Freedom of Fate ~ Castielxreader

9 - Brothers' Remorse

You tried to anchor yourself back to conciousness, focusing on the sound of exhausted breaths and heavy footsteps over forest debris. You tried to force your eyes awake, but they fluttered lazily open and you could only make out the blue sky and the tree line gliding past you and Sam glancing down at you; his hair thrashing as he ran, his voice mumbling incomprehensibly to you. Your eyes fell closed again. You tried to find your stength to move and hold yourself up, but your head lolled back into the crook of Sam's elbow, and you realised he was carrying your entire weight in his arms. You felt guilt, you felt like a handicap, you thought the brothers would be better off without you as you slipped back into the recesses of your mind.

A sudden jolt woke you up into a state of alertness making you inhale sharply and sit up abruptly. You heard Dean swear and apologise for hitting a pothole, but you were too disorientated to trace his voice to his form. With that violent jerk your neurons were stimumated into turmoil, each sending pulses to your pain centre simultaneously to remind you what state your body was in. You whinced in pain, falling back against Sam's shoulder to the position you had been sleeping in for a while. You heard him consoling you with gentle whispers as he took his other hand and slipped it between your head and his shoulder, cradling your skull as he lowers you into his lap. He bent over slowly, careful not to crush you, but his stomach is pressed close enough to you for you to sense his heat through his layers of clothing. He picked up a jacket off the floor of the car which you must've knocked off you when you woke up, and drapped it over your shoulders. The brief, instantaneous breeze it created as he swung it over made you shiver and you realised how cold you were.

'What happened?' you asked groggily, your voice hoarse because your throat was parched. You moved your tongue around your mouth trying to soothe the dryness with your saliva, but it made the taste of copper resurface. You lifted a finger to your lips, there was crusted blood in the corner of your mouth and down your chin. You figured you had coughed it up when you hit the wall, but there was also a gash on the inside of your cheek from when you accidentally bit down on it in the collision. It still tasted freshly metallic.

Dean, who you could now see in the drivers seat, reached over to you with a bottle of water in hand, offering it to you with a blunt 'here'. You accepted it desperately. Sam helped elevate your head a little but you tilted the bottle too eagerly and water splashed down your chin, chest and his legs. You apologised but he didn't seem bothered at all.

'The Wendigo copied my voice. I heard it too and tried to call out to you, but it had knocked you out. You were unresponsive by the time we killed it. I carried you back to the car and we're going to the hospital now,' he spoke softly, dabbing the water off your skin with his sleeve.

You groaned unhappily, you were hurting all over but you weren't dying. 'No. Can we just go back to the motel room?'

'Absolutely not!' Dean protested with a voice agitated by your suggestion. 'What if you have internal bleeding?'

You pulled yourself up gingerly, against Sam's insistence that you should stay still, you wanted your actions to correlate to your words when you reiterated that you were okay. 'Guys please. You know how it'll look if two guys bring in a beat-up girl. I'm fine, probably a little concussed but I don't need to go to the hospital'.

Dean conceded bitterly, steering the car in the direction of White Sulphur Springs. You rested your head back against the leather seat, shutting your eyes analysing the sensations throughout your body. You could feel dried blood tangled in your hair at your nape, but there was no searing pain from your scalp, so the wound there is not too severe. The pain and heat radiating from between your shoulder blades was scathingly agonising; you couldn't sit with your back directly to the seat rather had to shift to the edge to keep that distance. While the rest of your body was cold this spot burned and you whinced at the thought of having to clean it later, when just still air in the Impala made it sting. You opened your eyes just as the neon motel sign came into view. Dean got out of the car first, walked around to your side and opened the door, holding his hand out to you. You took it, and he helped you out, hovering his hand over your head in case you hit the metal door frame. Once both your feet were planted on the ground he took your wrist and draped your arm over his shoulder then weaved his own arm around your waist. He bent down a bit so his other arm could support you at the knees and was just about to lift you up but you swatted him away.