Five Years Later

Chapter One: The Sickness

The bitter cold chafed Dean's skin as he tossed aside the sheets on his bed, irritated with the inherent scratching of the fabric combined with frigid temperatures. The radiator in the bunker wasn't working so well after all these years sustaining this amount of people; the air was always either freezing cold or unbearably warm.

"Dean?" The blankets beside him rustled, and a young woman, her voice raw with sleep, turned groggily to face him. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes, dear." Dean sighed, shuddering as he sat up and glanced cursorily around the room they had been sleeping in. It was much too familiar to him, this room. He often laid awake during the night, jumping at the slightest movement in the nearby shadows. His intermittent insomnia was part of his life now; it was just another symptom of his illness.

"Is Joanna crying?" The woman nestled back against the mattress, curling up beside Dean. He shook his head initially and put one arm around her cautiously, a terrible cough shaking his body to the core. After it had passed, he paused and listened for a moment to see if the woman was right. Sure enough, the wails of a young child were sounding from outside the door.

"I take it back." Dean heaved a sigh, which agonized the steadily mounting pressure inside his chest. He could feel sweat trickling down his body from where it had been stagnant in beads while he 'slept,' despite the frosty weather. "I'll go get her."

"I'll do it, honey." The woman gave him a little smile, an exhausted one that showed how perpetually tired she was. "She is getting too old to be up at this hour of the night."

"I said I would take care of it." Dean kissed her forehead, his lips trembling with fever, and slid out of bed. He was so dizzy upon standing that he feared he might fall, but he carefully made his way along the wall, using various furniture to support himself. To his relief, the woman didn't notice – she would have typically made a fuss over him being so inept.

He had been sick for nearly a year from this beast of a virus that ravaged his body to the core. The symptoms were too many to number, but included chills, fevers, insomnia, nausea, dizziness, and a terrible case of coughing and congestion. The closest person they had to a doctor on their team was Bobby, who didn't know what the hell Dean had gotten or why it was lasting so long.

Dean made it to the door after five minutes of painstaking effort. He stood by the wall for a moment to catch his breath and regain the balance he had lost in those minutes of dizzy, flustered movement. He heard the woman toss in bed, and upon hearing this, he persevered forward. He knew she would surely chastise him for how much he was ailing and make him get back under the covers, where he would lay awake until dawn. If she stayed asleep, he would get to do something helpful for the first time in a long while.

He turned the handle and was greeted by little Joanna, who was a mess of tears on the floor of the hallway. Her hazel eyes blinked at him, sadness evident in her sweet expression. Dean reached his arm out to her and she did the same, chest heaving as she tried to calm herself.

"Dad..." Joanna hiccupped, her voice strained from crying. "I was afraid; I'm sorry. There was a monster outside and I was scared..."

Dean rested her against his chest and swayed back and forth in the doorway, balancing her on his waist so he could more easily rock her. Having only one arm from the incident many years ago, he was unable to stroke her hair and comfort her, so he simply rested his chin on the top of her head and cradled her like she was still a baby.

She was, in a way. She was five, but she was the smartest five-year old that Dean had ever had the pleasure of meeting. At her age, she still had that innocence that no one else in the bunker possessed, even if they tried. He hoped she would hold on to it for as long as possible.