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Title: Upside Down and Sideways
Genre: Gen
Category: Angst, whump
Rated: T
Summary: Set just after ELAC. Dean's world has been turned on it's head- He's alive while his Dad is dead and Sam just won't leave him alone. Consumed by rage and grief, his anger has consequences that neither he nor Sam can foresee. Limp!Sam, Angry/protective/hurt!Dean, ultra-awesome/curmudgeonly!Bobby
A/N: Just as a word of warning, there is going to be a lot of the OC Alicia in this chapter. I'm just trying to establish her back story as she's going to be the antagonist of the story in coming chapters. No romantic relationship will occur between her or either of the boys.
Chapter 3
Dr. Carla Ashmore hung up the phone and placed it back inside of a plastic, Ziploc bag for his family, surprised that it was still working after the accident that had claimed three lives. At least it and the wallet had been saved the full brunt of the fire by being in the back pocket of the man's pants or otherwise she wouldn't have known who to call for him. She didn't normally call the family of those that came into her morgue on their own phones, but seeing that there had been a number of messages left on it from someone named Dean, she figured that it had to be someone close to the man lying on the slab beside of her, so she had decided to expedite matters and called the number. She hadn't expect to be chewed out the moment the phone answered, but people could get pretty testy when they get worried about someone not calling them back, especially family members.
Lifting up the half-burned wallet, she looked at the driver's license inside, remarking how it had managed to remained virtually unscathed save for some melting around the edges and compared the face on it to the body. He was a nice looking man from his picture, but it was tough to say that now as the fire had burned off his hair, half of his face and on top of that, the jagged piece of metal sticking out of his forehead made identification difficult. Initially, his height and approximate weight were a match to that described on the license, yet she would need the guy's family to take a look and confirm that it was indeed Sam Morrison.
She tucked the license back into the wallet and placed into the bag along with the phone and a few other personal items found on the body. It was a sad thing seeing someone so young snuffed out like this, but she had seen death come to people of all ages for years now and was hardened to its effects. Death was as much a part of life as breathing; everyone had to face it sooner or later was what she always thought.
The identity of the bus driver was already confirmed as was the body of the driver of the car that had caused the crash in the first place. It was obvious from just the whiskey and beer smell of his corpse alone, what had caused the crash. The man had been too drunk to be driving and had taken two others with him to the grave.
She shook her head. Just another Friday night at work, she mused.
OOOOO
"It can't be him...it can't." Dean repeated with a shake of his head, murmuring a now familiar mantra to the older man sitting beside of him.
As much as he didn't want to believe it either, Bobby was busy bracing himself for the worst and burned up the miles in his old truck as fast as they could. He just prayed that there wasn't a cop around to catch them doing 30 miles over the speed limit or that his old clunker wouldn't give out on them before they got there. Not knowing whether it was Sam laying dead in that morgue might just send Dean over the edge. As it was he was barely hanging on. Stealing a quick glance at Dean, whose jaw muscles worked visibly through his skin as he ground his teeth, made Bobby feel eaten up with guilt since it had been him that had let Sam take off like he had in the first place.
Damn, but those boys weren't his world. Losing John had been bad enough, but Sam? It was almost too much to bear thinking about. If he was barely holding back the grief he felt tearing him up inside, how much worse was Dean feeling right now?
Dean also willed the miles to fly by. Bobby wouldn't let him drive in the state he was in, but he just wished he could, if anything to distract him from the black thoughts swirling in his mind. Sam couldn't be dead. It defied everything he felt to be true. He was supposed to keep him safe, it was his one job and lately he'd been really crappy at it. He had pushed Sam away one time too many and now there might never be any reconciliation. Even worse still, was Sam might have died thinking that he had hated him, that he didn't want him around. It wasn't true of course, but he had needed to keep him at arm's length, that if he had opened up to his little brother that he might let it spill the last words his father had spoken to him and that had been a burden he hoped to keep from Sam.
Save Sam or you might have to kill him.
And now Sam was dead and it was his pushing that had sent him away.
Stop it! He yelled at himself inside his head. Sam is not dead.
"Can't this piece of junk go any faster?" Dean asked yet again.
"Sorry, but this thing was exactly made for speed. I'm going as fast as I can." Bobby replied not unsympathetically.
Dean growled in frustration. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. He had just gotten his family back together and now they were both gone-
No! He took that thought back again.. Sam was not gone... he couldn't be. He held fast to that thought and refused to let it go, but why then could he not stop thinking that he had already lost him?
OOOOO
Alicia was still shaking. The night had passed into morning as she sat in her hospital bed, waiting to be discharged and she counted her blessing. She had been lucky. Only a few bruises and some smoke inhalation had been the physical toll on her body, but inside, she still felt like a bowl full of jello.
One thing that had occupied her thoughts more than the accident itself was the eyes of the man that had saved her. He had held a kindness and determination in them that she couldn't describe. He was different. Far more so than anyone else she had ever met, she couldn't quite explain how, but she felt there was a bond there, like his life was somehow attached to hers now. It had to be fate, him being on that bus, there to rescue her in her time of greatest need. There was just no other way to think than it was just meant to be.
And when the explosion had occurred and she saw him flying through the air. She had been beside herself with grief. She hardly knew the man, but thinking that he had just been killed in front of her eyes had been like someone cutting a knife into her very soul.
She was just so thankful that when she woke up after passing out from witnessing him land on his head in a way she was certain no one could survive, that she saw the paramedics working on him. So, he had to still be alive. She had bugged the nurses over and over again to give her any information about him, but they had all been tight-lipped and wouldn't let her get up from her hospital bed until the doctor had given her the all-clear.
Now that the doctor had told her that she was free to leave after she signed her discharge papers, she was itching to go and see the man that had saved her life. And after she had finished doing just that, she wasted little time getting dressed and hurrying to find out all she could about him.
It took some cajoling and some time to find someone that was sympathetic enough to her plight to help her locate her missing hero, but at last, she discovered that there was a John Doe from the crash last night in ICU.
"I'm sorry, but only family is allowed into the ward." She had been told by one crotchety old nurse at the ICU reception desk.
"But, please. He saved my life. I need to see him." He first impressions of the nurse being a hard-assed bitch, faded as the older woman took on a softer demeanor and sighed.
"Oh, alright, but you can only stay for a few minutes and don't tell anyone that I let you in."
"Thank you, thank you." She beamed until the nurse showed her the bed where her new-found savior lay. He was white as a sheet and had equipment hooked up to him and line and tubes sprouted from his arms like branches from a tree.
"Oh God..." She breathed. "Is he going to make it?" Her heart dropped thinking that she was going to lose the best thing that had happened to her in her life.
"He should pull through. He suffered some severe smoke inhalation and a concussion, but hopefully he should wake up soon. He's strong and young, so he has that on his side."
"So, he's going to be okay?"
"Hope so. We're just going to keep him here in ICU until he wakes up as a precaution."
Relief washed over her and Alicia moved closer to his side, daring to sneak her hand into his lax one.
"Wake up soon." She whispered a plea to him. "I'll be waiting for you."
OOOOO
As they pulled into the parking lot of the morgue, the sun was just beginning to peak above the horizon, beautiful golden rays of light danced merrily across the landscape, but Dean really could have cared less. His mood was too dark for it matter how pretty the sunrise or the rest of the world was at that moment, he only cared about proving that Sam wasn't dead.
Bobby killed the engine and turned around in his seat to Dean. "You okay to do this?"
"I gotta know it's not him." Dean stared ahead at the building looming before them without looking at the concerned man beside him. It was a simple brick building that one might find in Anytown, USA, but to him it was more frightening than any haunted house he had ever stepped foot in.
Bobby nodded grimly and gave Dean a quick squeeze of the shoulder. There was no way this was going to be easy, but the sooner that got it over with, the sooner they would know Sam's fate for sure.
"C'mon. I'll be with you the whole time" Dean turned his eyes on Bobby, and nodded absently, looking far older than a young man his age ever should. Bobby slid out of the truck with Dean following close behind.
The younger man felt like he was walking on legs made of jelly, as though they could barely sustain his weight as they entered the facility. They walked up to a desk where a pinched faced receptionist typed away on her computer.
Bobby cleared his throat to grab her attention and after a few moments of continued typing, she glanced up and greeted them.
"Can I help you?" She asked
"We're here about my brother-" Dean started with a hitch and couldn't find his voice to go on.
"What's his name?"
"Sam Morrison." Bobby replied for him. Dean's thoughts flashed back to the current license he had made for Sam not too long ago. His little brother had balked at the alias, but Dean had kidded him about looking like Jim Morrison with his hair all long and shaggy as it was. He had always joked about Sam's obsession with keeping his hair so ridiculously long, but right then he'd give anything it and the man that wore it again.
She nodded. "Dr. Ashmore will be with you in a few minutes. Go ahead and have a seat."
They sat and waited for what felt like an eternity, but in reality was only about ten minutes and Dean was growing antsy with each passing second. He just wanted to get this over and done with, prove that it wasn't Sam and then go find his brother.
He took up pacing a groove in the floor rather than sitting in the plastic chairs of the waiting area until a petite, middle aged woman walked up to them, a chart in one hand. "Mr. Morrison?" She asked.
"Yeah." Dean stopped, feeling his heart skip a beat.
"If you'd follow me please, to my office." She led the way down a short corridor and into a small office with stacks of papers piled high next to a wood desk. She took a seat and bade Dean and Bobby to have a seat.
"I know this must be a difficult task for you and I that identifying a loved one's remains can be a harrowing experience, so I'll try to keep this as painless as possible." She reached for a chart and pulled out a glossy photograph. "I have a photo of the man we believe is your brother. I have to warn you though, there has been a lot of damage done to the body and recognition may be difficult. If you're not able to identify him, then we may need to get his dental records or perform DNA tests."
She handed the photo to Dean across the desk and he took it wordlessly with a slight quiver in his hand. Bobby watched the blood drain from his face and peered over the young man's shoulder to get a view of himself. Immediately he wished he hadn't.
It was a grisly sight. Hair burned completely away and skin charred black in places, his mouth hung open as if held in a nightmarish scream for all eternity while a large, gaping hole marred the center of his forehead. Dean shook his head at the sight, then sighed audibly in relief while he closed his eyes and thanked Sam's guardian angel. The man in the photo was definitely not his little brother.
"It's not him." He breathed, his heart thumping wildly in his chest, doing its best to break out of the confines of his ribs.
"Are you absolutely certain, Mr. Morrison?" the doctor asked.
"I know every freckle on my brother, ma'am, that's sure not him. The nose is too wide, eyes are too close together.... My brother's still alive out there somewhere."
OOOOOO
Alicia managed to finagle her way with the nurses into being allowed to stay longer with her hero. She wished she had a name to put with him, but he had never told her it, so in her mind she just called him 'hero'.
She had found a chair some hours ago and was now dedicated to staying by his side until he woke up. She fought off the fatigue that chased after her and forced her eyes to remain open as she held his hand tight. When he finally began to stir, her tiredness was completely forgotten and she leaned in, hoping beyond hope that he would just open his eyes.
Fighting against the pain that coursed through his head and all over his body, the pull to stay inside the cottony confines of sleep was losing it's hold on him. Heavy weights seemed to be attached to his eyelids, but he pried them open despite of that, confusion taking hold over the pain as he came to the conclusion that he had no idea where he was.
Fuzzy images hit him. Fire and a feeling a dread was all he could recall, everything else was a blur, as was the sight of the person sitting next to him, holding his hand. He felt the grip tighten around his and when a woman's voice began to speak, his confusion grew in leaps and bounds.
Who was she? He tried to focus his vision, though it caused his head to explode in agony. Pushing away the pain for the time being, he managed to get a clear enough picture of the girl to see that he had no clue who she was.
"Who are you?" he had to ask, feeling the dry, scratchiness of his throat begin to cause a chain reaction of sorts that left his coughing and panting for air. What the hell had happened, why did it feel like a half-ton weight was crushing his chest and more importantly, where the hell was he and where was Dean? His breathing grew shallower and panic assailed, he couldn't breathe!
Alicia's elation at seeing his eyes open quickly gave into to fear as he struggled to breathe and monitors went off in frenzy of beeping alarms. "I need some help here!" She called out but the nurse that had first allowed her into the ward was already on her way.
She still held onto his hand when suddenly she was hit with a series of images. She saw him as a child, felt his pain and fear as monsters chased after him, watched in shocked horror as a pretty young girl was pinned and bleeding to a ceiling while fire exploded all around her, then she saw a man lying on a hospital floor, and felt a cup of coffee slipping from his fingers as fear again gripped him and he ran to him. All of this in the space of a heartbeat and she gasped as though struck by a bolt of lightening.
She let go of his hand in shock and pulled away as though his fear was her own, his memories her memories. A stabbing pain assaulted her temples. Oh God, she groaned to herself, not again.
As the nurse pushed her aside, she barely heard the woman demand that she leave the room and let her help the man that had saved her life. On shaky legs she numbly made her way out to the corridor, breathing catching in her throat as could no longer hold back the tears. She leaned back against the safety of the wall and let her knees buckle, sliding her back down the wall until she sat on the floor in a heap of sobs. The things she had just seen tore at her more than the physical pain. Fear, sadness, his feelings of being pushed away, of rejection by the ones he held most dear- He was so much like her....
OOOOO
"Thanks." Flipping his phone closed as he walked, Dean turned to Bobby, his eyes taking on an air of steadfast determination. The coroner had explained that the majority of the victims had been taken to the hospital in town and they should check there first.
"Well?"
"There's a John Doe up at the hospital here in town. I gotta bad feeling Bobby, if he didn't give them a name we'd recognize, he must be hurt bad."
Bobby nodded. "Then we best get goin'. Where's the hospital?" Dean was already to the truck and pulling open the door.
"Downtown." Dean replied.
Bobby gunned the accelerator and went as fast as possible without getting pulled over and made it to the hospital in what had to be record time for his old rust bucket. Dean practically sprinted out of the vehicle as soon as they parked and Bobby had to huff and puff to catch up with him. Dean was already at the reception desk and arguing with a nurse by the time he made it inside and had to place a restraining arm on the younger man before he reached over the counter and did something stupid to the poor girl.
"C'mon...how long can it possibly take to find one guy?" Dean asked, hoping to hurry the receptionist up in finding his brother.
"I'm going as fast as I can, sir." She typed away and clicked a few more times on her mouse before she finally found a patient listed as a John Doe. She hurried to find where he was, hoping to get the man standing across from her with the reddening, angry face away from her as soon as possible. She sighed in relief when she found a location to give him.
"He's in ICU, but it looks like there are orders to transfer him to a regular room. Also looks like they got a name for him now. Samuel Hagar? Is that him?"
Dean grinned and the poor receptionist let go of the breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. "That's our boy." He hit the man beside him on the chest with the back of his hand, his smile lighting up his face. "C'mon, Bobby."
She watched them go, thinking that the younger man was quite handsome when he wasn't so angry.
OOOOO
Sam was breathing much easier now, the panic and confusion of his first waking moments had receded and he was glad when they switched him from the oppressive oxygen mask to the smaller nasal cannula. After the nurses and doctors had finally stopped their hovering, he looked around, wondering if he had imagined the girl that had been by his bedside when he woke up. She was nowhere to be seen and soon he was distracted again by a doctor asking questions such as his name and what day it was, who was the president and so on, your standard head injury checklist that he'd been through before on more than one occasion. When he answered all the questions to the satisfaction of the doctor, he was pleased to be told that he would be moved to a regular room as soon as one was available.
Despite the constant pounding of the anvil beating on in his brain, he was determined to get out of there sooner rather than later and get a call out to Dean. Boy, his brother was gonna be pissed at the pile of shit he got himself knee deep into this time.
His mind however was still thick and fuzzy. He struggled to recall what had happened, but could come up with nothing more than vague feelings and brief snatches of images that didn't make any sense. He had been told by one of the nurses that he had been involved in a bus accident and that he was in Norfolk, Nebraska, but the last thing he could remember clearly was packing his bag and telling Bobby he needed to leave. However, how he had ended up on that bus without a lick of identification or his cell phone was all still a mystery to him.
He was still pondering all of this when he spied a shy figure hovering by the door.
"Hey...you were here before, weren't you?" He asked the girl.
"Yeah...sorry...I uh...just wanted to make sure you were okay."
"Uh...thanks..." He came back awkwardly. He wasn't sure how, but she did seem familiar to him. "Do I know you?"
"My name's Alicia...We were on the bus together..."
"Oh. I'm sorry, I don't remember what happened."
"It's okay. The nurse said you might not. But you should know, you saved my life....and a whole bunch of others too." She walked tentatively into the room, a smile beginning to light up her face as he beckoned her in. "You were really amazing."
Sam blushed and hid his eyes at the praise, feeling weird for doing something he couldn't even remember. "I'm sure, whatever I did, I did because I had to."
"Well, I'm sure glad you were there or wouldn't be standing here now."
"I'm glad you're okay then." Sam met her eyes and she beamed at him in adoration, something he was a little uncomfortable with. The was something different about the girl, but what it was he couldn't put a name to the feeling, but it was somewhat...unsettling? Thinking that he still had to be a little out of from all of the medication he was on and the drumbeat still marking time in his head, he pushed those thoughts aside. She had made the effort to see him and make sure he was alright, so he erred on the side of politeness.
"I'm Sam, by the way." He introduced himself and held out his hand.
"Sam..." She repeated, letting his name roll around her tongue like a sweet piece of candy. She smiled even wider, feeling a swelling begin in her chest. The name suited him, she decided. Only a short time ago, she had seen a glimpse into this man's soul and despite all of the pain and hardship she had seen, she was amazed by how he was still concerned for her.
Snapping out of her momentary fugue, she finally realized that he was still holding out his hand for her to shake it. She glanced down at it, remembering what had happened the last time she had held it and her smile dropped and she felt the blood drain from her face. As much as she longed to touch him again, she feared what would happen if she did. If he knew what a freak on nature she was, he wouldn't want anything else to do with her. Just like her Grandmother.
"You okay?" He asked with genuine concern, seeing her pale before him. She began to breathe a little faster and Sam wondered what he had done to cause such a reaction.
"I'm sorry...sorry...I gotta go." She shook her head and backed away from him as though he was contagious with the bubonic plague and beat a hasty retreat from the room.
Sam lowered his hand in confusion. He didn't think that he had done anything wrong, but maybe she was just shy. Either way, it was a little strange and left a niggling feeling again that something wasn't quite normal about her.
All his thoughts were forgotten moments later when an orderly walked in and announced that he would be moving him to his new room in the general ward. He was grateful to get out of that place, he really needed to get into a room that had a phone. His ruminations on the strange visit with Alicia were soon replaced by the new fear he developed knowing the shit storm that was coming his way when he told Dean where he was.
OOOOO
Alicia felt so stupid. What had she been thinking running out of that room? She had totally freaked out on him and now her Sam probably thought she was the creepiest person he ever met. She huddled near a corner and let the tears fall again. God, how had her life become so screwed up?
Just a few months ago, she was a normal, if not a little introverted young woman. But then weird things had just started happening to her: strange dreams, unwanted feelings she would pick up from people and then the came day when her Grandmother fell ill.
The woman that had raised her after mother died since she was a baby had been dying. She had never been kind to Alicia growing up, she was abusive verbally and physically and she still wore the scars to prove it. Deep down she knew the woman somehow blamed her for being rescued from the house fire that that had killed her mother and she hadn't been afraid to take it out on Alicia. If it hadn't been for a quick thinking neighbor, she would have died too, but all her grandmother could see when she looked at her was a poor substitute for her own daughter. Even though she grew up with the hurt of knowing she was unloved by the one person she counted on the most, she still took care of her Grandmother when she fell ill with cancer. Feeding her bathing her, changing her when she soiled herself and still her Grandmother cursed at her and pushed her way. Her bitterness new no bounds.
It was while she was visiting in her in the hospital that last day that she dared to grab hold of her grandmother's hand, wanting to give her one last measure of comfort before she died and hoping for some kind of show of affection to be returned. But what had happened instead was the blast of images. Scenes from her childhood, her marriage, the pain of losing her husband to a heart attack, then the grief of seeing her only child taken from her much too soon. She saw the resentment her grandmother felt at being sidled with Alicia, felt her anger at the unfairness of it all and the anger she dealt out towards her granddaughter. All this came tumbling towards her like a freight train, slamming into her at intolerable speeds.
It had hit her so hard, that she passed out immediately afterward only to wake up to a huddle of nurses surrounding her and grandmother laying dead on the bed beside her.
It was then that she knew that she needed to get as far away as possible. Her grandmother had left her the house, but it was too hard to go back to after all that she saw, knowing that she had truly been so unloved. So it sat empty now back in South Dakota. A day after she put it up on the market, she decided to head south, anywhere but that place, and bought that fateful bus ticket.
She was still silently crying into her sleeve when she heard a sound of wheels turning. Looking up she saw an orderly pushing Sam's bed out of the ward. They were moving him away from her, but she wasn't about to lose him, not yet.
She felt an unbreakable bond to him now and whether or not he felt it too, she had to make sure that she didn't lose him too. Admittedly, she knew that what she was feeling was love for her Sam. She would have to make him see that she cared about him, that she would do anything for him, that she felt his pain, knew the heartbreak he felt and that they were meant to be together. Forever.
TBC..
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Date: 2010-03-26 01:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 01:38 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-03-26 10:42 am (UTC)From: