Supernatural Fan Fiction ❯ Asylum ❯ End of the Road ( Chapter 2 )

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Asylum
Supernatural, AU
Dean/Sam

Summary: For the past few years, Dean Winchester has been a resident of various mental health facilities and has gained quite a reputation since being forcibly admitted. Abandoned by his father who had previously been a patient himself, the only thing keeping him going is the thought of his brother.

*Disclaimer* I do not own anything. Except maybe the occasional OC. Supernatural is property of Eric Kripke and others.

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A/N: Historically, the term `Sanitarium' was used to describe a sort of health resort. This word has been in use long before the 20th century.

The term `Sanatorium' (also sometimes spelled `sanatarium' or `sanitorium') was used to describe a medical facility for the treatment of long-term illness (typically tuberculosis). In 1904 the word was created as a way to distinguish between the existing health facilities in which people could stay and recover their health with the benefit of fresh food, water, air, and rest, and the new hospitals. Instead of being derived from the Latin noun sanitas, meaning health, the Latin verb root sano was used, emphasizing the need for scientific healing or treatment. Thus the new word sanatorium was born.

When the cure for TB was discovered, many sanitoriums shut down, though some were converted to general hospitals or specialized hospitals (ie. AIDS, mental health, etc.).

In many cases, "Sanitarium" is considered the proper American spelling of the word.  "Sanatorium" is the British variant spelling. But many use the terms interchangeably to describe a psychiatric hospital or mental health facility.

I will be using the term sanitarium. (In part, because that is what is familiar to most. But also because I happen to be an oldschool-Metallica fan and their song “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” makes use of the American spelling. lol)

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Ch. 2: End of the Road


The mess hall, cafeteria, or whatever you wanted to call it, had the potential to be the most interesting or the most irritating place in the facility. Dean found that it often times had a direct correlation to who happened to be inside.

Just now, Dean was trying to mind his own business and had no interest in `mingling' with the locals. It was still early, only about 7:45 a.m. and he'd slept like shit last night. The last thing he needed was this asshole Gordon sitting down across from him, an antagonistic smile on his goddamn irritating face.

“`Morning, Winchester,” he greeted cryptically.

Dean grunted and ignored him in favor of his eggs and some coffee that someone had to have been hung-over to make so poorly. Ah hell, it was better than nothing though. He usually drank it black but this stuff needed some extra TLC to be palatable. He poured some of the milk from his cereal into it, careful not to get any cornflakes in his mug. Yeah, he was too lazy to be bothered to get up for proper milk or creamer. Not to mention not being keen on leaving his food unsupervised, especially with Gordon here.

He was briefly amused that Kellogg's cornflakes were served here, having been spawned by some genius in a mental hospital, and that people all over the place were eating the same damn thing he was for breakfast before getting ready for work or school or whatever. All he was missing was the white picket fence. And freedom. And perhaps not having this self-important, goatee-sporting asshat staring him in the face, waiting for him to do something.

Dean took a big spoonful of cereal and shoveled it into his mouth, making a show out of chewing as he said, “`Sup, Gordon.”

“You sure are taking things easy, Winchester,” the dark-skinned man said ominously.

Gordon was a bit torqued in the head. He delivered every line like it had hidden meaning oozing out of every orifice, and that his bug-eyed intense looks were supposed to make you understand which one he meant to convey.

Seriously, seriously annoying this early in the morning.

“Ya want some toast, man?” Dean asked, mouth full of eggs this time. He waved a piece in Gordon's face, making the man lean back a touch. “No? Don't mind if I do.” He took two huge bites, mouth now stuffed about to capacity. “MMm!” he said shaking his head as if this was the best damn meal of his life.

“Where's all the salt, Winchester?” Gordon asked in a low, threatening voice.

Dean raised an eyebrow at him. He made short work of his food and swallowed. “...the fuck am I supposed to know?”

“You know.”

“Coulda fooled me.” Dean piled the rest of his eggs on his second piece of toast, spread with jelly, and rolled it like a burrito. He took a huge bite. The nuisance in front of him didn't budge. Gordon was being persistent today. Usually he gave up in disgust after witnessing a few minutes of gluttonous eating. I'll have to work out extra later, he thought distractedly. Working out gave him something to do at least. And if he ever got out of here, he wanted to get some action. The other reason he worked out is that he didn't want to get soft. It paid to be prepared.

“You're the one doing it.”

Dean sighed explosively. “Doing what, Gordon? Trying to eat my goddamn breakfast? Guilty as charged.”

“The shakers go missing. Sometimes they turn up empty.” He leaned forward menacingly, dark eyes fixed. “I think,” he said quietly, a serial killer look on his face, “you're the one doing it.”

“Really,” Dean said, finishing off his `burrito'. “That's funny,” he said with his mouth full, raising his brows. “Because I have seen no shortage of salt in these parts.” He picked up the salt shaker that was sitting on the table in front of him and shook some onto his last bit of food before popping it into his mouth. “Sugar, maybe,” he amended with a shrug. There was severely limited mingling of the sexes here. Mostly the men and women were kept separate and lived on opposite ends of the facility.

He leaned back and swiped the salt shaker off the table behind him. It was full. “Oh, and look here,” he said, putting it down next to the other salt shaker, “more salt.”

Dean put his arms on the table and leaned forward aggressively with a hard gaze. “You got a problem with me? Why don't you just come out with it and quit fucking around?” His voice had been steadily growing louder. Other people were starting to watch the exchange, whispering and poking at each other.

Gordon noted the extra attention and decided to call it a draw. “We'll talk again later,” he promised, getting up and swinging his leg over the bench seat. He kept his eyes on Dean with a glare the entire time, before spinning on his heel and stalking out of the room.

“Anyone else want some fucking salt?” Dean called out loudly as he stood. Some of the diners shook their heads rapidly before turning around, and others just quickly found themselves occupied with anything other than getting caught meeting Dean's eyes. “Christ,” he muttered, then pocketed the extra salt shaker from his table.

---

Dean went back to his room and passed most of the day poring through the book he'd gotten from the p-doc. He was a little irritated with himself for mentioning his family at all during his session, but he'd been distracted and he felt more or less at ease around the new shrink.

It was bad enough that Bobby knew some of the subject matter that caught his eye, but that couldn't be helped. He didn't have access to this kind of stuff anywhere else. He'd scoured the patient library. Nothing. He'd even caved and read some of the historical romance novels if they promised even a mention of the paranormal. (They were awful, by the way.) So when he saw the contents of Bobby's shelves, he couldn't help himself.

Sure, he'd compromised himself somewhat with his need to borrow these books and pore over them, but as long as he was careful and gave nothing else away, it could remain `just an interest'.

Man, he really did not like bringing his family into this though. The less known about them, the better.

“Heya, Winchester,” his roommate greeted as he walked in.

Dean nodded at him and kept reading. He was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall with the book balanced on his thighs.

“A little light reading?” Ed Zeddmore asked, pushing his glasses up his nose in a nervous gesture and snickering at his own joke.

Dean raised his eyes over the edge of the humongous book, giving the basement-pale, curly-haired guy a `you've got to be kidding me'  look. “Hey man, kinda busy here,” he said, going back to the book rather pointedly. Solitary was worse, he reminded himself. He may have a bugfuck potato-head for a roommate, but at least he had more liberties.

“What's it about?” Ed asked after a long pause.

“It's about a serial killer who only goes insane after playing the game 20 Questions.”

Ed furrowed his brow. “Seems to be a pretty long book for that.”

Dean felt like banging his head into the wall. Being civil could be such hard work. “Yeah, well apparently people didn't know when to leave well enough alone. So he had quite a career.”

“What's his name?”

“I think it might be Dean.”

Ed sniggered and pushed his glasses back into place. “That's funny, because your name is--” He broke off, noticing the `no shit, Sherlock' look Dean was giving him. “...Oh. Right. I get it.” He laughed nervously. “I uh... forgot something in the library.” He scrambled to leave the room, but poked his head back in long enough to say, “Catcha on the flip side.”

Dean shook his head and tried to go back to reading. It was an effort.

---

A few hours later, Dean was quite contentedly catching some shut-eye when a sound quite like the buzzing of a fly graced his ear.

“Psst! Dean!”

Dean was steadily coming to hate his roommate. He could pick out that annoying voice anywhere. He did not care for this new skill. He cracked an eye open, still tired from his workout but nice and relaxed from the hot shower he'd taken afterwards, and realized he'd fallen asleep with `The Tome' over his face. It was damn heavy. “What?” he asked, moving it aside and rubbing his eyes.

Judging by the quality of light in the room, it was late afternoon.

His stomach growled and he absently rubbed at it, changing his assessment to be in the arena of 4 p.m.

“Did you hear? There's a live one. Fresh meat?”

Dean gave the rotund teenager an unimpressed look. Ed had an annoying habit of trying to sensationalize everything. He also seemed to maintain a state of perpetual excitement. “A new resident?”

“Yes, that's what I'm saying.”

“Nope. Didn't hear and don't care.”

Ed looked disappointed. “Really? But he's different. He's like... catatonic or something. They say he's been asleep for like a week.”

“Wouldn't that be a coma?” Dean said disinterestedly as he wondered how excruciating the wait till dinner was likely to be.

Ed shrugged. “If it was, they wouldn't be bringing him in. His name's Campbell.”

Dean frowned as the name jarred him. Campbell... Where have I heard that before?

“So, you wanna see him?” Ed asked restlessly. “This might be the only chance, as they're wheeling him in. Once he's in the room, he won't be coming out again unless he wakes up.”

Dean was starting to feel restless as well. “Yeah, sure.” He had time to kill before he could eat, and this guy's name was bugging him.

He followed Ed out of the room, slightly annoyed that he wasn't any taller than the curly-haired teenager. He looked around and didn't see any of the orderlies tailing him. It seemed they didn't have the resources to be on him 24-7, but they liked to follow him around and escorted him to and fro on specific occasions, such as visiting the shrink for his weekly sessions. He guessed they were less concerned with patient safety than they were with staff safety.

Regardless, they'd been giving him a longer leash since he'd been behaving himself. But that leash had gotten a lot longer since he'd been in Dr. Singer's care. Paulo usually did the escorting, but Dean suspected it was because they sort of got along.

Poor sap, trying to make friends with a resident.

Solitary had sucked. That's where they stuck him when he first got here. That's also where he heard about the tunnels. Originally they were a sort of corridor between buildings, through which patients were moved about, but mostly everything was done topside these days. One of the more easily aggravated `guards' (he was technically an orderly) had let slip quite a lot of information in-between his rather creative threats for Dean to shut his pie hole. Dean did his god's honest best to piss the guy off, and had learned an awful lot in the process.

Eventually he had to let up though. They guy was a source of info and entertainment, but being stuck in a box with bars over the windows was starting to get to him.

One of these days, he was going to find a way to get down there and check things out. According to Dillan-the-pissed-off-orderly, there were not just corridors, but entire rooms underground. There were also strange ass stories of what they might have been used for and who might have died down there.

“Quick,” Ed was saying, “over here.”

Ed was waving him in the opposite direction of the main entrance. “What for? Don't they usually bring the new ones in through the front?”

“Yeah, but they have it blocked off.” He indicated  an amassing force of men in white coats and adjusted his glasses. “We won't get close. We'll have a better view from up there.” He pointed to the second floor, just at the top of the split staircase that framed the high-ceilinged entryway.

“So, the back stairs then?” Dean anticipated.

Ed looked like he'd lost some of the wind in his sails. “Yeah, how'd you guess?”

Dean frowned at him. “Dude, it's pretty obvious that's the only way they wouldn't see you. If we go up the back stairs, we can get pretty close and then belly crawl the rest of the way. It'd be much harder for them to notice us if we're less than a foot tall versus running up the stairs right in front of them.”

“You're pretty smart, Dean.” Ed sounded like he was only just figuring this out. Dean wanted to climb to the top of the stairs and pitch him over the railing. Dumb fuck.

“Right then, let's go,” he said instead. They were wasting time and he wanted to check out this Campbell character. He slow ran down the hall, keeping an eye out for anyone that might get in his way, residents or staff. Ed followed him, much less smooth about the entire affair, and slow to duck corners when suspicious persons were sighted.

They were nearly busted when Dillan passed by from the direction of the kitchens. Dillan, hard assed Irishman that he was, would have detained them on principle. He loved to find Dean getting himself into trouble. Ed was slow on the uptake and he caught Dillan's eye.

“Hey - Zeddmore,” the dangerous looking man with the crew-cut said. “What are you doing out over here?”

“N-Nothing,” Ed stammered, just a few feet from where Dean was out of view. “W-We were just--”

“We?”

Dean could just make both of them out without giving himself away. Mostly it was Dillan in his line of sight. The Irishman looked suspicious as hell.

Ed laughed nervously and gestured vaguely to the air beside him as if he thought there was a `person' there. “Yeah. We. Were just going to...”

“Going to gawk at the new guy?” Dillan finished, giving him a look that said he hated dealing with crazy folk whose idea of a good time was to go peek at other crazy folk.

“No,” Ed drew out the word. “No, no, most definitely not that.”

“Yeah, whatever, Zeddmore.” Dillan ruffled a hand over his shorn hair with a bored expression. “Get going.” He made a shooing motion. “And don't get caught doing anything you're not supposed to be doing.”

“That was inspired,” Dean said when the coast was clear and they'd resumed their trek.

Ed looked proud. “You think so?”

“Lucky for you he doesn't much care what kind of crazy anyone is, and you seemed to catch him in a good mood. He would have dragged me off by the ear.”

“Maybe he let me go because I look harmless.”

“You are harmless.” Unless you counted the mental anguish Ed could just by talking as a sort of violence.

“Are you sure?” Ed said fretfully. “How would you know?”

“I have a sixth sense about that kind of thing.”

“Really?” Ed perked up. “I didn't know you were psychic, Dean!” he said in an excited whisper.

Dean regretted the number of steps it took to get the to the second floor.

Unlike Ed, Dean was able to belly crawl at a quick pace and was able to reach the end of the landing just as the gurney was wheeled in. A body, covered up to the shoulders with a blanket was strapped upon it. A ring of orderlies kept residents from entering by guarding the doorways that did not have doors. Some where threatening more boisterous residents with revocation of certain privileges. This seemed to be effective.

Dean got as close to the edge as he dared, straining to get a look at the new guy. It was still too far to see clearly. He'd have to wait until they wheeled him by, right beneath his current location. He'd picked this side for a reason. There hadn't been any patients visible on this end which meant they'd taken pains to clear everyone out and keep it cleared out.

All right, all right, he thought as the procession got near to halfway between him an the main door. New guy was being wheeled though feet first, which would give him a better view of his face. C'mon, Campbell, let's see what you're about.

Ed huffed as he crawled up next to Dean. “Did I miss anything?” he said too loudly.

“Shh!” Dean whispered. “Not yet.” He turned his attention back to the ground floor, and sucked in a breath. He blinked rapidly as he looked on the patient's familiar face, and the long brunet bangs that waved back from it.

Campbell. Now it all made sense, the way that name hit him like buckshot. It was his mother's maiden name, and on that bed was none other than his brother!

“Ed,” he said hoarsely. “What did you say the guy's first name was?”

“I didn't, but his name is Sam. Sam Campbell.”

“Shit,” he cursed, scrambling up from his post, not caring if anyone saw him.

“Dean?” Ed said in a stage whisper. “Where are you going?”

Dean ignored him, making for the back stairs as panic battered at the inside of his head. Sam was catatonic? What in the hell had happened? What was he doing in here of all places? Why wasn't he in California, where he'd been going to school? Michigan wasn't exactly a stone's throw away. It didn't make any sense!

He burst into the hallway from the stairs, skidding slightly on the floor, and ran towards the atrium. It wasn't the best of ideas, but he knew he wouldn't be getting through any of the doors they'd locked to close off the corridor they were taking Sam through. He reached the crowd flocking the open door, elbowing past the other residents while he evaluated the weakest link in the chain of three orderlies keeping them at bay. He slammed between the two on the left, clipping the one on the end which gave him an opening to dodge the center guy's grasping arm.

His mind was racing, trying to make sense of Sam on that gurney. It faltered on the thought of Sam never opening his eyes again. Interspersed with that was images of the last time he'd seen his brother, out near Sanford Uni. Everything had been okay. He'd been in one piece, had looked good, healthy, mentally sound. Granted, that had been a few years ago. What happened? What happened to you?

He could just make out the procession in the hall ahead of him when a vise clamped around his neck. “All right, Winchester,” Dillan said in his ear as he put Dean into a choke-hold. “That's far enough.”

“You don't understand,” Dean ground out, trying to break the Irishman's solid grip which also happened to be a deterrent to breathing. “That's my brother in there.”

“I don't care if he's the Queen of France, Winchester,” the orderly said with an incredulous laugh, voice slightly strained with the effort of keeping him in check. “You are not going in there.”

“Please,” Dean said as his vision started to go splotchy. “I have to--”

Dean's body went limp as he blacked out and Dillan hoisted it over his shoulder. Damn, but Winchester weighed more than he looked. His compact frame was like solid muscle.

“Hey, Dillan,” one of his fellow workers said from where they were actively herding people down the hall. “What did you do, finally lose your cool and choke Winchester out? Bet you've been waiting a damn long time to do that.”

The Irishman shook his head. “I dunno, it was weird. I've never seen him act like that. He's been playing his cards real close to his chest for a while now. Seemed like he wanted to gnaw my arm off.”

“You'll wanna go report that to his p-doc. Who's got him? Singer?”

“Yeah, I think so. Hey, Richardson, you wanna help me out here? Dude's fuckin' heavy.”

“Naw, I'm good,” the dark-haired orderly answered, “fun as that looks. Want me to hold any doors open for ya?”

“Bite me,” Dillan said, readjusting his load with a glare.

He was probably going to get into trouble with the way he'd handled this. But with Winchester's record, he couldn't exactly let him run loose. Especially not when he was acting all weird. Brother indeed. He couldn't have even gotten a clear shot to look at the new guy's face. Besides, they didn't even have the same last name.

---
TBC

A/N: Chapter title is from the song “End of the Road” by Infected Mushroom. (Can you sense a theme here? Lol. It's very likely I'll be naming all the chapters with this convention, but I am picking the songs according to mood or mood/lyric content to fit with the story.)