the end of the hallway, where it branched off. If we went to the right it would lead us to the washrooms, where I knew there was a fire escape. The only problem was, the hallway was long, and bullets had a nasty habit of outrunning people.
I heard Ellen scream something over the crash of footsteps on the stairs, but then her voice was interrupted by the sounds of gunfire. I'd never heard anything so loud in my life. It wasn't anything like what you heard in action flicks. This was the real deal, and my brain rattled around in my skull as my world went deathly silent after the first shot. I was still running, but I couldn't hear my shallow breaths or my sneakers pounding the floor. I knew Jo was screaming as she bolted down the hallway in front of me, her small hands pressed to her ears, but I couldn't hear her either.
Then came the second shot, and a third and a fourth. These were quieter, like the world was suddenly submerged in water. Still, I knew that two of the shots had not come from the officers. I figured Dean had removed his own gun and was firing back. A loud ringing began to drown out everything else, but now safety was only a few feet in front of me. Jo was already rounding the corner, unharmed as far as I could tell, and I was quick to follow. I almost skidded across the floorboards as I took the turn, pushing Jo towards the washrooms before she had time to take a breath.
"The fire escape!" I yelled, though I could hardly hear myself. The ringing was like a bell tolling inside of my head, eliminating all other sounds. Fortunately, it seemed like Jo understood, for she quickly pushed open the washroom door and ran to the window, beginning to pry it open. Only when I had reached the fire escape did I chance a look back. Dean was standing in the doorway, pointing a gun down the hallway. His teeth were gritted as his arms shook from the force of each shot he fired.
I heard my name and turned to face Jo, who was standing out on the fire escape and reaching in to grab my shirt. I allowed myself to be pulled outside, having to bend my body awkwardly in order to fit through the cramped opening. Jo was beginning to climb down the ladder when I made it fully outside, a slight drizzle immediately covering my limbs in a watery sheen. I looked back into the building but Dean was already there, pushing me forward as he came through the window.
"Go!" he shouted, and I followed Jo down the ladder, not entirely sure how I was able to do so with my hands shaking the way they were. As soon as my feet touched the ground Jo was pulling me down the side alley that ran beside the shelter. I didn't have to look back to know that Dean was right behind us. The ringing in my ears had already begun to fade and I could hear his footsteps. Jo led us through a hole in a wooden fence and suddenly we were in someone's unkempt backyard. I had to jump over an old, abandoned wheel barrow before we were scaling a smaller, wire fence, and then we were in some sort of construction yard. It went on like this for a while, Jo leading us from place to place; across a busy street, passed an empty shopping mall, through a shabby fast food joint. I was thankful that she was so familiar with the area, but my heart continued to thump in my chest even when we finally stopped running. We were standing in the parking lot of an old, rundown motel. The place had obviously gone out of business a long time ago, the "No Vacancy" sign missing a few letters and soggy trash piled all around.
"I can't... Run anymore..." Jo heaved, her hands on her knees and her head hanging as she tried to regain her breath. I had no idea where we were.
"I think we lost them," Dean announced as he looked towards the direction we had come from. I noticed that he didn't seem to be out of breath at all. A sheen of rainwater covered his face and bare arms, his right hand still clutching the gun. I swallowed as I looked at the black device, but then I noticed that a rivulet of red was running down his left arm, turning pink where it mixed with rainwater.
"You're bleeding," I said. He turned his eyes to me and then towards the spot I was looking.
"Bullet wound," he said, as if it was a casual occurrence for him to have holes in his body.
"You were shot?" Jo squeaked, looking at Dean's arm with large eyes. Her face was as pale as flour. I suspected my complexion had lost its rosiness as well.
"I'm fine," he replied, almost amused. "We should see if we can get into one of these motel rooms and wait out the night. Jo, is there a drug store nearby?"
"There's one a block away," she said, her voice faint.
"Good. I need you to buy me a few things. Alcohol, bandages, and a set of tweezers."
"What about the guys after us?" I asked. "It's not safe to-"
"I shot one in the leg," Dean replied as he began to make his way to the empty motel, a hand clutching his shoulder. "I doubt his partner will look for us alone. It didn't seem like they had any back up nearby."
"I'm on it!" Jo said as she gave a little salute. It seemed her cheerfulness had returned now that Dean's wound was out of sight. I watched as she bounded away, her blonde hair bouncing along in its pony tail. Then I followed Dean to where he was trying to find an unlocked room. It looked like this place had been used by squatters before. The locks on most of the doors had already been broken, and each one we entered was littered with beer cans, dirty needles, and used condoms. We finally chose the owner's office, which was reasonably cleaner than the other rooms.
By the time Jo came back, Dean had removed his shirt, revealing the bloody mess that was his shoulder. I could barely look at the wound, but Dean had no problem with examining it. He winced slightly as he prodded the injury. It seemed the bullet had hit him in the back of his shoulder, but had not gone completely through.
"Fuck," he sighed. "I would have told you to make a trip to the liquor store too, if it were open," he told Jo.
"Is it bad?" I asked, grimacing. I had no experience with bullet wounds, so I supposed even the small ones would look life-threatening to me, but Dean didn't seem to be very anxious.
"Not too bad," he said as he finally turned his attention away from the injury. He grabbed the shopping bag from Jo and set the items on the desk. "The bullet missed the bone but didn't get embedded too far. I was lucky."
I nodded my head, not really sure he could call himself 'lucky' after being shot.
"Does it hurt a lot?" Jo asked, scrunching her face up as she examined the gunshot wound.
He went to shrug but then seemed to think better of it. "This may sound weird, but I'm pretty sure I've been shot before." I could believe it. "I'm gonna need someone to dig this bullet out for me."
My eyes widened. "One of us?"
"Well I can't do it myself," Dean retorted. "I can't reach. I'd just make a bigger mess of it."
"I'll do it!" Jo said, raising a hand in the air as if she was volunteering to be the class president. I wondered where her earlier squeamishness had gone.
"Think you can?" Dean asked her, looking a little sceptical.
"A few years ago I was working at some dive downtown, and this drunk asshole bashed a glass on a waitress's face. She gut cut up real bad, and when I went to the hospital with her I got to watch the doctor pull shards of glass from her face. That's kind of like this, isn't it? I can totally handle it."
"That's a touching story, Jo," Dean said, his voice sarcastic. "I don't think it's really the same thing, though."
As disappointment etched Jo's features I piped up. "I have good hand-eye coordination. My biology teacher said I have the hands of a surgeon."
Dean sighed. "That's good enough for me, I guess."
Twenty minutes later, after a superb lesson in cursing from Dean, the bullet was out and the wound was disinfected and bandaged. I'd done a pretty good job, at least for my first time. Dean had said so himself. Made me wonder how he had gained such experience to decide such a thing...
Jo was asleep on the couch in the entrance as I cleaned up the mess on the desk, discarding bloody tissues into an empty trashcan that had been left behind in the motel office. Dean stood in front of the window, checking out my bandage job in the reflection. "I hope this doesn't ruin my tattoo..." he mumbled.
I scoffed. "You were shot and your biggest concern is that it may have ruined your tattoo?"
"It's a cool tattoo," Dean defended as he pierced me with a glare in the reflection of the window. I shook my head as I lifted myself onto the front counter.
"Those guys were after me," I announced. "They were sent by my stepfather." Dean didn't reply, so I added, "I almost got you killed."
"Well that's not something new. Remember when you called those bikers cavemen? Almost got us killed then too."
I scowled. "I'm serious, Dean. You
and Jo." I glanced at the sleeping girl on the couch. "You almost died because of me. I should have never let you become involved in all of this. I have to-"
"Shut up, Sam." I did. "I'm pretty sure I'm older than you, which means I can decide for myself who and what I want to get involved with. As for Jo, with the way she looks at you I'm pretty sure she's willing to do anything for you, including risk her life. So that settles it. Stop bitching."
I was too bewildered to reply. Instead, I bit my lip and glanced to the side, my eyes falling on an empty picture frame. Dean was right. I couldn't tell him what to do, and there was no use casting Jo aside. She was already involved, and probably safest with me and Dean now. There was no way I was allowing her to return to the shelter. I was happy that Ash had been working at the bar during the time of the shooting.
"What do we do now?" I asked, my voice quiet.
Dean turned his head to face me, a hard glint in his eyes. "What else? We return fire with fire."
To Be Continued.
