Fic: If I Have Freedom (10/15)
Chapter IX: My Soul is Dark
Chapter X: A Child that Has Cried All Night
"Where's Sam?"
Dean yelled in shock, nearly ran the Impala onto the shoulder, and pulled over, turning to glare at the angel who had materialized into the back seat.
"Warning, Cas!" he barked. "What the hell do you want, anyway?"
"I need help. Where's Sam?"
"Where's Sam? What do you mean where's Sam? I tried to get hold of you hours ago and you show up now and want to know where Sam is? He's missing! And if you'd shown up when I called you, you would know that! Grandpa Creepy's got him and is doing God knows what to him to try to get him to spill about how to bring people back - so if you're here for us to track down the Turin Shroud or some other artefact you guys lost track of, wrong place, wrong time."
"I'm here to talk to Sam."
"Sam's missing."
"I'll help you find him."
"Whoa." Dean started the car again, glancing at Cas in the rear-view mirror. "You're volunteering to help find Sam? You want to tell me what's going on here?"
"Dean, do you think… Do you think we made Sam a little unhappy in the year after… Lucifer?"
"It's possible," Dean said, pushing the idea away because he really couldn't afford to lose focus until he had Sammy back and safe. "Why?"
"I spoke to Michael."
"You were in the Cage?"
"No, but I could hear him and Lucifer from where I was trying to get past the barrier. It's on the other side of the Cage, like Sam said. Michael told me Sam had difficulties because he couldn't forgive himself for everything that happened."
"Sounds like Sam," Dean muttered. "I've been meaning to talk to him about it, but first he was Robocop and now… Well, it's been complicated. I'll get to it."
"Umm… Michael also said I should express his gratitude to you."
"What's he got to thank me for?"
"I'm not sure you want to hear this, Dean."
"Cas."
"He said that if Sam had… er… if he'd held out any hope of you forgiving him, he might have found a way to forgive himself, but since he didn't… Of course he might have been lying, Dean. He probably was lying."
"Like hell he was," Dean muttered. "When Sam gets back to normal, first thing I'm going to do is beat this crap out of him."
"I have to talk to Sam. And to you, but… with Sam."
"Then let's get Sam."
Sam was conscious.
Of course he was bloody conscious. They wanted him awake, didn't they, so he could answer their damned questions.
He was conscious, and he hurt like -
Well, not like hell. Now that he knew precisely what it meant to hurt like Hell, he could say definitively that the pain he was currently experiencing wasn't it.
But it came pretty damn close.
He felt light-headed, and he knew it was blood loss. Probably didn't take much to cause symptoms of blood loss in a four-year-old, if it came to that. Sam found himself wishing they'd just hurry up and kill him before he had the chance to do something stupid…
Like tell them what they wanted to know.
After all, would it really be that bad to have his mother back? Maybe if he told Dean… Dean could do it, like Michael had said, Sam's life for Mary's. It would be a fair trade.
Sam frowned.
There was something wrong with that idea. He had an odd feeling Dean wouldn't go with it. He couldn't imagine why, but…
But he was tired. The memories hadn't let up: he'd spent hours going from remembered pain to real pain and back, and in both cases there were knives and blood and Dean laughing at him for being so weak. Sam wasn't even very sure what was real and what wasn't anymore: it was all the same.
"Sammy."
Dean's voice. Was that real? Sam couldn't tell.
"Sammy. Just tell me."
Oh. Real, then. The Dean in the memories never asked Sam for information. He wasn't torturing Sam for a reason. He was just doing it because he could. The real Dean - not Dean, he told himself firmly, it bloody isn't Dean - was torturing him because he wanted his mother back.
Sam couldn't blame him.
Not Dean, you idiot. It - ISN'T - Dean.
Sam thought he might be losing his mind.
Sam wanted Dean. He wanted him the way he had when he'd been a small child and flung himself into his big brother's arms after a nightmare or a scraped knee, wanted him the way he had when Michael and Lucifer had been having their fun with him in the Cage and only the thought of Dean safe and happy had kept him holding on to sanity. He wanted Dean so much that at this point he was even willing to believe that the thing in the room was Dean.
The knife came down again. Sam choked back a sob. He couldn't keep the traitorous tears from running down his face, but he could - he would - stay quiet.
"Come on, Sammy," Dean's voice said above him, entreating. "You know I hate doing this to you. Just tell me, kiddo. Tell me and we can put an end to this. I'll even give you a pass for a chick-flick moment." The knife was gone, replaced by a gentle hand. "Come on, little brother. We'll bring Mom back. You want that, too. I know you do."
"You're not Dean."
There was a sigh, and the hand on his chest became painful, digging into the cuts and making him whimper. "You want to do this the hard way, Sam? Fine. Just don't say I didn't warn you."
Dean drove past the abandoned farmhouse. A mile from it, he pulled up on the side of the road, hearing Bobby's truck brake behind him. He got out, Cas did that freakish thing where he went from sitting in the Impala to standing outside it without following any of the intermediate steps, and Bobby met them on the gravel shoulder.
Dean didn't bother to get anything out of the trunk. He had the Colt and he had his shotgun, and his bare hands were going to be enough if anything tried to get between him and Sammy.
They ran the mile back to the house in something like two and a half minutes - freaking Olympic athletes think they're so freaking fast - and although Bobby was out of breath and muttering about how Sam and Dean were a pair of idjits and next time he was just going to throw both of them to a Wendigo and get the hell out of the way, he was right behind Dean as he snuck into the empty yard. Cas brought up the rear, angelic feet even quieter than the hunters'.
They were at the door when they heard it: a high, tortured yell that was unmistakeably Sam.
The sound seemed to snap something inside Dean. Everything faded away except Sammy Sammy Sammy Sammy and all he was aware of was the need to close the distance between himself and his baby brother, find whatever was making that awful sound come out of Sammy and kill it.
"Dean, stop it! You can't go in half-cocked like this!"
"Dean, you're doing your brother no good."
Dean blinked. He was still outside, Bobby hanging onto one arm and Cas holding the other, Sam's screams, increasingly more agonized, filling the air.
"Listen, Dean," Bobby said urgently. "He's alive and he's strong enough to shout. That's a good thing. Positive sign. Now we can deal with this but we don't know how many of them are in there. If we go in and get outnumbered, they might kill Sam before we can get to him. We need to have a plan."
"I think they have Sam in the back of the house," Cas offered. "That's where the… noise… seems to be coming from."
Dean didn't see how Cas could tell: to him the noise seemed to be everywhere, filling his ears and filling his head and God this is just a tiny taste of what happened to Sam in the Cage.
Dean went to his knees and threw up.
"You're trying my patience, Sammy."
"It's Sam."
He felt a punch to the jaw, and while it hurt, it was really nothing to what the rest of him was feeling just then. Whatever the thing was, it knew what it was doing.
The door opened. Sam turned his head, but he couldn't tell who had come in: his vision had dissolved into a vague blur of colours.
"Get anything?"
Samuel.
"Nothing," Dean's disgusted voice spat above him.
"Maybe he's telling the truth."
"He isn't," said a third voice. It was familiar, but it took Sam a moment to place it: the demon that had taken him. He'd had no idea it was still in the room. "He remembers - I saw it in his eyes when the memories came back. We just have to find a way to make him talk."
"Sam?" That was Samuel's voice again. He heard footsteps, and a shadow moved in front of his face. "Can you hear me?" Closer, now. "Sam, believe me when I say it gives me no pleasure to do this. I just need my daughter back. You understand, don't you - I will do anything to get Mary back. If you just tell me, this can all be over. I'll patch you up and take you back to Singer's house."
"You stupid bastard," Sam got out. "Do you really think it'll be that easy?"
"Do you have any idea how unnerving it is to hear language like that from a four-year-old? This job gets crazier by the day. Why won't it be easy, Sam?"
Sam would have laughed if he hadn't known it would hurt. "Dean's going to be so pissed at you."
"He's already threatened to kill me on multiple occasions. It can hardly get worse."
"You don't know Dean."
Samuel ignored him and turned to the thing - not Dean - that had been working him over. "He's said nothing at all?"
"It would be easier if I didn't have to work with your restrictions. I mean, no permanent damage? You can't force an answer out of someone who's spent decades under Lucifer's knife without doing some permanent damage." Samuel made a vaguely disapproving noise. "Oh, come on. You want your daughter back or not? You have to make sacrifices."
Samuel sighed. "Fine. Do what you have to do."
He got to his feet and left. Sam couldn't help feeling a flicker of terror.
"Hear that, Sammy?" Dean's voice whispered, cold and pitiless. "That was the sound of your luck running out."
The plan was simple. Bobby and Cas were going in the front to grab Samuel and anyone else they could find. While they did that, Dean was going to take advantage of the diversion to go in the back and rescue Sammy.
Then - although he hadn't told Bobby and Cas about this part of the plan - he was going salt and burn anything that he found in there that was hurting Sammy or had hurt Sammy or had thoughtabout hurting Sammy. Then he was going to take Sammy and get somewhere safe and not move until Sammy was himself again, if he could ever be himself again after this.
Oh, yeah, and he was going to deal with Samuel.
He was so going to deal with Samuel.
Dean gripped the Colt tighter. He tried the back door. It was locked. He hesitated: he didn't want to smash it in and alert whoever was in the house, but he didn't have time to waste picking the lock.
Then Sammy screamed again, and Dean kicked in the door.
The thud was muffled, but definitely there. Sam felt himself perk up a little with hope: maybe it was rescue.
The Dean - not Dean - sitting over him picked up the red-hot iron it had been holding to the inside of Sam's wrist. In a way it was as well that the thing had done that, he thought wearily; it had at least cauterized the deep cuts it had made in the same wrist earlier.
Dean was going to be mad.
"See what it is!" the thing above him snapped. A door opened, closed, and a minute later opened again.
"Nothing outside. Must be - wait, what's that?"
Sam heard raised voices, and then what was distinctly a gunshot.
"Coming from the other side of the house," Dean grunted. "Nothing to do with us. So no reprieve for you, Sammy." There was a brief silence. It seemed to be thinking. "Maybe you don't realize how serious I am, Sammy. My fault. I should have made it clear in the beginning." It forced his hand open, spreading it flat on the table. "You don't really need all your fingers, do you, kiddo?"
Sam whimpered: he couldn't stop himself.
A dark shadow was looming over him and a voice in his ear said, "Well, if you don't want me to do it, then tell me how to bring Mom back. It can't be that difficult."
Sam gathered the last shreds of his courage. "Go - to - hell."
"Fine. Have it your way."
The shadow moved away. Sam felt cold steel on his hand, lightly tracking over his fingers one by one before stopping at the last one.
Sam waited for the pain -
There was a crash and a gunshot, loud enough to deafen him, and the steel was gone and there was shouting and banging and chaos and -
And, somehow, Sam knew he was going to be all right.
Dean had reached the doorway just in time to hear someone threaten to take Sam's fingers off. He'd run his hands over the door through Sam's snarled defiance, feeling absurdly proud and petrified at the same time, found the weak spot, and smashed through it just in time to note that the thing was wearing his face before he shot it.
There was something else in the room - two somethings, in fact. They seemed to think that they were going to stand between Dean and his little brother.
Dean didn't know what they were and he didn't particularly care. He had the Colt and he had Ruby's knife and he had his freaking fists, and it only took a minute to get rid of the things and he wasn't even breathing hard at the end of it.
"Sammy?"
Dean ran across the room to Sam -
And there, finally, he stopped short. His little brother was a mess. He was a mass of bruises and blood, with blackened marks that looked horribly like burns running down his right arm.
Oh God, Sammy.
Sammy squinted up at him uncertainly. "Dean?"
Dean got to work cutting the ropes holding Sam, because seeing his baby brother spread-eagled on a table to be tortured was his worst nightmare come to awful, burning life. Sam didn't move when Dean had cut him loose, and Dean didn't know if it was because he was in too much pain or because he didn't believe it was over.
For the first time he wished he had Bobby or Cas with him: the thing had been hurting Sam wearing Dean's face, and who knew what the kid saw now?
"Sammy, I'm sorry."
There were a hundred things in that. It was I'm sorry you're hurting and I'm sorry you thought I couldn't forgive you and I'm sorry they took you on my watch and I'm sorry this whole miserable mess ever happened. Dean wasn't sure he knew exactly what he meant himself.
But Sammy seemed to understand. Sammy always understood.
He cracked a smile - a small one, but still a smile. Then he finally moved, hands twitching and lifting to reach for Dean, a terrified child trying to find his place of safety, four-year-old Sammy asking to be picked up. There was willing absolution in his baby brother's outstretched arms, absolution and comfort and an odd kind of reassurance. Dean took them all gladly, sliding his hands under Sam's back as carefully as he could, holding Sam against his chest and feeling Sam's head nestle trustfully on his shoulder.
"You're OK, Sammy," Dean breathed, inexpressibly grateful that it was true. "Nobody's going to hurt you anymore. I've got you."
"Told Samuel you'd come."
Dean felt tears in his eyes, maybe because Sam's voice was a pained whisper, maybe because whatever problems they'd had and whatever freaky-ass crap had been going on in his head, Sam had known that Dean would never let him go.
"I'll always come for you, Sammy," Dean whispered back, heading for the door. "Come on. I'm going to get you patched up."
Chapter XI: As the Gentle Rain from Heaven