Chapter Text
Sam had been unconscious more than most people and he knew how it felt to come out of it. He usually came to consciousness slowly, like rising out of normal sleep only slower. There would be a liminal period where he was sort of aware and sort of not, sometimes rising and falling dolphin-like until he could sort of figure out what was going on. Consciousness would be fragmented, he’d blink and too much time would have gone by. Oh, and since something—blood loss, being hit in the head, or sometimes just sheer pain would have caused it—he’d feel like shit. But this wasn’t like that. He just was aware. Light switch.
In the dark.
He did feel like shit. His legs hurt like holy fucking hell. Not literally like hell but this was some not-normal place. He knew because it was black and soundless. Someone—Crowley or an angel or some piece of paranormal crazy was going to show up and do something any minute now. He could touch. Not entirely pleasantly. It was a little chilly. There was something covering him. He felt like he was laying a bit awkwardly on his back. He straightened his head and he could feel himself blinking.
Someone took his hand and he said, “What the fuck?” except he couldn’t hear himself talk, not even the way you could hear yourself when you plugged your ears. Whoever was holding his hand was clenching it like crazy, shaking it a little. Then after a moment they grabbed his other hand and pulled it up which moved his body a bit and that shot pain like an electrical current down his legs making him unable to think or even breath it hurt so bad.
One of the hands had let go when the pain ebbed enough for him to care.
A hand touched his face.
This was fucked up. Totally fucked up. He kept hold of the hand and felt around with the other one. The mysterious place was a bed.
Oh God, what if he was blind? “I can’t see,” he said although again he couldn’t actually hear if he said anything. The hand holding his changed positions and then tickled his palm. What the hell? He was lying in bed, possibly blind (and deaf?) and they were tickling his palm? He wanted to try to sit up but his legs had hurt so bad when they moved him he was afraid to move. “Dean?” he said.
The tickle thing again.
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. Or maybe they couldn’t understand him. Hell, maybe he was whispering. Or shouting.
He blinked and thought. “Dean, are you writing on my hand?” he asked.
He concentrated. ‘Y’
“This is fucked,” he said.
‘YYYYY’
“Am I shouting?”
It felt clearly different, pretty sure it was ‘N’.
“Cas here?”
‘Y’
He felt another hand touch his arm.
“Hi Cas,” he said.
The hand tapped. He smiled. He could feel himself smile. He was trying not to freak.
“Spell?” he asked. He could remember the hunt. The witch.
‘N’
“Curse,” he said.
‘Y’
“Will it wear off?”
No answer for a long time.
“Maybe,” he said to help.
Still a long pause. ‘Y’ finally. He could smell the scent of motel room. Of Dean. Of whiskey. Dean had started drinking.
Probably not. “This sucks,” he said. “This sucks donkey dicks.”
Dean lifted his hand to Dean’s face, to feel Dean smiling and nodding.
Deaf people were loud. They stayed for weeks at this long term residency hotel in some state in the south. Sam was in first grade? Something like that. The two people next door were multiply handicapped; hearing impaired, developmentally disabled, —they were picked up by a shuttle that took them to a sheltered workshop every morning and brought them back every night. They had loud deaf sex sometimes and Sam hadn’t known what was going on, had asked if they were sick, if they were hurt. Dean had been probably ten or eleven and mortified, and Sam couldn’t even remember John’s reaction (which undoubtedly meant that he had only asked Dean).
He closed his eyes. Closed his mouth. After a minute, Dean tapped on his hand. Dean wanted something. Sam wanted to freak out but he was afraid of that pain to come back to his legs. His neck and shoulders were uncomfortable but he was afraid of moving too much. He couldn’t think of anything to ask. He opened his eyes to the blackness and waited for whatever Dean had in mind. Slowly Dean wrote ‘T’ ‘A’ ‘L’ ‘K’.
Sam was afraid to talk. He didn’t know what he would say.
‘L’ and then something he didn’t follow.
“I don’t understand.”
‘L’ ‘E’ something.
“Legs? They hurt. Is that what you’re asking? Am I crippled, too?”
Dean squeezed his hand. After a moment Dean put something in his hand. Pills. Pain pills. Sam held his head up and felt someone’s hand (Cas?) behind it and threw them back. Then there was water.
“No whiskey?” Sam asked, trying to grin.
‘N’
The hand let his head back down. With his free hand Sam reached across towards Dean. Dean caught his other hand but Sam wanted to feel Dean so he shook his hand loose. There was a moment when Dean tried again, lacing his fingers through Sam’s fingers, and Sam pulled his fingers loose before Sam finally gritted his teeth and leaned—which hurt like a son of a bitch. Oh fuck his legs, what was wrong with his legs? But he touched Dean’s face. He just needed to confirm it was Dean.
He didn’t know Dean’s face by touch but it was nice except that Dean’s face was wet. His brother was crying. He’d made his brother cry.
Sam let himself go limp, closed his eyes, pulled his hand back to lie across his belly.
#
Sam had decided opinions about people with disabilities. He was aware he wasn’t always good about it—Sam was pretty sure he was an ablest, that is a person who made judgments about the disabled the way a person who was racist did about people of color. He knew he did. He knew it was a failing. Being blind and deaf and unable to walk did not mean he had no life. Cripple, the word he had used, was an example of what an asshole he was. He had to trust that his brother and Cas would do anything they could to reverse this. If they couldn’t, he had to trust he could make a life. He still had his brain. It would be okay, no matter what. Hard. Different. He could adapt.
It was better than the Cage. No one was actively torturing him.
Compared to Castiel’s angelic senses, he hadn’t even lost that much. Castiel could taste molecules and sense everything. The music of the spheres.
He tried to feel vibrations in the room. The air. Temperature. He found that he restlessly rubbed the sheet between finger and thumb without even realizing it.
Dean and Cas couldn’t hold his hand all the time. Dean walked hard sometimes but Dean could also walk so that he didn’t thump at all and most of the time Sam didn’t feel any vibrations.
He didn’t know what was in the room. Couldn’t tell if something might be coming after him. It made him crazy. Made him imagine things. He kept trying to open his already open eyes. Then he’d close them thinking that his blind stare was probably really disturbing for Dean. (Cas probably didn’t care. Things like that didn’t seem to bother Cas one way or another.) Then he’d realize he was trying to listen, trying to see, and rubbing the sheet again.
He didn’t know if they noticed or not. Didn’t know if anyone was looking at him or not. He felt as if someone was looking at him so he tried to always keep his face still, his eyes and mouth closed and to not look gross or disturbing. At the same time he felt as if there was no one around.
It seemed like hours had passed.
It went on and on and on.
Then he had to pee.
Eventually, someone touched his hand and he startled. Then he could tell them.
His legs hurt so bad. Towels and a bottle and indignities. Time for the pain to subside while someone help his hand. Then food and water.
Sam had known for a long time, since he got out of the Cage, that it wasn’t good for him to have nothing to do or he could get pretty weird. He researched or he ran or he hunted. He indexed the books in the Bunker. He watched TV with Dean or Cas—although sometimes he had to have his laptop with him when he did that or his thoughts could go bad. He was a freak who had been subjected to something psychiatrists called Continuous Trauma which was like PTSD without ever having a chance to get to the post-traumatic part. He’d researched it. He knew all about it. He knew that he and Dean were basically poster children for totally mentally fucked.
He wondered if he was making noises he couldn’t hear and touched his lips. They were closed.
He had flashbacks to the Cage. The Trials. Kevin’s death. He realized his eyes were open and closed them so he wasn’t just staring blankly. He tried to meditate. He had no idea if it was day or night. Maybe everyone was asleep but him.
Eventually water. And having to pee again.
The animal body. It was awful. But not as awful as the absence.
#
Someone touched his hand. He startled.
“What time is it,” he asked. “AM or PM? AM?”
‘Y’ Then they counted on his fingers, pulling one finger at a time, one two three four five six seven.
“Seven in the morning,” he said. “Am I shouting?”
‘N’
“Talking funny?”
‘N’ They opened his hand—he thought it was Dean. ‘W’ ‘H’ ‘I’ ‘S’ ‘P’
“Whispering?”
‘Y’
Well that was a relief. It shouldn’t matter to him since Dean and Cas were holding his dick while he peed and wiping him when he shat but it did.
Dean (he was sure it was Dean because he knew the smell and feel of Dean) opened his hand and made a mark on his hand. He shook his head because he didn’t get it. Again.
“C,” he said.
Two taps on his wrist meant ‘no.’ And then the mark.
“G,” he guessed.
‘O’
Then the thing Dean did to mean next word.
‘H’ ‘O’ ‘S’ ‘P’ ‘I’ ‘T’
“Go to the hospital? No,” he said, “they can’t do anything.”
‘Y’
“Why?” he asked.
‘P’ and then a letter he didn’t get. A couple more times and he got, ‘A’ ‘I’ ‘N’.
The leg pain.
Not the hospital. He couldn’t imagine going to the hospital. Moving hurt and he wouldn’t be able to see or hear what was going on. He wanted to stay here where he felt sort of safe. “They’ll do tests,” he said. “CAT scans and stuff. Dean, no, I won’t, no, I can’t…”
Dean stroked his hair.
‘Y’
“Please,” he begged.
‘Y’
He felt Dean kiss him on the forehead. Dean never did that. It was like he was a child. Or dying. He wished he were dying. Or dead.
#
It seemed like a long time later that Dean tapped his hand, then carefully let him feel a sock. What? Then Dean pulled the blanket and sheet off of him and carefully trailed his hand down along Sam’s hip (a tiny electric pain following his finger, some sort of weird nerve response) until he got to Sam’s foot. He was going to put socks on Sam.
He lifted Sam’s foot.
Pain
<…..>
He didn’t want them to move him. They were going to get him to the Impala and it would be impossible. He felt two fingers against his forehead. Cas?
#
Rumbling and the familiar sense of being folded into the back seat of the Impala. It hurt but not that electric obliterating pain of being moved. How had he gotten here? Memories of lost time, of Gadreel, he must have made some noise, he could feel he was making some panicked noise. He was under a blanket and he had his arms on top. The smell of the Impala. He felt disoriented. Someone touched his hand and he grabbed onto them. He could feel how awkward the reach was. The hand was soft—Cas?
Fuck, get it together. He squeezed Cas’ hand. “I’ve…I’m okay,” he said. He smiled. He thought it was a smile or maybe not, it probably looked like a grimace. His eyes were open and staring, he could feel it. “I should wear sunglasses,” he said. “Dean can call me Stevie Wonder.” He made himself close his eyes. Breathe. Let go of Cas’ hand.
He told himself he wouldn’t let himself make any noise when they got him out of the car at the hospital.
The car stopped and the engine stopped. He could feel when the vibration stopped. He could feel cold air. Doors slam. Colder air. A hand on his shoulder.
He waited, not knowing what was going on. He started shivering after awhile.
When hands lifted him out of the car, the electric pain caused his legs to contract, his hamstrings to shorten like rubber bands and obliterated everything. He had no idea what kind of sounds he must have made.
#
The hospital was a horror. He knew he was on a gurney because he could feel it rolling. He could feel the texture of hospital sheet and under that, the indestructible, impossible-to-stain vinyl. He clutched it because all the movement had left his legs hurting. It was nerve pain, deep inside. Where they touched anything it was worse. They had him flat. They turned a corner (rocking even a little hurt.) He was going in the ER of course because the Winchesters never made scheduled appointments; he wondered how busy it was. Smelled like a hospital although he briefly smelled coffee. Would he be parked in a hallway and have to wait until they could see him? He wasn’t exactly an emergency. On the other hand, they didn’t know it was a curse and they’d probably think the sudden onset of blindness, deafness, and excruciating leg pain was a big deal. What story was Dean telling them? They’d run some kind of CT or MRI—
Another turn, and then another turn. He wished he knew what was going on.
Someone put their hand on his knee—fuck fuck fuck fuck don’t touch his legs, asshole asshole asshole. He kept his teeth clenched because there were other people around, people who were scared and hurt, maybe even kids. They didn’t need some guy screaming.
Somebody was pushing him down. He was curled halfway to a sitting position and someone had hands on his shoulders. He let them push him down.
Then nothing. He just laid there and tried not to think about his legs. He knew how the pain worked. It would ebb starting with his feet, then crawling up his hips and creeping back to his spine until it was just a dull ache at the base of his spine and where his legs touched the gurney but that took a long time. He didn’t know how long; he thought hours but pain stretched time and he didn’t exactly have a clock. He rubbed the sheet between his thumb and fingers, ran his fingers over the vinyl. Crap, his eyes were open. Creep people out by staring blindly into space, Winchester. Sunglasses. Maybe Dean could buy him a cheap pair. He closed his eyes. They felt dry. It was chilly and his fingers were cold.
He counted slowly to one hundred. Kept counting. Maybe he was sitting in a hallway waiting for a bay to open up? Dean was probably doing paperwork. He was thirsty and it was kind of cold. Well, he’d been cold and thirsty before. He kept counting. He was at 523 when someone picked up his arm and he jerked it from them. He felt his eyes fly open.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry.” Fucking Christ, warn him. It was too much like the Cage. No way to know what was coming. Reality was unreliable. Again, he thought grimly.
Someone patted his arm and then put a hospital bracelet on. Then they wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his bicep.
“Blood pressure,” he said. “Got it. Thanks for patting my arm. Helps if you tap my hand before you do something. So I know you’re there.”
It was like talking into the void. Did they hear him? Wonder what name they were using for insurance. He couldn’t even ask for Dean. The blood pressure cuff pumped up. When it went down, nobody took it off. He counted again. He was almost to 400 when with no warning, the blood pressure cuff inflated again. He startled a little but he had guessed it would be automatic.
He fell into a rhythm. He figured that the blood pressure machine was going off every five minutes. He still wasn’t sure whether he was staged in a hallway somewhere or was actually in the ER. He was counting the fifth set (not having yet been able to get close to 300 between cuff inflations, his sense of time was screwed) when something touched his arm, a brush of fingertips.
He knew he yelped, he couldn’t help it, and half sat up.
Someone grabbed his hand. He thought it might be Dean just because of the firmness. “Dean?” he said.
With their other hand, they tapped once for ‘yes’.
“Are we in an ER bay?” he asked.
A single tap. Then they let go of his hand and traced a ‘D’ and an ‘R’.
“Doctor? Already?” he asked.
A single tap, ‘yes’ and then Dean took his hand and squeezed hard. Back to tracing. ‘P’ ‘A’ ‘I’ ‘N’ and then something. It took Sam a moment. Oh, a question mark.
“Yeah,” he said. “Tell them not to touch my legs, okay? And if they’re going to touch me or do something, it helps if they tap my hand first so I know they’re there.”
‘P’ ‘A’ ‘I’ ‘N’ ‘1’ ‘10’
“I…a 6? Unless they touch, then an 8.” He hated when they asked for a scale. He never knew what to answer. He figured you passed out at 10. Unless you were in the Cage and never passed out no matter how bad it got. The Cage was close in his memory right now.
‘I’ ‘V’
Sam nodded.
Dean turned his arm over and patted his forearm—slapping the veins—they had both found veins enough to know, then put his palm against Sam’s arm. Dean’s hand was warm. Dean squeezed. Somehow Sam knew that meant wait. Sam had good veins. He was cold, though, which meant they’d be digging.
The blood pressure cuff inflated again.
He concentrated on Dean’s hand, feeling human and good against his arm. Everything else was…don’t think about not having anything but that, and how that was going away, how Dean couldn’t spend the rest of his life holding on, think about right now.
The blood pressure cuff deflated. He wondered what his blood pressure was. Like that mattered. “How’s my blood pressure,” he said, for a joke.
Dean let go to write in his hand. ‘T’ ‘O’ ‘O’ ‘H’ ‘I’ ‘G’ ‘H’
Then
‘M’ ‘E’ ‘D’ ‘S’
“For blood pressure?” Sam said, incredulous. He’d never had high blood pressure in his life.
‘A’ ‘N’ ‘X’ ‘I’ ‘E’ ‘T’ ‘Y’
“Fuck,” Sam said. “I’m being a fucking child.”
A finger on his lips. Dean saying, shhhh. Then Dean took his hand again and squeezed, tight. He held on and held on. Sam felt so ashamed. John Winchester did not raise them to be anxious. He was not anxious. Anxious was…he would cop to being afraid. He’d been afraid a lot. Frightened out of his fucking mind. He would even cop to depression. PTSD. But anxious. Anxious was the suburbia of fear. Anxious was whining. He coped, goddamnit. Startling too much, that was reflexes, that was something that came from hunting. Nightmares. Anxious, that was needing a goddamned teddy bear.
He was squeezing Dean’s hand so hard but Dean was squeezing back, just as hard. Dean’s hands were strong.
Dean tapped. Several times. Something up. Dean pulled out of his hand.
A warm blanket across his legs spread so carefully and gently.
Another one across the rest of him.
Another folded up on his arm, to warm him up for the IV.
He couldn’t help but laugh. “You running this ER now?”
One tap. ‘Yes.’ Then spelled in his hand. ‘U’ ‘B’ ‘E’ ‘T’
#
The IV went in easy and then Sam was pretty sure they were giving him lorazepam or diazepam. One of the benzos. They waited awhile and he felt pretty much the same. Then some fussing, he could tell because Dean was still holding on to him but had to shift and there was someone moving around his IV a little. Then he started to notice a difference. He was pretty sure his blood pressure must have dropped like a brick in a swimming pool because he really didn’t care about much of anything.
There was an MRI. Dean wrote it into his palm and then they left Dean behind. The bad part was undressing him and getting him into a gown. They weren’t giving him anything for pain yet and moving him burned through a lot of the sweet buzz from whatever they’d given him to bring down his blood pressure. He was sweating and gasping by the time they were finished. Someone took a minute to put their palm on his forehead.
Then he was back in that place where he had no idea what was happening for a very very long time. People would touch him, do something to him, and he never knew it was going to happen. He knew he had been moved around, his legs had been jostled and once even straightened, he’d had his IV reinserted (and suspected he’d had blood drawn) and been examined by someone wearing latex gloves and using a cold stethoscope.
He couldn’t breathe. He hurt. He was so thirsty. His mouth was so dry. He was exhausted.
He couldn’t tell the difference between awareness and some sort of in-between state where he kept thinking he had to get up.
He kept sitting up and then he’d hurt so bad he’d have to sit there and try to breathe through the pain.
Finally they put him in restraints.
He couldn’t remember where he was.
He kept trying to breathe and drifting in the silence and sightless place for a long time.
Maybe it was day, maybe it was night. He didn’t know how many hours had passed.
Someone had a hold of him, had their hands on both sides of his face, their forehead against his. He only knew one person who did that, who felt like that, who smelled like that. “Hi Dean,” He wasn’t in restraints anymore, they were rocking him. He could feel them. There was something. He was being drawn down into darkness.
#
Sam dreamed.
He was at a bar in a bowling alley. It was dark but full of color. There were bowling lanes off to the right where brilliant pins like white teeth sat in pockets of light. And the sounds! The rolling of bowling balls, the crash of spares. Laughter and the occasional shout. He sat there nursing a beer. After a moment he realized that the guy in the leather jacket hunched over a beer next to him was his dad. Was John Winchester.
“Hello, Sam,” his dad said. He had a duffle bag, their weapons bag, at his feet. This should have been weird but it wasn’t.
“I didn’t know you bowled,” Sam said.
His dad made a kind of noncommittal response. “Like your shoes,” he said.
Sam realized he was wearing burgundy, white, and black bowling shoes. They were actually kind of cool. “Yeah,” he said, admiring them, their color. “Fish sauce, as the kids say,” which was a phrase he’d recently heard meant ‘cool’. “Anything in that bag for me?”
John shook his head. “Nope.”
Sam thought, never was. Never will be.
“Sam,” Castiel said insistently.
Sam swiveled on his stool. The angel was behind him, trench coat and suit not so out of place in a bowling alley. “Cas,” he said.
“Come with me,” Cas said.
It felt kind of rude to just leave his dad sitting there but honestly, something about the whole thing felt like a place he didn’t really want to be. He followed Cas out the door. Instead of a parking lot they walked through what looked like the atrium of a mall only without the shops—all sunshine and walkways and glass.
He looked back at the bowling alley.
“It’s not really your father,” Cas said. “It’s just a dream.”
Sam couldn’t help but be amused. “A dream?”
Cas sighed. “I can’t help you work out your issues with your father. I tried that in a brothel and it seems even very obvious things are very complicated when humans are involved.”
Sam didn’t think he could disagree. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Cas said. “Some place where you will feel very comfortable.”
Like that existed.
Cas pushed open a side door and it was late spring at the back of a motel. They were renovating the rooms one by one and as they did they put the furniture out back on a wooden deck while they painted and replaced the plumbing and tile. It was somewhere in Colorado? New Mexico? So late spring meant June. He was probably thirteen. His dad had gotten them a deal because they were in a ski lodge in the off season. John was off chasing a lead on the Yellow-eyed Demon. Not that Sam knew that back then.
New Mexico. Taos Ski Valley. The place was a ghost town in the summer. They were over 9000 feet above sea level. When they first got there and tried to train, they fucking died because of the thin air. They saw spots if they ran 200 yards. Dean would put his hands on his hips, chest heaving, and say, “Scenic vista,” and they’d pretend they were looking at the mountains. In a month they were scrambling to 10,000 or 12,000 feet, following streams and finding a lake, looking for big horn sheep. He and Dean painted and scraped and Dean even helped with hauling toilets and cabinetry and working on some of the more serious renovation but for Sam there was a lot of down time. He could lie on a bed outside in the mountain sunlight, and read.
The owner of the lodge was a weird dude, a New Zealander named Sebastian who had worked on Wall Street and hated it, then quit to ski. He’d spent some time where he did nothing but ski. From March to October he’d skied in Chile and then he’d come north of the equator and work as an instructor. Now he’d bought this property. There was a room with bunks for the ski bums who work at the lodge in the winter. Sam and Dean had never skied in their lives. As far as Sam knew, Dean still never had.
It had been a paradise.
He threw himself on his back on a high bed.
Cas squinted up at the mountain behind the lodge. The ski was the kind of blue only seen at high altitude. Georgia O’Keefe blue.
“I forgot all about this place,” Sam said.
“You’re dreaming,” Cas said.
Sam remembered everything. “You’re dreamwalking,” he said.
“Yes,” Cas said. “They’ve given you a sedative but you’re resistant to pain medication and sedation so I’ve sent you into a deep sleep. I hope you’re not angry, I didn’t have the opportunity to ask for your consent.”
He snorted. “It’s okay, Cas. I’m not missing much.”
“The hospital lost track of you,” Cas said. “When we tracked you down you were dehydrated and hurting. Dean was angry.”
What was there to do but laugh. “I bet.”
“They refused to give you any pain medication until they’d run tests.”
Sam nodded. He knew the drill. “They couldn’t find anything because it’s a curse.”
“That’s correct,” Cas said.
“Thank you for being here,” Sam said. “This,” he waved his hand around, “it’s really nice. I mean, to be able to, you know—”
“See and hear and walk,” Cas supplied.
Sam thought he would have preferred not to have been so blunt but he nodded. “Things just, you know, come out of nowhere.” If they would just stop randomly touching his legs it would be better.
“Your blood pressure indicated high levels of anxiety and they’ve put you on anti-anxiety medication. We had no idea. I’m sorry, Sam.”
Sam shrugged, embarrassed. He looked at the sheer face of the mountain behind the lodge. It was gray stone and shrub and then grass and pine. Above that if he looked far enough he could see the tree line and above that, snow. He almost wished he could stay here but it would kill Dean.
“What now?” Sam asked.
“They want to keep you in the hospital and run more tests. They want to do an EEG, and a spinal tap.”
Sam shook his head, then thought. “Okay,” he said.
Cas tilted his head. “This sounds like it will be pointlessly painful.”
“You and Dean,” Sam said, “You can’t keep taking care of me. I can’t walk or see or hear. They’ll give me pain meds now. You should…”
“Find a way to cure you,” Cas said.
“Yes,” Sam said. Like that would happen. “Exactly. Hunt and search for a cure.” Stop wasting their lives sitting around holding his hand. “The witch is dead but maybe if you find her spell book.” She’d been so ordinary. They’d found her shopping in her mall jeans. She’d just come from getting her hair cut and she was carrying a Macy’s shopping bag. She drove a Toyota Rav4. Sam had never expected to be taken out by a middle-aged woman who drove an SUV.
The breeze came off the mountain, pure and clean.
“Cas?”
“Yes, Sam?”
Sam looked down at the bed. The blanket was wool. He remembered them so vividly—the ski lodge theme was rustic so the beds were pine and the blankets were red with a black bear on them. He had loved them unashamedly. “Can you come back once in awhile and bring me here?”
“I will. I promise.”