Before I Sleep, for dizzojay
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spn_summergenTitle: Before I sleep
Recipient: dizzojay
Between the drive and the hike both on- and off-trail it takes them nearly all of the four hours Sam had estimated. The sun sits low in the sky casting long shadows that nearly swallow up the cave entrance. Dean had done well in the car but as the hike stretched along the miles he stopped trying to suppress his yawns.
Sam tried to think of people who had gone without sleep for multiple days. There was the math major on his floor who had stayed up completing a semester of calculus homework – but he hadn’t lasted longer than two days. Besides, Sam knew from his own bouts of sleepless nights that there’s a significant difference between the nights up you plan for versus the nights up you wish you didn’t have to experience.
Not that any of the reflection matters. Dean is awake and he’ll keep being awake until Sam can track down enough water to wash off the rock baby mojo.
This time Sam slithers into the cave first without bothering to draw his gun so he can better leverage himself along. Out of an abundance of caution Sam checks for any rock babies but as Bobby said they aren’t directly aggressive towards humans. The cave looks just as uninhabited as it had the first time around.
Sam waves Dean through and turns to scowl at the paintings but something glittering on the floor catches his eye.
When Dean pulls himself into the room Sam is crouched by the opening of the passage they had gone down last time. The salt line was angrily struck through with a series of jagged zigzags. The movement had been so violent it scattered grains of salt all the way to the other side of the room. “Guess they didn’t like your art either,” Sam tells Dean.
Dean kicks the salt into a pile off to the side. “Cry babies,” he mutters. Then he asks, “What do you think, up or down?”
The upwards sloping passage is entirely unexplored. The downwards passage is three hours of dry caves but with the sound of dripping water. “Water flows downhill.”
Dean nods and takes the lead.
It’s their third time through the passages in the past two days. Sam thinks he recognizes some of the stalactites and accurately remembers two points where the cave is about to take a sudden turn. They aren’t being as careful the first time given they know what to expect but they’re probably moving as slow. Sam doesn’t think Dean realizes how his footsteps are dragging and his missteps on the uneven floor are becoming more common. The hiker they’d found and the one who’d checked herself into the hospital had both been nearly comatose on the third day. Sam clenches his hand around the face of his watch and refuses to allow himself to look. Counting down this early would be counter-productive.
Sam stays behind Dean to make it less obvious he’s slowing down for him, lurking within arm’s reach in an overabundance of caution.
They crawl through the nerve-wracking squeeze once more. “You know,” Dean grumbles after he doesn’t duck low enough and hits the top of his head against a protrusion on the ceiling, “I keep thinking how much easier this hunt would be if we had done this one as kids.”
Sam grunts and focuses on staring at Dean’s muddy boots, ignoring the walls at his periphery and the way his chin scrapes against the floor.
“I mean,” he continues, his body muffling the sound so it seems more distant than it is, “Think about having an extra foot or two of headspace. Not to mention better knees. This crawling around is killing mine.”
“That’s because you’re a reminiscent old fart.”
Dean’s laugh expands his chest until it brushes the ceiling. “I think I’m entering the hysteric phase of sleep deprivation because that should not be funny.”
Sam doesn’t exactly smile but he can feel the ghost of it there. “Just keep crawling, grandpa.”
“Speak up, sonny! Can’t hear you!”
“I said –“
Dean’s feet suddenly pull away and then stand flat on the ground. Sam hadn’t even realized they were at the end of the squeeze. He scuttles through the rest with a relieved sigh and Dean slaps him on the back as he stands up. “Said what?”
“I said your feet smell like ass.”
“Aw, how sweet.”
They really should stay quiet and alert but Dean hasn’t slept in nearly thirty hours and Sam’s grateful for any excuse to forget about the watch ticking away on his wrist. Most of their energy still goes to walking rather than talking, but occasionally Dean will break the silence with a new insult he comes up with for the uwani azi or Sam will point out a cool feature in the cave. Nothing stirs in the dark corners of the cave. The only things that have changed since yesterday are the aggressively defaced salt lines along their path. They continue retracing their steps.
Dean kicks aside each salt line with a scowl. “Passive aggressive chunks of gravel,” he murmurs into the cave. It whispers odd remnants of his words back at them.
At the room with branching passages Sam has a moment of indecision. Dean notices at the mouth of yesterday’s passage, turning around just outside the room itself. “Sam?”
Sam illuminates the cave on his left, wondering if the floor slopes steeper downward than the one they were about to follow. They have no idea how long the cave goes; who knows how much time could be wasted if they pick the wrong one here.
“Hey.” Dean punctuates his word with a whistle to make Sam turn. “We following the water echoes or what?”
Sam shakes himself out of the momentary indecision. Yes, they are. Water may flow downwards but he trusts his ears. The sound of dripping water is faint but gradually grows louder as they continue on. Sam chagrins himself to be more focused. They crawl through rock formations and tight spaces until finally the third room looms out of the darkness.
Sam considers calling for a break like last time to restore some of their energy but Dean’s shoulders are set in a manner that means he’s still going because he won’t be able to start again after he stops. He ignores the room’s paintings and walks straight to his last salt line, sweeping it aside like all the others. The follow through of his kick makes him stagger a step in the opposite direction. Instead of taking a break Sam gives in to the urge to check his watch as he crosses the room. His stomach lurches to see it’s past midnight; Sam would have guessed it wasn’t yet eleven. Time seems to flow faster down here, leaving Sam unprepared for the deterioration of his brother. How long can Dean keep going under his own steam?
Finally expanding into unexplored space, Sam and Dean have to slow their pace even further. The cave seems less refined here, the floor and walls peppered with discolored boulders of other types of rock that stubbornly jut from the limestone. They end up climbing more than walking, half-crouched with a flashlight in one hand and the other reaching out for balance. Small gravel occasionally falls loose when Sam and Dean scrabble up the side of a stone and once or twice a boulder with a top oversized to its bottom shifts beneath their feet.
Sam’s not sure if it’s his imagination reacting to the growing patter of water echoing through the passage but the air seems more humid and he swears there’s a faint rut in the floor from what may have once been a river. The gravel seems more concentrated there like a flash flood had swept loose stones into the depths of the cave. Even as the cave crowds in on them Sam’s optimism slowly rises. It may take another hour or so to reach the end of this passage but he’s confident there will be water. The dripping is too constant for the cave to be entirely dry.
Sam’s careful optimism dies a quick death when Dean suddenly stops, flashlight ceasing its horizontal sweeping of the path ahead. The passage is too narrow for Sam to stand next to Dean and too short for Sam to look over his head. Instead he bends his knees further and cranes his already crooked neck to peer around Dean’s hunched shoulders.
In front of them is a rocky overhang that abruptly cuts the traversable area of the passage to a fraction of its previous size. Sam’s not sure either of them could fit through it even on their bellies. Of course it is purely an academic question because within an arm’s length the passage bubbles into a dead end. Sam thinks he’s hallucinating because the sound of dripping is even louder now and underpinned by what sounds like the distant roaring of a river.
Dean kicks a loose piece of gravel towards the wall that looks like it’s slowly melting downwards. It clatters and bounces before tumbling into a narrow seam Sam hadn’t noticed in the uneven shadows, one that runs unevenly across the entire width of the floor. Similar to the wall above it the rock looks like it was slowly melted over time, whorls of different colors dripping down its face like wax. The pebble clatters out of sight for a good ten seconds bouncing like a pinball. Sam listens for any kind of splash but if it made such a sound it was drowned out by the accumulating echoes of rock striking more rock.
As the echoes die off Sam can’t think of anything to say. He was so sure –
“I don’t think we’re getting through this one without a jackhammer.” Dean twists to the side and slumps against the wall letting his head fall back with a sigh. His eyes droop close in a parody of sleep. “How about we go back to the motel and test these Picasso wannabes against some benzodiazepine?”
Sam snorts and allows himself to slump as well. Dean can rest while Sam plans their next move. This isn’t a total dead end. They’ve confirmed a river flows somewhere below them in the rock. Step two is finding the right path to it. The narrow seam in front of them cannot be the only way down. There are three other passages they haven’t tried yet. The next one they should try is the second of three passages in the room Dean marked with a large arrow. It looked like it sloped downwards and it curved in the same direction as the passage they were in now.
Sam’s feet ache when he pulls himself away from the support of the wall. His soft groan doesn’t rouse Dean at all. “Dean?” Sam reaches out to shake his shoulder and freezes when Dean’s eyes flutter open. Small particles of dust drift from Dean’s face. Sam reaches out to run a thumb below one of his eyes and Dean lethargically bats it away before Sam can touch anything.
“Leave it,” he mutters. “I’m fine.”
“You’re crying limestone,” Sam points out. This is far from just tired. How long until his symptoms become acute? They have a lot more ground to cover, and if Dean can’t make it on his own power they have even less time to find the water source than before.
“Am not,” Dean grumbles. He leverages himself to his feet by essentially lurching against the opposite wall. Face haggard with exhaustion he stares at Sam and visibly struggles with himself for a moment. “I might be pretty useless,” Dean finally admits. “The room is spinning a little.”
Sam doesn’t press further, recognizing Dean’s peculiar sense of concession for what it is. Dean’s not fine but he doesn’t know how hard it’s going to hit him until it does. There’s only one solution to this problem. “We’re going to head back to the room with the arrow and try a second passage.”
Without any room to switch their order Sam leads the way back, making an effort to cater to Dean’s speed. It was easier when he was behind. He could keep an eye on Dean without having to contort his body into awkward positions and his arms were always out to give Dean a boost when he needed one. Even with Sam trying to move slowly it becomes much more apparent how labored Dean’s pace is.
This time Sam follows through on his thought to call for a rest when they work their way back to the third cavern. They can’t sleep but at least the food will help them regain a complementary kind of energy. They’ve hiked miles already and potentially have miles to go. It’s not the kind of environment to skip meals in.
After their late dinner of energy bars and protein snacks Sam can feel his eyelids drooping. The stress for Dean’s condition and combined with the incongruent boredom of climbing through hours of claustrophobic caves has wiped Sam’s energy. He feelsl guilty because at least he had slept the night before; Dean has been up for nearly twice that with a nasty curse sapping his energy at an accelerated rate.
Next to Sam Dean’s head is nodding erratically, the last bite of an energy bar hanging from his nerveless fingers. His foot twitches dangerously close to the canteen he’d put down without screwing the top back on. Sam’s mind returns to worrying about what he will do if Dean becomes unable to follow under his own steam. Can Sam carry him through miles of tunnels alone? Should he deposit him in one of these rooms and hope he’s got enough time to both find the water source and carry enough back in his small canteen that cleansing Dean of the curse will work? Sam prefers the former if at all possible to prevent their remaining time from being split in half.
Of course whichever way is inferior to keeping Dean on his own feet. They need to cover as much ground before the curse progresses that far. Sam bumps Dean’s shoulder with his own, steadying the canteen so it doesn’t fall over. Dean jolts and drops his energy bar.
“What?”
“Come on, we’re heading out again.”
“Aren’t you gonna… take a rest?” The tension in Sam’s shoulders grows when he hears how disjointed Dean’s speech is becoming. It’s like he needs to pause every three words to regather his thoughts. “You also had… long day.”
“I’ll sleep when you do,” Sam tells him.
He watches Dean react to his words, first with eyebrows drawn together in concentration like he’s listening long after to the echo of Sam’s words. Finally Dean grunts wordlessly and stands up with a clear effort. “Princess and the pea,” he accuses. “Not enough mattress.”
Sam forces himself to smile even though Dean has a hard time keeping his gaze focused.
-----------------------------------
The second passage is as much of a disappointment as the first. Mercifully it’s an easy walk and even at their current pace a short way to the dead end. The closed room is the largest they’ve found so far with the obligatory five-color cave paintings decorating one wall but the ceiling is peppered in the largest stalactites they’ve seen in the cave so far. The ceiling is too high for Sam to accurately judge how large the formations are but Sam thinks a few may reach over six feet. They stretch down from the ceiling in large clusters carpeted by delicate straw-like structures and Sam feels like he’s staring up and seeing the canopy of an odd forest.
If the clock wasn’t ticking in the back of his mind Sam would have liked to explore that room some more. As it was he give it a quick assessment to confirm there were no other tunnels except the one they’d come in to. His glance to the ceiling was interested but brief as he caught Dean on the shoulder and gently steered him around.
The final passage branching from the room Dean drew an arrow in goes on for much longer and more complicated to traverse. Sam thinks they’re sloping downwards more often than they’re climbing up but it’s hard to tell. Once more there’s the faintest of channels running along the floor that looks like it was the beginning etches of a riverbed. Sam dares to hope again because the only option they have after this is the upwards passage from the first room.
The hours of exertion have exacted their toll on Sam; his mind cycles through irrelevant snippets of thought and his body continues without requiring much conscious input. The surrounding darkness pushes in oppressively and the echoes of their own movements begin to burn unpleasantly in Sam’s ears. Like all persistent background noises it had sat unobtrusively in Sam’s subconscious until a moment of mental dissonance brought it roaring to the forefront not to be subdued again.
Sam can’t imagine what Dean must be going through right now. He continues to put one foot in front of the other and turns according to Sam’s gentle steering but the last time Sam tried to engage him verbally Dean had stared uncomprehendingly for a long moment. He’d had to visibly draw together his concentration before asking Sam to repeat the question. He has the wherewithal to duck his head and keep his balance which is all Sam’s going to ask of him right now.
As zoned out as he is, Sam doesn’t spot the glimmer of sunlight until they’re nearly on top of it. He stares at it in a stupor for a long moment, trying to figure out if he’d actually taken them the wrong way. He hadn’t. The route is different than the one to the entrance they’d come. It’s a second entrance.
When Sam pulls Dean into the morning light they both need to cover their eyes until they’ve adjusted. Sam sits Dean down for another break in the fresh air. He isn’t able to get him to eat much. Dean will sip absently at his canteen when Sam pushes it into his hands but his lips are cracked in the early stages of dehydration. Sam isn’t able to eat much either, exhaustion souring his stomach to trail rations, but he forces down what he can and makes sure to drink a ration of water. He pushes Dean into the trees to go to the bathroom and discovers they must have come out on top of the hill that the original entrance cuts through the base of.
He spends a few minutes trying to spot the entrance before a sudden bolt of panic makes Sam turn around and check that Dean has returned to the entrance instead of wandering off. If he becomes as footloose as Floyd had been then Sam may waste hours tracking him down
Luckily Dean still has the follow through to return to the entrance, hunched over on the log with his head resting in his hands.
“Dean?” Sam asks. “You okay?”
His fingers curl in his hair and his answer seems to fall out without Dean meaning to say it. “I’m so tired.”
Sam bites his lip, wishing there was something more he could do. “I know,” he says instead. “Just hold on a little longer.” Sam checks his watch. It’s 11 AM. If the curse completes at sundown, Dean has a little over ten hours. depending on how long he can keep his zombie-like state up, Sam can half that for the time Sam has to find the river.
Dean stands up and looks around hazily. There’s limestone caught in the corner of his eyes. Sam wonders how much he’s actually processing right now. He grabs Dean’s hand and leads him back inside to the imprint of a dried up pool. Sam swallows down his disappointment and wishes Kentucky had a stormier month. Perhaps then it would be filled with water. Instead he and Dean tread through the dried limestone husk and continue their search down the passage.
Sam was keeping a mental tally of the cave system as they explored it: Four rooms, four distinct traversable passages. One way had been too narrow for human traversal, one way ended in a dead end room. They were currently on the third passage with one to go. Sam refused to believe that the water could be inaccessible which meant they would find it either on this passage or the next. That mental math had been one of the thoughts repeatedly churning through his mind as they climbed. This one or the next.
This passage had climbed back to the surface but then began to sharply descend on an angle so steep Sam and Dean resorted to sliding down on the seat of their pants using their hands to brake. Like nature’s version of a playground slide they plummeted down and around a gradual bend until they were deposited into another room.
Sam nearly updated his count to five rooms until he noticed a fine scattering of grains on the floor and a distant window of natural daylight. Crouching down to view the entrance and then reluctantly walking over to the swept aside pile of salt, Sam feels his frustration abruptly crest.
They were back at the beginning of the cave.
There weren’t four distinct passages after all. One had been a loop. There was no next option, no path to reach the water Sam heard roaring beneath their feet. Given a jackhammer and a couple months maybe Sam could return to the end of the first passage and drill their way down – but what could he do in less than eight hours?
Dean, swaying unsteadily in the center of the room, turns so abruptly he staggers sideways. Craning his head to look towards the painted wall he asks, “Do you hear that?”
Sam stills, sweeping his own flashlight across the far wall. He doesn’t see anything out of place. “Hear what?”
Dean shudders and ineffectually grasps for the word. “Like a baby. But not. You didn’t sound like that.”
“Crying?” Sam clarifies. “You hear them crying?”
“Yeah.”
Sam curses. What else can they do without water? They could break off some stalactites for weapons, but assuming it would work on the uwani azi they’d need to be physically present. From what they’ve seen this is a hands off kind of curse. They won’t get within striking distance while Dean is dying. Their usual warding materials already failed to protect Floyd, and Sam doesn’t have anything beyond the basics on him. Sam’s hands start to shake when he thinks about sitting here for eight hours waiting for Dean to die.
The realization comes like a chill down his spine. Sam had miscounted the tunnels again.
There was one more they hadn’t explored yet, one which clearly could not be linked to any of the others; the chimney passage that narrowed down into a rib-busting vise. Sam hadn’t counted it because it hadn’t looked big enough for him to squeeze through. But suppose he managed to wriggle past the choke point and into the drop-off below? Water flows downhill after all.
Sam berates himself for being ten kinds of stupid when it occurs to him. This should have been his first plan when the main passage became a dead end. He let his reluctance to crawl through tight areas influence his decision makings, and now he’s run down the clock to dangerous levels. Who knows how much cave is left to explore beyond that point?
Sam grabs Dean’s elbow, and he readily follows Sam away from the specter voices only he can hear. For the third time they descend into the cave.
-----------------------------------
The biohazard sign Dean had drawn on their first pass now strikes Sam as a bad omen. Sam doesn’t think of himself as superstitious – but that line is drawn a little differently for a hunter. He looks over at Dean and Dean looks at the yawning pit in front of them.
“I don’t like this,” Dean says.
Sam couldn’t agree more.
“Dean,” Sam says, drawing Dean’s gaze to him. “I’m going down first. If I yell, follow me.”
Dean blinks rapidly while he listens to Sam’s instructions but eventually nods. He’s still in there – just struggling against an overwhelming tide of exhaustion and all the impairment of higher functions it causes. Sam is just grateful he can still move under his own direction. If he uses Floyd as their benchmark Dean is doing well. Sam gives him a reassuring nod before turning his attention to the chimney.
The passage is too steep to walk down, just short of a direct fall. If he jumps Sam will probably just break his legs at the bottom. Sam sits at the edge of the chimney and extends his legs so they press against the opposite side. He braces his hands against the sheer walls on either side and slowly eases his hips off the ledge. After walking his legs down he can press his lower back against the side of the chimney he’d been sitting above. Sam presses with his back and his legs, repositions his arms, and walks his legs down a little further.
Moving in this way – arms, press, walks his legs, slide his back, press, arms, repeat – Sam can shimmy down the shaft in a controlled manner. It gets harder the further down he goes, arms tucked in too tight and legs too long to extend all the way so he has to press against the wall using the tips of his boots instead of the soles.
Sam is sweating heavily before he gets to the vise but it worsens when he sees the size of the gap he has to squeeze through. Bringing his arms up to his shoulders and then extending them down to the opening, Sam thinks he may truly have enough room to get through – barely. It’s not just the shoulder width that’s intimidating but the space for his chest front-to-back as well.
Sam takes a couple deep breaths before he drops his legs from the wall, hands placed so it’s like he’s trying to perform a tricep dip with his legs hanging straight down. He slips one foot through and then the other, twisting them side to side to keep his jeans from catching on the rock. Sam’s feet get swallowed up, then his calves, then the bottom half of his thighs. Before committing entirely to his desperate plan Sam kicks his legs the small amount they can move and tries to feel for his feet catching on anything rough. The first time his toes slide off with hardly any friction. The second time he gets a small catch. The third time he finds a section of rock bumpy enough for him to get a good foothold.
Sam exhales slowly and double checks his grip. He’s going to do this. After a mental count of three he lowers himself down until his hips catch against the rock. Swinging his legs in tandem on the other side of the vise, Sam gradually slips his hips down. The pressure is uncomfortably tight. Sam twists his torso side to side and feels himself slide another inch. The lip of the vise catches against the bottom of his t-shirt. Wedged as firmly as he is, he frees a hand to tuck it in. The last thing he wants are scrapes on his entire torso.
It’s already getting harder to breathe with just the bottom of his chest cavity compressed. Sam is not looking forward to how it’ll feel when he’s trying to fit his whole body through. But if it’s this or Dean dying in front of him it’s not really a choice. Sam takes a few deep breaths to saturate his blood oxygen levels and starts wriggling again. With determined twists and rolls and wriggles Sam descends to nearly his armpits. His ribs are being crushed out of shape. He can feel them strain to expand every time Sam draws breath. Since they can’t it leaves Sam light-headed.
His body wants to panic from the lack of oxygen but Sam knows that will just get him stuck. He forces himself to exhale, kicks his legs out to catch a foothold, and raises his arms above his head. Throwing his hips into the movement Sam wriggles down further. It’s impossible to breathe. His adrenaline is spiking. Sam raises his arms as high as they will go so his shoulders press against either side of his ear. His feet slip down the wall of the chimney as Sam wriggles and shoves his body along.
His eyes are closed but Sam can feel the moment his hips clear the bottom of the squeeze. His torso follows next, armpits scraping the whole way against either side of the squeeze even through his shirt. Sam’s chin catches against the rock and he quickly tilts it sideways, feeling stone scrape against one cheek. Walking down the wall with his feet and purposefully pressing his arms outward once they’re in the squeeze to make sure his descent is a controlled one, Sam finally makes it through with a heartfelt gasp of relief.
Sam presses his back and legs against opposite walls like he’d done above, blindly inching downwards until his head and arms clear. After that Sam takes a moment to catch his breath. on this side of the squeeze Sam can the incline is not as steep. As long as he uses the walls for balance he can walk his way down.
Sam has to think for a long moment about whether or not to call for Dean to follow him down. It all comes down to the math again; without Dean, Sam has to find the water source in half the time because he’ll need to carry it back. Wait that in mind Sam moves himself out of the immediate landing area and calls up for Dean to follow.
It simultaneously harder because Dean’s nearly at the edge of consciouslness, and easier because Sam can mind Dean’s descent and support his weight from below while Dean wriggles through. It’s possible he had more room to maneuver than Sam did, but whatever advantage that would give him was cancelled out by Dean’s fugue state. He makes it through, barely. That’s all Sam needs.
Leading the way down the steep incline with arms outstretched to keep himself from tumbling head over heels down it, Sam leads them on their way.
After a dizzying number of spirals down the passage the ground finally flattens out – and the ceiling collapses into another squeeze. Sam nearly sobs in frustration. The roaring sound of rushing water teases them onwards but Sam hates the cramped spaces with a passion born of having to drag all 6’3” of himself through them. Regardless he drops onto his belly and shoves himself forwards.
It seems to last forever. The only assurance Sam has that Dean hasn’t fallen behind are his labored breaths and the occasional bump of a hand against his boots. Sam tries to wipe his mind of thoughts and just concentrate on pulling himself forward by his fingertips, catching the sides of his boots against the rock and pushing himself another inch, reaching out his arms and repeating the process.
He thinks the slickness against his palms is just sweat until he realizes it’s too cool to be his own. Panning his flashlight what little length he can, Sam sees that indeed the whole cave is damp floor to ceiling. It begins to soak into his shirt but Sam notes both occurrences with an unfettered jolt of happiness. He can’t tell if the roaring in his ears is coming from his pumping blood or the water ahead. Either way it reinvigorates Sam. He inch-pulls along, pushes down the panic of being unable to turn his head, ignores the burning in his forearms and his calves.
Finally, after what seems like a day crawling forward, Sam pulls himself out of the crawlspace and into a cave with high cathedral arches of stone – and taking up over half the floor space, a roaring underground river that launches out of an incision in the stone and roils across the cave. Sam only looks at it for a moment before returning to the squeeze to crawl back to where Dean was slowly working his way along and help pull him forwards.
Tumbling out into the cave for the second time is just as good as the first. In fact it’s even better because he can grab Dean by the arm and tow him forwards, making him strip off his shirt and practically dunking him head first into the water. It’s practically ice cold but Sam makes him submerge his hands up to his elbows, rub the limestone from his eyes, scrub his chest clean of sweat and the malicious curse of the uwani azi. Sam uses the edge of Dean’s dry shirt to wipe the limestone sweat tracks off his face and laughs in relief when they don’t come back.
Dean staggers in a daze, smiling back at Sam but entirely too exhausted to say or do much. Sam pushes him down onto the smoothest area of limestone. Dean topples gracelessly, stretched out on his back with arms stretched by his side. Sam lifts his head and settles it on his knee, stroking down Dean’s forehead to encourage him to close his eyes. The tumultuous roar of the river and its echoes nearly drown out Dean’s last murmur before he collapses into an exhausted sleep. “No touching the artwork,” he says. “Got it, Bobby.”
The last thing Sam remembers is the cave giving his laughter back to him.
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Sam wakes to the roaring of the underwater river and the slimy chill of water soaked in his clothes. He fumbles for the flashlight switch and rolls over with a grunt when his back twinges from napping on top of unyielding stone. Dean is still asleep. Sam considers leaving him but the promise of dry clothes and a comfortable back seat prompts Sam to give Dean an experimental shake. Dean’s back is worse than Sam’s anyway; it’ll be better to get him to crash on something soft.
Dean groans and curls himself into a ball. He responds the second time Sam prods him, batting Sam away with one hand and a sleep drunk, “What?”
“Come on,” Sam tells him. “We’re heading back to the Impala.”
Name-dropping the car makes Dean blearily look around, eyes widening at the rapids just a few feet away. “Are we still in the cave?”
“Yeah.” Sam tries a few small stretches to work out the kinks in his muscles. “How much do you remember?”
“Just a –“ Dean’s jaw cracks with his oversized yawn. “Just a lot of rocks and the creepy crying. How long have we been down here?”
Sam checks his watch. “It’s 4 in the morning, so about… thirty-two hours?”
Dean’s eyes widen. “Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Sam says. His skin is itching for sunlight and a breeze. “You can sleep more in the car once we dry off.”
Dean’s perfectly timed shiver gets him on his feet and moving. The squeezes back are difficult to navigate, especially since this is the first time Dean remembers going through it, but without the bubbling panic of last night It’s much easier for Sam to keep himself centered and control control breathing. He goes first, showing Dean it’s feasible to slowly pull himself through the bend and the vise in the chimney passage.
Dean swears like a sailor the whole time he’s working his body through with short corkscrew twists. Sam empathizes. On the bright side the first squeeze they’d had to traverse now feels positively breezy. They army crawl through, Sam reveling in the freedom he has to fully expand his lungs the whole way through.
Dean had used his own canteen to gleefully splash the uwani azi paintings in the first room they reached. Where the water struck the paintings began to bubble and hiss, the colors blending together into the same brown as the walls. Sam jumped when he heard the outraged wails. Dean just scowled. “Yeah, that Jackson Pollock revenge isn’t so much fun on your won stuff, is it?” The wails don’t respond. A similar outburst happens when Dean splashes the wall of the first room. They’ll need to come back for the rest of the paintings and to figure out how to permanently close both cave entrances.
That’s a task Sam happily leaves for tomorrow. He crawls into the sunrise with a heartfelt sigh and flops on the dirt, rolling just far enough for Dean to exit as well. Only a few more miles back to the car and then Sam and Dean can finally sleep.
Recipient: dizzojay
Between the drive and the hike both on- and off-trail it takes them nearly all of the four hours Sam had estimated. The sun sits low in the sky casting long shadows that nearly swallow up the cave entrance. Dean had done well in the car but as the hike stretched along the miles he stopped trying to suppress his yawns.
Sam tried to think of people who had gone without sleep for multiple days. There was the math major on his floor who had stayed up completing a semester of calculus homework – but he hadn’t lasted longer than two days. Besides, Sam knew from his own bouts of sleepless nights that there’s a significant difference between the nights up you plan for versus the nights up you wish you didn’t have to experience.
Not that any of the reflection matters. Dean is awake and he’ll keep being awake until Sam can track down enough water to wash off the rock baby mojo.
This time Sam slithers into the cave first without bothering to draw his gun so he can better leverage himself along. Out of an abundance of caution Sam checks for any rock babies but as Bobby said they aren’t directly aggressive towards humans. The cave looks just as uninhabited as it had the first time around.
Sam waves Dean through and turns to scowl at the paintings but something glittering on the floor catches his eye.
When Dean pulls himself into the room Sam is crouched by the opening of the passage they had gone down last time. The salt line was angrily struck through with a series of jagged zigzags. The movement had been so violent it scattered grains of salt all the way to the other side of the room. “Guess they didn’t like your art either,” Sam tells Dean.
Dean kicks the salt into a pile off to the side. “Cry babies,” he mutters. Then he asks, “What do you think, up or down?”
The upwards sloping passage is entirely unexplored. The downwards passage is three hours of dry caves but with the sound of dripping water. “Water flows downhill.”
Dean nods and takes the lead.
It’s their third time through the passages in the past two days. Sam thinks he recognizes some of the stalactites and accurately remembers two points where the cave is about to take a sudden turn. They aren’t being as careful the first time given they know what to expect but they’re probably moving as slow. Sam doesn’t think Dean realizes how his footsteps are dragging and his missteps on the uneven floor are becoming more common. The hiker they’d found and the one who’d checked herself into the hospital had both been nearly comatose on the third day. Sam clenches his hand around the face of his watch and refuses to allow himself to look. Counting down this early would be counter-productive.
Sam stays behind Dean to make it less obvious he’s slowing down for him, lurking within arm’s reach in an overabundance of caution.
They crawl through the nerve-wracking squeeze once more. “You know,” Dean grumbles after he doesn’t duck low enough and hits the top of his head against a protrusion on the ceiling, “I keep thinking how much easier this hunt would be if we had done this one as kids.”
Sam grunts and focuses on staring at Dean’s muddy boots, ignoring the walls at his periphery and the way his chin scrapes against the floor.
“I mean,” he continues, his body muffling the sound so it seems more distant than it is, “Think about having an extra foot or two of headspace. Not to mention better knees. This crawling around is killing mine.”
“That’s because you’re a reminiscent old fart.”
Dean’s laugh expands his chest until it brushes the ceiling. “I think I’m entering the hysteric phase of sleep deprivation because that should not be funny.”
Sam doesn’t exactly smile but he can feel the ghost of it there. “Just keep crawling, grandpa.”
“Speak up, sonny! Can’t hear you!”
“I said –“
Dean’s feet suddenly pull away and then stand flat on the ground. Sam hadn’t even realized they were at the end of the squeeze. He scuttles through the rest with a relieved sigh and Dean slaps him on the back as he stands up. “Said what?”
“I said your feet smell like ass.”
“Aw, how sweet.”
They really should stay quiet and alert but Dean hasn’t slept in nearly thirty hours and Sam’s grateful for any excuse to forget about the watch ticking away on his wrist. Most of their energy still goes to walking rather than talking, but occasionally Dean will break the silence with a new insult he comes up with for the uwani azi or Sam will point out a cool feature in the cave. Nothing stirs in the dark corners of the cave. The only things that have changed since yesterday are the aggressively defaced salt lines along their path. They continue retracing their steps.
Dean kicks aside each salt line with a scowl. “Passive aggressive chunks of gravel,” he murmurs into the cave. It whispers odd remnants of his words back at them.
At the room with branching passages Sam has a moment of indecision. Dean notices at the mouth of yesterday’s passage, turning around just outside the room itself. “Sam?”
Sam illuminates the cave on his left, wondering if the floor slopes steeper downward than the one they were about to follow. They have no idea how long the cave goes; who knows how much time could be wasted if they pick the wrong one here.
“Hey.” Dean punctuates his word with a whistle to make Sam turn. “We following the water echoes or what?”
Sam shakes himself out of the momentary indecision. Yes, they are. Water may flow downwards but he trusts his ears. The sound of dripping water is faint but gradually grows louder as they continue on. Sam chagrins himself to be more focused. They crawl through rock formations and tight spaces until finally the third room looms out of the darkness.
Sam considers calling for a break like last time to restore some of their energy but Dean’s shoulders are set in a manner that means he’s still going because he won’t be able to start again after he stops. He ignores the room’s paintings and walks straight to his last salt line, sweeping it aside like all the others. The follow through of his kick makes him stagger a step in the opposite direction. Instead of taking a break Sam gives in to the urge to check his watch as he crosses the room. His stomach lurches to see it’s past midnight; Sam would have guessed it wasn’t yet eleven. Time seems to flow faster down here, leaving Sam unprepared for the deterioration of his brother. How long can Dean keep going under his own steam?
Finally expanding into unexplored space, Sam and Dean have to slow their pace even further. The cave seems less refined here, the floor and walls peppered with discolored boulders of other types of rock that stubbornly jut from the limestone. They end up climbing more than walking, half-crouched with a flashlight in one hand and the other reaching out for balance. Small gravel occasionally falls loose when Sam and Dean scrabble up the side of a stone and once or twice a boulder with a top oversized to its bottom shifts beneath their feet.
Sam’s not sure if it’s his imagination reacting to the growing patter of water echoing through the passage but the air seems more humid and he swears there’s a faint rut in the floor from what may have once been a river. The gravel seems more concentrated there like a flash flood had swept loose stones into the depths of the cave. Even as the cave crowds in on them Sam’s optimism slowly rises. It may take another hour or so to reach the end of this passage but he’s confident there will be water. The dripping is too constant for the cave to be entirely dry.
Sam’s careful optimism dies a quick death when Dean suddenly stops, flashlight ceasing its horizontal sweeping of the path ahead. The passage is too narrow for Sam to stand next to Dean and too short for Sam to look over his head. Instead he bends his knees further and cranes his already crooked neck to peer around Dean’s hunched shoulders.
In front of them is a rocky overhang that abruptly cuts the traversable area of the passage to a fraction of its previous size. Sam’s not sure either of them could fit through it even on their bellies. Of course it is purely an academic question because within an arm’s length the passage bubbles into a dead end. Sam thinks he’s hallucinating because the sound of dripping is even louder now and underpinned by what sounds like the distant roaring of a river.
Dean kicks a loose piece of gravel towards the wall that looks like it’s slowly melting downwards. It clatters and bounces before tumbling into a narrow seam Sam hadn’t noticed in the uneven shadows, one that runs unevenly across the entire width of the floor. Similar to the wall above it the rock looks like it was slowly melted over time, whorls of different colors dripping down its face like wax. The pebble clatters out of sight for a good ten seconds bouncing like a pinball. Sam listens for any kind of splash but if it made such a sound it was drowned out by the accumulating echoes of rock striking more rock.
As the echoes die off Sam can’t think of anything to say. He was so sure –
“I don’t think we’re getting through this one without a jackhammer.” Dean twists to the side and slumps against the wall letting his head fall back with a sigh. His eyes droop close in a parody of sleep. “How about we go back to the motel and test these Picasso wannabes against some benzodiazepine?”
Sam snorts and allows himself to slump as well. Dean can rest while Sam plans their next move. This isn’t a total dead end. They’ve confirmed a river flows somewhere below them in the rock. Step two is finding the right path to it. The narrow seam in front of them cannot be the only way down. There are three other passages they haven’t tried yet. The next one they should try is the second of three passages in the room Dean marked with a large arrow. It looked like it sloped downwards and it curved in the same direction as the passage they were in now.
Sam’s feet ache when he pulls himself away from the support of the wall. His soft groan doesn’t rouse Dean at all. “Dean?” Sam reaches out to shake his shoulder and freezes when Dean’s eyes flutter open. Small particles of dust drift from Dean’s face. Sam reaches out to run a thumb below one of his eyes and Dean lethargically bats it away before Sam can touch anything.
“Leave it,” he mutters. “I’m fine.”
“You’re crying limestone,” Sam points out. This is far from just tired. How long until his symptoms become acute? They have a lot more ground to cover, and if Dean can’t make it on his own power they have even less time to find the water source than before.
“Am not,” Dean grumbles. He leverages himself to his feet by essentially lurching against the opposite wall. Face haggard with exhaustion he stares at Sam and visibly struggles with himself for a moment. “I might be pretty useless,” Dean finally admits. “The room is spinning a little.”
Sam doesn’t press further, recognizing Dean’s peculiar sense of concession for what it is. Dean’s not fine but he doesn’t know how hard it’s going to hit him until it does. There’s only one solution to this problem. “We’re going to head back to the room with the arrow and try a second passage.”
Without any room to switch their order Sam leads the way back, making an effort to cater to Dean’s speed. It was easier when he was behind. He could keep an eye on Dean without having to contort his body into awkward positions and his arms were always out to give Dean a boost when he needed one. Even with Sam trying to move slowly it becomes much more apparent how labored Dean’s pace is.
This time Sam follows through on his thought to call for a rest when they work their way back to the third cavern. They can’t sleep but at least the food will help them regain a complementary kind of energy. They’ve hiked miles already and potentially have miles to go. It’s not the kind of environment to skip meals in.
After their late dinner of energy bars and protein snacks Sam can feel his eyelids drooping. The stress for Dean’s condition and combined with the incongruent boredom of climbing through hours of claustrophobic caves has wiped Sam’s energy. He feelsl guilty because at least he had slept the night before; Dean has been up for nearly twice that with a nasty curse sapping his energy at an accelerated rate.
Next to Sam Dean’s head is nodding erratically, the last bite of an energy bar hanging from his nerveless fingers. His foot twitches dangerously close to the canteen he’d put down without screwing the top back on. Sam’s mind returns to worrying about what he will do if Dean becomes unable to follow under his own steam. Can Sam carry him through miles of tunnels alone? Should he deposit him in one of these rooms and hope he’s got enough time to both find the water source and carry enough back in his small canteen that cleansing Dean of the curse will work? Sam prefers the former if at all possible to prevent their remaining time from being split in half.
Of course whichever way is inferior to keeping Dean on his own feet. They need to cover as much ground before the curse progresses that far. Sam bumps Dean’s shoulder with his own, steadying the canteen so it doesn’t fall over. Dean jolts and drops his energy bar.
“What?”
“Come on, we’re heading out again.”
“Aren’t you gonna… take a rest?” The tension in Sam’s shoulders grows when he hears how disjointed Dean’s speech is becoming. It’s like he needs to pause every three words to regather his thoughts. “You also had… long day.”
“I’ll sleep when you do,” Sam tells him.
He watches Dean react to his words, first with eyebrows drawn together in concentration like he’s listening long after to the echo of Sam’s words. Finally Dean grunts wordlessly and stands up with a clear effort. “Princess and the pea,” he accuses. “Not enough mattress.”
Sam forces himself to smile even though Dean has a hard time keeping his gaze focused.
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The second passage is as much of a disappointment as the first. Mercifully it’s an easy walk and even at their current pace a short way to the dead end. The closed room is the largest they’ve found so far with the obligatory five-color cave paintings decorating one wall but the ceiling is peppered in the largest stalactites they’ve seen in the cave so far. The ceiling is too high for Sam to accurately judge how large the formations are but Sam thinks a few may reach over six feet. They stretch down from the ceiling in large clusters carpeted by delicate straw-like structures and Sam feels like he’s staring up and seeing the canopy of an odd forest.
If the clock wasn’t ticking in the back of his mind Sam would have liked to explore that room some more. As it was he give it a quick assessment to confirm there were no other tunnels except the one they’d come in to. His glance to the ceiling was interested but brief as he caught Dean on the shoulder and gently steered him around.
The final passage branching from the room Dean drew an arrow in goes on for much longer and more complicated to traverse. Sam thinks they’re sloping downwards more often than they’re climbing up but it’s hard to tell. Once more there’s the faintest of channels running along the floor that looks like it was the beginning etches of a riverbed. Sam dares to hope again because the only option they have after this is the upwards passage from the first room.
The hours of exertion have exacted their toll on Sam; his mind cycles through irrelevant snippets of thought and his body continues without requiring much conscious input. The surrounding darkness pushes in oppressively and the echoes of their own movements begin to burn unpleasantly in Sam’s ears. Like all persistent background noises it had sat unobtrusively in Sam’s subconscious until a moment of mental dissonance brought it roaring to the forefront not to be subdued again.
Sam can’t imagine what Dean must be going through right now. He continues to put one foot in front of the other and turns according to Sam’s gentle steering but the last time Sam tried to engage him verbally Dean had stared uncomprehendingly for a long moment. He’d had to visibly draw together his concentration before asking Sam to repeat the question. He has the wherewithal to duck his head and keep his balance which is all Sam’s going to ask of him right now.
As zoned out as he is, Sam doesn’t spot the glimmer of sunlight until they’re nearly on top of it. He stares at it in a stupor for a long moment, trying to figure out if he’d actually taken them the wrong way. He hadn’t. The route is different than the one to the entrance they’d come. It’s a second entrance.
When Sam pulls Dean into the morning light they both need to cover their eyes until they’ve adjusted. Sam sits Dean down for another break in the fresh air. He isn’t able to get him to eat much. Dean will sip absently at his canteen when Sam pushes it into his hands but his lips are cracked in the early stages of dehydration. Sam isn’t able to eat much either, exhaustion souring his stomach to trail rations, but he forces down what he can and makes sure to drink a ration of water. He pushes Dean into the trees to go to the bathroom and discovers they must have come out on top of the hill that the original entrance cuts through the base of.
He spends a few minutes trying to spot the entrance before a sudden bolt of panic makes Sam turn around and check that Dean has returned to the entrance instead of wandering off. If he becomes as footloose as Floyd had been then Sam may waste hours tracking him down
Luckily Dean still has the follow through to return to the entrance, hunched over on the log with his head resting in his hands.
“Dean?” Sam asks. “You okay?”
His fingers curl in his hair and his answer seems to fall out without Dean meaning to say it. “I’m so tired.”
Sam bites his lip, wishing there was something more he could do. “I know,” he says instead. “Just hold on a little longer.” Sam checks his watch. It’s 11 AM. If the curse completes at sundown, Dean has a little over ten hours. depending on how long he can keep his zombie-like state up, Sam can half that for the time Sam has to find the river.
Dean stands up and looks around hazily. There’s limestone caught in the corner of his eyes. Sam wonders how much he’s actually processing right now. He grabs Dean’s hand and leads him back inside to the imprint of a dried up pool. Sam swallows down his disappointment and wishes Kentucky had a stormier month. Perhaps then it would be filled with water. Instead he and Dean tread through the dried limestone husk and continue their search down the passage.
Sam was keeping a mental tally of the cave system as they explored it: Four rooms, four distinct traversable passages. One way had been too narrow for human traversal, one way ended in a dead end room. They were currently on the third passage with one to go. Sam refused to believe that the water could be inaccessible which meant they would find it either on this passage or the next. That mental math had been one of the thoughts repeatedly churning through his mind as they climbed. This one or the next.
This passage had climbed back to the surface but then began to sharply descend on an angle so steep Sam and Dean resorted to sliding down on the seat of their pants using their hands to brake. Like nature’s version of a playground slide they plummeted down and around a gradual bend until they were deposited into another room.
Sam nearly updated his count to five rooms until he noticed a fine scattering of grains on the floor and a distant window of natural daylight. Crouching down to view the entrance and then reluctantly walking over to the swept aside pile of salt, Sam feels his frustration abruptly crest.
They were back at the beginning of the cave.
There weren’t four distinct passages after all. One had been a loop. There was no next option, no path to reach the water Sam heard roaring beneath their feet. Given a jackhammer and a couple months maybe Sam could return to the end of the first passage and drill their way down – but what could he do in less than eight hours?
Dean, swaying unsteadily in the center of the room, turns so abruptly he staggers sideways. Craning his head to look towards the painted wall he asks, “Do you hear that?”
Sam stills, sweeping his own flashlight across the far wall. He doesn’t see anything out of place. “Hear what?”
Dean shudders and ineffectually grasps for the word. “Like a baby. But not. You didn’t sound like that.”
“Crying?” Sam clarifies. “You hear them crying?”
“Yeah.”
Sam curses. What else can they do without water? They could break off some stalactites for weapons, but assuming it would work on the uwani azi they’d need to be physically present. From what they’ve seen this is a hands off kind of curse. They won’t get within striking distance while Dean is dying. Their usual warding materials already failed to protect Floyd, and Sam doesn’t have anything beyond the basics on him. Sam’s hands start to shake when he thinks about sitting here for eight hours waiting for Dean to die.
The realization comes like a chill down his spine. Sam had miscounted the tunnels again.
There was one more they hadn’t explored yet, one which clearly could not be linked to any of the others; the chimney passage that narrowed down into a rib-busting vise. Sam hadn’t counted it because it hadn’t looked big enough for him to squeeze through. But suppose he managed to wriggle past the choke point and into the drop-off below? Water flows downhill after all.
Sam berates himself for being ten kinds of stupid when it occurs to him. This should have been his first plan when the main passage became a dead end. He let his reluctance to crawl through tight areas influence his decision makings, and now he’s run down the clock to dangerous levels. Who knows how much cave is left to explore beyond that point?
Sam grabs Dean’s elbow, and he readily follows Sam away from the specter voices only he can hear. For the third time they descend into the cave.
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The biohazard sign Dean had drawn on their first pass now strikes Sam as a bad omen. Sam doesn’t think of himself as superstitious – but that line is drawn a little differently for a hunter. He looks over at Dean and Dean looks at the yawning pit in front of them.
“I don’t like this,” Dean says.
Sam couldn’t agree more.
“Dean,” Sam says, drawing Dean’s gaze to him. “I’m going down first. If I yell, follow me.”
Dean blinks rapidly while he listens to Sam’s instructions but eventually nods. He’s still in there – just struggling against an overwhelming tide of exhaustion and all the impairment of higher functions it causes. Sam is just grateful he can still move under his own direction. If he uses Floyd as their benchmark Dean is doing well. Sam gives him a reassuring nod before turning his attention to the chimney.
The passage is too steep to walk down, just short of a direct fall. If he jumps Sam will probably just break his legs at the bottom. Sam sits at the edge of the chimney and extends his legs so they press against the opposite side. He braces his hands against the sheer walls on either side and slowly eases his hips off the ledge. After walking his legs down he can press his lower back against the side of the chimney he’d been sitting above. Sam presses with his back and his legs, repositions his arms, and walks his legs down a little further.
Moving in this way – arms, press, walks his legs, slide his back, press, arms, repeat – Sam can shimmy down the shaft in a controlled manner. It gets harder the further down he goes, arms tucked in too tight and legs too long to extend all the way so he has to press against the wall using the tips of his boots instead of the soles.
Sam is sweating heavily before he gets to the vise but it worsens when he sees the size of the gap he has to squeeze through. Bringing his arms up to his shoulders and then extending them down to the opening, Sam thinks he may truly have enough room to get through – barely. It’s not just the shoulder width that’s intimidating but the space for his chest front-to-back as well.
Sam takes a couple deep breaths before he drops his legs from the wall, hands placed so it’s like he’s trying to perform a tricep dip with his legs hanging straight down. He slips one foot through and then the other, twisting them side to side to keep his jeans from catching on the rock. Sam’s feet get swallowed up, then his calves, then the bottom half of his thighs. Before committing entirely to his desperate plan Sam kicks his legs the small amount they can move and tries to feel for his feet catching on anything rough. The first time his toes slide off with hardly any friction. The second time he gets a small catch. The third time he finds a section of rock bumpy enough for him to get a good foothold.
Sam exhales slowly and double checks his grip. He’s going to do this. After a mental count of three he lowers himself down until his hips catch against the rock. Swinging his legs in tandem on the other side of the vise, Sam gradually slips his hips down. The pressure is uncomfortably tight. Sam twists his torso side to side and feels himself slide another inch. The lip of the vise catches against the bottom of his t-shirt. Wedged as firmly as he is, he frees a hand to tuck it in. The last thing he wants are scrapes on his entire torso.
It’s already getting harder to breathe with just the bottom of his chest cavity compressed. Sam is not looking forward to how it’ll feel when he’s trying to fit his whole body through. But if it’s this or Dean dying in front of him it’s not really a choice. Sam takes a few deep breaths to saturate his blood oxygen levels and starts wriggling again. With determined twists and rolls and wriggles Sam descends to nearly his armpits. His ribs are being crushed out of shape. He can feel them strain to expand every time Sam draws breath. Since they can’t it leaves Sam light-headed.
His body wants to panic from the lack of oxygen but Sam knows that will just get him stuck. He forces himself to exhale, kicks his legs out to catch a foothold, and raises his arms above his head. Throwing his hips into the movement Sam wriggles down further. It’s impossible to breathe. His adrenaline is spiking. Sam raises his arms as high as they will go so his shoulders press against either side of his ear. His feet slip down the wall of the chimney as Sam wriggles and shoves his body along.
His eyes are closed but Sam can feel the moment his hips clear the bottom of the squeeze. His torso follows next, armpits scraping the whole way against either side of the squeeze even through his shirt. Sam’s chin catches against the rock and he quickly tilts it sideways, feeling stone scrape against one cheek. Walking down the wall with his feet and purposefully pressing his arms outward once they’re in the squeeze to make sure his descent is a controlled one, Sam finally makes it through with a heartfelt gasp of relief.
Sam presses his back and legs against opposite walls like he’d done above, blindly inching downwards until his head and arms clear. After that Sam takes a moment to catch his breath. on this side of the squeeze Sam can the incline is not as steep. As long as he uses the walls for balance he can walk his way down.
Sam has to think for a long moment about whether or not to call for Dean to follow him down. It all comes down to the math again; without Dean, Sam has to find the water source in half the time because he’ll need to carry it back. Wait that in mind Sam moves himself out of the immediate landing area and calls up for Dean to follow.
It simultaneously harder because Dean’s nearly at the edge of consciouslness, and easier because Sam can mind Dean’s descent and support his weight from below while Dean wriggles through. It’s possible he had more room to maneuver than Sam did, but whatever advantage that would give him was cancelled out by Dean’s fugue state. He makes it through, barely. That’s all Sam needs.
Leading the way down the steep incline with arms outstretched to keep himself from tumbling head over heels down it, Sam leads them on their way.
After a dizzying number of spirals down the passage the ground finally flattens out – and the ceiling collapses into another squeeze. Sam nearly sobs in frustration. The roaring sound of rushing water teases them onwards but Sam hates the cramped spaces with a passion born of having to drag all 6’3” of himself through them. Regardless he drops onto his belly and shoves himself forwards.
It seems to last forever. The only assurance Sam has that Dean hasn’t fallen behind are his labored breaths and the occasional bump of a hand against his boots. Sam tries to wipe his mind of thoughts and just concentrate on pulling himself forward by his fingertips, catching the sides of his boots against the rock and pushing himself another inch, reaching out his arms and repeating the process.
He thinks the slickness against his palms is just sweat until he realizes it’s too cool to be his own. Panning his flashlight what little length he can, Sam sees that indeed the whole cave is damp floor to ceiling. It begins to soak into his shirt but Sam notes both occurrences with an unfettered jolt of happiness. He can’t tell if the roaring in his ears is coming from his pumping blood or the water ahead. Either way it reinvigorates Sam. He inch-pulls along, pushes down the panic of being unable to turn his head, ignores the burning in his forearms and his calves.
Finally, after what seems like a day crawling forward, Sam pulls himself out of the crawlspace and into a cave with high cathedral arches of stone – and taking up over half the floor space, a roaring underground river that launches out of an incision in the stone and roils across the cave. Sam only looks at it for a moment before returning to the squeeze to crawl back to where Dean was slowly working his way along and help pull him forwards.
Tumbling out into the cave for the second time is just as good as the first. In fact it’s even better because he can grab Dean by the arm and tow him forwards, making him strip off his shirt and practically dunking him head first into the water. It’s practically ice cold but Sam makes him submerge his hands up to his elbows, rub the limestone from his eyes, scrub his chest clean of sweat and the malicious curse of the uwani azi. Sam uses the edge of Dean’s dry shirt to wipe the limestone sweat tracks off his face and laughs in relief when they don’t come back.
Dean staggers in a daze, smiling back at Sam but entirely too exhausted to say or do much. Sam pushes him down onto the smoothest area of limestone. Dean topples gracelessly, stretched out on his back with arms stretched by his side. Sam lifts his head and settles it on his knee, stroking down Dean’s forehead to encourage him to close his eyes. The tumultuous roar of the river and its echoes nearly drown out Dean’s last murmur before he collapses into an exhausted sleep. “No touching the artwork,” he says. “Got it, Bobby.”
The last thing Sam remembers is the cave giving his laughter back to him.
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Sam wakes to the roaring of the underwater river and the slimy chill of water soaked in his clothes. He fumbles for the flashlight switch and rolls over with a grunt when his back twinges from napping on top of unyielding stone. Dean is still asleep. Sam considers leaving him but the promise of dry clothes and a comfortable back seat prompts Sam to give Dean an experimental shake. Dean’s back is worse than Sam’s anyway; it’ll be better to get him to crash on something soft.
Dean groans and curls himself into a ball. He responds the second time Sam prods him, batting Sam away with one hand and a sleep drunk, “What?”
“Come on,” Sam tells him. “We’re heading back to the Impala.”
Name-dropping the car makes Dean blearily look around, eyes widening at the rapids just a few feet away. “Are we still in the cave?”
“Yeah.” Sam tries a few small stretches to work out the kinks in his muscles. “How much do you remember?”
“Just a –“ Dean’s jaw cracks with his oversized yawn. “Just a lot of rocks and the creepy crying. How long have we been down here?”
Sam checks his watch. “It’s 4 in the morning, so about… thirty-two hours?”
Dean’s eyes widen. “Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Sam says. His skin is itching for sunlight and a breeze. “You can sleep more in the car once we dry off.”
Dean’s perfectly timed shiver gets him on his feet and moving. The squeezes back are difficult to navigate, especially since this is the first time Dean remembers going through it, but without the bubbling panic of last night It’s much easier for Sam to keep himself centered and control control breathing. He goes first, showing Dean it’s feasible to slowly pull himself through the bend and the vise in the chimney passage.
Dean swears like a sailor the whole time he’s working his body through with short corkscrew twists. Sam empathizes. On the bright side the first squeeze they’d had to traverse now feels positively breezy. They army crawl through, Sam reveling in the freedom he has to fully expand his lungs the whole way through.
Dean had used his own canteen to gleefully splash the uwani azi paintings in the first room they reached. Where the water struck the paintings began to bubble and hiss, the colors blending together into the same brown as the walls. Sam jumped when he heard the outraged wails. Dean just scowled. “Yeah, that Jackson Pollock revenge isn’t so much fun on your won stuff, is it?” The wails don’t respond. A similar outburst happens when Dean splashes the wall of the first room. They’ll need to come back for the rest of the paintings and to figure out how to permanently close both cave entrances.
That’s a task Sam happily leaves for tomorrow. He crawls into the sunrise with a heartfelt sigh and flops on the dirt, rolling just far enough for Dean to exit as well. Only a few more miles back to the car and then Sam and Dean can finally sleep.
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