Trial and Error- part I
Masterpost
The cell was dank and dark, a toilet hole fit for a giant's ass.
Continuous running water, like fetid sweat, fed the mold in the walls until it covered the whole room like green, living paint.
Under the dirt that covered his face, the little boy looked pale in comparison with the putrid green of the wall.
In his small hands was a toy. A broken doll.
It had no head and its white dress had long stopped being even remotely close to white, but it still had arms and one footless leg. A peace offering that had done little to stow the flow of tears and sadness that ever seemed present in his eyes.
And yet...
The doll was his trusted companion whenever the bad men took Dean away from him; his guardian angel when he was left alone in that clammy cell, hearing nothing but the falling of water and echoing of silence.
The little boy had tried to be brave like his new friend was, like Dean was, always with a smile for him and a new story, even when he returned miserable and gasping for breath.
Dean always told the most amazing stories. He fought monsters, Dean would tell him, and one day... one day he would kill the monsters that held them both prisoner.
The little boy just needed to be brave for a little while longer, until Dean got them out of that place, just like he'd promised.
That particular day was different. For one, there was no smile for him, even when the guards closed the doors. Dean was holding his arm against his chest, like it hurt, and he had tears in his eyes.
The boy had never seen Dean cry. He thought Dean looked a bit like the walls, water falling down his cheeks like it did from the moss.
"Come here," he called to the little boy, sliding down the door as soon as the bad men closed it.
The boy raced to him, his smile making up for the one Dean was lacking. Maybe his friend had forgotten how to smile, but the boy could remind him.
They sat facing the back wall, the one with a small slit in between its stone to allow entrance to the thin veil of light that was their only to tell day from night.
The little boy sat in Dean's lap, the feeling of a warm body serving as his chair far more appealing than the hard, cold stone of the soggy floor.
"Does your arm hurt, Dean?" he asked quietly, doing his best to keep his weight away from the limb. "Is that why you're crying?"
Dean shook his head, sucking a ragged breath. "I'm okay, kiddo. How're you doing?"
"Tell me a story, Dean" the kid begged, eager to get things back to their kind of normal. Broken doll grasped tightly in his right hand, while his left played idly with the metal doll's head hanging around Dean's neck, he laid back and waited to be taken away from that place by Dean's fantastic tales.
Dean often joked that the golden head hanging from his neck was the one missing from the doll, shrunken to tiny measure by evil witches who hated dolls.
"Have I told you about that one time Sam and me went to Heaven?" Dean started, his voice heavy with emotion. His voice was always sounded like that when he talked about Sam, but this time it carried even more sadness than usual.
"Mommy told me about Heaven, that it has some white bearded old man, standing at the gate, like Santa, deciding who gets to go in and who doesn't," the boy quickly supplied. "And that I had to be a really, reeeally good boy for the old man to let me pass."
The memory of his mother embrace as she told him her own set of stories brought fresh tears to his eyes. It always did. The boy let them fall. Dean had told him that it was okay to cry when you missed someone terribly.
Still, the feeling of Dean's big fingers brushing his tears away was soothing and the little boy leaned into it, until his face was supported by the man's hand.
Like a tiny cat, Dean always told him. Purring and seeking heat to cuddle.
Dean didn't mind it, the little boy knew that.
"Well, there is an old man," Dean told him, "but he ain't got much of a beard. He tends to this really pretty garden though. My brother and I, we visited a bunch of fun places while we were there, saw lots of friends that we hadn't seen in a long time. But there was this one place where they wouldn't let us in because..."
Dean stopped and looked up, like he was searching for the rest of the story on the ceiling. The little boy followed his gaze up, but all he could see was grey stone. "Why wouldn't they let you guys in?"
"Because we were too old."
"Too old?"
"Yeah, they said it was a place just for the coolest of kids, and only they could get in."
"What did it look like?"
Dean paused, scratching his beard. The little kid always found it funny when he did that. "Well... how to describe it... have you ever been to Disneyland?"
The little kid's eyes grew as large and round as saucers, words escaping him so he could only slowly nod his yes.
"Well, then, it looks sort of like Disneyland," Dean said with another of those smiles that failed to reach his eyes. "Only bigger and cooler."
"For real?" the little kid had to ask. Dean had never lied to him, but it was never too cautious to confirm. "With Goofy and everything?
"Which one is Goofy? Is that the big dog one?" Dean asked. The kid gave a vigorous nod. "Because there was a big, gangly looking dog running the whole thing, telling everyone where to go," Dean added, nose scrunching as he thought really hard. "He's there, to personally greet every new comer into Heaven. Is that Goofy?"
Another nod. "Everyone?"
"Well, every special kid who shows up at his doorstep. You see, there's way too many fun things to do in Heaven's Disneyland, and Goofy wants to make sure that they don't miss a single one of them."
"Even the ones I'm not tall enough to ride?"
"Especially the ones you're not tall enough to ride," Dean said, his voice hitching for some reason that escaped the little boy.
"You think I'll go there one day, Dean? Do you think I'll get to see that?"
From the silence that followed, the little boy almost feared that Dean would say no, that Dean would say that he was a bad boy, and bad boys didn't deserve such happiness. But when he looked up, the boy could see that the reason Dean was silent was because he was biting his lips, eyes closed as if he'd fallen asleep in the middle of his story. "Dean?"
"You'll go there," Dean whispered. "I'll make sure of that."
The words didn't make much sense for the little boy, but he let them go because Dean was hugging him, tighter than he had ever hugged him before and it felt like the safest place in the world, when Dean closed his arms around him like that. It was almost as good as his daddy's hugs.
"Dean, you're squishing me," the little boy complained with a giggle.
The embrace only grew tighter, like Dean hadn't heard his complaint at all. Tighter and tighter still until the little boy could draw no breath. And then hands that had always been loving and protecting, closed around the little boy's neck and in one swift gesture, snapped it.
The broken doll fell to the floor, released from loosen, lifeless fingers. The sound of plastic against stone felt phony, artificial in a world of pain much too real.
Dean sat still, the dead boy in his lap.
And then he laughed.
-oo-
Dean had to keep track of time by doing one mark on the wall for each day that went by, but it was an impossible task even with a tiny slit on the wall that allowed for some semblance of sunlight to enter the cell.
Some days, there was no light at all, the sky too dark with rain to let a single ray of sunshine through. Those days, it felt like the night lasted forever.
Other days, the boredom was so intense that his mind just wandered off. When he became aware of the familiar damp walls again, there was no telling how long had passed. Days, weeks, months... years.
Dean ran a hand over his stubbled cheek, feeling the coarse hair that had grown almost to the length of a knuckle.
A month. Maybe.
A month of complete and utter solitude, not seeing a single soul, not opening his mouth to speak with anyone, without a shred of contact with his captors. If it weren't for the bowl of bland porridge that was shoved inside his cell every day, twice a day, like clockwork, and the noisy troll patrolling outside, Dean would assume that he was alone.
Abandoned in some dark hole, left to die.
For the first few days he had screamed his anger at every noise that he could hear outside, cursing his captors and the mothers who had birthed. He cursed until his voice gave out.
His mind turned towards escape after that. One of the things Dean had realized as soon as he'd opened his eyes inside that cell was that there was no way out except through the door. And that one remained closed even when his meals and water were brought in, or when a new pissing jar was forced inside through an opening barely big enough to fit a closed hand.
Took him awhile to bend his stubbornness to the necessity of it and push the filled jars closer to the door so that they could be removed and thus lessening the smell that had grown fouler and fouler with each passing day.
It was bad enough that there was nothing he could do about his other... waste. Or the fact that he was smelly enough to make himself sick.
The piss, at least, Dean could get rid of.
A guard passed every couple of hours, snooping around and making sure all the doors were properly locked by rattling them. Dean could hear him coming from ten doors away.
The lock on the door was on the outside, and antique sort of thing that, from the sound of it, seemed fit to be in a castle's dungeon. Brackets, bolts and all.
Not even the side hinges presented with a tiny chance of being used in escape, being sturdy steel that seemed newer and better kept than anything else inside that cell.
The slit through the wall was not good either. Its usefulness to allow light in was about as good as its usefulness to let a man pass outside. Even the skinniest of rats would have trouble fitting through there.
Dean paced and roared, bloodied his fists on the moldy walls when frustration got the better of him, but he was not getting out of that cell unless someone came for him.
After the first week of complete solitude, it didn't even matter to him if the ones coming through that door were friend or foe. He just needed motion. Something to happen.
By week two, he was ready to chew his own head off just to stop the close circuit of thoughts from going around and around and around in his mind.
Dean was sure that Sam would be searching for him. Frantically, no doubt, unearthing Earth, Heaven and Hell for a clue as to who had taken his brother.
The list of things that could go wrong when Sam became unhinge like that were too many to leave Dean frantic himself.
They had foolishly believed that there would be a moment's respite for them, a little bit of well deserved peace. Just because they had stopped the apocalypse and killed Lucifer.
After all, once the root of all-evil was vanquished, what more was there to do?
They had taken some time off, visited some friends, behaved as regular people for a while. Tried to be your average Joe.
Sam and Dean had been an utter failure at being normal. Dean had no experience in the matter whatsoever and Sam... Sam had long forgotten how it was to not have blood on your hands on a weekly basis.
They were on their third hunt, after almost two years of civilian life, when Dean was taken. He wanted to blame it on them being sloppy, on the fact that they had lost some of their edge as hunters, but the truth was, it hadn't even happened on the hunt.
It happened at breakfast.
One moment Dean was opening the Impala's door, balancing coffees and donuts in one hand and the keys in the other, and the next ... he was in that cell.
It was such a low-key and uneventful kidnapping that Dean would have laughed at Fate's twisted sense of humor if the joke weren't on him.
He found the broken doll on his third week there. Or maybe on his first week. Time overlapped and folded back and forth until it was all the same.
At first, Dean was sure it was a dead rat. A mummified rat at that, from the stiffness. The doll was half buried in the filthy straw floor, half stuck inside a hole in one of the side walls and Dean pulled it out carefully, like an archeologist digging a rare artifact.
Despite the constant cold inside that cell, the sight still managed to chill Dean to the bones. The implications of the presence of a child's toy in such a place brought nothing good to mind.
He picked it up, trying to imagine who had left it there, whose childish hands had grabbed it last and called that headless doll a friend.
The doll's white dress was stained with blood, faded and turned to rust with the passage of years. Dean could only hope that the child who had brought that doll in to that place had found her freedom quickly.
Dean was about to put the doll aside when a piece of paper fell from it. Carefully rolled up and stored inside the hollow plastic body, Dean picked it up. The length of paper unfolded, tiny blue letters covering it from tip to the bottom.
"It might be years before someone finds this letter, or maybe it gets found the very next day after my death. Doesn't matter, just as long as someone reads it.
If you're reading this, you're either one them -in which case I hope you choke on shit and die- or you're just as trapped in here as we were. My little sister and me.
If that is the case, first of all, my sympathies. I'm sorry that you're in this place, a shit hole I hate with all my heart, a shit hole I can only imagine that, whoever you are, will hate too.
She was the only one who made it bearable in here.
They took my sister a year ago. I think it was a year. I'm much taller now, almost as tall as dad was, I suppose. There is a constant itchy feeling on my chin that I think might be the beginning of a beard. I have no idea. It's been over two years since I've seen myself in a mirror.
I'm not here to talk about me, though. After all this time, I have no doubt that I'll ever be free again. I'll die here, but I won't let that happen before I tell you everything about my little sister. I'm here to talk about her."
The day after Dean found the letter, they came for him.
-oo-
"Where is the sword?"
The question had been repeated more times than Dean cared to count, always in the same flat tone, as if each time the questioner believed whole-heartedly that the prisoner was just hard of hearing and this was the one time he would understand the question and answer.
There were at least three of them, even though only one spoke, and they were after Michael's sword. That was as much as Dean had managed to figure from his 'interactions' with his captors.
As far as he could tell, they were all human.
-oo-
They had waited for him to be asleep to step inside his cell and take him. Dean had woken to a black bag being placed over his head even as he was dragged to his feet by two different sets of hands. He couldn't see a thing.
"Who the fuck are you people?" Dean growled. "Where the hell are you taking me?"
The gag seemed to come as an after thought, hastily fastened around his mouth over the bag. It made it almost impossible to breath.
It was certainly effective against any further questions Dean might've want to yell at them.
The black bag had reduced Dean's world to a void of light and shapes.
Dean had been blinded like that before. It had been for a short, and yet terrifying period, but it had taught him the value of using his other senses in battle to compensate the lost of such an important one.
As he was moved out of his cell, booted steps echoed over the walls, revealing a short ceiling and a stone structure. Dean's footsteps, barefoot as he walked, were soundless, but not devoid of information. They were walking over sandy stone, not the fake slab things, but real stone, the kind that was used to build fortresses and castles.
The air was cold too, like some man-made cave that had swallowed them into the depths of the earth.
The only thing that assured Dean that he wasn't actually in a real medieval castle, smack in the middle of the Dark Ages, was the faint buzz of electricity every ten feet or so, as they walked past the next lamp.
Dean counted his steps, judging how far he was from the following spot of light.
Five feet. There was one hand on each of his elbows, fingers clasped tightly over his skin. Callous hands, used to work.
Four feet. The guy on his left walked with an uneven pace, favoring his right leg.
Three feet. The guy on the right was wearing ear buds. Dean could ear the faint thumping of heavy metal emanating from his side.
Two feet. If he struck the lamp the right way, the guards would be left in the dark as much as he was. And in the dark, Dean had the advantage.
One foot away. Dean's muscles coiled, ready for action. One deep, calming breath, and he struck.
A straight kick on the knee of the guy on his left sent him howling in pain to the floor. Dean thought he'd heard the snap of bone, but he couldn't be sure.
Left hand free, Dean used it to punch the throat of the guy on right who, with his ears impaired, was only now realizing something was amiss.
The lamp was right in front of him, Dean could feel it's hot glare even through the thick bag on his head. He punched it with his bare hands, feeling blistering glass break under his knuckles.
Dean hardly felt the pain. His mind was already on what he needed to do to overpower the stunned guards.
He attacked Ear Buds first. Gasping for air and still clutching his throbbing throat with one hand, the guard was throwing wild punches with his free hand, trying to strike anything in his reach. He ended up punching his partner out, making Dean's job a lot easier.
With one unconscious on the floor, all Dean had to do was follow the sound of the raspy gasp of Ear Buds and push his head against the wall. The noise his skull made as it collided with solid stone echoed through the entire hall.
Only when he was sure that both guards were incapacitated, did Dean waste a few seconds pulling the gag down and undoing the knots on the bag around his head before he pulled everything off.
Blinking his eyes was more of a reflex reaction rather than something of use. The lamps were too far apart to give much light to the place and, with the one nearest to him broken, all Dean could see were two glares at a distance, one ahead of him, the other far behind.
The fight had turned them all around so Dean had no way of knowing with direction he had come from and which he was headed. He picked one at random and ran.
The stone corridor turned left at the end. Dean stopped just short of the turn, closed his eyes and listened. The silence was deafening, but it also meant that there should be no surprises waiting for him past the curb.
He was wrong.
Dean stopped short of rubbing his eyes, hands instead pressed against the wall to confirm what his sight was telling him. A dead end.
Who the hell built a corridor that led nowhere?
Cursing his lack of luck, Dean did a quick turn about and ran back the way he'd come, hoping that there might be some other corridor that he had missed the first time around.
As he reached the broken lamp a second time, Dean realized two important things: one, the guards were no longer there, which meant that the alarm had already been raised on his escape; and two, he wasn't in a simple corridor. The place was a freaking maze.
Looking ahead, towards the next lamp, Dean could see the corridor turn right, just past the lamp. He was pretty sure that he and the guards had walked straight for the last twenty feet, which meant that that turn hadn't been there before. Or he was losing his frigging senses.
Not knowing how much longer he had before the corridor was packed with guards, Dean pushed forward, aiming for the next turn. There had to be an exit somewhere.
He never saw the green cloud of gas, exiting near the ceiling.
The world started dipping drastically to one side, stones walls dancing manically and turning into grey porridge, in a way stone walls had no right to do.
Dean distantly realized that he was being dosed with something, just before his face rushed to meet the ground. His last coherent thought was that impact was going to hurt like hell.
-oo-
The whole left side of Dean's face felt like rubber, which would have been nice if numbness was also part of deal. Instead, it hurt like a throbbing bitch.
He was back into his cell, so wherever the hell they had been taking him before must have been postponed, on account of his improvised escape attempt. Poor attempt, Dean forced himself to add.
How was he going to escape a place that kept changing its layout and where the walls knocked you out?
He couldn't even tell if he was underground, above ground or which way was out. Hell, he couldn't even guess how many guards there were.
It was all designed to give him a headache, Dean knew that much at least.
When the guards showed up the next time, he went quietly. The bag was back on his head and the gag, because he wisely decided to keep his mouth shut, was thankfully absent.
The route they took once they left his cell was, unlike before, so twisted and convoluted, that Dean felt dizzy just from trying to imagine it.
Frigging maze.
All he was missing was a damn Minotaur.
After a good ten minutes walk, the guards stopped. As they came to a stop, door hinges, similar to the ones on his cell, slid effortlessly as a door was opened.
Inside, the air was slightly hotter more on the left than on the rest of the room. From a heater or maybe a bright light that had been left on for too long. They sat Dean right in front of the heat source, releasing his hands just long enough to pull them behind him and bind his wrists behind the chair's back.
When the black bag was pulled from his head, Dean realized that the heat was coming from a flood light, aimed directly at his eyes.
The intensity of such brightness after a long period of darkness felt like a jolt of lightning, aimed straight at his brain. Dean gasped, surprised by the assault.
"Where is the sword?"
A man's voice, no accent that Dean could tell, no peculiarities in his speech that he could use to identify his interrogator. Because of the bright light, all that Dean could see was red, punctuated with sparkling dots of white. It annoyed the living crap of the hunter.
The man was nothing more than a tall, red shadow, hiding behind the flood of intense light, a silhouette of vivid color.
"Wha-" Dean's voice failed him, coming out raspy and weak from lack of use. He cleared his throat, whished for the jar of water that he still had in his cell, and tried again. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Quit playing games," the man said with all the calmness and certainty of one who knew exactly what he was doing. "Tell me where you hid Michael's sword and we'll let you go... Dean."
Dean swallowed the spit he did not have. His eyes watered as he forced them to see what lay beyond the bright light but it was useless.
There weren't that many people in the world who knew about the sword of Michael, less even who knew it to be in Dean's possession. "I have no idea what you're talking about," Dean said dismissively. "Cristo," he added matter of fact, like it was any other name.
Dean knew that it was pointless to call out a demon when he couldn't see past the light to witness the thing's eyes turn black, but Dean was mostly just curious about what his captor's reaction would be to the calling.
There had been a whole army of demons present when the sword had first come into play, in Egypt. Asmodeus' demons. He and Sam had killed many, but it was possible that the ones that were forced back in Hell had yapped their pie holes about the matter.
And then there was Lucifer's private army as well. Any of those could have held a grudge over the weapon that had killed their boss.
"I'm not a demon, Dean," the man said, polite, sounding a touch entertained by Dean's assumption.
"Great," Dean said with a forced smile. "So, what brand of freak are you?" he asked directly, as the man had made plain his knowledge of the supernatural. "Animal, mineral, vegetable or junkless?"
"I'm just a businessman, one that has never failed to procure what his clients ask of him," the man said, his voice turning to stone as he leaned forward. "And my latest client is interested in this particular sword. Which you possess."
Dean closed his eyes, trying to escape the flood of light for just a few seconds. It was pointless, though, as the light was so bright that it passed right through his lids. "What makes you think I have it?"
The smile was silent, but Dean could still hear it in the man's words. "Please… a whole townful of people watched you pull that thing out of the Ark and use it. Do you really think such an event would go unnoticed?"
Dean sighed, realizing that there was no point in trying to deny the obvious. He needed, however, more time. Time to figure out who this client was; time to know what he really dealing with.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, that he and Sam had traveled to Egypt with Bobby to rescue a fake Castiel. The world was on the brink of destruction, there had been little hope that they could ever win and yet… the impossible had greeted them at every turn.
They had found that their blood was more dangerous than they had ever assumed.
They had found out that the Ark of the Covenant was not a myth, but a little box of surprises. Inside Dean had found the long lost sword of the archangel Michael. Well, Dean's sword now, if he were to believe the archangel's words.
That single discovery had allowed them to defeat Asmodeus and Lucifer almost in one single blow, proving just how powerful the sword was. It was not a weapon to keep close at hand and they could not risk it falling into the wrong hands. Like this guy.
It wasn't that Dean thought for one second that anyone other than him had a snowball's chance of actually using the Michael's sword. The thing was very peculiar about who could turn it 'on', so to speak, and would only manifest itself as an actual sword in Dean's presence. Any other time, it just looked like a piece of burned metal.
But the object in itself held power. Something as evocative and famous as the sword of the leader of Heaven's armies... it had the potential to move mountains.
"I don't have it with me anymore," Dean said flatly. "Lost it at a game of poker."
There was a moment of silence and Dean braced for the consequences of his provocative words.
It didn't matter what they did to him. The sword and keeping it safe was more important than his life.
The man said nothing, but Dean could see his shadow move as he gave a head nod to someone somewhere at the back. Suddenly, there were hands on his shoulders, pulling Dean to his feet and dragging him away before he had a chance of realizing he was moving.
They took Dean to another room, one occupied mainly by a large pool of dark water.
After being in Hell for over thirty years, it would stand to reason that a person would've grown immune to the pain and humiliation of torture. But that made as much sense as saying that, because water can be turned into mist, it stops being wet. Some things, you never grow use to. Some things time cannot dilute; they are always horrible.
The atrocities that his soul had suffered in Hell were impossible to inflict on any human body. Flesh was weak, feeble, easily broken and forever ruined.
The soul was immortal, malleable, continuous. Like mercury, it could be split into pieces, only to reassemble itself as new when released from its torment.
In Hell, Alastair would often start his day by pulling out Dean's tongue, just to watch him trying to scream his pain through the rest of the day's 'festivities'.
On Earth, less than two minutes with his head being forced under water and Dean was already feeling the pull of unconsciousness beckoning at him.
It didn't help matters that they had hung Dean up side down, held by his ankles, dangling like a worm at the end of a fishhook over the pool of dark water. His hands, bound behind his back, were of no help whatsoever as water came rushing up to meet his face. The movement was dizzying on its own, gravity shifting wildly without Dean having any say in the matter. It was unpredictable, uncontrollable and fucking annoying.
They never pushed things far enough for Dean to pass out, just enough for him to wish he had.
As his head was once more pulled out of the cold, salty water, Dean's lungs pulled in a long breath even before his brain registered the presence of breathable oxygen.
"Where is the sword?"
The first couple of times, Dean had been inventive. One time, the sword was up his captor's ass; he'd left it in his other pants; the dog ate it.
Sometimes, he'd just tell them to go fuck themselves. After losing count of how many times his lungs had been threatened with a fill of water, Dean had no more energy to be inventive.
Or talk.
He just remained silent and waited for the ropes binding his legs to loosen again and for gravity to rush by until he hit water. The initial shock never failed to rob the breath from his chest.
-oo-
Most of the times, Dean woke up back in cell, clothes already dry, mouth tasting like something had crawled inside and died. It made everything else seem like a bad dream.
Whenever he was conscious enough to do it, whenever there was light enough for it, whenever his eyes didn't cross at the small letters, Dean read.
"I was seven when my mother got pregnant for a second time. The time between my parents' announcement that I was going to be a big brother and the actual arrival of the baby was, for me, a blurry rollercoaster of excitement over the new playmate and worry that the new kid was going to take my place.
My parents brought the new baby home on a Friday. My dad died on the following Sunday. His car crashed against a school bus. My dad's fault, mom used to say every time she hit the bottle too hard.
Life after that was not easy for the three of us.
Mom was always sad, her gaze on something far away from our home. Her happiness, I imagine.
She barely saw us even when we were standing right in front of her. If I hadn't taken care of my little sister, no one would have.
My name was the first word she ever said, and after that she said it often. At the time, that had made me so angry with her…
You see, in a way, I had hoped that, once my little sister begun to talk, she would call out to our mom and pull her back into this reality. If all my little sister ever said was my name, how could that ever happen?
I realize now that I was just being childish. Much the same as when I decided that we should run away from home."
-oo-
"I have a surprise for you today, Dean," the man said, nearing Dean.
Dean blinked his eyes furiously, trying to clear them of water and the fogging effects of having nearly drowned for the hundredth time. Hanging upside down over the body of stinking water where they kept dunking him, Dean had an unique view of his captor. The man was tall, lean as a track racer, hair cut short. His features, however, kept wavering on Dean's vision.
The last time he had said those words, a man had been brought into the room, bound and gagged. Dean had been pretty certain that he had never seen that man before.
When his captor boasted that he was going to kill 'Bobby' unless Dean cooperated, Dean realized that they had simply captured the wrong man.
He was about the right age, and he had a beard just like Bobby, but he wasn't Bobby. Just a stranger.
Dean had said as much; he was sure that the other man had also told them the same. They believed in neither of them.
No pleads or reasoning had managed to get through. The man had looked surprised when one of the guards stepped behind him and cut his throat opened.
He had been just a stranger, but he had still died because of Dean's silence.
Today's surprise was already bringing bile to Dean's mouth. Someone else was going to die because of what he could not tell. He coughed, the only answer he would deign to give his captor.
"Bring him in," the man ordered, taking a step back to allow Dean to view the door behind him.
Even with eyes that refused to focus and gazing the world upside down, the person being dragged inside the room was painfully familiar. "Sam!"
It was a bittersweet happiness, a relief that turned his stomach sick. Dean had been worried sick about his brother, wondering what might've happened to him, what desperate things Sam might be doing to find him.
Now Dean had satisfied his curiosity about where Sam was, but this was the place he wanted his brother to be.
Dean knew exactly why they had brought Sam to him.
"Dean! You're alive!" Sam sounded surprised, yanking against the hands holding him still and struggling to get near his brother. "Thank God!"
"Leave him out of this," Dean hissed, forcing himself to ignore Sam's presence. It was a futile demand, he was aware of that, but Dean could not stand by as Sam was used to make him break.
Dean risked one look at his brother, finding Sam's eyes fixed on his. He too was aware of what was about to happen. "Don't give them anything!" Sam yelled.
They had made a pact. After the worse of the storm had passed, after each had rested and recovered from their injuries, Sam and Dean had made a pact.
They had witness the power that each controlled and both were more than aware of how badly the weapons in their control could be used. Each was more than aware that it was up to them to stop both the sword and the ring of falling in the wrong hands.
At the time, it had seemed ridiculous to actually say the words, to swear on their souls that each would honor the pact.
'I promise and vow that not blood, or pain or love will weaken my resolve'.
The words had sounded silly; over dramatic. The setting sun over the mountains in the isolated spot where they had pronounced them gave the whole thing a feeling of ritual, of importance.
It had felt foolish at the time.
Not anymore.
Dean's heart started racing as he saw two guards move to stand behind Sam.
They didn't slashed Sam's throat. Instead, they dragged Sam to kneel in front of Dean and strapped him to a slab of rock. The knife, with a sharp and long blade was being held nowhere near Sam's throat.
"Where is the sword, Dean?"
Dean bit his tongue to stop himself from replying, from telling the man everything he wanted to know.
As they cut off Sam's right hand, the pact, the words, the honor binding them, was the only thing stopping Dean from screaming the location of Michael's sword.
'I promise and vow that not blood, or pain or love will weaken my resolve'.
Sam didn't scream. Not because of his control over the pain, because some forms of pain can't be controlled, but because his nerve endings were simply and completely overloaded.
Dean could see him staring at his severed limb, gazing in shock as his lost hand fell to the floor and rolled away, like a dog's chew toy.
A part of his mind kept telling him that this wasn't real, that it wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening.
But the strong smell of iron in the air too solid, too vivid for any of this to be an illusion. Dean could almost taste the blood in his mouth. "You fucking bastard." His words were uttered quietly, each carrying as much hatred and promises of retribution as Dean could muster.
"You're forcing my hand, Dean," the man said, a smirk on his lips. "No pun intended. Now… where is the sword?"
Dean exchanged one more look with his brother. There were tears in Sam's eyes, his face was white with pain and blood loss, but his resolve was as strong as ever. There was no turning back for either of them.
"Fuck you," was Dean's only answer as he shifted his gaze back to their torturer.
They cut off Sam's left hand next. He did scream then, senses overfilled and spilling over in a guttural sound of pain. It echoed in the stone structure, expanding and running free, like a beast on its own.
"Where is the sword, Dean?"
'I promise and vow that not blood, or pain or love will weaken my resolve'.
Dean fixed his eyes on his little brother and ignored all else. There were only the two Winchesters left in the world, standing alone against all odds, fighting monsters and beasts alike.
There had been strawberry ice cream for dessert the day his mom had brought Sam home. Dean remembered that so clearly he could almost taste the sweetness in his mouth.
He had been so small and wrinkled that Dean had asked his parents if Sam was a tiny old man. His mom and dad had laughed, but baby Sam had started crying right there and then, as if he had been offended by Dean's comment.
Sam's right foot fell to the floor with a wet slap, the stone beneath him red with blood.
"Where is the sword, Dean?"
The first time Mary had allowed Dean to help her change one of Sam's diapers, Dean had made a mess. His small fingers had been laden with cream to put on his brother's butt but instead, Dean had decided that the cream looked yummy enough to give it a lick. It was the most disgusting thing he had ever tasted.
By the time they cut Sam's left foot, he was too weak to make a sound. The small noise that escaped his bloody lips was a soft call to his brother, a private signal calling Dean back to the here and now.
The last thing Dean wanted was to return to a bitter reality where his brother was slowly being killed in front of him with nothing he could do stop it. But Sam was calling, Sam needed him, and that was something that Dean had never been able to deny his brother.
Their eyes locked, leaving all else outside.
Sam was saying goodbye, and even though Dean's fighting spirit was roaring for him to do something, to save his brother, Dean also knew that there was nothing he could do to stop this from happening.
They had shared a life together, a closer and deeper relationship than most siblings ever manage to achieve. It had not been an easy life, it had been downright insane at times, but it had been their life.
Watching Sam close his eyes with a faint smile on his lips, Dean realized that, he too, had no regrets.
Still, as they finally cut Sam's throat, Dean felt his heart stop.
PART II