Chapter Text
The three of you push into a sports bar that is all noise, bodies, and too many TVs at once. The place is packed shoulder to shoulder, blue and red light flashing across beer signs and people already half-drunk by late afternoon.
Dean leans in to talk to the hostess, except nobody is really talking in here. Everybody is yelling.
“It’s crowded tonight,” he says.
She gives him a look like, no kidding. “Yeah, well, it’s Super Bowl Sunday. I might be able to get you a couple seats at the bar.”
Dean turns, wedges himself halfway between you and Sam, and yells over the noise, “It’s Super Bowl Sunday.”
You hear him.
Then everything stops.
Not the room. The room keeps going. People shout. Glasses clink. Somebody near the wall loses their mind over a replay.
But inside your head, something locks into place with a sick, hard click.
Super Bowl Sunday.
And with it comes a flash of memory so sharp it feels like something tearing loose behind your eyes.
For one strange second, you just stare past both of them like you’re seeing something else.
Then you drop.
Sam catches you before you hit the floor.
He and Dean exchange a look of pure shock. Sam shifts his grip to get you off the ground. Dean presses two fingers to your neck, finds your pulse, then leans in close to make sure your chest is moving.
He looks up at Sam and nods once.
Alive. Breathing.
Sam carries you. They push through the crowd and get outside.
“Move,” Dean snaps. “Move!”
Sam’s voice is low and urgent right by your ear. “Hey, baby. Come on. Wake up.”
“What happened?” Dean demands.
“I don’t know. She just dropped.” Sam is already moving toward the car. “We need to get her to a hospital.”
Dean has the engine running before Sam’s door is fully shut.
Sam folds himself into the backseat with you in his lap, your body limp against his chest, his long legs crowded awkwardly. There is no graceful way to do this for a man his size, and he does not care.
He keeps saying your name and, “Come on, you’re okay. Stay with me,” alternating between a gentle pat to your cheek and smoothing his hand over your hair.
Dean glances in the mirror, backing out too fast. “I hope to God this isn’t one of her weird other-dimension things, because if it is, there’s nothing they can do. And we sure as hell can’t explain it to them.”
Sam doesn’t answer. He just keeps his eyes on your face.
“It’s okay,” he says to you, even though you are not awake to hear it. “You’re okay. We’re almost there. Just stay with me.”
The hospital is close.
Sam is out of the car before Dean fully brakes, carrying you through the ER doors like he is afraid someone will try to take you from him before they help. Dean shouts for a nurse.
Questions hit fast.
How old is she? Any medical conditions? Any drugs? Any seizures? Did she hit her head? How long was she unconscious?
Dean answers because Sam can’t. Sam is just staring at your face while they transfer you to a gurney.
They roll you away.
Sam and Dean are left under fluorescent lights with the smell of bad coffee and a clipboard the receptionist handed Dean. Dean starts filling out forms. Sam can’t. His hands won’t stop shaking, so he sits down and leans forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tight they look painful.
After what feels like hours, a nurse comes out and finds them.
Sam stands so fast the chair legs scrape. “All her vitals are normal,” he says. “Blood pressure, pulse, oxygen. We’ve done blood work and a CT and we have an MRI scheduled. They’re checking everything because right now there’s no obvious reason for the loss of consciousness. The doctor wants neurology to take a look too.”
“Can we see her?” Sam says
“Soon,” the nurse says. “As soon as they get her settled in a room.”
He leaves.
Dean steps out into the hall and calls Cas.
“She collapsed,” he says the second Cas answers. “No injuries, no blood, no clue. The hospital says all her vitals are normal, but she won’t wake up. Can you get here?”
“I’m on my way,” Castiel says.
When Cas finally walks through the ER doors, he looks rumpled, grim, and personally offended by the concept of parking.
Sam barely reacts.
Dean gets right to it. “Can you do anything?”
Castiel’s face falls before he even answers. “I don’t know. I've never been able to affect her the way I can with other humans. I can’t heal her. I can’t even put her to sleep.”
Dean grinds his teeth. “Yeah, well, you can see her soul, right? So look. Do something. Anything.”
Castiel nods once. “I’ll try.”
When they finally let the three of them in, you are lying in a hospital bed under thin blankets, hooked up to monitors, an IV running into your arm, adhesive leads stuck to your skin.
Cas glances at Sam. “Sam, You look terrible.”
Sam ignores him completely and goes straight to your side. He takes your hand.
Dean stops at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, mouth flat.
Castiel moves to the head of the bed on the other side, looking down at you with that awful helplessness he hates wearing on his face. He places a hand over your midsection. Nothing.
He touches your forehead. Nothing.
After a moment, he steps back and lowers his hand. “I’m sorry. I can’t do anything.” He hesitates. “I can see her soul. It appears unchanged.”
Sam lets out a breath.
“Except,” Cas says, “the light is a little brighter.”
Dean looks at him. “Brighter? What does that mean? Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cas.”
“I don’t think so,” Cas says. “Normally, I would consider it most likely a good sign. But I don’t know what this light is, and it's never looked quite like a normal human soul.”
He looks back at you. “I’m sorry. I wish I could be more useful.”
Sam bends over your hand, then lifts it enough to press his mouth to your knuckles before leaning in to kiss your forehead.
“Please be okay,” he whispers against your skin. “Please wake up. Come back to me. Please.”
Cas looks at Dean. “Should I stay?”
Dean glances at Sam, then back at Cas. “I mean... family usually stays in situations like this.”
Cas nods once. “Then I’ll stay.”
Dean blinks. “No, Cas, I was just... you don’t have to stay.”
Cas hesitates. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Really. I’ll call if anything changes.”
Cas disappears, looking faintly uncertain even as he goes.
Dean gives your foot a gentle squeeze through the blanket. “I’m getting coffee.”
When he comes back, Sam is in the chair beside your bed, still holding your hand, eyes fixed on your face. He looks up when Dean comes in.
“She just looks like she’s sleeping,” Sam says.
Dean sets the coffee down and stares at you for a second too long. “Yeah.” He pulls up a chair. “Look, it could be worse. She’s stable. She’s breathing on her own. No bleeding, no major injuries, no...”
Sam looks back at you, eyes shining. “She just won’t wake up.”
Dean doesn’t have anything to say to that. So he just sits there with him.
After a while, Dean looks at the untouched coffee, then at Sam. “When was the last time you ate?”
Sam doesn’t answer.
“Great,” Dean says. “That means too long.”
He stands. “I’m getting food.”
A little while later, Dean comes back with a paper bag that smells like fries and stale grease. Hospital food from the little late-night counter downstairs. He sets it on the tray table and digs out a burger.
“Eat.”
Sam doesn’t even look at it. He is still in the chair, one hand wrapped around yours, the other pressed against his mouth like he is holding himself together by force.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I didn't ask.” Dean unwraps the burger and holds it out.
Sam shakes his head.
Dean gives him a look, then takes a bite himself, because apparently one of them has to remember bodies need fuel. The room is quiet except for the soft beep of the monitors and the hum of the vent. You have not moved. Your face looks calm, too calm, and it makes Dean uneasy in a way he hates.
A little later, a nurse comes in, checks your IV, checks the monitor, writes something on the chart, then looks at the two of them.
“Visiting hours are over.”
Dean lets out a short laugh like she must be joking. “No.”
She gives him the patient, worn-out look of someone who has had this exact argument a thousand times. “She’s stable. She’s not in ICU. She gets regular visiting hours.”
Sam finally looks up. “I’m not leaving.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, and from the sound of it, she actually is. “But you need to go.”
Dean argues first. Then Sam. Then both of them.
The nurse does not bend.
In the end, Dean gets Sam out of the room by promising they will be back first thing in the morning, and because security is suddenly standing too close to the doorway for this to turn into a winnable fight, not without violence.
Out in the hall, Dean stops to talk to Sam. “Come on. We’ll get a few hours. Then we'll come right back.”
Sam looks through the glass at you. “Yeah.”
Dean knows that tone. It means yes, fine, whatever, shut up.
They make it back to the motel well after midnight. Dean is asleep almost as soon as he hits the bed, but when he wakes a few hours later to the thin gray light of morning, Sam’s bed is empty.
He's not surprised.
Back at the hospital, the night floor is quiet in that half-dead way hospitals get near dawn. One TV murmurs somewhere far down the hall. A nurse at the station barely glances up as Sam slips past with coffee in one hand and a face that says don’t even start with me.
He eases into the chair beside your bed and takes your hand.
After a while, exhaustion wins. His head drops forward onto the rail by your arm.