Searching Purgatory [COMPLETED]

Chapter Eleven

Lauren woke up in a different bed in a different room than the one she'd grown used to over the last month. It only took a second for her to recognize the room as her bedroom in the Bunker. Her eyes shifted around the room as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. As soon as her back was pressed against the head board, her head began pounding and the walls of the room started spinning wildly making her very nauseous.

The door opened, the hinges creaking louder than she remembered, and Sam was in the doorway, his face immediately lighting up when he saw Lauren. "You're awake," he shouted, rushing to her bed.

Lauren winced, pressing her fingers to her temples. "Why are you yelling?" She whispered.

Sam gave her a confused look before placing a hand on her shoulder and gently pushing her back in bed. "Lay back down, Lauren," he ordered, much quieter this time.

She obeyed without argument and sunk back beneath the covers. Sam pressed a hand to her forehead and nodded in satisfaction.

"Your fever has gone down. How are you feeling?"

Lauren groaned. "Like someone's drilling into my skull. What happened?"

"What do you remember?"

Lauren thought about lying--she felt awful for ditching them--but Sam was giving her such a sad puppy dog look that she had to tell the truth. "I remember just about everything. Up to hitting you in the back of the head with a flash light. But...I'm not sure after that."

Sam nodded. "Well, you're safe now and that's all that really matters." He wasn't going to tell her that he wanted to know what had happened for the month that she'd been with Crowley. She'd just woken up.

"What about everybody else? Is everyone okay?"

Sam shook his head. "Lauren. Worrying about everyone else is what got you in this mess in the first place. Worry about yourself please?"

Lauren smiled, glad that someone was looking out for her. "Okay."

"Now are you hungry? When was the last time you ate something?"

Lauren didn't have time to answer before her stomach growled loudly.

"I'll take that as a yes. I will be right back with some food."

"I can do it, Sam," Lauren argued. "You don't have to worry about it." She knew that she had caused him enough worrying to last him a lifetime.

He frowned at her. "You can barely sit up and we've been whispering this whole conversation. I'll be right back." He got to his feet and bent down to kiss Lauren's forehead. "Don't disappear on me again."

Lauren shook her head. "I won't. Promise."

* * * * * * * * * *

"How is she?" Sage asked when Sam entered the kitchen.

He shrugged and opened the pantry to find something simple to make Lauren. He was no gourmet cook. "She has a pretty bad headache and we whispered the whole time I was in there, but other than that, she seems uninjured." He looked around the kitchen, peanut butter and jelly in either hand. "Where's Dean?"

Dean had come out so that they could talk to him about Purgatory and had been pretty unreadable about the whole thing.

"After you left to check on Lauren, he remembered something that happened a few years back, declared the plan a failure, and sulked back to his bedroom," Gabriel explained.

"What did he remember?" Sam asked, racking his own brain for anything that could possibly ruin their plan.

Sage shrugged. "Wouldn't say. He only said that the reapers wouldn't help us because of something that happened a few years ago."

Finally, it hit Sam. The trials. They had to rescue a soul from Hell and return it to Heaven. They had used the help of a rogue reaper (that's why Sam knew about this option in the first place) but Crowley had found out what they were doing and had killed the reaper that had helped them.

Sam put Lauren's sandwich on a plate and poured her a glass of orange juice. "I'll talk to him."

"Good luck," Gabriel called.

Sam poked his head in Lauren's room to see that she had actually fallen back asleep. Tip toeing across the room, he set the plate on her night stand and exited as quickly and quietly as possible.

Dean was sitting on his bed cleaning and re-cleaning his gun. He barely looked up when Sam came in the room and didn't bother to really acknowledge him either.

Sam sat on the bed next to him. "You wanna--"

"Not even sort of."

Sam nodded. Of course not. He didn't even really know why he tried any more. Dean never wanted to talk about it. Sam just hoped that, one day, Dean would trust him enough with his feelings. "Do you wanna tell me why you decided that the plan wouldn't work so quickly?"

Dean sighed and clicked the last part of his gun in place before setting it on the bed. "Those reapers aren't gonna want to help us out, Sammy. Honestly who would? Everyone that help us out ends up dead or kidnapped or tortured. I sure as hell wouldn't help us."

Sam knew what he meant and he knew how he felt. Ellen, Jo, Bobby, Charlie. So many people had died helping them out. And Dean had cared about Zoe. Really cared about her. Sure, they bickered and teased and pretended like they didn't care about each other, but Sam had only seen Dean act this way around one other person and he wasn't even allowed to say her name unless he wanted to get punched.

"Isn't it worth a shot, though? I mean, yeah, there's a slight chance that it won't work out, but there's also a slight chance that it will. And we're famous for taking chances."

Dean shook his head. "I don't want to be let down again."

"So you'd rather Zoe was stuck in Purgatory for the rest of forever?" Sam raised an eyebrow. He still didn't know all the gory details of what went down in Purgatory but he knew that Dean hated that place and he hadn't wanted Sam stuck there forever.

Dean looked at him, angry at first, but then he sighed. He knew Sam was right. "Sometimes you really piss me off, you know that?"

Sam smiled. "Only because you know I'm right."