-PART EIGHT-
A/N: Um, angst snuck up on me and smacked me around. I tried to edit it and come up with something even slightly humorous, and nope. Not happenin'. Sorry if anyone feels mislead/blindsided, but the smiles shall soon return. I'm determined.
-:-
Ben convulses hard and fast, wiry little body possessing too much strength for Dean to properly contain him in the tiny room of graying tile. It's disgusting and cold, and Ben's torso is all exposed vibrations and jutting ridges of bone, jeans unbuttoned, his changing ritual interrupted midway through.
He's too white, too skinny, too sweaty, too fragile. He shouldn't be on this mold-creased floor, glazed eyes level with the rank toilet while Dean mutters worthless words like, “It's alright, kiddo. I gotcha. It's okay, Ben.”
It's not okay. It's so fucking far from okay there are certainly cracks spidering along the universe's invisible architecture, shafts of scalding, destructive light seeping in.
Dean feels like a dumbass and stops talking, manages to wrangle the thrashing frame into a better position and lifts him up minutes and eons after Sam's retreat with Alec.
Sam and Alec are at opposite edges of the other bed, his brother reaching out to bridge the gap, because apparently Alec's decided he doesn't need to be cuddled anymore. His shirtless back is rigid and turned away, walling Sam and his attempts at comfort off so effectively there may as well be miles of crooked brick stacked between them.
They're both on their feet as soon as Dean enters, hawk eyes tracking his juddering burden as he falteringly carries Ben into the room and deposits him as gently as possible onto his own bed, presses a palm against his brow to immobilize the boys' head while the rest of him flops around uncontrolled.
“What the hell's wrong with him?” Sam blurts, shaky. One long stride, and he's dropping down opposite his brother, huge palm flattened over the kid's chest to keep him still.
Alec remains a flinty-eyed statue, pissed at everything, at the circumstances that've toppled the scale the wrong way. Away from enjoyable chaos and toward that other kind.
“N-nothing” Ben manages, alarmed for some other reason than the fucking convulsing that's knocking him all over the place, and Dean's shocked to hell and back at the kid's awareness in the throes of his seizure. “S-Sam,” Ben angles his head up to look pleadingly at the taller man. “Th-there's nothing wr-wrong with me.”
Those puppy eyes go as round as they can go as Sam looks up at Dean and then back down, something registering there that it takes a moment for Dean to catch on to. He's still a little fucking distracted, his own chest throbbing with his heart's desire to break out, gaze locked on the kid's rattling limbs. They're too goddamn thin, and even though this surface is softer and more forgiving, they're slamming around too hard. It's un-fucking-acceptable, his first good look at Ben, something of his malnourished and broken that Dean's not sure he can fix.
“Of course there's nothing wrong with you, Ben,” Sam says carefully, sensing exposed nerves along a subject he doesn't quite have a full grasp on yet. “You're just sick and we need to know how to make you better. We don't like seeing you hurt.”
Sick. He's freaking sick and Dean is being a shit-tard brand of useless, free hand curled into a painful fist that itches to crash into the sneering, bony face of any bad guy right now. Dean unlocks his jaw and knocks his brother's hand away, ignores the flash of mutiny on Sam's face. He doesn't mean anything by it, except. Except Sam doesn't know how, is all. Dean knows how to pretend he's large and all-powerful even when he isn't, knows how to project a certain kind of indestructible and jam himself between his charge and the bad things, and okay-fine, he's feeling a mite possessive at the moment. Sam'll get over it.
Dean gathers Ben close again, muscles straining to maintain full-body contact, and Sam does get over it. At least long enough to dig his cell phone out and start punching buttons.
Sam says, “Cas,” all low and serious and I-went-to-law-school-don't-make-me-whip-out-the-big-head-smashing-book, gets up and starts pacing, but not too far, needs to hover just a little.
Sam's always thinking in a crisis, wields his laptop and phone like some glowing scythe of ultimate pig-headedness and bullies answers out of whoever he can reach with them. Sam refuses to hear words like 'inevitable' and 'hopeless', refuses to sit idly by and flounder for a solution to the quaking child when there are answers just waiting to be yanked out of someone's head, and Dean's never been so immensely grateful for that. He'll go to a creepy faith healer again if that's what it takes, damn the price.
Ben says, “I-I... I'm n-not... I'm. I c-can fix it. I-I can f-fix it.”
“How? How can you fix it, Ben?” Dean squeezes him tighter, tries to sound commanding but only comes off desperate. “Tell me what to do.”
Ben shakes his head, or Dean thinks he's shaking his head, but it's hard to tell.
“They gave us pills,” Alec cuts in, shrugging himself out of his stone casing as he crawls up onto the bed, holds his arms out and glowers, like give him to me, he's mine.
Dean gets that, he totally does. Which is why he can't let go. Alec has to relent a little and finagle his way into the oxygen-restricting hug.
“Every day, different pills,” Alec goes on, hand cradled over the back of Ben's neck and his words trembling a little with the force of his brother's fit. “For lots of things, but some to keep us from shaking. They used to take them away-the kids. They never came back. But then they started giving us more meds. Sometimes they let us, for punishment but not...” he trails off, bottom lip wobbling before he resolutely firms the set of his mouth and stares worriedly at Ben. “I don't know how he can be okay. He's been gone for a long time.”
Sam pounces on that before Dean can, because of course the freak has two ears that work independently from one another and can listen to Cas and them at the same time. “What kind of pills? Alec, did they tell you what they were?”
“Why would they?” Matter-of-fact and mildly condescending. He's never ranked high enough to be given that kind of consideration, something as simple as the right to know what the hell he was being force-fed, and Sam frowns, swiping a hand across both boys' heads before he refocuses on the phone.
“What the hell do you mean you didn't think of that? Kids in labs, Cas! Medical records are a freaking priority! Who knows what the fuck they did to 'em?”
Dean doesn't know how long he can function with these flares of rage going off everywhere. Sometimes they let us, for punishment. He'll teach some fuckers about punishment, Hellraiser-style, and with the experience to back it up.
And then it hits him, and the rage morphs back into fear that sets his skin abuzz.
“Alec.” Dean swallows thickly and stares down at the kids, tangled up in each other and shaking as one. He doesn't like seeing that, not one bit. “How long?”
“What?”
“How long did they... withhold the meds before you...”
“Oh.” Alec closes his eyes and hooks his chin over Ben's shoulder. “It varied. Um, a few days? Sometimes a couple of weeks. I think stress levels are a factor.”
Stress levels. Shit. If there's anything more stressful than this right here, Dean will eat his own fucking boots. Ben's shakes are tapering off now, but they'll come back, and Alec will start shaking, too. Long-term shaking can't lead to anything good, and Dean would like to take this moment to reiterate the not losing anyone else with many expletives, but it's not really the time for histrionics. That would just make him helpless out loud and they don't need to know that he's helpless.
Ben adds determined wriggling to his abating seizure, and Dean's hold tightens automatically. He's still so strong, though, shimmies out anyway, shudders sideways and rolls onto the floor with a heart-arresting thud.
“Ben!” Dean and Alec are both diving over the edge, but Ben bats them away, so damn pale he's bordering on transparent, wobbles to his feet.
“I'm n-not wrong. I can d-do it.” His eyes are bright and dark at once as he levels them with a gaze that blares so many alarming things-I'm sorry, it's okay, please don't be mad. Dean knows these things like he knows... well, himself. He knows his own eyes and what they're saying, and he's not having any of that bullshit.
“No, Ben. C'mere.” Dean reaches down and plucks him up. “Whatever you wanna do, I can help you. Just tell me.”
But Ben's not following Dean's orders right now. The kid can barely stand up straight without falling and still manages to wrench himself free, makes it to the door before Dean can blink. “N-not you. You c-can't. I g-gotta do it. I can d-do it.”
“Ben. What're you talking about?“ Alec's confused, hovering at Dean's side as if to reassure him and wanting to go to his brother at the same time.
Ben doesn't want Alec or anyone else, though, that much is clear. That much holds Alec in flummox and fills Dean's throat with dust as Ben fumbles with the door knob, head cracking against it as he tries to force his trembling fingers to cooperate.
Sam's gone quiet and stiff, and he's watching Ben, too, phone dangling at his side. They're all so far away, frozen and indecisive, mere feet that will take too long to cover with the boy's speed if they startle him further and don't find a way to talk him down.
“Ben,” Sam says, and it's that tone that reminds Dean his brother spent four long months scaring the evil shit out of demons. Ben falters but doesn't stop, yanks the door open and glances back, eyes huge and round. “Get your ass back in this room right now.”
Ben jerks backwards the slightest step, automatic, swings his head around to regard the dark, cricket-chirping highway just beyond the parking lot. His vibrating shoulders square up as best they can, and then-
“Ben, goddammit!”
“Wait!”
“Alec, stop!”
Streaking blurs and pounding footsteps and bellows, and everyone's in motion, small forms swallowed up by trees and darkness and harsh breaths punching out of panicked lungs, and those two little shits are so fucking grounded when Dean gets a hold of them.
He will get hold of them, even if he is far louder, slower, and clumsier than their sleek little stealth frames. Failure is not an option.
A belt of pines looms across the asphalt. Dean hoofs it over the gravel lot, hits the ditch and vaults across, tries not to think about bare little feet and the endless health hazards that one elongated pit contains-rubber-gouged animal corpses, crumpled soda cans rife with sharp edges, a broken section of fence full of splinters and tetanus potential. Tries not to think about how parents are always fearing the ditches with wide eyes and hushed whispers, and how the next thing he sees will surely be a gutter, because they talk about those too, and Jesus fucking Christ, they're always finding tiny bodies in the woods on those police shows.
The pine cones and needles concealing an amalgamation of human debris and the disorder of the wild aren't much better. Dean's boots clobber the ground in deafening snaps and crunches as he smacks branches aside, hears Sam crashing around in the growth much the same way somewhere off to his right, shouting loud enough for the both of them.
Dean wants to shout too, but he's also got enough sense left in his frantic head to know the extra noise only alerts Ben, who is running the hell away from them, so it's clearly counterproductive. He doesn't even know which direction they've gone, they're just gone, but he's plowing ahead anyway, distantly hoping the panicked slosh of his gut has a compass buried in it somewhere.
Alec and Ben. Dropped into his life and launching it into a wild spin within mere hours, destroyed and a little fucked up but so adorable and just plain Winchester that Sam and Dean were screwed before they even formed a single coherent thought. And now? Now, they're out of sight, adult sensibilities all in freefall, and they can't just go. They can't just come and latch onto Dean's abused heart and run off with it. It's not allowed.
They're half-naked, out in the open, unprotected. No magic symbols or dedicated men with small arsenals strapped to their backs to stand between them and danger. Just the jungle, where anything goes, and he's not thinking about the perils lurking every which way, goddammit, because there's no time to stop and have a fucking stroke.
Dean needs... Jesus, he needs more men, a perimeter, the whole damn state in lockdown. They're so fast and the world is huge, full of monsters and... and people, bad people who think perverted, violent things about little kids, and oh god, oh fuck, that stroke is creeping ever closer, his vision whiting out with panic-
“Sam! Dean!”
It's Alec.
Dean has no sense of time, brain whirled and twisted into a frenzy, but it feels like years before he hears that high-pitched yell. He's lurching around a trunk and barreling toward it full-throttle before his mind even catches up with his own body. His fingers are fastened around the butt of his pistol and tugging it free of their own accord, because the yell sounds alarmed, and Dean is fully prepared to ventilate the holy hell out of anything that puts that particular note in that little voice.
Dean would march back to hell and challenge its armies with Pixy Stix for that little voice, he's realizing with a certain amount of fear but no real surprise.
“Dean!”
That's Sam, because of course those damn stilt-legs got there first, but it's close, so that means Dean's not far behind.
There's a clearing, small and edged with bramble. He can see it now, where the moonlight is casting a silver halo through the dark, and there's movement. Dean's lungs are burning, tattered rags as he tramples through the unfriendly plantlife, gun at the ready even though all he can make out is Sam's huge, heaving back.
His brother's crouched at the base of a tree, head bent down in examination. Alec is standing off to the side, arms and torso all scratched up from the branches, bug-eyed and gaping and wholly uncomprehending.
Dean's pulse finds an impossible rhythm when he doesn't see Ben right away, and Sam is too quiet right now. Too tense and still. This is all wrong. Dean has a vivid imagination, and he's never hated it more than in this moment, envisioning all kinds of gory findings on the other side of Sam's hulking figure.
“Sam?” Dean doesn't even try to keep the quaver out of his voice as he inches closer, holding onto his pistol as if it can return the favor. “Where's Ben?”
Sam doesn't turn to look at him, stays very still. “He's right here, Dean. He's, um, he's o- he's not hurt.”
Sam was going to say 'okay.' He's okay. But apparently Ben's not okay, even if he's not hurt, at least not any more than he already was. This doesn't make Dean feel a heck of a lot better. Sam needs to work on his reassurances.
And then he takes that final step that will allow an unbroken line of sight over Sam's shoulder, and he realizes Sam doesn't need to work on anything. Dean needs to be not assured. Dean needs to be pretty fucking worried.
“W-What?” The grip on his weapon slackens, arm falling dead at his side. “What the fuck is he doing?” Dean croaks.
He can hear Sam swallow. “He won't let it go. I tried, but he... he won't.”
“You wouldn't have been able to catch him,” Alec whispers, almost as pale as Ben and still entranced by the carnage surrounding his brother, so confused as he defends his own running away. “I had to catch him, but I couldn't stop him from... doing that.”
“I know, kiddo. You did good. C'mere.”
Dean crouches and swings an arm wide, damns himself for being such a coward and turning away from the mess Ben's made for the smallest reprieve, but he needs it. He can't think straight looking at that.
Alec comes, slow and unsteady, eyes locked on Ben until Sam's back obstructs his view, and then he turns them on Dean, stops the barest inch from his fingertips. That green gaze is so bright and moist, angry and terrified, seeking something to mend it all and something to rend for it all, and Dean nods, wriggles his fingers.
“C'mere, dude, I need a fuckin' hug. You guys scared the shit outta me.”
Alec surges forward and crushes him up with his little arms, stealing his comfort under the poor guise of giving it, but Dean does feel comforted. Alec's fucked up and Ben is... Ben is pretty far gone. But they need him, and being needed is something he's always been good at even if he hasn't received much acknowledgement for it. Dean doesn't need acknowledgement, though. He'll figure the rest of this shit out, one painfully slow step at a time, as long as everyone stays and lets Dean just be there.
Alec is a tiny furnace against Dean's chest, and he runs a hand over his hitching back until the kid's all hugged out, holds onto him for a few more seconds. He's not ashamed. He deserves it after all the missing children horror, and it's bolstering him for the horror that still lays ahead. He hears Sam talking, low and soft, but he's not really listening at the moment.
“Lemme see.” Dean holds Alec at arm's length and the kid's face is splotched red, arm swiping over his nose with a sloppy sniffle, Dean's shirt a little wetter than it was before, but he's not going to point any of that out. Instead, he runs a critical eye over the minor scratches.
Just a few minutes-or maybe weeks, he's still not quite sure-away from his care and look what the fuck happens. His mind skips ahead and back in time all at once, and he thinks absurdly of cartoon bandages and stupid stories he made up about battle scars for Sammy all those years ago. It was Transformers and Ninja Turtles back then, because Sam actually used to be cool once upon a time, and Dean used to tell him about notches in the metal and half-shells that meant the heroes weathered a bad guy and came out on top. Sam mostly weathered secondhand bicycles and unsafe climbing trees, but he didn't seem to care about those minor details, was proud to flaunt his achievements to the world at large and made Dean feel a little better about failing.
Dean knows better now, but cartoon bandages are still a priority. There's gonna be whole quilts of them to hide this crap until it fades. He just hopes these kids won't be into anything as mind-numbing as Spongebob, because then he might have to doubt their origins.
Alec cocks his head, reaches out and awkwardly pats Dean's shoulder. “They'll be gone by morning.”
Dean's smirk falls kind of flat. Alec shouldn't be comforting him, even if Dean understands why he's doing it. It reminds him too much of Dad. 'You shouldn't have had to say that to me. I shoulda been sayin' it to you.'
Fuck, his eyes are welling up with heat and that's no good at all. He needs to stop letting his mind wander. He's got other shit to deal with and shelter to usher everyone back into.
Alec edges back into his embrace when it takes him way too freaking long to compose himself, terror ringing through him like a tuning fork. This is fucking ridiculous is what it is. Dean used to be a lot better at this, but apparently kids are just destined to fuck with a guy's wiring. He squeezes the boy tighter than the boy's squeezing him, kids himself about who's comforting who anymore and stands up, knees cracking as he hefts Alec closer to his hip and tucks the gun back into his waistband.
His gaze ratchets upward like it's on a faltering pulley system, and it's still there. It's not going away.
Alec heaves a shaky sigh and plants his face in Dean's shoulder, voice muffled when he asks, “Is this what it does? I don't wanna be Outside anymore if this is what it does to us.”
Dean hears the significance placed on 'Outside'. “Nah, dude. This is just...” He doesn't know, but he's not letting Alec think for a second that that place is better for any reason. “Extenuating circumstances,” is his stupid-ass conclusion, and he wants to kick the shit out of himself even if Alec seems temporarily placated. Or maybe he's just taking pity on Dean and his spectacular new level of lame. “You're not alone,” he amends. “Ben was alone for a while, and we don't do so good with that kinda thing, but neither of you are gonna be alone anymore, okay?”
Alec nods and knots his hand into the front of Dean's shirt, and that's better. It was the right thing to say, of course it was. He makes a note to consult in his inner child more often, clears his throat and looks down at his brother.
Sam's pretty well gutted, one hand extended and cupped open, like he's desperate to catch Ben's tears and banish them to a far-off galaxy but can't quite reach. He's still murmuring, but it's too soft for Dean to make out. Dean takes this in, and he takes in the deer.
The fawn is pulled crookedly over Ben's legs, and Ben is still swaying and knocking convulsively against the tree trunk, bawling silently as he crams his fingers into the gaping, blood-stained mouth and tries to twist another tooth free. It's a baby deer killed by a baby Dean, neck twisted grotesquely and its eyes blown wide and dull. There are whitened bits off to one side, cracked and messy because Ben is so strong but too unsteady.
Ben was alone. Ben hunted for survival. That's not what this is. Dean doesn't understand what this is, doesn't understand how this fixes anything. But it's not any defect on his part. It's simply not an understandable thing. He's seen so much worse and not-worse, not even close, and he feels sick.
“Sammy.” Dean tugs his brother's shirt collar and Sam rises up, beseeching and openly helpless. Dean's only response is to thrust Alec at him, the boy that's willing to let himself be cuddled as long as the grown-ups know it's for their sake and not his. The boy Sam can reach right now. “I gotta talk to Ben for a second.”
Sam nods jerkily, “Yeah,” eyes skating away in shame at not being productive in this. He absconds with Alec to the opposite side of the clearing for that small illusion of privacy.
Dean moves to Ben's side and crouches down once more, grip settling firmly over the frantic little fingers. Ben's eyes snap up to him, streaming and fever-bright and distant. His lip curls up but no sound comes out. Dean doesn't flinch.
Dean's in over his head. Everything's so fucked up already, and who the hell does he think he is taking on something like this in the middle of a cosmic war he's partially responsible for? Ben has excessive needs and Dean has a full plate.
But Ben's a Winchester. Ben is Dean's. It's not like there was ever really a choice.
So Dean sets his jaw, hooks a finger under Ben's chin to hold his gaze, says in his best Dad-voice, “Time to cut this shit out, kid,” and wishes the magical and right thing to say could be so easy.
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