Wayward Sons Come Home - Part 2
Fic Masterpost
Art Masterpost
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First Night
The showers were cold and communal. Sam shivered in front of shower head and changed into another set of clothes, he stood out among the rest of the members. There was a cold wind blowing on his walk to the bunkhouse and the crowd of people around him huddled together and rubbed their arms for warmth.
The walls of the bunkhouse didn't do much to stop the cold. Sam climbed into his bed, scratchy sheets and thin pillow. He could still hear the wind whistling through the wooden slates of the building. Around him, noises of people slowly faded to be replaced with the snores and sniffles of the sleeping. Sam couldn't sleep. He couldn't get comfortable, between the cold and the too short bed, he missed his warm girlfriend and the warm blankets on his big bed back in California.
They'd taken his watch, so Sam waited until all of the rustling and noises had faded away. He slowly inched up in bed, pulling the blankets along with him. There was a big fleece sweater in his things and it added a layer of warmth he was going to need. His flashlight was gone too, but Sam avoided looking at the light in front of the bathroom and let his eyes try to adjust to the darkness.
The floor creaked under Sam's boots. The boards weren't sealed properly and Sam could feel air rushing up through the cracks and breezing up his pant legs. He tiptoed across the floor, trying to be light on his feet, but it didn't matter. No one stirred or so much as shifted in bed when he walked past them.
There were no windows and Sam hoped the door to the bunkhouse wasn't locked. He used to have trust and faith in the community and their care for each other, even if it was expressed in less than healthy ways. That had all changed; the openly carried weapons, the whole vein of fear which ran through nearly all of the people he'd met. He needed to talk to Bobby. Tomorrow, he'd learned a lot from the man and it was difficult to rectify the second father he knew with the bloody murderer he'd read about in microfiche.
He opened the door to the bunkhouse slowly, it wasn't locked after all. The hinges squeaked and Sam froze. He held his breath and glanced back over his shoulder, thankfully it didn't seem to have disturbed anyone. He counted himself lucky and squeezed out through the small opening he'd already created.
The wind was harsh outside, without the walls of the building to block it. Bright light was provided by tall street lamps placed around the courtyard and the buildings. Sam blinked in the sudden change of light and pulled the door closed before sneaking around the edge of the bunkhouse. He needed to get out of the light.
Sam started with the first building. The door was locked, but he twisted the knob hard and it broke off in his hand. The hinges were well oiled at least and Sam closed his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
The former cottage had supplies in it. Bags of flour, sugar, oats, and grains sat in plastic bins. There were mouse droppings, but none of the rodents appeared. Sam opened all the bags and stuck his arm in, feeling for weapons or drugs, he didn't know where they'd hide those things.
There were cartons of insecticide, pesticide, and rat poison and Sam didn't really believe it was all for the farm. Why would it be kept in a food supply shed? At the very least, it should have been kept away from the food, unless there were plans to mix it in.
Sam couldn't do anything about the broken lock or the way the knob hung oddly from the door. He walked quickly to the next cottage and this time the door opened without any resistance.
It was light inside this cottage and Sam realised his mistake as soon as he opened the door. Four men were sitting at a roughly hewn wooden table with a radio on it. All of them were heavily armed and the walkie-talkies were squawking before he could turn around and pretend that none of this had ever happened.
"Sam?" It was Dean who grabbed him and spun him around. His brother was shorter than he was now, but he was stronger and Sam stood still as those heavy hands clamped down on his shoulders.
"So this isn't the bathroom?" Sam asked weakly, not really expecting them to buy it.
The guard Castiel cocked his head and stared at Sam. "The bathrooms are located in the bunkhouses."
"He knows where the bathroom is. I showed him myself." Dean released Sam for another guard to hold while the fourth went behind and handcuffed Sam's hands behind his back.
Dean took off his walkie-talkie. "Fathers, there's a problem in the guard shed."
Sam was shoved down into a chair and his ankles were cuffed to the legs of it. The chair was low to the ground and the position forced his knees up near his chest. He hoped the FBI was getting everything through the wires in his clothes. That this was going to be worth something to them. He wished there was some way for him to know what was going on, for them to tell him what they needed. If they were going to get him out.
The guards had a hushed conversation in the corner of the room. Dean kept glancing back at Sam. Sam tried to communicate with his brother, the looks and glances they'd used to use to have an entire conversation. Nothing seemed to be going through this time.
"We'll be right back." The two guards Sam didn't know declared and they left, their holsters open and hands on their weapons.
"How could you?" Dean asked and he set a chair in front of Sam and sat down, burying his head in his hands. "I trusted you. Everyone trusted you."
Castiel patted him down. Sam lost his boots and his belt but the guard left him the rest.
"When did you accept Satan into your life?" Dean demanded, grabbing Sam's chin and forcing the younger brother to meet his eyes. "You were good and strong. How did you lose sight of everything?"
"It's not like that." Sam tugged at the ropes Castiel was fastening around him. "C'mon Dean, you know that it's not like that. We used to joke about it. It can't all be real. There's no devil waiting outside the gate."
"We were wrong!" Dean exploded in his brother's face. "We were wrong all along, can't you see that? Father Lucifer and Father Michael, Sam, they saved us. We were wrong and we were going to Hell. They showed us how to live and how to save ourselves."
Sam shook his head. "You know better than this! You're my brother. Try and think about this. Lucifer and Michael aren't good. They're bad news! Just look at their names! Honestly Dean, who names their kid Lucifer?"
"God spoke to them." Dean said, his voice changed as he slipped into storytelling mode. He'd always been better than Sam at remembering and telling the tales they'd learned from Bobby. "God told them families were drifting and to bring them together, the heavenly family first had to be made whole."
Sam couldn't help it, his jaw dropped. They'd honoured gods and goddesses before, but it wasn't like that. It was concepts of divinity and hope, he'd never expected a god to talk to anyone.
"That's enough." Castiel said and he stepped between them. "Dean, you should check the bunkhouses. Make sure no one else is out of bed."
Dean growled something, but he followed the order, letting in a rush of chilly air when he opened the door.
"Stop." Castiel said, but he didn't explain. He retreated to the door, closing it and rotating from staring at Sam to keeping watch outside the door.
"Castiel?" Sam asked, hoping he could get the guard to admit to more fault, to implicate himself in crimes. This trip had to be worth it. He was never coming back, no matter what the FBI promised him.
"Shh." The guard ordered and he opened the door. The cold air rushed in first and Sam shivered as he looked up into the icy blue eyes of Father Lucifer.
It was different now. In the darkness, with the light from the lantern glowing over the face of the leader, his blue eyes and blond hair were sinister, not handsome. His face was hard and Sam shivered again, not from the cold this time. Somehow it felt like the man's gaze was going to stab holes in his head and pin him to the wall.
"Sam, Sam, Sam."
Castiel brought a chair and Lucifer perched on the edge of it. He pushed it against the table and balanced there, like a bird, or the angel he'd taken his name from.
"Do you know what God commands us to do to those who betray us, Sam?" Lucifer's voice was casual, as if he was telling everyone at dinner what time the night's events were at.
Bible passages, ancient tales of vengeance, and graphic woodcuts of punishments flashed through Sam's head. He'd read books and been told stories in the dead of night and in the Hunter's Retreats small schoolhouse. Bobby liked to rage about punishment and sin and hell on Earth. Lucifer could have been referring to many many different punishments or so-called "laws" from forgotten passages of the good book.
"You do not deserve to live. You have sinned against us, and you have sinned against God."
Sam shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. Everyone has sinned. All of us have sinned and fallen from God. You're one to talk. You call yourself 'Lucifer'!"
Lucifer smiled. "You think you know your scripture, Sam? Lucifer was the most loyal of God's children. His father loved him above all others."
Sam wanted to say something. He wanted to snap and ask Lucifer if he just craved his daddy's approval. If someone had touched him in a bad place as a child and now he got his rocks off torturing people who just wanted to be left alone with people they cared about.
"Castiel, take him to the white cottage. This will be dealt with in the morning. Only immoral souls are still awake at this time of night. I need to return to bed."
Castiel half bowed and showed the leader out, then releasing the ropes and re-cuffing Sam's hands behind his back. His feet were bound with a rope with just enough slack for him to take a half step without falling over. "Walk." Castiel ordered, then he shepherded Sam out of the whitewashed cottage and down the path away from camp.
Sam kept his eyes open as they walked past white cottage after white cottage. He didn't know what Lucifer meant by 'the white cottage'. All of the buildings were white, and they'd never had a place to hold people in the past. Not like the empty building they'd isolated him in when he'd first arrived.
The compound still sprawled, even though everyone had been relocated to the bunkhouses and all of the women had left. The cottages were empty, dirty from disuse, and they all really needed another coat of whitewash. Sam had used to do that. The children spent the mornings painting the lower halves of the buildings. Sometimes they got to use the ladders to reach the upper parts. Sam liked the painting, he hadn't realised it was child labour and that the paint was probably giving him cancer until he'd gotten out.
There were fewer buildings now and some of them were unfinished. Cottages without windows, buildings that only had three walls and the fourth was just a few two-by-fours, all waiting for the people to return and finish them. At the end of the dirt path, sat a short squat building. It didn't have the wooden platform the rest of them did to keep them off the damp earth, and it's walls were washed and the light on the porch was on and shining brightly into the darkness.
Sam tripped when Castiel stopped and the rope around his ankles got tighter. He watched as the guard crossed himself and whispered something under his breath before he approached the building and hauled Sam along behind him.
They didn't have to knock on the door. It opened for them and Sam shivered. He didn't know this man, just something in him set his skin crawling.
"Took your sweet time." The man said and his lips twitched up into a smile for a second. "I'll take him now." He added when Castiel moved to step into the cottage.
The rope was handed off. Sam tried to see into the darkness of the cottage as he was passed between the two guards like a prisoner.
"I will return tomorrow. I'm on duty in the morning." Castiel looked at Sam when he spoke, then turned back to the man. "Our fathers are going to speak with him tomorrow."
The man frowned and shrugged. "All right then." He clamped his hand around Sam's neck and hauled him into the cottage. It was dark in here, especially after the bright light from the porch bulb. Candles flickered on a table and Sam blinked hard until his eyes adjusted to the oppressing darkness.
This wasn't a cottage design he'd seen before. It was much smaller on the inside and the walls were covered with a greyish cloth coating. There were bars over the single window and more bars on the other side of the room, but Sam couldn't see what was beyond them. There was nothing but milky darkness that swallowed everything. The man hauled Sam across the room and there must have been a key, Sam heard the click of metal on metal. The bars opened and this time, Sam tripped.
The man just let him fall, crashing down a set of stairs with his hands and feet bound. Sam heard something crack and he rolled down the last few steps, only to land face first on a dirt floor at the bottom of the flight of stairs.
"Ha." The rope tightened and Sam carefully got to his feet. His entire body ached and he was covered in dirt from his trip down. "You deserved that."
Sam had to hurry, half tripping with each step to keep up with the man. It wasn't as dark down in this basement, but there were more bars. Bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling and illuminated stacks of boxes locked behind double sets of bars. When they rounded a corner, and the basement was a lot larger than the ground floor, Sam couldn't believe his eyes.
The small rooms behind the bars weren't just holding cardboard boxes, and the entire hallway smelled like human excrement and disease.
"Ash?" Sam asked, finding his voice as he stumbled past the first cell.
"Sam?" Ash retreated away from the bars until Sam couldn't see him anymore.
"All yours." The man stopped and unlocked one of the cells, then pushed Sam in.
Sam hesitated, standing in the centre of the tiny cell. He turned around and tugged at the cuffs on his wrists. "Can you undo these?"
The man just laughed. "Naw. I don't really feel like it." He banged on the bars in front of Ash's cell and the one next to Sam. "See you soon, lovelies."
The prisoners were silent as his footsteps faded down the hallway and Sam was bursting with questions.
"Ash?"
"Sam? Did they get you too?"
Sam pressed up against the cold wet bars to crane his neck to see into Ash's cell. "What? No, I came back. Are they kidnapping now?"
"I was gone for two weeks." Ash mumbled. "They found me at a homeless shelter during recruiting."
"That sucks, man. When did you get out? Did they just leave you down here?"
"About a week after the new guys arrived. Every last one of them was a dick and no one really seemed to get that." Ash banged on the bars. "I've been down here since then."
"Seriously?" Sam asked before realising that he had never had any reason not to trust Ash. This whole mess was screwing with his head. "That was years ago!"
"Nearly three, by my reckoning." Ash said and his voice was quieter. "It doesn't really get warmer or colder down here and there's never any sunlight. I kinda just guess when I think the days change."
"Is it just you?" Sam asked and he reached his hand through the bars to point across the hallway. "Are we alone in here?"
"There have been a couple others. Some of them are new." Ash's hand pointed out through the bars. "Ava used to be across from me, but they took her and Max is in there now."
"Max Miller?" Sam asked. The Millers had come to the Hunter's Retreat, they had fled from one of the uncles who beat on the wife and son, but they'd been quiet and kept to themselves. Max had never hung out with the other kids and he spent most of his time working with his parents in the gardens rather than in the school with the rest of them.
"Yeah. He doesn't talk much. Andy used to be in your cell. I don't know what happened to him either."
"I'm sorry, really sorry, Ash. I'm trying to fix this. It might take a while, but I'm going to get you out of here." Sam wanted to say more, to tell him the FBI were listening in, but it wasn't safe.
Ash kept him engaged in conversation for what Sam guessed to be the rest of the night. His old friend had plenty of stories of the new arrivals to the Retreat, and of how quickly everything went to hell. People were kicked out of the camp or forced out of their cottages and into the bunkhouses. The school was shut down and the jobs people had created for themselves ended, while everyone was put to work in the fields.
The conversation petered out eventually, and Sam leaned against the wall, too scared to fall asleep. There was a pile of blankets in one corner of the cell, but they were filthy and he wasn't cold enough to risk lice and fleas to wrap up in them. Sam had managed to slip into a half-dozing state by the time he was startled into wakefulness by footsteps in the hall.
"The fathers want to see you." The captor sneered at him and Sam got to his feet. His legs were cramped from the cold ground and his arms were one massive pain. The handcuffs had stopped cutting into his wrists a long time ago, but he couldn't feel his hands at all anymore.
He shuffled slowly along the hall, trying to peer into the various areas behind the bars. There weren't any bodies that he could see and that was something of a relief. The stairs were steep and narrow, difficult to climb even for the unbound man behind him judging from his huffs and puffs.
"Don't move." The man warned him and he tied Sam into a chair before tilting his face up to the light. He poked at Sam's face and hot pain flashed through Sam's nose. "Broken." The man announced and Sam cringed away as the fingers moved into his line of sight again.
Sam was steeling himself to be tortured when the front door opened and Castiel, the guard who hadn't hurt him yet, came in.
"Azazel." Castiel said and the man backed off. Sam could feel hot blood dripping down his face again, but there was nothing he could do about it.
"Relax brother, I didn't touch him." But even as he spoke, Azazel stepped away from Sam.
"Remove the cuffs, I'll take him from here."
Azazel grumbled something, but a moment later, Sam was inching his arms back in front of his body, his shoulders loudly protesting the movement. His hands were bright red and swollen, and there were bloody bruised lines around his wrists where the cuffs had been.
Castiel looked pointedly at the ropes that still encircled Sam's body and Azazel removed them too. He muttered something about jumped up bottom feeders and his fingers pinched hard into Sam's flesh as he pulled the ropes free. Sam stood up and stretched, his body wanted to curl in on itself and nap for a good long while, but Castiel was heading to the door and Sam reluctantly followed after him.
"There are people in there." Sam said once the door had closed behind them.
"I know." Castiel answered. He stopped walking down the path and turned back. Sam met his gaze and shivered, the guard had the same blue eyes as Lord Lucifer, only his weren't as piercing, dead, and cold.
"Is Lord Lucifer your brother?" Sam asked and Castiel started walking back towards the prison cottage.
"He is my Father." Castiel opened his holster and drew his gun. "But we were born of the same flesh. Bend down, the cameras can still see you."
Sam pulled his aching limbs in as tightly as he could and stayed low to the ground as he followed Castiel past the white cottage and across the swath of grass beyond it. The tree line was sparse at first, but they walked into denser and denser patches of woodland. Sam's eyes fixed on Castiel's drawn gun. Had he just been taken out here to be shot?
"Just stay quiet." Castiel said, his voice lower than a whisper. "They will notice soon, if they haven't already."
Those didn't sound like the words of someone about to shoot him. Sam kept his head down and tried to get his breathing under control. Fear and adrenaline were racing through his body and he was breathing harder now than he usually did on his morning runs.
"Shh." Castiel warned. "They'll search the grounds. I need to listen."
They didn't stay still for long. Castiel looked intently into the distance, not that there was anything besides trees to be seen, and Sam almost expected the guard to press his ear to the ground like some sort of Lord of the Rings fanatic. Sam followed when he was motioned to move. The trees and brushes rustled around him as he shuffled through the forest.
The sun was up by the time the trees had thinned out enough for the light to get through. Old dead leaves cracked under Sam's feet and Castiel kept shooting looks back at him whenever he made noise.
"Close enough." Castiel had to grab him, Sam was exhausted, cold, and his feet hurt. He would have liked to just keep walking along until they could stop for good. All of this starting and stopping made the trek so much worse.
"The fence is close by. It will be watched."
Sam hugged himself with his arms. It didn't really help him stay warm, but he could try. "Where are we going?"
"Away." Castiel answered and he reached above his head to grab a tree branch. When he jumped, Sam knocked into him as hard as he could and brought the guard to the ground, pinning him until the gun was several feet away from both of them.
"Is this all part of the trick? Make me think I'm getting away and then show me how it can never happen?"
Castiel shook his head minutely, he couldn't move it very much, Sam had him pinned tightly. "It was time to leave. I couldn't stand it and there wasn't anything I could do for the rest of the prisoners. At least you had a chance."
Sam relented his hold and sat up. He offered his hand to Castiel and tugged the guard into a sitting position on the cold wet ground next beside him. "I don't trust you."
"You can always go back to the camp." Castiel offered. "Now, pick up the gun before the moisture seeps into it. I still might need it."
"I'll be holding the gun." Sam lifted it off the ground and looked over it quickly and carefully, the way his father had taught him.
Castiel shrugged. "I know better than you who to shoot, but I won't fight with the only person holding a gun." He pointed to the thinning trees ahead of them, "We need to leave before these fields fill for morning work."
Sam kept the gun drawn and at the ready. He walked quietly now, picking his feet up and thinking about where he placed them. They were large enough and still crunched leaves underfoot, but it was slightly better and he kept his senses on the alert for other guards or for Castiel to turn on him.
The forest ended abruptly. There were crops planted in the field that followed, in between the tree stumps where the firewood had been harvested from. A good few hundred metres away, the high fence topped with barbed wire and a security camera broke the idyllic view of farm life.
"Be ready to run." Castiel warned. He undid his bullet proof vest. "I'll go over the fence first and we'll use this to protect ourselves from the barbed wire."
Sam nodded. "You go first, I'll cover you."
The guard took a deep breath and set off running. The security camera didn't instantly turn to follow him and no other guards appeared, Sam started off behind him, picking his way through the tree stumps and swinging the gun from side to side in case someone appeared to hinder their escape.
"C'mon on! Boost me up!" Castiel had his fingers entwined in the metal links of the fence and Sam pushed hard on his butt, giving him the extra boost he needed to get to the top. "Watch the wire!" Castiel yelled as he jumped down on the free side of the fence.
Sam had to jump to get high enough up. The bullet proof vest didn't do much to stop the barbed wire and the protection it did offer only covered a very small area. Sam hissed as he jumped to freedom and his shirt ripped, the skin underneath it suffering the same fate.
"Gotta go!" Castiel pulled at his sleeve and they set off down the road at a breakneck pace.
It wasn't until they were about to round a steep bend that Sam realised he no longer had the gun. And when seven men in military fatigues with heavy weapons met them on the road, he realised that Castiel didn't have the gun either.
The men didn't say anything to them. One of them barked something into a mic attached to his shoulder, but Sam couldn't make out the words. Once there was a fresh pair of handcuffs fastened around his wrists, he was in too much pain to worry about whatever Lord Lucifer was going to do to him for this. He just hoped he would be killed rather than languish in the underground cells for years.
They separated him from Castiel, and as he was frogmarched along between the burly guards, Sam wondered again if it had all been a ploy. The punishment for desertion was death, at least according to most of the religions Bobby had taught him. The older man used to rage at the front of the classroom, shaking his fist as he listed out crimes. Each and every one of them punishable only by death.
Sam was expecting a long walk back to the compound, and he was surprised when they rounded another bend in the road and stopped at an encampment filled with men in fatigues, vans with tinted windows, and more heavy artillery than an NRA meet up in Texas.
The escorts stopped and when Sam got a good look at the man his guards had stopped in front of, he realised it wasn't a man at all. In fact, now as his fear and adrenaline died down, he noticed name patches on the fatigues, and the weapons didn't have their information filed off.
"We've got them at the base camp sir." The woman said into her lapel mic, and Sam looked over his shoulder to see if Castiel was still there. The guard was being searched and there were several knives on the ground next to him, along with one of the little snub-nosed pistols Sam had never been allowed to shoot.
"Bring them in." The mic said, crackling back to life.
He got patted down too. Not as thoroughly as Castiel, more of a perfunctory stroke over his arms and legs, not that there was anything to find. No hidden knives or tiny guns for him.
Only one of the men brought them through the camp and up to the side of a van. When they got close enough for Sam to read the license plate, he realised what was going on and wondered if he should say anything in front of Castiel. Their escort knocked and Special Agent Victor Hendrickson opened the door. His suit was covered with a tactical vest and windbreaker, both of which proclaimed to the world, FBI.
"Sam." Agent Hendrickson had their handcuffs removed and showed them into the back of the van and asked the agent outside to send over someone named Bela. "And you must be our inside man." He clapped Castiel on the back and offered them both bottles of water.
"Did you hear?" Sam asked, waving a hand over his body, trying to imply the wires he'd been hiding.
"Yep. The warrants went through, the ACLU is backing us due to various human rights violations. The Wayward Sons are going down." Hendrickson grinned. "I'm a little surprised you made it out alive. And without your brother."
Sam looked at his hands. They were starting to hurt again, the bruises deepening as blood flow returned to his extremities and swelling enough to make his shirt sleeves uncomfortably tight around the wrist.
"Dean Winchester will not leave." Castiel said, his voice was deep and had that distant tone about it again. "He loves our fathers and will not betray them."
Hendrickson shrugged. "Not my area of expertise. Are you the one who sent this?" He gave Castiel the note in a sealed plastic bag. When the former compound guard nodded, Hendrickson got that shit eating grin back. "Excellent. We'll need your testimony and any information you can provide. My men are heading in soon and weapons, numbers, troop positions, whatever you can give us would help."
Castiel nodded. "Do you have paper?" He reached into his pocket, "And a pen? Your men took all of my things."
As Castiel bent over his new task, ink already filling the pages, Sam found himself the subject of Hendrickson's scrutiny. "Thank you, Sam. All of these people will get another chance. And if they had mobilised and carried out whatever insane Armageddon plan, who knows how many lives would have been lost?"
Sam nodded and something inside his face shifted painfully. "Can I go home?" He asked, his voice small and quiet. He didn't really have hope for his brother and father, Ash maybe. But he could see everyone later, after he saw a doctor and got some sleep.
"Soon." Hendrickson opened the back of the van. "We'll get you something to eat and someone to talk to." He stepped out and Sam followed him. "Speak of the devil! Bela, you're just the woman I wanted to see."
A young woman in a fancy fed suit with an FBI windbreaker nodded. She didn't smile and her arms were crossed over her chest. Sam immediately didn't like her. "Is this the guy you sent back in?"
"Sam Winchester, this is Dr. Talbot. She's a specialist in deprogramming." Hendrickson put one foot in the van. "You know where I'll be."
Once he was gone, Dr. Talbot's face softened the tiniest bit. "Come with me, I'll get you checked out and I think there's still some hot coffee somewhere."
Sam followed her, always staying a step behind as they walked through the tents and vans that made up the camp. Things were still being unloaded and he saw satellite pictures of the camp. It was odd to see blobs of himself and Castiel walking around on the grounds.
"Just take a seat." Dr. Talbot swept into a tent and returned with a large first aid kit. She set it on the table next to him and took a seat. "Anywhere else besides your nose and wrists hurt?"
"Yeah." Sam lifted his hands to undo the buttons on his shirt, but his fingers felt like overcooked spaghetti and he fumbled around on the fabric, unable to tell if he was even touching the button.
"Don't bother." She pulled a pair of scissors from the kit. "Do you love this shirt?"
"Not even mine." Sam held still as she cut it off over him and winced as her fingers brushed his battered body.
"Ouch." Dr. Talbot said in sympathy as she pulled on a pair of gloves. "I'm going to have to touch you. Tell me if anything hurts more than you'd expect it to."
Sam bit his lip and swallowed his pain as she probed as his ribs and felt over his kidneys and spleen. Everything hurt, some of his ribs bothered than others. He mentioned it, but nothing was terrible. At least not internal bleeding, dying terrible.
"Okay, I've got some stuff for you here." She rinsed his arms and wrists with some sort of antiseptic solution and wrapped bandages lightly around them. "Which arm hurts less?"
Sam offered his left even though they both hurt. He looked away when she started the IV, he still felt the stab of pain when she advanced the catheter, and whatever she hooked into the port was cool inside his arm.
"That'll help with the pain. And this is for infection." She hung a second bag of fluid from a collapsible IV stand. "You'll need to see a specialist to set your nose. It looks like it settled wrong." She put her thumbs on either side of his nose and he flinched away from her.
"It can wait." Sam said, the pain was starting to dull and it made him want to avoid additional discomfort.
"Sure." Dr. Talbot sat down and closed the kit back up. "So, Sam, what was it like to go back inside?"
He looked at his feet. If his shoulders weren't so tight, he would have shrugged, but it would hurt. "I don't know. . .different."
"Sometimes it's better when a place isn't what we remember." She said and Sam sighed.
"Is there any way I can get out of this?" He asked. "I did the whole therapy thing at school when I first got out."
Now she was back to scowling, the relaxed neutral expression gone. "I'm going to be directing the care of those inside and working one-on-one with some of them. Even if you don't benefit, which I highly doubt, any insight I glean from you can help your fellows recover."
Sam sighed again. "Let's get this over with."
--
For Life
It took him six months to get back to normal. Stanford gave him a semester off, and Sam talked to Bela over the phone a couple of times. She referred him to a plastic surgeon but his nose still looked off.
"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Jess rubbed his arm and squeezed his hand, her thumb stroking over the deep groove scarred into his arm from his night in handcuffs.
"I wanted to do this a long time ago." Sam reminded her.
"We're ready for you now." Dr. Talbot opened the door and brought him into her office. "Remember, he's had six months to get this far. We are starting to see some improvement. Sam, at this point, that's a good sign."
Sam bit his lip and nodded. "I'm ready."
"All right, just stay calm. If you need to leave, do it right away. He'll just get upset if you can't stay calm." She opened the second door in her office and Sam followed her down a long white corridor. They stopped outside the last room and she opened it with her swipe card.
Sam stepped inside. "Hey Dean."
His brother was sitting upright on the bed, staring at the wall. He didn't looked when Sam came closer. He looked right through him when Sam stepped into his line of sight.
"Dean, they finally let me come visit you."
Dean blinked and met his eyes for a second. He resumed his stare into nothingness, but Sam recognized the tears sitting on the surface of his brother's eyes.
"My name is Dean Winchester. You are holding me unlawfully and against my will."
Dr. Talbot sighed and tapped Sam on the shoulder to gesture him out of the room. "I'm sorry Sam. I thought there had been some real progress."
"He's talking now. That's a good sign, right?"
Dr. Talbot shook her head. "He never says anything else."
Art Masterpost
--
First Night
The showers were cold and communal. Sam shivered in front of shower head and changed into another set of clothes, he stood out among the rest of the members. There was a cold wind blowing on his walk to the bunkhouse and the crowd of people around him huddled together and rubbed their arms for warmth.
The walls of the bunkhouse didn't do much to stop the cold. Sam climbed into his bed, scratchy sheets and thin pillow. He could still hear the wind whistling through the wooden slates of the building. Around him, noises of people slowly faded to be replaced with the snores and sniffles of the sleeping. Sam couldn't sleep. He couldn't get comfortable, between the cold and the too short bed, he missed his warm girlfriend and the warm blankets on his big bed back in California.
They'd taken his watch, so Sam waited until all of the rustling and noises had faded away. He slowly inched up in bed, pulling the blankets along with him. There was a big fleece sweater in his things and it added a layer of warmth he was going to need. His flashlight was gone too, but Sam avoided looking at the light in front of the bathroom and let his eyes try to adjust to the darkness.
The floor creaked under Sam's boots. The boards weren't sealed properly and Sam could feel air rushing up through the cracks and breezing up his pant legs. He tiptoed across the floor, trying to be light on his feet, but it didn't matter. No one stirred or so much as shifted in bed when he walked past them.
There were no windows and Sam hoped the door to the bunkhouse wasn't locked. He used to have trust and faith in the community and their care for each other, even if it was expressed in less than healthy ways. That had all changed; the openly carried weapons, the whole vein of fear which ran through nearly all of the people he'd met. He needed to talk to Bobby. Tomorrow, he'd learned a lot from the man and it was difficult to rectify the second father he knew with the bloody murderer he'd read about in microfiche.
He opened the door to the bunkhouse slowly, it wasn't locked after all. The hinges squeaked and Sam froze. He held his breath and glanced back over his shoulder, thankfully it didn't seem to have disturbed anyone. He counted himself lucky and squeezed out through the small opening he'd already created.
The wind was harsh outside, without the walls of the building to block it. Bright light was provided by tall street lamps placed around the courtyard and the buildings. Sam blinked in the sudden change of light and pulled the door closed before sneaking around the edge of the bunkhouse. He needed to get out of the light.
Sam started with the first building. The door was locked, but he twisted the knob hard and it broke off in his hand. The hinges were well oiled at least and Sam closed his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
The former cottage had supplies in it. Bags of flour, sugar, oats, and grains sat in plastic bins. There were mouse droppings, but none of the rodents appeared. Sam opened all the bags and stuck his arm in, feeling for weapons or drugs, he didn't know where they'd hide those things.
There were cartons of insecticide, pesticide, and rat poison and Sam didn't really believe it was all for the farm. Why would it be kept in a food supply shed? At the very least, it should have been kept away from the food, unless there were plans to mix it in.
Sam couldn't do anything about the broken lock or the way the knob hung oddly from the door. He walked quickly to the next cottage and this time the door opened without any resistance.
It was light inside this cottage and Sam realised his mistake as soon as he opened the door. Four men were sitting at a roughly hewn wooden table with a radio on it. All of them were heavily armed and the walkie-talkies were squawking before he could turn around and pretend that none of this had ever happened.
"Sam?" It was Dean who grabbed him and spun him around. His brother was shorter than he was now, but he was stronger and Sam stood still as those heavy hands clamped down on his shoulders.
"So this isn't the bathroom?" Sam asked weakly, not really expecting them to buy it.
The guard Castiel cocked his head and stared at Sam. "The bathrooms are located in the bunkhouses."
"He knows where the bathroom is. I showed him myself." Dean released Sam for another guard to hold while the fourth went behind and handcuffed Sam's hands behind his back.
Dean took off his walkie-talkie. "Fathers, there's a problem in the guard shed."
Sam was shoved down into a chair and his ankles were cuffed to the legs of it. The chair was low to the ground and the position forced his knees up near his chest. He hoped the FBI was getting everything through the wires in his clothes. That this was going to be worth something to them. He wished there was some way for him to know what was going on, for them to tell him what they needed. If they were going to get him out.
The guards had a hushed conversation in the corner of the room. Dean kept glancing back at Sam. Sam tried to communicate with his brother, the looks and glances they'd used to use to have an entire conversation. Nothing seemed to be going through this time.
"We'll be right back." The two guards Sam didn't know declared and they left, their holsters open and hands on their weapons.
"How could you?" Dean asked and he set a chair in front of Sam and sat down, burying his head in his hands. "I trusted you. Everyone trusted you."
Castiel patted him down. Sam lost his boots and his belt but the guard left him the rest.
"When did you accept Satan into your life?" Dean demanded, grabbing Sam's chin and forcing the younger brother to meet his eyes. "You were good and strong. How did you lose sight of everything?"
"It's not like that." Sam tugged at the ropes Castiel was fastening around him. "C'mon Dean, you know that it's not like that. We used to joke about it. It can't all be real. There's no devil waiting outside the gate."
"We were wrong!" Dean exploded in his brother's face. "We were wrong all along, can't you see that? Father Lucifer and Father Michael, Sam, they saved us. We were wrong and we were going to Hell. They showed us how to live and how to save ourselves."
Sam shook his head. "You know better than this! You're my brother. Try and think about this. Lucifer and Michael aren't good. They're bad news! Just look at their names! Honestly Dean, who names their kid Lucifer?"
"God spoke to them." Dean said, his voice changed as he slipped into storytelling mode. He'd always been better than Sam at remembering and telling the tales they'd learned from Bobby. "God told them families were drifting and to bring them together, the heavenly family first had to be made whole."
Sam couldn't help it, his jaw dropped. They'd honoured gods and goddesses before, but it wasn't like that. It was concepts of divinity and hope, he'd never expected a god to talk to anyone.
"That's enough." Castiel said and he stepped between them. "Dean, you should check the bunkhouses. Make sure no one else is out of bed."
Dean growled something, but he followed the order, letting in a rush of chilly air when he opened the door.
"Stop." Castiel said, but he didn't explain. He retreated to the door, closing it and rotating from staring at Sam to keeping watch outside the door.
"Castiel?" Sam asked, hoping he could get the guard to admit to more fault, to implicate himself in crimes. This trip had to be worth it. He was never coming back, no matter what the FBI promised him.
"Shh." The guard ordered and he opened the door. The cold air rushed in first and Sam shivered as he looked up into the icy blue eyes of Father Lucifer.
It was different now. In the darkness, with the light from the lantern glowing over the face of the leader, his blue eyes and blond hair were sinister, not handsome. His face was hard and Sam shivered again, not from the cold this time. Somehow it felt like the man's gaze was going to stab holes in his head and pin him to the wall.
"Sam, Sam, Sam."
Castiel brought a chair and Lucifer perched on the edge of it. He pushed it against the table and balanced there, like a bird, or the angel he'd taken his name from.
"Do you know what God commands us to do to those who betray us, Sam?" Lucifer's voice was casual, as if he was telling everyone at dinner what time the night's events were at.
Bible passages, ancient tales of vengeance, and graphic woodcuts of punishments flashed through Sam's head. He'd read books and been told stories in the dead of night and in the Hunter's Retreats small schoolhouse. Bobby liked to rage about punishment and sin and hell on Earth. Lucifer could have been referring to many many different punishments or so-called "laws" from forgotten passages of the good book.
"You do not deserve to live. You have sinned against us, and you have sinned against God."
Sam shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. Everyone has sinned. All of us have sinned and fallen from God. You're one to talk. You call yourself 'Lucifer'!"
Lucifer smiled. "You think you know your scripture, Sam? Lucifer was the most loyal of God's children. His father loved him above all others."
Sam wanted to say something. He wanted to snap and ask Lucifer if he just craved his daddy's approval. If someone had touched him in a bad place as a child and now he got his rocks off torturing people who just wanted to be left alone with people they cared about.
"Castiel, take him to the white cottage. This will be dealt with in the morning. Only immoral souls are still awake at this time of night. I need to return to bed."
Castiel half bowed and showed the leader out, then releasing the ropes and re-cuffing Sam's hands behind his back. His feet were bound with a rope with just enough slack for him to take a half step without falling over. "Walk." Castiel ordered, then he shepherded Sam out of the whitewashed cottage and down the path away from camp.
Sam kept his eyes open as they walked past white cottage after white cottage. He didn't know what Lucifer meant by 'the white cottage'. All of the buildings were white, and they'd never had a place to hold people in the past. Not like the empty building they'd isolated him in when he'd first arrived.
The compound still sprawled, even though everyone had been relocated to the bunkhouses and all of the women had left. The cottages were empty, dirty from disuse, and they all really needed another coat of whitewash. Sam had used to do that. The children spent the mornings painting the lower halves of the buildings. Sometimes they got to use the ladders to reach the upper parts. Sam liked the painting, he hadn't realised it was child labour and that the paint was probably giving him cancer until he'd gotten out.
There were fewer buildings now and some of them were unfinished. Cottages without windows, buildings that only had three walls and the fourth was just a few two-by-fours, all waiting for the people to return and finish them. At the end of the dirt path, sat a short squat building. It didn't have the wooden platform the rest of them did to keep them off the damp earth, and it's walls were washed and the light on the porch was on and shining brightly into the darkness.
Sam tripped when Castiel stopped and the rope around his ankles got tighter. He watched as the guard crossed himself and whispered something under his breath before he approached the building and hauled Sam along behind him.
They didn't have to knock on the door. It opened for them and Sam shivered. He didn't know this man, just something in him set his skin crawling.
"Took your sweet time." The man said and his lips twitched up into a smile for a second. "I'll take him now." He added when Castiel moved to step into the cottage.
The rope was handed off. Sam tried to see into the darkness of the cottage as he was passed between the two guards like a prisoner.
"I will return tomorrow. I'm on duty in the morning." Castiel looked at Sam when he spoke, then turned back to the man. "Our fathers are going to speak with him tomorrow."
The man frowned and shrugged. "All right then." He clamped his hand around Sam's neck and hauled him into the cottage. It was dark in here, especially after the bright light from the porch bulb. Candles flickered on a table and Sam blinked hard until his eyes adjusted to the oppressing darkness.
This wasn't a cottage design he'd seen before. It was much smaller on the inside and the walls were covered with a greyish cloth coating. There were bars over the single window and more bars on the other side of the room, but Sam couldn't see what was beyond them. There was nothing but milky darkness that swallowed everything. The man hauled Sam across the room and there must have been a key, Sam heard the click of metal on metal. The bars opened and this time, Sam tripped.
The man just let him fall, crashing down a set of stairs with his hands and feet bound. Sam heard something crack and he rolled down the last few steps, only to land face first on a dirt floor at the bottom of the flight of stairs.
"Ha." The rope tightened and Sam carefully got to his feet. His entire body ached and he was covered in dirt from his trip down. "You deserved that."
Sam had to hurry, half tripping with each step to keep up with the man. It wasn't as dark down in this basement, but there were more bars. Bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling and illuminated stacks of boxes locked behind double sets of bars. When they rounded a corner, and the basement was a lot larger than the ground floor, Sam couldn't believe his eyes.
The small rooms behind the bars weren't just holding cardboard boxes, and the entire hallway smelled like human excrement and disease.
"Ash?" Sam asked, finding his voice as he stumbled past the first cell.
"Sam?" Ash retreated away from the bars until Sam couldn't see him anymore.
"All yours." The man stopped and unlocked one of the cells, then pushed Sam in.
Sam hesitated, standing in the centre of the tiny cell. He turned around and tugged at the cuffs on his wrists. "Can you undo these?"
The man just laughed. "Naw. I don't really feel like it." He banged on the bars in front of Ash's cell and the one next to Sam. "See you soon, lovelies."
The prisoners were silent as his footsteps faded down the hallway and Sam was bursting with questions.
"Ash?"
"Sam? Did they get you too?"
Sam pressed up against the cold wet bars to crane his neck to see into Ash's cell. "What? No, I came back. Are they kidnapping now?"
"I was gone for two weeks." Ash mumbled. "They found me at a homeless shelter during recruiting."
"That sucks, man. When did you get out? Did they just leave you down here?"
"About a week after the new guys arrived. Every last one of them was a dick and no one really seemed to get that." Ash banged on the bars. "I've been down here since then."
"Seriously?" Sam asked before realising that he had never had any reason not to trust Ash. This whole mess was screwing with his head. "That was years ago!"
"Nearly three, by my reckoning." Ash said and his voice was quieter. "It doesn't really get warmer or colder down here and there's never any sunlight. I kinda just guess when I think the days change."
"Is it just you?" Sam asked and he reached his hand through the bars to point across the hallway. "Are we alone in here?"
"There have been a couple others. Some of them are new." Ash's hand pointed out through the bars. "Ava used to be across from me, but they took her and Max is in there now."
"Max Miller?" Sam asked. The Millers had come to the Hunter's Retreat, they had fled from one of the uncles who beat on the wife and son, but they'd been quiet and kept to themselves. Max had never hung out with the other kids and he spent most of his time working with his parents in the gardens rather than in the school with the rest of them.
"Yeah. He doesn't talk much. Andy used to be in your cell. I don't know what happened to him either."
"I'm sorry, really sorry, Ash. I'm trying to fix this. It might take a while, but I'm going to get you out of here." Sam wanted to say more, to tell him the FBI were listening in, but it wasn't safe.
Ash kept him engaged in conversation for what Sam guessed to be the rest of the night. His old friend had plenty of stories of the new arrivals to the Retreat, and of how quickly everything went to hell. People were kicked out of the camp or forced out of their cottages and into the bunkhouses. The school was shut down and the jobs people had created for themselves ended, while everyone was put to work in the fields.
The conversation petered out eventually, and Sam leaned against the wall, too scared to fall asleep. There was a pile of blankets in one corner of the cell, but they were filthy and he wasn't cold enough to risk lice and fleas to wrap up in them. Sam had managed to slip into a half-dozing state by the time he was startled into wakefulness by footsteps in the hall.
"The fathers want to see you." The captor sneered at him and Sam got to his feet. His legs were cramped from the cold ground and his arms were one massive pain. The handcuffs had stopped cutting into his wrists a long time ago, but he couldn't feel his hands at all anymore.
He shuffled slowly along the hall, trying to peer into the various areas behind the bars. There weren't any bodies that he could see and that was something of a relief. The stairs were steep and narrow, difficult to climb even for the unbound man behind him judging from his huffs and puffs.
"Don't move." The man warned him and he tied Sam into a chair before tilting his face up to the light. He poked at Sam's face and hot pain flashed through Sam's nose. "Broken." The man announced and Sam cringed away as the fingers moved into his line of sight again.
Sam was steeling himself to be tortured when the front door opened and Castiel, the guard who hadn't hurt him yet, came in.
"Azazel." Castiel said and the man backed off. Sam could feel hot blood dripping down his face again, but there was nothing he could do about it.
"Relax brother, I didn't touch him." But even as he spoke, Azazel stepped away from Sam.
"Remove the cuffs, I'll take him from here."
Azazel grumbled something, but a moment later, Sam was inching his arms back in front of his body, his shoulders loudly protesting the movement. His hands were bright red and swollen, and there were bloody bruised lines around his wrists where the cuffs had been.
Castiel looked pointedly at the ropes that still encircled Sam's body and Azazel removed them too. He muttered something about jumped up bottom feeders and his fingers pinched hard into Sam's flesh as he pulled the ropes free. Sam stood up and stretched, his body wanted to curl in on itself and nap for a good long while, but Castiel was heading to the door and Sam reluctantly followed after him.
"There are people in there." Sam said once the door had closed behind them.
"I know." Castiel answered. He stopped walking down the path and turned back. Sam met his gaze and shivered, the guard had the same blue eyes as Lord Lucifer, only his weren't as piercing, dead, and cold.
"Is Lord Lucifer your brother?" Sam asked and Castiel started walking back towards the prison cottage.
"He is my Father." Castiel opened his holster and drew his gun. "But we were born of the same flesh. Bend down, the cameras can still see you."
Sam pulled his aching limbs in as tightly as he could and stayed low to the ground as he followed Castiel past the white cottage and across the swath of grass beyond it. The tree line was sparse at first, but they walked into denser and denser patches of woodland. Sam's eyes fixed on Castiel's drawn gun. Had he just been taken out here to be shot?
"Just stay quiet." Castiel said, his voice lower than a whisper. "They will notice soon, if they haven't already."
Those didn't sound like the words of someone about to shoot him. Sam kept his head down and tried to get his breathing under control. Fear and adrenaline were racing through his body and he was breathing harder now than he usually did on his morning runs.
"Shh." Castiel warned. "They'll search the grounds. I need to listen."
They didn't stay still for long. Castiel looked intently into the distance, not that there was anything besides trees to be seen, and Sam almost expected the guard to press his ear to the ground like some sort of Lord of the Rings fanatic. Sam followed when he was motioned to move. The trees and brushes rustled around him as he shuffled through the forest.
The sun was up by the time the trees had thinned out enough for the light to get through. Old dead leaves cracked under Sam's feet and Castiel kept shooting looks back at him whenever he made noise.
"Close enough." Castiel had to grab him, Sam was exhausted, cold, and his feet hurt. He would have liked to just keep walking along until they could stop for good. All of this starting and stopping made the trek so much worse.
"The fence is close by. It will be watched."
Sam hugged himself with his arms. It didn't really help him stay warm, but he could try. "Where are we going?"
"Away." Castiel answered and he reached above his head to grab a tree branch. When he jumped, Sam knocked into him as hard as he could and brought the guard to the ground, pinning him until the gun was several feet away from both of them.
"Is this all part of the trick? Make me think I'm getting away and then show me how it can never happen?"
Castiel shook his head minutely, he couldn't move it very much, Sam had him pinned tightly. "It was time to leave. I couldn't stand it and there wasn't anything I could do for the rest of the prisoners. At least you had a chance."
Sam relented his hold and sat up. He offered his hand to Castiel and tugged the guard into a sitting position on the cold wet ground next beside him. "I don't trust you."
"You can always go back to the camp." Castiel offered. "Now, pick up the gun before the moisture seeps into it. I still might need it."
"I'll be holding the gun." Sam lifted it off the ground and looked over it quickly and carefully, the way his father had taught him.
Castiel shrugged. "I know better than you who to shoot, but I won't fight with the only person holding a gun." He pointed to the thinning trees ahead of them, "We need to leave before these fields fill for morning work."
Sam kept the gun drawn and at the ready. He walked quietly now, picking his feet up and thinking about where he placed them. They were large enough and still crunched leaves underfoot, but it was slightly better and he kept his senses on the alert for other guards or for Castiel to turn on him.
The forest ended abruptly. There were crops planted in the field that followed, in between the tree stumps where the firewood had been harvested from. A good few hundred metres away, the high fence topped with barbed wire and a security camera broke the idyllic view of farm life.
"Be ready to run." Castiel warned. He undid his bullet proof vest. "I'll go over the fence first and we'll use this to protect ourselves from the barbed wire."
Sam nodded. "You go first, I'll cover you."
The guard took a deep breath and set off running. The security camera didn't instantly turn to follow him and no other guards appeared, Sam started off behind him, picking his way through the tree stumps and swinging the gun from side to side in case someone appeared to hinder their escape.
"C'mon on! Boost me up!" Castiel had his fingers entwined in the metal links of the fence and Sam pushed hard on his butt, giving him the extra boost he needed to get to the top. "Watch the wire!" Castiel yelled as he jumped down on the free side of the fence.
Sam had to jump to get high enough up. The bullet proof vest didn't do much to stop the barbed wire and the protection it did offer only covered a very small area. Sam hissed as he jumped to freedom and his shirt ripped, the skin underneath it suffering the same fate.
"Gotta go!" Castiel pulled at his sleeve and they set off down the road at a breakneck pace.
It wasn't until they were about to round a steep bend that Sam realised he no longer had the gun. And when seven men in military fatigues with heavy weapons met them on the road, he realised that Castiel didn't have the gun either.
The men didn't say anything to them. One of them barked something into a mic attached to his shoulder, but Sam couldn't make out the words. Once there was a fresh pair of handcuffs fastened around his wrists, he was in too much pain to worry about whatever Lord Lucifer was going to do to him for this. He just hoped he would be killed rather than languish in the underground cells for years.
They separated him from Castiel, and as he was frogmarched along between the burly guards, Sam wondered again if it had all been a ploy. The punishment for desertion was death, at least according to most of the religions Bobby had taught him. The older man used to rage at the front of the classroom, shaking his fist as he listed out crimes. Each and every one of them punishable only by death.
Sam was expecting a long walk back to the compound, and he was surprised when they rounded another bend in the road and stopped at an encampment filled with men in fatigues, vans with tinted windows, and more heavy artillery than an NRA meet up in Texas.
The escorts stopped and when Sam got a good look at the man his guards had stopped in front of, he realised it wasn't a man at all. In fact, now as his fear and adrenaline died down, he noticed name patches on the fatigues, and the weapons didn't have their information filed off.
"We've got them at the base camp sir." The woman said into her lapel mic, and Sam looked over his shoulder to see if Castiel was still there. The guard was being searched and there were several knives on the ground next to him, along with one of the little snub-nosed pistols Sam had never been allowed to shoot.
"Bring them in." The mic said, crackling back to life.
He got patted down too. Not as thoroughly as Castiel, more of a perfunctory stroke over his arms and legs, not that there was anything to find. No hidden knives or tiny guns for him.
Only one of the men brought them through the camp and up to the side of a van. When they got close enough for Sam to read the license plate, he realised what was going on and wondered if he should say anything in front of Castiel. Their escort knocked and Special Agent Victor Hendrickson opened the door. His suit was covered with a tactical vest and windbreaker, both of which proclaimed to the world, FBI.
"Sam." Agent Hendrickson had their handcuffs removed and showed them into the back of the van and asked the agent outside to send over someone named Bela. "And you must be our inside man." He clapped Castiel on the back and offered them both bottles of water.
"Did you hear?" Sam asked, waving a hand over his body, trying to imply the wires he'd been hiding.
"Yep. The warrants went through, the ACLU is backing us due to various human rights violations. The Wayward Sons are going down." Hendrickson grinned. "I'm a little surprised you made it out alive. And without your brother."
Sam looked at his hands. They were starting to hurt again, the bruises deepening as blood flow returned to his extremities and swelling enough to make his shirt sleeves uncomfortably tight around the wrist.
"Dean Winchester will not leave." Castiel said, his voice was deep and had that distant tone about it again. "He loves our fathers and will not betray them."
Hendrickson shrugged. "Not my area of expertise. Are you the one who sent this?" He gave Castiel the note in a sealed plastic bag. When the former compound guard nodded, Hendrickson got that shit eating grin back. "Excellent. We'll need your testimony and any information you can provide. My men are heading in soon and weapons, numbers, troop positions, whatever you can give us would help."
Castiel nodded. "Do you have paper?" He reached into his pocket, "And a pen? Your men took all of my things."
As Castiel bent over his new task, ink already filling the pages, Sam found himself the subject of Hendrickson's scrutiny. "Thank you, Sam. All of these people will get another chance. And if they had mobilised and carried out whatever insane Armageddon plan, who knows how many lives would have been lost?"
Sam nodded and something inside his face shifted painfully. "Can I go home?" He asked, his voice small and quiet. He didn't really have hope for his brother and father, Ash maybe. But he could see everyone later, after he saw a doctor and got some sleep.
"Soon." Hendrickson opened the back of the van. "We'll get you something to eat and someone to talk to." He stepped out and Sam followed him. "Speak of the devil! Bela, you're just the woman I wanted to see."
A young woman in a fancy fed suit with an FBI windbreaker nodded. She didn't smile and her arms were crossed over her chest. Sam immediately didn't like her. "Is this the guy you sent back in?"
"Sam Winchester, this is Dr. Talbot. She's a specialist in deprogramming." Hendrickson put one foot in the van. "You know where I'll be."
Once he was gone, Dr. Talbot's face softened the tiniest bit. "Come with me, I'll get you checked out and I think there's still some hot coffee somewhere."
Sam followed her, always staying a step behind as they walked through the tents and vans that made up the camp. Things were still being unloaded and he saw satellite pictures of the camp. It was odd to see blobs of himself and Castiel walking around on the grounds.
"Just take a seat." Dr. Talbot swept into a tent and returned with a large first aid kit. She set it on the table next to him and took a seat. "Anywhere else besides your nose and wrists hurt?"
"Yeah." Sam lifted his hands to undo the buttons on his shirt, but his fingers felt like overcooked spaghetti and he fumbled around on the fabric, unable to tell if he was even touching the button.
"Don't bother." She pulled a pair of scissors from the kit. "Do you love this shirt?"
"Not even mine." Sam held still as she cut it off over him and winced as her fingers brushed his battered body.
"Ouch." Dr. Talbot said in sympathy as she pulled on a pair of gloves. "I'm going to have to touch you. Tell me if anything hurts more than you'd expect it to."
Sam bit his lip and swallowed his pain as she probed as his ribs and felt over his kidneys and spleen. Everything hurt, some of his ribs bothered than others. He mentioned it, but nothing was terrible. At least not internal bleeding, dying terrible.
"Okay, I've got some stuff for you here." She rinsed his arms and wrists with some sort of antiseptic solution and wrapped bandages lightly around them. "Which arm hurts less?"
Sam offered his left even though they both hurt. He looked away when she started the IV, he still felt the stab of pain when she advanced the catheter, and whatever she hooked into the port was cool inside his arm.
"That'll help with the pain. And this is for infection." She hung a second bag of fluid from a collapsible IV stand. "You'll need to see a specialist to set your nose. It looks like it settled wrong." She put her thumbs on either side of his nose and he flinched away from her.
"It can wait." Sam said, the pain was starting to dull and it made him want to avoid additional discomfort.
"Sure." Dr. Talbot sat down and closed the kit back up. "So, Sam, what was it like to go back inside?"
He looked at his feet. If his shoulders weren't so tight, he would have shrugged, but it would hurt. "I don't know. . .different."
"Sometimes it's better when a place isn't what we remember." She said and Sam sighed.
"Is there any way I can get out of this?" He asked. "I did the whole therapy thing at school when I first got out."
Now she was back to scowling, the relaxed neutral expression gone. "I'm going to be directing the care of those inside and working one-on-one with some of them. Even if you don't benefit, which I highly doubt, any insight I glean from you can help your fellows recover."
Sam sighed again. "Let's get this over with."
--
For Life
It took him six months to get back to normal. Stanford gave him a semester off, and Sam talked to Bela over the phone a couple of times. She referred him to a plastic surgeon but his nose still looked off.
"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Jess rubbed his arm and squeezed his hand, her thumb stroking over the deep groove scarred into his arm from his night in handcuffs.
"I wanted to do this a long time ago." Sam reminded her.
"We're ready for you now." Dr. Talbot opened the door and brought him into her office. "Remember, he's had six months to get this far. We are starting to see some improvement. Sam, at this point, that's a good sign."
Sam bit his lip and nodded. "I'm ready."
"All right, just stay calm. If you need to leave, do it right away. He'll just get upset if you can't stay calm." She opened the second door in her office and Sam followed her down a long white corridor. They stopped outside the last room and she opened it with her swipe card.
Sam stepped inside. "Hey Dean."
His brother was sitting upright on the bed, staring at the wall. He didn't looked when Sam came closer. He looked right through him when Sam stepped into his line of sight.
"Dean, they finally let me come visit you."
Dean blinked and met his eyes for a second. He resumed his stare into nothingness, but Sam recognized the tears sitting on the surface of his brother's eyes.
"My name is Dean Winchester. You are holding me unlawfully and against my will."
Dr. Talbot sighed and tapped Sam on the shoulder to gesture him out of the room. "I'm sorry Sam. I thought there had been some real progress."
"He's talking now. That's a good sign, right?"
Dr. Talbot shook her head. "He never says anything else."