Other People Stop Looking 2/5
Other People Stop Looking
Summary: "People don't just disappear, Dean. Other people just stop looking."
Chapter One
It was time to panic.
Dean stood outside the cafe, fingering his triple-shot latte ponderously, trying very hard not to panic. Hunters don't panic. Hunters stayed calm and collected until they solved the case, killed the bad thing, saved the victim. Hunters don't panic. They researched and loaded guns with rock salt and learned exorcisms and got the job done.
Big brothers panicked, and Dean was trying very hard not to. Panicking got you no where. It certainly didn't find wayward little brothers.
So Sam hadn't even made it down the street, according to the smiling chatterbox of a woman inside the cafe. She cheerily informed Dean that, no, she hadn't seen the young man he described, and yes, she had been the only one working all day and she was sure she would have remembered him. Business was slow and only a couple of regulars had been by - that poor old Frank with his heart condition, not feeling too well, oh and the scandal, that Vicky from church was pregnant and no one knew who the father was - and what can I get you?
My brother, Dean wanted to say. Get me my brother and I'll forgive you for being so damned happy, but instead he asked for coffee, because hunters and big brothers both need caffeine if they're going to turn a town upside down.
There was no hunt. They were only in this stupid place because it had been getting late and Sam was cranky and Dean was hungry and the Impala was almost out of gas and stopping for the night had seemed like a good idea, until the next morning when Sam went out for coffee and didn't come back, and why, why did it seem like the kid had a glowing neon sign above his head proclaiming 'Take Me Home' to all the supernatural creepy crawlies?
Dean was gonna kick that kids ass when he found him, or maybe he'd just put him on a leash.
The coffee tasted burnt, bitter, but Dean wasn't really paying attention to the taste anyway, busy retracing his steps - what should have been Sam's steps - searching for a clue. The day was overcast but there was no rain to wash away any evidence. The pavement was dry. There were no other routes Sam would've taken, no other coffee shops he could have been to. It just didn't make sense.
Dean dug his phone out of his pocket, slopping coffee onto his hand, and hit redial. Just like the dozen or so tries before it went straight to 'This is Sam, leave a message.'
"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered, shoving his phone back in his pocket and wiping his hand on his jeans.
Where the hell was Sam?
XXX
Sam woke in degrees. Senses switched back online one by one. First was the dry cottony taste in his mouth, the dull ache in his head that made him wonder how much he'd had to drink the night before. Then came the realization that he was lying on a hard, flat surface, his hip and neck protesting from too long in the same position. On the floor. Why was he on the floor? Definitely had way to much to drink last night. He couldn't even remember drinking.
Sam shifted slightly, trying to find some relief and the grind of metal against metal reached his ears.
His eyes could have been glued shut for all the trouble he had opening them and it was barely worth the effort because he was merely greeted by more darkness. God, he felt sick. Never drinking again. He moved to push himself up but stilled, blinking in the black, and raised a hand to investigate the tug at his wrists.
Chains. Chains? Yes, definitely chains. Blindly, Sam took hold of one and followed it with his fingers until he reached its end. It wrapped around a vertical bar and looped back to his other wrist. He tugged at it experimentally but there was no give. He raised his other hand to explore further and felt his stomach sink as each hand found more bars as far as he could reach.
He was in a cage.
Not hungover, concussed. This was not good. Letting himself slowly sink back to the ground, he willed himself to think through the sludge he'd once called his brain, looking for some clue as to where he was, how he got there, but the best he could dredge up was a vague memory of stepping out of a motel room with the goal of fresh coffee in mind. He couldn't pick out any warning signs or recollect any struggle.
He turned his eyes back to the endless darkness around him, searching fruitlessly for shapes in the black.
"Dean?"
His voice echoed back to him, hoarse and scratchy, bouncing off the walls of what had to be empty space. There was no reply and Sam wasn't surprised. Of course Dean wouldn't have let himself be captured like this. It was always Sam who was stuck playing damsel in distress, waiting for his brother to rescue him.
"Hey!" he called, waited, listened to it echo back.
Sam sighed, then shivered. The cold had only just registered. He reached down to search his pockets for something to pick the locks of his cuffs, then stopped, huffing out a gasp of disbelief. He had no pockets. No pockets because he was barefoot and clad only in boxers and a t-shirt.
The idea of someone - and it had to be a person. Creatures didn't usually bother undressing their victims - stripping him while unconscious made his skin tingle uncomfortably. He felt violated.
"Hey!" he yelled again, but the answering silence swallowed his voice.
XXX
Sam didn't remember falling asleep. He had no idea how much time had passed before he was woken by the sudden flare of blinding florescent lights. Red burned hot behind his closed eyelids and he pressed his arm over his face.
The footsteps were loud and purposeful, two sets, heading towards him. He forced himself to open his eyes against the harsh lighting, moving his arm minutely so he could squint out from under it.
It took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust enough to see and by the time they had, two men were outside the cage. He couldn't make out their features. They stood, silhouetted, one of them fumbling with keys. Sam heard the tinkling as the man pressed one into the lock, then the door creaked open.
"Who are you?" he forced out, trying to will his vision into focusing around the bursts of colour in his retinas.
The men's heads turned to look at each other.
"Jacob said not to talk to it," one of them said, his voice gravelly and with a slight lisp, as if he was missing a few teeth.
It. The word grated unpleasantly, sending prickling fingers of foreboding up Sam's spine. Who were these people?
"What do you want?" he tried again, closing his eyes. His head hurt.
He was met with stoney silence, then the cage door clanged shut. He wrenched his eyes open and saw the retreating backs of the two men.
"Hey!" he called, but the men kept walking and he immediately lost interest when he spotted the paper cup in front of him. He pushed himself up on his elbow and reached out a chained arm, snagging the cup and tipping the water down his parched throat. It was lukewarm but it was wet and soothing, and gone too fast.
He finished the last drop just as the lights flicked off and he was again left alone in darkness.
XXX
It was late. And dark. Too late and dark to do any searching that would be worthwhile.
Dean paced the motel room, full of tense, anxious energy. He hadn't seen Sam since the morning, didn't even know what time that was because he'd been more than half asleep, offering Sam nothing more than a drowsy order for black coffee and bagels.
Bagels. God, Dean could kick himself. Seriously, if he'd known it was the last thing he was going to say to Sam he would've thought of something more meaningful.
Who was he kidding? If he'd known it was the last thing he was going to say to Sam he would've tied the kid to the bed and never let him leave.
So while Dean was sleeping, Sam had managed to get himself snatched by something. This would be a lot easier if he had something to go on, but no hunt meant no monster to find. No monster whose habits and hide outs he could track to Sam.
There was nothing. Dean had walked every possible path to and from the cafe and motel a dozen times and nothing was out of place. There were no signs of struggle anywhere, no scuffed up dirt, no blood splatters (which, though terrible, would have at least given him something to go on). Sam had simply walked out of the motel and off the face of the earth, as far as Dean could tell.
And now, it was late and dark and Dean alternated between pacing like a caged animal, trying Sam's cell even though he knew it was pointless and, when he could bring himself to sit still, furiously researching the town for any clues as to where Sam might have gone and what could have taken him.
The TV was on. The silence when it was off just emphasized the absence of Sam's usual chatter.
Actually, everything emphasized the absence of Sam.
XXX
It was maddening, being left alone in the cold silence of the black, empty room. He had no idea where he was, why he'd been taken or who by. No idea where Dean was or how long he'd been there. He had nothing to distract himself, couldn't even count the bars on his cage because it was too dark to see and he couldn't reach them.
A part of him figured that this was part of the plan, keep him in the dark, try to wear him down or scare him. All he had to do was stay calm, stay reasonable and try to think of a way out. Another part of him was building towards screaming that he had to get out, that he was gonna go nuts if they left him here much longer.
Even straining his ears, he couldn't make out any noises other than the chattering of his chains. No footsteps or voices elsewhere in the house, assuming it's a house he's in. No mumble of a TV or radio. Maybe the room was soundproof, or maybe there was just no one around. Maybe they left. Maybe that was their plan.
He wished they'd bring him more water. It had been hours since the last cup, his tongue had lost all moisture and his lips were cracking, but aside from that he just really wanted to know whether there was someone there or if this was it, really wanted the light turned on, if only for a moment because the blindness was smothering and suffocating and maybe if he could see he could find a way out, because no matter how many times his fingers search the space around him they always come back empty of any device that could help him.
XXX
The two men came back, an unimaginably long time later. Sam guessed it was morning by the faint glow of the curtains covering the lone window. There was no light let in, merely a dull gray amongst the black, until a switch was flipped and unmercifully bright artificial lighting lit up the room. It reminded Sam of the lights in hospitals, determined to illuminate every single square inch of the place, leave nothing in shadows, allow no place to hide.
Sam watched this time, rallying against the burning white light, ignoring the sting and tears that built up in his eyes. One of the men didn't look much older than Dean; blonde, with a scar that ran the length of his left cheek. He wore jeans and sneakers, a dark hoodie. He held a cup of water.
The other was much older and reminded Sam a bit of Bobby, with a baseball cap perched on a thinning head of hair, a scraggly beard freckled with gray, but his eyes were dark, his mouth set in a hard, disapproving line. They were both armed.
Sam hauled himself up so he was sitting with his back against the bars, one of his arms held against his abdomen by the lacking length of chain.
"What do you want?" He squinted against the light. "What's going on?"
Scar-face seemed to hesitate, his eyes flicking to meet Sam's.
"Don't talk to it," Baseball Cap nudged him sharply, "We don't know what it can do."
Scar-face dropped his gaze immediately. "Thought Jacob said it had visions," he muttered belligerently.
"Who's Jacob?" Sam asked.
"Shut up," Baseball Cap growled, hand hovering over his weapon as if itching to use it. "We don't know what else it can do."
Sam pushed himself up straighter, trying to raise his hands into the position of surrender, spoke clearly and reasonably, "Look, I don't know what's going on. You've got the wrong person-"
"Shut up!" Baseball Cap roared this time, his face twisting as he drew his gun from his waistband. In one smooth movement he had it aimed at Sam's face, safety off.
Sam cringed back against the bars. Cold washed through his bloodstream, he felt his heart speed up automatically.
There was the longest, tensest moment of silence. The man held his position and Sam kept his lips firmly shut, didn't even dare to breathe. Finally, Baseball Cap tilted his head at his companion, who immediately took a set of keys from his jeans pocket, almost dropping them in his haste to get the door open.
Baseball Cap kept Sam pinned against the bars, not daring to move, while Scar-face crouched down in the cages opening and pushed the cup of water forwards. Sam watched from the corner of his eye, unwilling to tear his gaze away from the firearm while it was such an immediate threat. He didn't reach for the water until the men were almost out the door, snatching it up just before the room was plunged into darkness.
XXX
Dean woke from his few hours of fitful sleep as soon as the rising sun peaked through the mandatory gap in the motel curtains. He swore halfheartedly at the light as he stumbled to the coffee-maker. It gurgled to life with a flick of the switch and Dean thunked down at the table, booting up the laptop and rubbing the remnants of sleep from his eyes.
Almost 24 hours now, since Sam had walked out the door and didn't walk back in. The possibilities were endless; vengeful spirit, ghouls, golems, werewolves, vampires, take your pick. But the town was quiet. No sign of anything supernatural that Dean could find. No suspicious missing persons reports to look into. No murders that baffled police.
Sam was so much better at research than Dean. The kid could pick out patterns and make connections in a way that would've impressed even John Winchester, had he still been alive.
Dean pushed all thoughts of his father aside as he made his way back to the coffee machine, pouring himself a cup of sugarless black. No point bringing all that up now. He needed his mind clear, not wallowing over the fact that if Sam was... gone, then he'd be the last Winchester left standing.
Dean couldn't think of anything worse.
XXX
The next time the light flicked on, hours and hours later, only the younger man with the scar appeared. Sam shut his eyes, listening to the footsteps as the man came closer. He waited for the sound of keys but the footsteps stopped a few feet from him and silence fell. Sam squinted up against the glare.
Scar-face stood there, watching him with the strangest expression on his face, eyes glum and serious, gnawing on his lower lip in a way that was so reminiscent of Dean that Sam could have cried. He wanted out. He wanted his brother to come and find him and get him out of there. He was cold and hungry and thirsty and he wanted his clothes back and the chains gone and to not be locked up in a cage like an animal.
That train of thought would get him no where.
Scar-face's weapon was tucked in his waistband, and he held another paper cup of water. Sam wondered vaguely whether there was some way to use paper cups as a means for his escape but he squashed the inane thought quickly. Even he wasn't McGyver enough for that.
The man stood there, making no move to unlock the cage, Sam growing more and more uncomfortable under his gaze. Finally, Scar-face cleared his throat.
"What's your name?"
Sam startled at the unexpected question, unsure of whether to answer or not. The last time he'd spoken had gotten him a gun aimed at his face. Not something he wanted a repeat performance of.
"I'm Damien," the man moved on, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Sam didn't reply, and slowly - as if Sam was an animal he didn't want to spook - Damien crouched down so they were closer to eye level.
"Can you hear me?" he asked.
Sam flipped the question over in his mind, trying to figure out what Damien's motives were. Trick question, maybe. Answer and get shot. No, thanks.
"Are you thirsty?"
Sam's eyes snapped back to the cup. Tempting. He watched a drip roll slowly over the man's hand.
"Hey," Damien fought for his attention. "You want water?"
Slowly, keeping an apprehensive eye on the gun, Sam nodded. Damien took the keys from his pocket and slotted one into the lock. He paused.
"Don't... try anything weird, okay?" He sounded almost worried and Sam wondered what exactly the man thought he was going to do while chained up in a cage, but he nodded his agreement anyway and stayed completely still as he watched Damien open the cage and crawl in, placing the cup just within his reach before hastily retreating, closing and locking the door behind him immediately.
He was forgotten almost completely as soon as Sam had the cup in his hands. This one he didn't drink all of straight away. Instead he took a sip and held it in his mouth for a moment, letting it roll over his tongue before allowing it to slowly slide down his parched throat. He drank half the cup before setting it aside carefully.
"The last one we had screamed."
Sam looked up, startled, unsure of what Damien meant.
"You don't scream." Sam couldn't be certain but he felt that there was an unspoken 'Not yet' at the end of that. "Are you scared?"
Sam was growing more and more confused the longer the man stood there. The visit seemed to have no purpose other than to satiate Damien's desire to talk, and Sam wasn't sure what saying the wrong thing would do to him.
Damien scratched absently at his scar. "I've been a hunter for five years, but I'll never forget the sound of that girl... thing... screaming." He considered Sam, "You all look so human. Why is that?"
"I am human," Sam said.
"What do you use your powers for?"
"I don't have powers," Sam denied.
Damien shook his head impatiently, "Don't lie. We know."
Sam fell silent, and eventually the man left.
XXX
No one came for hours. Sam figured it must have been night because the dull gray glow was gone. The darkness was complete.
Two days. Two nights. Dean must have been frantic. Sam wondered what his brother was doing at that moment. Did he have any leads? Was he close? Please let him be close.
Sam drifted but the gnawing in his stomach kept him from slipping fully into sleep. The cup of water was long since gone. He lay on his side on the floor, uncomfortable but no position he could find was comfortable, using his fingers to inspect every link of the chain that held him, looking for a weak spot. His wrists hurt and it was cold and he would have given absolutely anything for Dean to appear by the cage, jingling keys in one hand and giving him a cocky grin. He could almost hear his brothers voice, a mix of fury and relief, saying, "Don't worry, Sammy, I'll have you out in a minute."
Sam had never wanted to see the inside of a motel room so badly. He lay in the darkness and tried to sleep, wondering whether Dean was sleeping. He doubted it. Dean was looking for him. Dean would find him.
XXX
Dean had no idea where to look.
The trail, or lack thereof, had gone cold. He'd turned the town upside down, researched every building that could possibly house a ghost, ghoul, zombie, shape-shifter, whatever. He'd been 'this close' to beginning a door to door search of every house in the whole Goddamned town, using whatever excuse or badge that he could come up with, when night had fallen on the second day of Sam's disappearance.
He was on what must have been his eighth or ninth cup of coffee and the words on the laptop were blurring slightly.
He'd hacked into the police records but no one matching Sam's description had been arrested in the last two days. He'd checked the hospital but had again come back empty handed. No John Does admitted. No, don't recognize the guy in that photo, sorry. And after two hours of silent panic and stern talks to himself, he had built up the courage to check the morgue.
Sam wasn't there. Sam wasn't dead. Dean was sure that he would have felt... something if Sam was, but while there weren't words to describe the relief he felt at the morgue being a dead end (no pun intended), he'd take hospitalized or arrested Sam over vanished-into-thin-air Sam any day.
People went missing every day. Teenagers ran away from home, children were abducted by estranged parents, men and women were murdered and dumped somewhere that no one would ever find them. People were taken and never seen again.
It would all seem hopeless but Dean couldn't stop thinking of some half-remembered quote from Sam, a little thing that Sam probably didn't even remember saying, but Dean clung to it like a lifeline.
"People don't just disappear, Dean. Other people just stop looking for them."
Dean wasn't going to stop looking. No way. He was going to find Sam.
He'd called Bobby when his ideas had run out. The older hunter had gone quiet when Dean had told him the name of the town he was in, and had told Dean firmly, "You stay where you are. I'll be there in 24 hours," then he hung up.
So Bobby knew something, or thought he knew something, but it wasn't getting Dean any closer to Sam and 24 hours is a long, long time.
Dean waited and paced - he was going to wear out the carpet - and tried very hard not to focus on Sam's duffel that sat forlornly by his bed. He couldn't bring himself to pick up Sam's things; the shirt dropped on the bathroom floor, the book, spine-bent and dog-eared, that must have fallen off the bedside table at some point, a stack of research on some creature - because Sam's such a geek he researches monsters in his free time - left on the table next to the laptop. It was like everything was waiting for Sam to return, and Dean couldn't help the irrational hope that if he just left everything in place, frozen in time, Sam would find his way back to it.
XXX
"What are you?"
Sam wearily lifted his head from his knees. Damien was crouched low, regarding him with his usual suspicious curiosity.
"I don't know what you mean."
"I want to know what you are. What are your intentions?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't have any intentions."
Damien rubbed his fingers together like he was itching for a cigarette, cocked his head to look at Sam.
"Five years of hunting and you kids... it's something different, you know?"
Sam didn't know, had no idea what Damien meant, so he stayed silent.
"They're coming, you know. Jacob's coming. Now. You should prepare yourself."
"What's he gonna do?"
Even Damien looked distinctly unsettled by the idea of Jacob's visit. "Nothing good, kid."
XXX
TBC
Chapter Two