if love sits on your heart like stone (1/5)
one;; if you are unreachable
On the fifth day, Dean goes mute.
It’s not the first time it has happened, but this time it’s different. It’s not out of self-preservation, afraid to lose the last piece he’s got of himself, like when his Mom died, and it’s not because he’s been swallowing all the words back after realizing there was no one left to listen to him, like when Sammy left for school. But he turns mute anyway, because Sam’s gone and he’s taken all of Dean’s words with him.
Eight days later, Dean breaks his promise to Sam for the first time.
He tries, he really does - tells himself it’s just like Stanford, four years will have blown past before he knows it, but it isn’t, and not even a minute has blown past when he realizes he’s screwing up whatever it is he’s trying to do. To be fair, Sam is an idiot if he ever thought Dean was just going to find a woman with a kid and just start living an apple-pie life like his brother isn’t stuck somewhere with the Devil and a douchey archangel. But then again, they’re still in the slow process of finally understanding the depth of their bond. He figures he can probably forgive Sam for being a little slow on the uptake.
All the same, the result is that after thirteen days of hideous grimace-smiles and pleasantly morbid daydreams of his trusty .45 misfiring (and far less pleasant nightmares of Sam stuck in the Cage), he leaves Lisa’s place, and hightails it out of Illinois. It’s a bit more difficult than it would have been, because for some reason, Lisa has gotten it into her head that Dean is suicidal, and watches him like a hawk. Thing is, Dean is nothing if not trained from pretty much age five onwards by a battle-hardened ex-Marine, so hawk or not, stealth serves him well.
Halfway out of the state, he has to admit that Sam is a fairly wise idiot, if inarguably an idiot, because short of going back to Lisa, he has no idea what to do with himself.
It doesn’t take long, though - there’s always been one similarity between him and Sammy, one thing carved into their DNA - and that’s the unmistakable, unwavering, driven need of ‘find my brother, find my brother, find my brother’, when either one of them is gone, dead. It’s the tattooing of a relentless beat against his eardrums, the one battle-cry he can register, bright and painful and always there - until it’s flowing, rushing through his veins, consuming all his senses until the only thing that makes sense is Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam Sammy Sam Sam-
---
It gets easier after that.
Sort of. Not really. It doesn’t ever get easier, that’s what he’s starting to realize. He’s always known that, recognized that that block of void within him would only stay, stagnant and never healing, until he got his brother back - but he’d never quite gotten around to experiencing it.
Sam has, he knows. Six months in Broward County, six months that he never mentioned after that one time he broke down and babbled half-coherently about not being able to do it, hands scrabbling at Dean and squeezing so tight he thought he might break a bone - and then four months. When he was in Hell.
Research doesn’t bore him anymore, simply frustrates him (because there’s nothing, there’s nothing you can do, Dean, there’s nothing you can ever do) and he shoves at it, shoves it down as it bubbles up in his throat as a half-formed scream, shoves it down because he has no time for tantrums - Sam has no time - and continues looking.
Lisa calls, sometimes. He didn’t pick up the first time, let it go to voicemail, and listened afterwards. Her voice is warm and concerned and something else - angry, he thinks, listening. Angry but trying not to be. It’s okay. Once he gets Sammy back, everything will fall into place, he just needs - he just needs Sam back.
But as she ends the message, her voice is just quiet, understanding almost. “You don’t have to say anything, Dean. I know -” She breaks off, because no, she doesn’t know. Not really. John knows how Dean stopped speaking after Mary died, but nobody knows that it was Sammy who gave him his voice back, babbling and pulling at Dean’s arms and staring up at him with those puppy eyes, wondering why Dean was silent.
“Just let us know you’re okay,” she finally says, sigh in her voice that’s part concern, part helplessness.
That? That he can do. Lying he does incredibly well - even without a voice. So he picks the phone up when she calls, rifling through books centuries old, and just... breathes.
It lasts for a moment, and then like an alarm clock right on time, he remembers that breathing is something Sam isn’t allowed to do anymore, that it’s a luxury not shared between them, a luxury that he doesn’t deserve, not alone - so he hangs up before he can choke audibly on nothing, texts “im ok” one-handedly into the phone, and hits send. It’s not difficult to push everyone to the back of his mind, far seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths from that one goal he has, up to and including the woman he loves, whether or not he’s in love with her. It should scare him, and it does at first, a little, when he’s lying on the bed trying to catch just enough sleep to be attentive in the morning - but everything fades and falls away from the voice in his head constantly chanting “find Sam, find Sam, find Sam”.
Nothing scares him quite as much as having his little brother gone, ripped away from him - on this earth anyway - and with that less a fear than a reality, nothing quite scares him anymore.
---
He finds it in a bland, thin book - more a pamphlet than a book, really, and he’d have thrown it aside if the words hadn’t popped up, red and bloody in his sleep-blurry eyes, and immediately jarred him from the lull of sleep.
He’s already tried a dozen formulas and spells - some incredibly dangerous and risky - but none of them have worked. He hadn’t expected them to work either, blind shots in the dark more than anything else. This - this, however... this is blood magic, and he feels the thump of his heart quickening in anticipation as he’s suddenly wide awake, scanning through the entire spell work, eyes catching on the same words: blood, brother, soul, binding.
It doesn’t require much, at least not as far as variety goes - a few herbs, holy oil and holy water, some Latin incantations, and a couple quarts of blood.
He ignores the tiny voice in his head telling him to find Bobby or Cas, just in case this goes wrong, and in case Sam’s soul isn’t enough to replenish the blood supply in his body. If either of them hears a word of this, there’ll be no getting to actually doing it, and he can’t have that, can’t risk his brother’s life for his own safety. This is something he has to do, and if he has to do it on his own to actually accomplish it, he will.
It doesn’t take long for him to get everything he needs, and then he strips down to his boxers - no sense in getting his clothes bloody if he doesn’t have to; blood is a bitch to scrub out - knife in hand, and starts the incantation.
He doesn’t pretend to understand the logic of blood magic, and he’s long past the point of actually trying, so when the pamphlet says to collect equal amounts of blood from each of the major arteries, he just prepares enough cloth to stop the bleeding, decides on the most efficient way to go about doing them, and slices right in. Perhaps for the first time he’s grateful for the forty years he spent in Hell, because locating those vessels and cutting them just enough and cleanly to get a good crimson spray into the plastic cups? That’s all child’s play to him.
Or it is, until he remembers that working with a good deal of blood loss makes for a good deal of clumsiness, and his hands are slippery with blood. He’s down to the last artery, squinting at the incantation and at his thigh alternately, trying to maneuver himself into a position to finish it up. The motel room grows dim, grey - and he’s seeing blood splattered everywhere he turns when he realises he’s losing consciousness. Panic shoots straight to his head, sends adrenaline pumping through his veins, and before he knows it, he’s plunged his trusty knife into his thigh, impatiently waiting for the cup to fill up, bubbling up like a morbid likeness of soda, except red and painful.
And then black.
---
He wakes up feeling like he’s lost more than two quarts of blood, which he probably has, given that he wasn’t awake to put any pressure on his artery. But he wakes up, which doesn’t make sense, at least not until a gravelly voice jerks him out of his thoughts.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Dean.”
Past the initial surprise, he can’t dredge up anything but despair in the face of his failure, so he just continues to stare up at the ceiling.
“I was very nearly too late to do anything.”
If only, Dean thinks.
The familiar trenchcoat moves into his line of sight. “Sam would not have wanted this for you,” Castiel says. “He sent you to Lisa and Ben. It was his dying wish.”
It doesn’t make any sense at all, Dean is certain. It makes no sense whatsoever. Why is Castiel so invested in Sam’s dying wish now? Why does i care what Sam wanted when he isn’t even there to want anything anymore? What Sam wants, right now, is to get the fucking hell out of the Cage. And Dean can’t even give him that.
“I couldn’t replenish your blood supply,” Castiel starts speaking again. “I... didn’t remove the scars.”
There’s a pause, like he’s waiting for Dean to say something. Like Dean should give a damn about goddamned scars when his brother’s trapped in a cage. In Hell.
“I promised Sam to keep you out of trouble, Dean. I have to try.”
He has to try, Dean thinks, and if he weren’t so fucking exhausted he might laugh. Cas isn’t just wrong, if he thinks keeping Dean out of trouble matters to Sam at all right now - he’s abso-fucking-lutely deluded. There was no room for thought beyond stop and please and no in Hell and he doesn’t fancy the Cage is filled with party and booze either. Sam doesn’t care. Sam is in the Cage, and all that matters is that Dean gets him out.
Castiel sighs, like Dean is a disappointment and a burden rolled into one. Nothing new. “I need to get back to Heaven,” he says. “Dean, I need you to promise me. You can’t try to get Sam out again.”
And there it is. People trying to get him to do the impossible, trying to get him to stop trying to find Sam. They don’t get it - don’t get that it’s hardwired into his brain, into his heart, into his soul. It’s everything in him scrabbling for anchor, for purpose, for life - it’s survival instinct, it’s gasping for air, it’s all. He. Has. And he’s not going to stop, he can’t, and he won’t.
Cas seems to get it, because the next moment he’s nodding and reaching in -
---
Dean’s caught impetigo from Sammy - it’s not the first time he’s gotten infected by something through Sam, or the other way round. I put the boys in separate rooms and locked the doors, hell if I know how Dean got through those locks to get to Sammy with me researching in Sam’s room. He swears he didn’t do it, and if he’s lying he’s gotten scary good at it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they shared more than just blood. Every time one of them gets hungry, the other starts complaining not half an hour later. When Dean or Sam is in a bad mood, the other starts acting up, and just because Dean tries to hide it doesn’t mean I don’t catch it when he’s close to tears because Sammy’s fretting.
“Daddy,” the whine is long in the second syllable, drawn out around unhappy, pouting lips. “I’m hungry...”
John frowns, instantly irritated, and barks out to Dean, holed in the corner of the backseat, arms loosely around Sammy. “I thought I told you to make sure he had breakfast, Dean.”
At thirteen, easing into puberty and perpetually hungry, Dean is still growing into his too-wide eyes, shooting up to John’s height, only the daily relentless training preventing the teenage gawkiness from taking over. He shifts, looking at John from the rearview mirror. “I did, sir.” A low growl from his stomach punctuates the end of his sentence, and a blush rises on his cheeks, embarrassment only to turn to fond exasperation when Sam turns around in Dean’s arms, giggling, and starts poking at Dean’s stomach.
“Hey no - Sammy, no, stop it, you little bitch -”
At the next rest stop, John stops for an early lunch, watches Dean wolf down two meals, and tries not to notice that Sam is barely eating, for all his whining in the car.
---
Beaumont Police Department stands out starkly in navy, accusing.
Beside him, Castiel sighs. “They can’t see us yet. I didn’t want to do this,” he says, and sounds genuinely apologetic. “I cannot afford to watch you all the time, Dean. My brothers and sisters need me, back home.” He cocks his head, looking upward briefly as though he could hear Heaven through the gesture. “I’m sorry, Dean. Take care.”
There’s a flutter of wings, as always, and then all descends to chaos.
It takes roughly twenty-four hours of questioning, testing, and paperwork before they finally accept him into their fold as Dean Winchester, born January 24, 1979, serial murderer and grave desecrator. Well, not really - for one, Dean does not participate in the questioning, and accepting him into their fold is not quite the phrase for what they do to him.
Imprisonment is infinitely closer.
---
If the prisoners previously harbored any illusions as to the hierarchy within the prison, one look at Dean Winchester is enough to squash them into nothingness. It’s not the height, or the obviously powerful physique. Among wolves, Dean Winchester is alpha, and one look into his eyes is enough to send chills down the most vicious murderer’s spine.
Because Dean Winchester has seen Hell, and he is not hiding it. More than that - he is finally, finally, honest-to-God, livid.
---
Agent Roger McCarthy receives his task 7AM, the first thing when he steps into his office. Dean Winchester, twice declared deceased, has returned from the dead. But more than that - he has turned himself in, and his report is not the least bit vague in stating that he has not said a single word since being taken into custody.
Dean Winchester. Serial killer. Grave desecrator. Two-time escapee from prison. Credit card fraud. Impersonation of federal officers. The list goes on, long - and if he has been alive for two full years since last declared dead, getting longer.
The prisoner sits, limbs loose, stance deceptively relaxed. His eyes are angled downward, but there is no defeat or humility in the posture. From the reports, two-years-old and barely a day-new, one thing is certain: Dean Winchester is a dangerous man. The footage they have of him shows him cocksure and cheeky, only too-old eyes belying his brash demeanor. If he was hiding the darkness in him, he isn’t now, and the difference - even ignoring sharpened, hardened angles to his face - is startling.
His eyes are still shadowed, his head bowed in what appears to be devious contemplation, when McCarthy steps in and sits down across the prisoner. His wrists and ankles are shackled, seemingly absurd precaution for all the attention he gives to the fact. And then he looks up.
There is no arrogant smirk, no dancing eyes, no words. He looks up, and there is only one way to describe him.
This man has seen Hell.
There is no mistaking the almost dismissive hostility in his eyes, dark and wholly disinterested. And yet, dangerous.
McCarthy struggles to fight the shudder that wracks its way through his body. The question is simply this: if Dean Winchester can keep himself out of prison, and there is presently no doubt in his mind that he could for as long as he wanted, why exactly did he turn himself in?
“Mr Winchester,” he begins, and watches for a reaction.
There is none. The prisoner continues to stare, disconcertingly, at him.
“You’re aware of your records,” he says. “You have been declared dead - for all intents and purposes, you could stay free in the world out there - so why did you turn yourself in?”
A verbal reply is, presumably, not in his expectations - but nonetheless, the almost-eerie lack of response is disturbing. Dean continues to stare.
“There is, of course, no reason to doubt that you might wish to... atone for your crimes, Mr Winchester, but -”
Still no reaction. The file pinned Dean as a possible vigilante criminal, with strong ethical beliefs, if somewhat unconventional, but the prisoner that sits before him right now remains unmoved.
“Your file here,” he taps at the inch-thick folder on the desk, “says that you have an... interesting relationship with your brother, Sam Winchester.”
And there. A flicker, and then he shifts - leisurely, unmindful of the way the cuffs and chains around his limbs clank against the chair. It reminds McCarthy of a large cat - smooth and lazy, but deliberate. Deadly.
“Which is why I wonder what happened between the two of you, that you are here, but he is not.”
Dean blinks, still not attentive, but listening.
“Did you have a fight?”
No movement.
“Or is he out there right now, trying to formulate a plan to get you out of this hell -”
Barely a movement, but instantly, McCarthy knows that he has misstepped. Dean is still staring at him, in the exact same posture, but as distinctly as if he had turned bodily away, there is no question that he has shut down, refusing to play.
“My men are watching out for him, you know that.”
Nothing.
The rest of the session is a bust, no different from talking to a rock. McCarthy watches him carefully, prodding less recklessly, trying to gauge reactions, anticipating any minute shifts, but whether it is because of John Winchester’s unfortunately brilliant militaristic training, or simply because Dean Winchester has arbitrarily gone deaf after that one sentence, it’s as if the man has been unplugged, batteries taken out.
---
The next time he sees Dean Winchester is for misdemeanour. He wears the lone bruise on his cheekbone like a crown and the last rag on a beggar’s frame. The other men - all five of them - look like they have been put through a grinder. Twice. They shrink away from him sullenly, men he has never seen visibly afraid of anything. He looks toward Dean, surprised, and the man has the audacity to crack a smirk.
The brief investigation tells him nothing he hadn’t expected - Winchester was jumped. He reacted.
“He doesn’t belong here,” one of them hisses, eyes nearly crazed. “He’s a whole different breed, he’s barely even human.”
It isn’t anything he doesn’t know, but it still chills him to hear it from a cold-blooded murderer. The cocksure smirking young man in the video may not have belonged in a SuperMAX, but even if the paperwork doesn’t agree, this one - silent, deadly, unfathomable - if only out of pure fear of what he might do - this one does. If he had his way, Winchester would have been chopper-transported to a SuperMAX the moment he got here, but the paper work is taking longer than he had hoped. He can only hope an inmate altercation is the worst that happens before he gets him behind bars permanently.
Dean still doesn’t say a single word, but as he’s led away, there is the slightest flicker in his eyes - frustration. Slowly but surely, Dean Winchester is fraying, and that - that is just the catalyst McCarthy needs to crack him open.
---
Or not, because that night, Dean Winchester is rushed into the nearest secure hospital. McCarthy watches him, face pale and almost gaunt, and for the first time sees a lost man rather than a dangerous monster.
part 2 ;; then I am insatiable
On the fifth day, Dean goes mute.
It’s not the first time it has happened, but this time it’s different. It’s not out of self-preservation, afraid to lose the last piece he’s got of himself, like when his Mom died, and it’s not because he’s been swallowing all the words back after realizing there was no one left to listen to him, like when Sammy left for school. But he turns mute anyway, because Sam’s gone and he’s taken all of Dean’s words with him.
Eight days later, Dean breaks his promise to Sam for the first time.
He tries, he really does - tells himself it’s just like Stanford, four years will have blown past before he knows it, but it isn’t, and not even a minute has blown past when he realizes he’s screwing up whatever it is he’s trying to do. To be fair, Sam is an idiot if he ever thought Dean was just going to find a woman with a kid and just start living an apple-pie life like his brother isn’t stuck somewhere with the Devil and a douchey archangel. But then again, they’re still in the slow process of finally understanding the depth of their bond. He figures he can probably forgive Sam for being a little slow on the uptake.
All the same, the result is that after thirteen days of hideous grimace-smiles and pleasantly morbid daydreams of his trusty .45 misfiring (and far less pleasant nightmares of Sam stuck in the Cage), he leaves Lisa’s place, and hightails it out of Illinois. It’s a bit more difficult than it would have been, because for some reason, Lisa has gotten it into her head that Dean is suicidal, and watches him like a hawk. Thing is, Dean is nothing if not trained from pretty much age five onwards by a battle-hardened ex-Marine, so hawk or not, stealth serves him well.
Halfway out of the state, he has to admit that Sam is a fairly wise idiot, if inarguably an idiot, because short of going back to Lisa, he has no idea what to do with himself.
It doesn’t take long, though - there’s always been one similarity between him and Sammy, one thing carved into their DNA - and that’s the unmistakable, unwavering, driven need of ‘find my brother, find my brother, find my brother’, when either one of them is gone, dead. It’s the tattooing of a relentless beat against his eardrums, the one battle-cry he can register, bright and painful and always there - until it’s flowing, rushing through his veins, consuming all his senses until the only thing that makes sense is Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam Sammy Sam Sam-
---
It gets easier after that.
Sort of. Not really. It doesn’t ever get easier, that’s what he’s starting to realize. He’s always known that, recognized that that block of void within him would only stay, stagnant and never healing, until he got his brother back - but he’d never quite gotten around to experiencing it.
Sam has, he knows. Six months in Broward County, six months that he never mentioned after that one time he broke down and babbled half-coherently about not being able to do it, hands scrabbling at Dean and squeezing so tight he thought he might break a bone - and then four months. When he was in Hell.
Research doesn’t bore him anymore, simply frustrates him (because there’s nothing, there’s nothing you can do, Dean, there’s nothing you can ever do) and he shoves at it, shoves it down as it bubbles up in his throat as a half-formed scream, shoves it down because he has no time for tantrums - Sam has no time - and continues looking.
Lisa calls, sometimes. He didn’t pick up the first time, let it go to voicemail, and listened afterwards. Her voice is warm and concerned and something else - angry, he thinks, listening. Angry but trying not to be. It’s okay. Once he gets Sammy back, everything will fall into place, he just needs - he just needs Sam back.
But as she ends the message, her voice is just quiet, understanding almost. “You don’t have to say anything, Dean. I know -” She breaks off, because no, she doesn’t know. Not really. John knows how Dean stopped speaking after Mary died, but nobody knows that it was Sammy who gave him his voice back, babbling and pulling at Dean’s arms and staring up at him with those puppy eyes, wondering why Dean was silent.
“Just let us know you’re okay,” she finally says, sigh in her voice that’s part concern, part helplessness.
That? That he can do. Lying he does incredibly well - even without a voice. So he picks the phone up when she calls, rifling through books centuries old, and just... breathes.
It lasts for a moment, and then like an alarm clock right on time, he remembers that breathing is something Sam isn’t allowed to do anymore, that it’s a luxury not shared between them, a luxury that he doesn’t deserve, not alone - so he hangs up before he can choke audibly on nothing, texts “im ok” one-handedly into the phone, and hits send. It’s not difficult to push everyone to the back of his mind, far seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths from that one goal he has, up to and including the woman he loves, whether or not he’s in love with her. It should scare him, and it does at first, a little, when he’s lying on the bed trying to catch just enough sleep to be attentive in the morning - but everything fades and falls away from the voice in his head constantly chanting “find Sam, find Sam, find Sam”.
Nothing scares him quite as much as having his little brother gone, ripped away from him - on this earth anyway - and with that less a fear than a reality, nothing quite scares him anymore.
---
He finds it in a bland, thin book - more a pamphlet than a book, really, and he’d have thrown it aside if the words hadn’t popped up, red and bloody in his sleep-blurry eyes, and immediately jarred him from the lull of sleep.
He’s already tried a dozen formulas and spells - some incredibly dangerous and risky - but none of them have worked. He hadn’t expected them to work either, blind shots in the dark more than anything else. This - this, however... this is blood magic, and he feels the thump of his heart quickening in anticipation as he’s suddenly wide awake, scanning through the entire spell work, eyes catching on the same words: blood, brother, soul, binding.
It doesn’t require much, at least not as far as variety goes - a few herbs, holy oil and holy water, some Latin incantations, and a couple quarts of blood.
He ignores the tiny voice in his head telling him to find Bobby or Cas, just in case this goes wrong, and in case Sam’s soul isn’t enough to replenish the blood supply in his body. If either of them hears a word of this, there’ll be no getting to actually doing it, and he can’t have that, can’t risk his brother’s life for his own safety. This is something he has to do, and if he has to do it on his own to actually accomplish it, he will.
It doesn’t take long for him to get everything he needs, and then he strips down to his boxers - no sense in getting his clothes bloody if he doesn’t have to; blood is a bitch to scrub out - knife in hand, and starts the incantation.
He doesn’t pretend to understand the logic of blood magic, and he’s long past the point of actually trying, so when the pamphlet says to collect equal amounts of blood from each of the major arteries, he just prepares enough cloth to stop the bleeding, decides on the most efficient way to go about doing them, and slices right in. Perhaps for the first time he’s grateful for the forty years he spent in Hell, because locating those vessels and cutting them just enough and cleanly to get a good crimson spray into the plastic cups? That’s all child’s play to him.
Or it is, until he remembers that working with a good deal of blood loss makes for a good deal of clumsiness, and his hands are slippery with blood. He’s down to the last artery, squinting at the incantation and at his thigh alternately, trying to maneuver himself into a position to finish it up. The motel room grows dim, grey - and he’s seeing blood splattered everywhere he turns when he realises he’s losing consciousness. Panic shoots straight to his head, sends adrenaline pumping through his veins, and before he knows it, he’s plunged his trusty knife into his thigh, impatiently waiting for the cup to fill up, bubbling up like a morbid likeness of soda, except red and painful.
And then black.
---
He wakes up feeling like he’s lost more than two quarts of blood, which he probably has, given that he wasn’t awake to put any pressure on his artery. But he wakes up, which doesn’t make sense, at least not until a gravelly voice jerks him out of his thoughts.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Dean.”
Past the initial surprise, he can’t dredge up anything but despair in the face of his failure, so he just continues to stare up at the ceiling.
“I was very nearly too late to do anything.”
If only, Dean thinks.
The familiar trenchcoat moves into his line of sight. “Sam would not have wanted this for you,” Castiel says. “He sent you to Lisa and Ben. It was his dying wish.”
It doesn’t make any sense at all, Dean is certain. It makes no sense whatsoever. Why is Castiel so invested in Sam’s dying wish now? Why does i care what Sam wanted when he isn’t even there to want anything anymore? What Sam wants, right now, is to get the fucking hell out of the Cage. And Dean can’t even give him that.
“I couldn’t replenish your blood supply,” Castiel starts speaking again. “I... didn’t remove the scars.”
There’s a pause, like he’s waiting for Dean to say something. Like Dean should give a damn about goddamned scars when his brother’s trapped in a cage. In Hell.
“I promised Sam to keep you out of trouble, Dean. I have to try.”
He has to try, Dean thinks, and if he weren’t so fucking exhausted he might laugh. Cas isn’t just wrong, if he thinks keeping Dean out of trouble matters to Sam at all right now - he’s abso-fucking-lutely deluded. There was no room for thought beyond stop and please and no in Hell and he doesn’t fancy the Cage is filled with party and booze either. Sam doesn’t care. Sam is in the Cage, and all that matters is that Dean gets him out.
Castiel sighs, like Dean is a disappointment and a burden rolled into one. Nothing new. “I need to get back to Heaven,” he says. “Dean, I need you to promise me. You can’t try to get Sam out again.”
And there it is. People trying to get him to do the impossible, trying to get him to stop trying to find Sam. They don’t get it - don’t get that it’s hardwired into his brain, into his heart, into his soul. It’s everything in him scrabbling for anchor, for purpose, for life - it’s survival instinct, it’s gasping for air, it’s all. He. Has. And he’s not going to stop, he can’t, and he won’t.
Cas seems to get it, because the next moment he’s nodding and reaching in -
---
Dean’s caught impetigo from Sammy - it’s not the first time he’s gotten infected by something through Sam, or the other way round. I put the boys in separate rooms and locked the doors, hell if I know how Dean got through those locks to get to Sammy with me researching in Sam’s room. He swears he didn’t do it, and if he’s lying he’s gotten scary good at it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they shared more than just blood. Every time one of them gets hungry, the other starts complaining not half an hour later. When Dean or Sam is in a bad mood, the other starts acting up, and just because Dean tries to hide it doesn’t mean I don’t catch it when he’s close to tears because Sammy’s fretting.
“Daddy,” the whine is long in the second syllable, drawn out around unhappy, pouting lips. “I’m hungry...”
John frowns, instantly irritated, and barks out to Dean, holed in the corner of the backseat, arms loosely around Sammy. “I thought I told you to make sure he had breakfast, Dean.”
At thirteen, easing into puberty and perpetually hungry, Dean is still growing into his too-wide eyes, shooting up to John’s height, only the daily relentless training preventing the teenage gawkiness from taking over. He shifts, looking at John from the rearview mirror. “I did, sir.” A low growl from his stomach punctuates the end of his sentence, and a blush rises on his cheeks, embarrassment only to turn to fond exasperation when Sam turns around in Dean’s arms, giggling, and starts poking at Dean’s stomach.
“Hey no - Sammy, no, stop it, you little bitch -”
At the next rest stop, John stops for an early lunch, watches Dean wolf down two meals, and tries not to notice that Sam is barely eating, for all his whining in the car.
---
Beaumont Police Department stands out starkly in navy, accusing.
Beside him, Castiel sighs. “They can’t see us yet. I didn’t want to do this,” he says, and sounds genuinely apologetic. “I cannot afford to watch you all the time, Dean. My brothers and sisters need me, back home.” He cocks his head, looking upward briefly as though he could hear Heaven through the gesture. “I’m sorry, Dean. Take care.”
There’s a flutter of wings, as always, and then all descends to chaos.
It takes roughly twenty-four hours of questioning, testing, and paperwork before they finally accept him into their fold as Dean Winchester, born January 24, 1979, serial murderer and grave desecrator. Well, not really - for one, Dean does not participate in the questioning, and accepting him into their fold is not quite the phrase for what they do to him.
Imprisonment is infinitely closer.
---
If the prisoners previously harbored any illusions as to the hierarchy within the prison, one look at Dean Winchester is enough to squash them into nothingness. It’s not the height, or the obviously powerful physique. Among wolves, Dean Winchester is alpha, and one look into his eyes is enough to send chills down the most vicious murderer’s spine.
Because Dean Winchester has seen Hell, and he is not hiding it. More than that - he is finally, finally, honest-to-God, livid.
---
Agent Roger McCarthy receives his task 7AM, the first thing when he steps into his office. Dean Winchester, twice declared deceased, has returned from the dead. But more than that - he has turned himself in, and his report is not the least bit vague in stating that he has not said a single word since being taken into custody.
Dean Winchester. Serial killer. Grave desecrator. Two-time escapee from prison. Credit card fraud. Impersonation of federal officers. The list goes on, long - and if he has been alive for two full years since last declared dead, getting longer.
The prisoner sits, limbs loose, stance deceptively relaxed. His eyes are angled downward, but there is no defeat or humility in the posture. From the reports, two-years-old and barely a day-new, one thing is certain: Dean Winchester is a dangerous man. The footage they have of him shows him cocksure and cheeky, only too-old eyes belying his brash demeanor. If he was hiding the darkness in him, he isn’t now, and the difference - even ignoring sharpened, hardened angles to his face - is startling.
His eyes are still shadowed, his head bowed in what appears to be devious contemplation, when McCarthy steps in and sits down across the prisoner. His wrists and ankles are shackled, seemingly absurd precaution for all the attention he gives to the fact. And then he looks up.
There is no arrogant smirk, no dancing eyes, no words. He looks up, and there is only one way to describe him.
This man has seen Hell.
There is no mistaking the almost dismissive hostility in his eyes, dark and wholly disinterested. And yet, dangerous.
McCarthy struggles to fight the shudder that wracks its way through his body. The question is simply this: if Dean Winchester can keep himself out of prison, and there is presently no doubt in his mind that he could for as long as he wanted, why exactly did he turn himself in?
“Mr Winchester,” he begins, and watches for a reaction.
There is none. The prisoner continues to stare, disconcertingly, at him.
“You’re aware of your records,” he says. “You have been declared dead - for all intents and purposes, you could stay free in the world out there - so why did you turn yourself in?”
A verbal reply is, presumably, not in his expectations - but nonetheless, the almost-eerie lack of response is disturbing. Dean continues to stare.
“There is, of course, no reason to doubt that you might wish to... atone for your crimes, Mr Winchester, but -”
Still no reaction. The file pinned Dean as a possible vigilante criminal, with strong ethical beliefs, if somewhat unconventional, but the prisoner that sits before him right now remains unmoved.
“Your file here,” he taps at the inch-thick folder on the desk, “says that you have an... interesting relationship with your brother, Sam Winchester.”
And there. A flicker, and then he shifts - leisurely, unmindful of the way the cuffs and chains around his limbs clank against the chair. It reminds McCarthy of a large cat - smooth and lazy, but deliberate. Deadly.
“Which is why I wonder what happened between the two of you, that you are here, but he is not.”
Dean blinks, still not attentive, but listening.
“Did you have a fight?”
No movement.
“Or is he out there right now, trying to formulate a plan to get you out of this hell -”
Barely a movement, but instantly, McCarthy knows that he has misstepped. Dean is still staring at him, in the exact same posture, but as distinctly as if he had turned bodily away, there is no question that he has shut down, refusing to play.
“My men are watching out for him, you know that.”
Nothing.
The rest of the session is a bust, no different from talking to a rock. McCarthy watches him carefully, prodding less recklessly, trying to gauge reactions, anticipating any minute shifts, but whether it is because of John Winchester’s unfortunately brilliant militaristic training, or simply because Dean Winchester has arbitrarily gone deaf after that one sentence, it’s as if the man has been unplugged, batteries taken out.
---
The next time he sees Dean Winchester is for misdemeanour. He wears the lone bruise on his cheekbone like a crown and the last rag on a beggar’s frame. The other men - all five of them - look like they have been put through a grinder. Twice. They shrink away from him sullenly, men he has never seen visibly afraid of anything. He looks toward Dean, surprised, and the man has the audacity to crack a smirk.
The brief investigation tells him nothing he hadn’t expected - Winchester was jumped. He reacted.
“He doesn’t belong here,” one of them hisses, eyes nearly crazed. “He’s a whole different breed, he’s barely even human.”
It isn’t anything he doesn’t know, but it still chills him to hear it from a cold-blooded murderer. The cocksure smirking young man in the video may not have belonged in a SuperMAX, but even if the paperwork doesn’t agree, this one - silent, deadly, unfathomable - if only out of pure fear of what he might do - this one does. If he had his way, Winchester would have been chopper-transported to a SuperMAX the moment he got here, but the paper work is taking longer than he had hoped. He can only hope an inmate altercation is the worst that happens before he gets him behind bars permanently.
Dean still doesn’t say a single word, but as he’s led away, there is the slightest flicker in his eyes - frustration. Slowly but surely, Dean Winchester is fraying, and that - that is just the catalyst McCarthy needs to crack him open.
---
Or not, because that night, Dean Winchester is rushed into the nearest secure hospital. McCarthy watches him, face pale and almost gaunt, and for the first time sees a lost man rather than a dangerous monster.
part 2 ;; then I am insatiable