What Once Was Lost - Sam/Dean - 1/6
Title: What Once Was Lost - 1/6
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3013 - 15,637 total
Warnings: mentions of child torture/murder (no graphic details)
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own them. If I did there would be a lot more touching.
Summary: 13 years ago Sam was left behind while his father and brother went on a hunt. Now, the sadistic cultists that Dean thought his father had destroyed are killing children again and Sam finds out that the long ago hunt didn’t go as smoothly as he had been told.
Author's Notes: This story is complete and has 6 parts all together. It was supposed to be longer, but then I decided I loved this 'verse too much to just be done with it. So there will be much more to come after this. And a BIG hug and thanks to my bestest Supernatural buddie plutogirl10 for holding my hand through this story and telling me I'm wonderful, even when I insist I'm not.
What Once Was Lost
“I think I found our next gig.” Sam looked over at Dean from his bed, computer perched on his knees.
“You think?” Dean asked from his place in front of the bathroom mirror. He wiped the remnants of shaving cream off his face and wandered out of the bathroom to look over Sam’s shoulder.
Sam’s hand slid across Dean’s hip and rested at his back, thumb hooked into the loop at the back of his jeans, fingertips brushing the skin beneath the hem of his shirt. Dean made no acknowledgment of the gesture, other than the subtle shift of his hips closer to Sam’s chair.
“Well, it could be one of our things or it could be some sick freak kidnapping a bunch of kids and torturing them.”
“Kids, huh?” His voice sounded casual, indifferent, but Sam could read the tension in his body like a book. His brother may claim to not like kids, at least when no pretty mothers were around, but Sam knew that Dean went after the creatures that hurt kids with a deep, burning hate.
“Yeah, so far six kids have gone missing in as many days, and this hasn’t been updated since this morning so who knows if whatever it is has taken another. All of them are between the ages of 12 and 14. Four have been found, according to this site, ‘tortured and maimed’ with satanic symbols carved into their skin. The symbols look familiar but I can’t place them. Look.”
Sam clicked on a picture that accompanied the report and an enlargement popped up. On the screen was a picture of a young boy’s chest, covered in knife wounds in strange, archaic shapes. The boy couldn’t have been more than 12.
Sam looked over his shoulder at Dean, whose face had gone deathly pale. “Where is this?” Dean demanded, his voice quiet; dark.
“Uh…” Sam clicked back to the report and quickly scanned the screen. “Pennsylvania. About 70 miles outside of Pittsburg.”
“Fuck!”
Sam jumped when Dean shouted, startled by the anger in his brother’s voice. Dean walked over to the other side of the room and started throwing their freshly cleaned weapons into a bag.
“Get your shit together, we’re leaving,” Dean ordered as the rest of their things followed the weapons.
“Dean-”
“Now, Sam!”
Sam closed the computer and watched helplessly as Dean gathered their belongings and walked out the door. He glanced around the room, grabbing two forgotten knives and his cell phone, and followed Dean out to the car.
Dean was standing over the trunk of the car, staring down at the polished black metal, his faced twisted into a grimace of anger and pain. “We’ll never make it in time,” Sam heard him whisper to himself. He jumped again when Dean’s fist slammed down on the trunk hard enough to leave a dent.
“Dean…” Sam tried again to get his brother’s attention but Dean ignored him. Simply barked a quick ‘get in the car’ as he slammed his own door.
An hour passed in silence, Sam watching his brother drive in speeds far exceeding the signs they passed in a blur, Dean staring out the window with an expression on his face too tortured for Sam to properly read. Every few minutes he would glance down at the clock on the radio and his jaw would twitch, teeth grinding so hard Sam was sure they would start to break soon.
“Dean,” Sam said quietly when the silence became too loud to bear. “What’s going on?”
Dean’s jaw tightened and he breathed in sharply through his nose, his brow furrowed in anger. “I know these sick sons-of-bitches.” He growled, eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. “I’ve… dealt with them before.”
Sam watched his brother closely but Dean didn’t say anything more. “Why aren’t they dead?”
“They are,” he hissed, hands clenching on the wheel. “They should be. I don’t get it. Dad killed them.”
“Are you sure it’s them?” Sam asked. He was terrified of the look in his brother’s eyes. He had never seen Dean like this before. He truly looked like a hunter. A killer.
“Yes.” Dean’s hands tightened on the wheel and he glanced back down at the clock again. “I know those symbols.”
“Maybe they are the same people. Maybe they’re just… dead.”
“No. No, Dad took care of them. Salted and burned the sons-of-bitches, I know he did. I don’t get it.” He looked down at the clock again and his fist came down on the steering wheel.
Sam reached over and grabbed his hand, holding on tightly when Dean tried to pull away. “Dean, what is going on?” he asked as he pried loose Dean’s tense fingers and carefully set his hand on the seat. He wanted to hold on to his brother, pull him into his arms and hold him until the tension left his shoulders and the darkness left his eyes. But he knew Dean would have none of that.
His brother let out a deep sigh, bringing his hand up to his eyes and rubbing it across his creased face. “13 years ago--fuck, exactly 13 years--Dad and I worked this job. Do you remember? We left you with Pastor Jim. Do you remember?”
“Uh…” Sam racked his memory for his tenth year, trying to think of the things that had happened. “Yeah. You… you were supposed to be gone for like, four days but you were gone almost two weeks.”
“Yeah.” Dean’s hands tightened on the wheel again. “There was this cult. They took kids, every thirteen years. Thirteen kids in thirteen days, every thirteen years. God I hate that number.”
Sam watched as a myriad of emotions rolled across his brother’s face. He breathed deeply, glanced at the clock. “The job went bad. It… but he got them. I know he got them. The sick fucks use these kids… they…”
Sam reached his hand out and touched Dean’s shoulder but Dean jerked away from him. He glanced at the clock again. “They use them for some ritual. They use them for blood magic. They torture them.”
“Oh.” Sam was at a loss for words. That was bad enough, but Dean kept talking.
“Each part of the ritual, one for each kid, lasts twenty-four hours. They take the kids the day before, so they’re ready at… at midnight when they…”
Dean went silent, his jaw clenching, his back rigid. Sam watched him, hating that he couldn’t help. “At midnight they kill one kid,” Sam whispered. “Then they start the next part of the ritual.”
Dean flinched, eyes blinking too fast, glancing down at the clock. They had started in Memphis, more than a ten hour drive to Pittsburg even the way Dean was driving, already late in the night. They would never make it in time to save the girl that had been taken yesterday afternoon.
Sam understood Dean’s dark mood now; the pain in his eyes. It tore Dean’s heart, took away a piece of him, every time they failed to save someone. And to fail a child, to know there was nothing they could do to save the thirteen year old girl, had to be killing him inside.
“Dean… you-”
“Don’t, Sam.” Dean’s hands clenched around the wheel. “Just don’t.” Sam sighed and turned away from his brother to stare out into the darkness outside his window. There was nothing he could say.
***
Hours passed in silence, nothing but the hum of the car beneath them bringing life to the darkness. Dean drove too fast, recklessly fast, even though there was no way. But every time his eyes flicked to the clock he would add a little more speed, clench the wheel a little tighter.
Sam watched the clock too, unable to look away from the bright green numbers that told the story of a child’s death. At midnight Sam sighed, feeling broken already. Dean didn’t look away from the road.
“We have 24 hours until they kill the next kid,” he said, his voice rough, determined. The car sped up just a little more and the world outside flew by in a dark blur.
***
“This is it; this is the town,” Sam said, shutting the atlas he held in his lap and tossing it into the back of the car. It was just after 5 AM. They had made the drive in less than 9 hours, the morning light not even blooming over the horizon yet.
“There’s a police station at the end of this road.” He opened the glove box and searched through the pile of ID’s to find the two he wanted. He placed Dean’s on the seat beside his brother and slipped his into his jacket pocket.
Dean reached over and picked up the fake FBI identification, pocketing it as his eyes scanned the road ahead. “They won’t know anything,” he said. “These people are too good. Dad and I couldn’t find anything on them last time. Who they were, where they were hiding the kids. Nothing.”
“How did you find them?” Dean’s jaw twitched and his eyes went dark.
“I was a decoy,” he said as he pulled into the police station parking lot. “They took me and Dad… Dad followed them.”
“Dad used you as bait?” Sam asked, horrified. “You were just a kid.”
The car turned off and Dean looked at Sam for the first time in hours. “Yeah, well, it worked.”
“You could have been hurt,” Sam argued, angry at the risk their father had taken with his own son’s life.
Dean’s body stiffened and he looked away from Sam. “Let’s go.” He got out of the car, slamming the door behind him so hard the car shook.
***
“I have to say, I‘m glad you’re here.” The sheriff looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, lines in his face that shouldn’t be there. “I just don’t know what to do.”
Sam and Dean sat in front of Sheriff Mitchell’s desk, Dean’s knee bouncing; anxious energy needing to move. “After we realized what was happening we sent word out to the whole area, telling them to keep track of their kids, not let them go anywhere alone. But then that girl disappeared right out of her yard. No one even saw it happen.”
He ran a hand over his face and leaned forward, shifting through the files on his desk. “Then there are the ones that don’t even try. This boy was walking home from school all alone. Ryan Hale. He disappeared yesterday. He makes seven, in seven days.”
Sam took the file from him, looking down at the school picture of a young boy, no more than thirteen, that was clipped to the top. He was so young, so innocent. Freckles spattered the bridge of his nose and his big, dark brown eyes stared back at Sam from the file.
Dean took the papers from Sam and stared down at the report. “This says he was reported missing by a gas station attendant?”
The sheriff nodded, a dark, angry look crossing his face. “The mother didn’t even realize he was missing. The attendant said the kid stopped there every day on his way home to get a soda, so when he didn’t show up, and with everything that was going on, he called the police. Sent a guy to the kid’s house to see if he had just been picked up from school or something and the mother said… well, I won’t repeat what she said. Doesn’t even think he’s been taken though. Thinks he’s just pulling some teenage stunt. But I talked to his teachers. He’s not the kind of kid that would do that.”
“She doesn’t care that he’s gone?” Sam asked, angry and confused. How could any mother not care that her child was missing?
“From what my officer said, she probably wouldn’t even remember what he looked like.”
Dean stood abruptly and tossed a hasty ‘thank you’ over his shoulder before leaving the room. Sam watched, helpless and worried.
“Is he okay?” Sheriff Mitchell asked.
Sam nodded and stood, leaning over the desk to shake the sheriff’s hand. “He’s fine, it’s just… cases with kids get to him.”
Mitchell nodded and stood up to see Sam to the door. “You stop these son’s-of-bitches, you hear me? I don’t care what it takes.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
“Are you going to talk to me about this?” Sam asked, his voiced pitched low as they waited for Ryan’s mother to answer her door. Dean hadn’t spoken a word since he had fled the sheriff’s office and Sam was quickly tiring of his stoic, stone-faced silence.
“Nothing to talk about,” Dean muttered, banging angrily on the trailer door for the third time.
“Nothing… what about the fact that I have no idea what’s going on? What about the fact that these people are supposed to be dead? What about the fact that we have no idea where to find this kid and being here isn’t going to help!”
“Sam, shut-”
The door swung open with a bang and the disheveled, drunk woman that filled the doorway barked an angry ‘what?’ at them. Dean turned away from Sam, fists clenching at his sides as his eyes raked over the sorry sight in front of them.
The woman was old before her time, tired and lost in her own addictions. Sam couldn’t even tell if she had once been beautiful or not; she certainly wasn’t now. Sam could hear the barely there growl that came from his brother’s throat and he stepped in front of Dean, blocking his view of the woman.
“Ma’am, we’re from the FBI. My name is Agent Stokes; this is my partner, Agent Williams. We’re here to ask you some questions about your son, Ryan.”
The woman brought a cigarette to her lips, ignoring the hand Sam had held out to her. She took a long drag then flicked it to the ground, coughing as she turned back inside. “Like I told that damn cop, Ryan ain’t missing and he sure as hell ain’t been kidnapped. The ungrateful little bastard just wandered off again. Not the first time.”
Dean moved for the door but Sam blocked him again. “Cool the fuck off or go to the car,” he hissed into Dean’s ear before following the woman into the filthy trailer.
Beer cans and cigarette butts were scattered everywhere, there were dirty dishes piled across every surface in the tiny kitchen; Sam could barely see down the hallway toward the bedrooms. A man lay sprawled across the ancient sofa, a beer bottle in one hand, joint dangling from the limp fingers of the other. Dean followed him into the trailer, breathing harshly through his nose.
“Ma’am, we have reason to believe that Ryan was kidnapped,” Sam said, standing carefully in the middle of the mess. The woman stumbled over to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of beer. Sam wondered if she was getting a really early start, or if she hadn’t yet stopped from the night before. His money was on the latter.
“You are aware that 6 other children have gone missing this week?”
The woman waved a hand in dismissal and took a large drink of the beer. “That ungrateful little brat has been nothing but a pain in my ass since he was born. His bastard father up and leaves me with his sorry ass, I take care of him, keep him fed and a fuckin’ roof over his head and the kid runs off every other week.
Tells me he was stayin’ at a friend’s, but he ain’t got no friends. ‘S a fucking freak, that boy.”
Dean growled and lunged at the women, grabbing her by the arms and shaking her. “Listen you bitch, your kid is-”
“Dean!” Sam grabbed the back of Dean’s jacket and pulled him away from the woman, shoving him toward the door. “Go to the car!”
Dean glared at Sam, shaking himself off and straightening his jacket as the woman started screaming. “I’ll have you’re badges! You won’t get away with this! Get out of my fuckin’ house!”
The man on the couch stirred, stumbling to his feet, the beer bottle crashing to the floor. “Who the fuck are you?” He slurred, lurching over his own feet and falling to the ground.
Sam growled and shoved Dean toward the door, forcing him outside as the woman started throwing things at them. A plate shattered by his ear as he pushed Dean outside. “What the fuck was that, Dean?” Sam demanded as they ran back to the car.
Dean spun around and shoved Sam hard, making him stumble back into the hood of the car. “Her son has been taken by a bunch of sick fucks that have been torturing him for 8 fucking hours, and she doesn’t even fucking care!”
“Dean, what if he’s not missing? What if he did just run away again?”
Dean turned away and opened the car door. “No. No, he was taken Sam. I know it. And she doesn’t care. I can’t... even if he did just run away, she should still care. She should… how can she not care?”
His eyes met Sam’s for the first time since they had left Memphis. There was so much pain behind them, tearing into Sam’s heart. “Dean…”
“Let’s go talk to the gas station attendant.” Dean slid into the car and shut the door on Sam’s unspoken question.
::: Part 2 :::
- Meagan
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3013 - 15,637 total
Warnings: mentions of child torture/murder (no graphic details)
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own them. If I did there would be a lot more touching.
Summary: 13 years ago Sam was left behind while his father and brother went on a hunt. Now, the sadistic cultists that Dean thought his father had destroyed are killing children again and Sam finds out that the long ago hunt didn’t go as smoothly as he had been told.
Author's Notes: This story is complete and has 6 parts all together. It was supposed to be longer, but then I decided I loved this 'verse too much to just be done with it. So there will be much more to come after this. And a BIG hug and thanks to my bestest Supernatural buddie plutogirl10 for holding my hand through this story and telling me I'm wonderful, even when I insist I'm not.
What Once Was Lost
“I think I found our next gig.” Sam looked over at Dean from his bed, computer perched on his knees.
“You think?” Dean asked from his place in front of the bathroom mirror. He wiped the remnants of shaving cream off his face and wandered out of the bathroom to look over Sam’s shoulder.
Sam’s hand slid across Dean’s hip and rested at his back, thumb hooked into the loop at the back of his jeans, fingertips brushing the skin beneath the hem of his shirt. Dean made no acknowledgment of the gesture, other than the subtle shift of his hips closer to Sam’s chair.
“Well, it could be one of our things or it could be some sick freak kidnapping a bunch of kids and torturing them.”
“Kids, huh?” His voice sounded casual, indifferent, but Sam could read the tension in his body like a book. His brother may claim to not like kids, at least when no pretty mothers were around, but Sam knew that Dean went after the creatures that hurt kids with a deep, burning hate.
“Yeah, so far six kids have gone missing in as many days, and this hasn’t been updated since this morning so who knows if whatever it is has taken another. All of them are between the ages of 12 and 14. Four have been found, according to this site, ‘tortured and maimed’ with satanic symbols carved into their skin. The symbols look familiar but I can’t place them. Look.”
Sam clicked on a picture that accompanied the report and an enlargement popped up. On the screen was a picture of a young boy’s chest, covered in knife wounds in strange, archaic shapes. The boy couldn’t have been more than 12.
Sam looked over his shoulder at Dean, whose face had gone deathly pale. “Where is this?” Dean demanded, his voice quiet; dark.
“Uh…” Sam clicked back to the report and quickly scanned the screen. “Pennsylvania. About 70 miles outside of Pittsburg.”
“Fuck!”
Sam jumped when Dean shouted, startled by the anger in his brother’s voice. Dean walked over to the other side of the room and started throwing their freshly cleaned weapons into a bag.
“Get your shit together, we’re leaving,” Dean ordered as the rest of their things followed the weapons.
“Dean-”
“Now, Sam!”
Sam closed the computer and watched helplessly as Dean gathered their belongings and walked out the door. He glanced around the room, grabbing two forgotten knives and his cell phone, and followed Dean out to the car.
Dean was standing over the trunk of the car, staring down at the polished black metal, his faced twisted into a grimace of anger and pain. “We’ll never make it in time,” Sam heard him whisper to himself. He jumped again when Dean’s fist slammed down on the trunk hard enough to leave a dent.
“Dean…” Sam tried again to get his brother’s attention but Dean ignored him. Simply barked a quick ‘get in the car’ as he slammed his own door.
An hour passed in silence, Sam watching his brother drive in speeds far exceeding the signs they passed in a blur, Dean staring out the window with an expression on his face too tortured for Sam to properly read. Every few minutes he would glance down at the clock on the radio and his jaw would twitch, teeth grinding so hard Sam was sure they would start to break soon.
“Dean,” Sam said quietly when the silence became too loud to bear. “What’s going on?”
Dean’s jaw tightened and he breathed in sharply through his nose, his brow furrowed in anger. “I know these sick sons-of-bitches.” He growled, eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. “I’ve… dealt with them before.”
Sam watched his brother closely but Dean didn’t say anything more. “Why aren’t they dead?”
“They are,” he hissed, hands clenching on the wheel. “They should be. I don’t get it. Dad killed them.”
“Are you sure it’s them?” Sam asked. He was terrified of the look in his brother’s eyes. He had never seen Dean like this before. He truly looked like a hunter. A killer.
“Yes.” Dean’s hands tightened on the wheel and he glanced back down at the clock again. “I know those symbols.”
“Maybe they are the same people. Maybe they’re just… dead.”
“No. No, Dad took care of them. Salted and burned the sons-of-bitches, I know he did. I don’t get it.” He looked down at the clock again and his fist came down on the steering wheel.
Sam reached over and grabbed his hand, holding on tightly when Dean tried to pull away. “Dean, what is going on?” he asked as he pried loose Dean’s tense fingers and carefully set his hand on the seat. He wanted to hold on to his brother, pull him into his arms and hold him until the tension left his shoulders and the darkness left his eyes. But he knew Dean would have none of that.
His brother let out a deep sigh, bringing his hand up to his eyes and rubbing it across his creased face. “13 years ago--fuck, exactly 13 years--Dad and I worked this job. Do you remember? We left you with Pastor Jim. Do you remember?”
“Uh…” Sam racked his memory for his tenth year, trying to think of the things that had happened. “Yeah. You… you were supposed to be gone for like, four days but you were gone almost two weeks.”
“Yeah.” Dean’s hands tightened on the wheel again. “There was this cult. They took kids, every thirteen years. Thirteen kids in thirteen days, every thirteen years. God I hate that number.”
Sam watched as a myriad of emotions rolled across his brother’s face. He breathed deeply, glanced at the clock. “The job went bad. It… but he got them. I know he got them. The sick fucks use these kids… they…”
Sam reached his hand out and touched Dean’s shoulder but Dean jerked away from him. He glanced at the clock again. “They use them for some ritual. They use them for blood magic. They torture them.”
“Oh.” Sam was at a loss for words. That was bad enough, but Dean kept talking.
“Each part of the ritual, one for each kid, lasts twenty-four hours. They take the kids the day before, so they’re ready at… at midnight when they…”
Dean went silent, his jaw clenching, his back rigid. Sam watched him, hating that he couldn’t help. “At midnight they kill one kid,” Sam whispered. “Then they start the next part of the ritual.”
Dean flinched, eyes blinking too fast, glancing down at the clock. They had started in Memphis, more than a ten hour drive to Pittsburg even the way Dean was driving, already late in the night. They would never make it in time to save the girl that had been taken yesterday afternoon.
Sam understood Dean’s dark mood now; the pain in his eyes. It tore Dean’s heart, took away a piece of him, every time they failed to save someone. And to fail a child, to know there was nothing they could do to save the thirteen year old girl, had to be killing him inside.
“Dean… you-”
“Don’t, Sam.” Dean’s hands clenched around the wheel. “Just don’t.” Sam sighed and turned away from his brother to stare out into the darkness outside his window. There was nothing he could say.
***
Hours passed in silence, nothing but the hum of the car beneath them bringing life to the darkness. Dean drove too fast, recklessly fast, even though there was no way. But every time his eyes flicked to the clock he would add a little more speed, clench the wheel a little tighter.
Sam watched the clock too, unable to look away from the bright green numbers that told the story of a child’s death. At midnight Sam sighed, feeling broken already. Dean didn’t look away from the road.
“We have 24 hours until they kill the next kid,” he said, his voice rough, determined. The car sped up just a little more and the world outside flew by in a dark blur.
***
“This is it; this is the town,” Sam said, shutting the atlas he held in his lap and tossing it into the back of the car. It was just after 5 AM. They had made the drive in less than 9 hours, the morning light not even blooming over the horizon yet.
“There’s a police station at the end of this road.” He opened the glove box and searched through the pile of ID’s to find the two he wanted. He placed Dean’s on the seat beside his brother and slipped his into his jacket pocket.
Dean reached over and picked up the fake FBI identification, pocketing it as his eyes scanned the road ahead. “They won’t know anything,” he said. “These people are too good. Dad and I couldn’t find anything on them last time. Who they were, where they were hiding the kids. Nothing.”
“How did you find them?” Dean’s jaw twitched and his eyes went dark.
“I was a decoy,” he said as he pulled into the police station parking lot. “They took me and Dad… Dad followed them.”
“Dad used you as bait?” Sam asked, horrified. “You were just a kid.”
The car turned off and Dean looked at Sam for the first time in hours. “Yeah, well, it worked.”
“You could have been hurt,” Sam argued, angry at the risk their father had taken with his own son’s life.
Dean’s body stiffened and he looked away from Sam. “Let’s go.” He got out of the car, slamming the door behind him so hard the car shook.
***
“I have to say, I‘m glad you’re here.” The sheriff looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, lines in his face that shouldn’t be there. “I just don’t know what to do.”
Sam and Dean sat in front of Sheriff Mitchell’s desk, Dean’s knee bouncing; anxious energy needing to move. “After we realized what was happening we sent word out to the whole area, telling them to keep track of their kids, not let them go anywhere alone. But then that girl disappeared right out of her yard. No one even saw it happen.”
He ran a hand over his face and leaned forward, shifting through the files on his desk. “Then there are the ones that don’t even try. This boy was walking home from school all alone. Ryan Hale. He disappeared yesterday. He makes seven, in seven days.”
Sam took the file from him, looking down at the school picture of a young boy, no more than thirteen, that was clipped to the top. He was so young, so innocent. Freckles spattered the bridge of his nose and his big, dark brown eyes stared back at Sam from the file.
Dean took the papers from Sam and stared down at the report. “This says he was reported missing by a gas station attendant?”
The sheriff nodded, a dark, angry look crossing his face. “The mother didn’t even realize he was missing. The attendant said the kid stopped there every day on his way home to get a soda, so when he didn’t show up, and with everything that was going on, he called the police. Sent a guy to the kid’s house to see if he had just been picked up from school or something and the mother said… well, I won’t repeat what she said. Doesn’t even think he’s been taken though. Thinks he’s just pulling some teenage stunt. But I talked to his teachers. He’s not the kind of kid that would do that.”
“She doesn’t care that he’s gone?” Sam asked, angry and confused. How could any mother not care that her child was missing?
“From what my officer said, she probably wouldn’t even remember what he looked like.”
Dean stood abruptly and tossed a hasty ‘thank you’ over his shoulder before leaving the room. Sam watched, helpless and worried.
“Is he okay?” Sheriff Mitchell asked.
Sam nodded and stood, leaning over the desk to shake the sheriff’s hand. “He’s fine, it’s just… cases with kids get to him.”
Mitchell nodded and stood up to see Sam to the door. “You stop these son’s-of-bitches, you hear me? I don’t care what it takes.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
“Are you going to talk to me about this?” Sam asked, his voiced pitched low as they waited for Ryan’s mother to answer her door. Dean hadn’t spoken a word since he had fled the sheriff’s office and Sam was quickly tiring of his stoic, stone-faced silence.
“Nothing to talk about,” Dean muttered, banging angrily on the trailer door for the third time.
“Nothing… what about the fact that I have no idea what’s going on? What about the fact that these people are supposed to be dead? What about the fact that we have no idea where to find this kid and being here isn’t going to help!”
“Sam, shut-”
The door swung open with a bang and the disheveled, drunk woman that filled the doorway barked an angry ‘what?’ at them. Dean turned away from Sam, fists clenching at his sides as his eyes raked over the sorry sight in front of them.
The woman was old before her time, tired and lost in her own addictions. Sam couldn’t even tell if she had once been beautiful or not; she certainly wasn’t now. Sam could hear the barely there growl that came from his brother’s throat and he stepped in front of Dean, blocking his view of the woman.
“Ma’am, we’re from the FBI. My name is Agent Stokes; this is my partner, Agent Williams. We’re here to ask you some questions about your son, Ryan.”
The woman brought a cigarette to her lips, ignoring the hand Sam had held out to her. She took a long drag then flicked it to the ground, coughing as she turned back inside. “Like I told that damn cop, Ryan ain’t missing and he sure as hell ain’t been kidnapped. The ungrateful little bastard just wandered off again. Not the first time.”
Dean moved for the door but Sam blocked him again. “Cool the fuck off or go to the car,” he hissed into Dean’s ear before following the woman into the filthy trailer.
Beer cans and cigarette butts were scattered everywhere, there were dirty dishes piled across every surface in the tiny kitchen; Sam could barely see down the hallway toward the bedrooms. A man lay sprawled across the ancient sofa, a beer bottle in one hand, joint dangling from the limp fingers of the other. Dean followed him into the trailer, breathing harshly through his nose.
“Ma’am, we have reason to believe that Ryan was kidnapped,” Sam said, standing carefully in the middle of the mess. The woman stumbled over to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of beer. Sam wondered if she was getting a really early start, or if she hadn’t yet stopped from the night before. His money was on the latter.
“You are aware that 6 other children have gone missing this week?”
The woman waved a hand in dismissal and took a large drink of the beer. “That ungrateful little brat has been nothing but a pain in my ass since he was born. His bastard father up and leaves me with his sorry ass, I take care of him, keep him fed and a fuckin’ roof over his head and the kid runs off every other week.
Tells me he was stayin’ at a friend’s, but he ain’t got no friends. ‘S a fucking freak, that boy.”
Dean growled and lunged at the women, grabbing her by the arms and shaking her. “Listen you bitch, your kid is-”
“Dean!” Sam grabbed the back of Dean’s jacket and pulled him away from the woman, shoving him toward the door. “Go to the car!”
Dean glared at Sam, shaking himself off and straightening his jacket as the woman started screaming. “I’ll have you’re badges! You won’t get away with this! Get out of my fuckin’ house!”
The man on the couch stirred, stumbling to his feet, the beer bottle crashing to the floor. “Who the fuck are you?” He slurred, lurching over his own feet and falling to the ground.
Sam growled and shoved Dean toward the door, forcing him outside as the woman started throwing things at them. A plate shattered by his ear as he pushed Dean outside. “What the fuck was that, Dean?” Sam demanded as they ran back to the car.
Dean spun around and shoved Sam hard, making him stumble back into the hood of the car. “Her son has been taken by a bunch of sick fucks that have been torturing him for 8 fucking hours, and she doesn’t even fucking care!”
“Dean, what if he’s not missing? What if he did just run away again?”
Dean turned away and opened the car door. “No. No, he was taken Sam. I know it. And she doesn’t care. I can’t... even if he did just run away, she should still care. She should… how can she not care?”
His eyes met Sam’s for the first time since they had left Memphis. There was so much pain behind them, tearing into Sam’s heart. “Dean…”
“Let’s go talk to the gas station attendant.” Dean slid into the car and shut the door on Sam’s unspoken question.
::: Part 2 :::
- Meagan