Stay With Me, Hold My Hand ⋆ SPN

1. The Beginning of a Tumultuous Sibling Relationship

A muffled noise, almost a cry, woke Mary up. Or maybe it was the subsequent crying that ended her slumber. Mary didn't bother to turn on the nightlamp, just padded out of the bedroom. As she entered the hallway, another door opened and an unkempt head of hair stuck out. "Sammy have another nightmare?" the teenage boy asked, rubbing his exhausted face with a hand.

"Probably, can you try to get Abby back asleep until I can get there?" Mary asked, nodding her head at the door across from her eldest son's.

"Yeah, sure," Dean half mumbled before shuffling across the hallway and entering the door. Mary is about to open her youngest son's door when she notices it's already cracked. Lightly pushing it farther open she sees a tall figure inside, blocking her view of Sam. Assuming it was her husband, Mary asked. "You got him?" and received only a nod in response.

Closing the door, she faintly hears Dean singing a song to his baby sister. A light flickering at the end of the hallway catches Mary's attention, she could have sworn John had changed it yesterday. She quietly walked over before lightly tapping it until the flickering stopped. Muffled voices from the television downstairs catch her attention, and she makes her way downstairs to turn off the TV John likely left on.

When Mary reaches the bottom of the steps she sees her husband snoring lightly in her chair. It takes a moment to register until she rushes back up the stairs, calling out her youngest's nickname, Sammy. She rushes into the room and the sight she finds makes her scream, waking her husband.

John, having heard Mary's shrill scream, rushed up the stairs, calling out his wife's name as she had called out her son's moments before. But when he burst into Sam's room, she was not there. His son is alone in the room looking around with wide eyes. John, not seeing Mary, assumed he misheard but went to comfort his son.

"Had another nightmare kid," he half asks, already assuming the answer. Sam shook his head, and John was surprised by how shaken he seemed. Normally the kid was scared, but this was on a whole other level. "Hey, come on Sammy, you know it's not real," John said, leaning down next to his son's bed.

"H-he was just here." Sam starts shakily. John assumes he is referring to the subject of Sam's nightmare of the day. Sam leaned in closer to his father, whispering as if he is afraid someone would hear him, a notion which slightly irritated John. "I think he took Mom," Sam whispered. He had woken up from a nightmare to see someone who, like Mary, he had assumed was John standing over him. But when the man whispered orders to Sam to stay calm, Sam knew he was mistaken.

Frozen with fear, Sam had instinctively swallowed the liquid the strange man had poured into his mouth. It had been thick, with a metallic taste but Sam hadn't had time to recognize it before his mother burst into the room. Sam shut his eyes, an instinctual response to his fear. He hadn't opened them until his father burst in, and by then his mother was gone.

John dismissed his son's tearful confession, assuming it was just another one of his nightmares. He saw something dark drip onto his youngest son's face, and he instinctively wiped it off. Noticing the red hue, John looked up and fell to the ground at the sight of his son's ceiling.

In the next room, Dean was cradling his baby sister, softly singing her a song. "Close your eyes, have no fear." Dean sang softly, rocking his baby sister. "The monster's gone, he's on the run, and your brother's here. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful girl," he altered some of the lyrics to better fit.

He had heard his parents rush into Sam's room and was going to ask what was going on when Abby fell back asleep. That is until he heard John and Sam's screams from the next room. Still holding his younger sister, Dean rushed out into the hallway where he almost collided with his brother, who was being pushed out of his room by his father.