Fic: Kintsugi
Title: Kintsugi
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG-13
Genre: gen, intense angst, h/c, emotional h/c, brother feels
Characters: Dean, Sam, OC
Word Count: 4,600
Warnings: language, horrific concepts, mentions of child abuse and torture
Summary: Dean needs a new protective sigil tattoo, and he visits the tattoo artist other hunters recommend--the only person in the area who's precise enough for the work. Getting two words in a row out of the guy is hard labor, but undeniably worth it in the end.
Kintsugi is a Japanese method of mending broken pottery with gold, where the pot is considered more beautiful for having been broken.
Bells jingled on the door as Dean walked into the tattoo parlor. The tattoo artist, scruffy and skinny, looked up quickly, suspiciously, before looking away again disinterestedly, tossing down a rag and walking behind the counter. Dean hadn’t figured this shop would be exactly upscale, but he quailed there in the doorway a moment, contemplating walking right out again ... which the tattoo artist seemed to half expect. Still, the hunter who gave him this shop’s address said for the kind of precision Dean needed for this particular tattoo, he’d better get the best, and this guy was it. Dean stepped all the way inside, and let the door shut behind him with another jingle.
The tattoo artist didn’t make eye contact. “Cash only, all of it, before we start.”
Dean edged up to the counter, took out his wallet, and threw down a stack of twenties, followed by the piece of paper with the sigil he needed on it.
The tattoo artist barely glanced at the sigil. “Another one, huh?” He spread out the stack of twenties, counting it, then left it on the counter, heading to the chair. Apparently it was enough to cover the whole thing. “Where do you want it?”
“Anywhere, on my torso,” Dean replied, feeling awkward, unable to resist eyeing the tattoo gun, trying to discern whether it got disinfected regularly, if at all, relieved when the tattoo artist started a cleaning ritual that bordered on the obsessive.
“’Kay, take off your shirt.”
Dean removed his shirt, flushing under the intense gaze of the tattoo artist, who was now seeing Dean’s life story written on his body, plain as day for anyone who knew the language: his anti-possession tattoo, warding symbols, another sigil. How much did this guy know about hunters? His shrewd stare shifted to the tattoo gun, and Dean realized he was only deciding where to put it when he said, “Left shoulder okay?” Dean nodded, and he got to work.
“Uh, don’t you want to use the drawing for reference?” Dean asked uneasily.
“I’ve done five of these this month,” he replied affectlessly, concentrating.
“Yeah, but--”
“It has to be perfect, I know,” the artist snapped. Setting down the gun, he stalked over to the counter, snatched the drawing from on top of the money, and returned, tossing it down onto Dean’s lap, never once so much as glancing at it. “Better?”
Dean knew better than to say anything after that. There were a couple of mirrors set up, via which you could theoretically see the tattoo taking shape, but it was hard to see anything through the blood. He could only hope that hunter had known what he was talking about when he said this guy was the best. It wasn’t like Dean trusted hunters, but they were more fanatical about this kind of precision than anyone else.
As the awkward silence lengthened, Dean cleared his throat. “So, uh ... how long you been doing this?”
“Eight years.”
Funny; kid only looked a rough-around-the-edges nineteen. “You like it?”
“Drawing blood, hurting people for hours on end? Love it,” said the guy mirthlessly. Was that a joke? It was impossible to tell.
Dean let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, but you, uh ... you have a gentle touch.” Oh, perfect. That sounded like a come-on. He glanced in the mirror at the tattoo artist’s face, mostly hidden behind greasy dark hair, but he showed no reaction. Every minute with him was equally excruciating; it didn’t get better or worse. Still, it was true. Dean had lots of tattoos by now, but somehow this guy managed to keep the pain to a minimum, skimming deftly over his skin, never staying in one place too long, highly efficient, if it was coming along as quickly as it appeared to be in the mirrors.
The tattoo artist said nothing, so Dean gamely tried again. “So, tell me: What’s the weirdest tattoo you ever had to do? I bet there’ve been some doozies.”
He paused to switch colors, his face as cold and inscrutable as ever. Dean wondered if he was even going to answer or if he was just going to pretend Dean hadn’t spoken when he finally murmured mutedly, “Whatever anyone wants to get is fine by me.”
Dean was a good conversationalist, he really was, but this guy was about as friendly as a wolverine. Still, the idea of sitting there in the otherwise empty shop, enduring the inescapable vulnerability and intimacy of getting a tattoo, without killing the silence with a little conversation, was worse than the painful effort of trying to get the guy talking. “You tattoo guys always have a bunch yourselves. Bet you’ve got some good stories for yours.”
This elicited some reaction evidently, as he paused in his work and huffed an audible breath, then sat breathing slowly and deeply for a few seconds--the way Dean would have taken deep breaths to try to calm himself down, so Dean got nervous for a second, because if there was one person you didn’t want pissed off at you, it was the guy doing your tattoo--before resuming, but when he finally answered, there was nothing discernable from his words or his tone of voice. “Yep,” was all he said.
Dean asked how he learned tattooing, and he gave some vague response about how it was a thing his family did and about practicing on himself at a young age, how it was the only skill he had, but if Dean thought it was chilly in the shop before he asked, the stony silence that fell after the guy let that non-answer be drawn arduously out of him made him rethink it.
Well, if you couldn’t get the other guy talking, the only thing for it was to start talking yourself. “So ... you get a lot of hunters coming through, huh?” He wanted to know if this guy knew something about hunting or not. He took it from the slight eyelid twitch and darkened expression that he did. “Yeah. I don’t like hunters, either.”
“Then why hunt?” Was it Dean’s imagination, or was the tattoo artist’s voice slightly harsher and more condemning than usual?
“’Cos, uh ... I lost my little brother. A long time ago. My dad, he, uh ... you know, he never recovered. He became a hunter and taught me everything I know--that’s how I learned about it--but in the end, I think it was losing his son that killed him. He died last year. But as for me, I, uh ... just have to find my brother. If he’s still alive.”
He saw the tattoo artist’s eyes pass glancingly across all his tattoos. “’Sam’?” He sounded even more suspicious than usual.
The first tattoo he ever got. “Yeah.”
He glanced at his tattoos again. “Demons, angels ... in so deep already?”
Dean turned around sharply, and the artist lifted the gun away from his skin quickly. Dean stared at him. “You’re a hunter!”
The tattoo artist lifted the gun slightly into Dean’s line of sight, so that it looked like an actual gun, and somehow even more menacing. “No. I’m not.”
Dean got that. Young kid, barely an adult. Probably a hunter born and raised, quit the family business after one too many hunts went horrifically wrong. That happened a lot. Seemed like everyone was either trying to get into hunting or trying to get out of it, nobody just stayed where they’d started. “Yeah. I wish I could walk away, but ... I can’t. I have to find out what happened to ’im.”
“So why not just go to the police, get a nice photo for the milk carton, why become a hunter?” Every word out of this guy’s mouth sounded like some viciously sarcastic joke ... even if it seemed like he hadn’t laughed in a decade.
“’Cos I think it’s hunters that took ’im,” Dean replied shortly, knowing this guy was probably the only person who understood that sentence who wouldn’t condemn him for saying other hunters would be capable of such a thing.
Not only did he not condemn him, he did him one better. “They probably did,” he said, getting an unmistakable thousand-yard stare, returning to work.
Dean kept talking about himself, but what little the tattoo artist had revealed during that interlude was all he got out of him. He showed Dean the tattoo when it was finished via mirrors, and Dean couldn’t believe the perfection of the rendering, down to the almost invisible squiggle at the ends of two of the thinnest lines. He wrapped it, handed Dean a crappy photocopied page describing how to care for his new tattoo, and they settled up at the counter. Dean turned to go, paused, turned back. “Um ... do you know of a hotel around here, cheap, but, you know, not ... as bad as some?” He laughed lightly, especially once he saw the faintest hint of a smile touch the usually downturned line of the man’s mouth. Funny how even the coldest person warmed up when they got to know you a little. Even this guy.
“Hunters,” he said, shaking his head, taking the key from under the counter and locking the register. “You should try making an honest living instead. Come on.”
He let Dean out of the shop and locked it behind them. It was dusk; apparently he decided Dean was going to be his last customer for the day. Dean figured he was leading him to a nearby hotel. It was only when they mounted the third set of steps in a run-down apartment building that it dawned on Dean this guy had taken such a shine to him that he was bringing him to his own apartment. It wasn’t uncommon for a hunter to let another hunter crash at their place, but Dean usually wouldn’t take them up on it, and it wasn’t a stretch to assume this guy all but never offered. Apparently there were perks to being in the hunters-who-hate-hunters club.
Dean eyed the old-timey light fixtures, dribbling golden light down the walls of old red velveteen wallpaper to the worn carpet runner down the center of the hardwood hall. This place probably cost nothing, but for all that, it was a well-built building, at one time luxurious. The guy knew how to pick an apartment. He unlocked a door (far corner, by the alley, on the fire escape, the classic hunter’s choice) and let them both in, grunting, “Don’t break the salt line.” Dean stepped over it, feeling as natural as if he were walking into his own hotel room. What the maids must think, cleaning up salt everywhere he stayed.
Sure enough, it was a spacious room, radiator heat, old fixtures and appliances, but homey and well-warded. Dean hadn’t felt so at home since he became a hunter ... or so safe. He couldn’t exactly say why.
The guy got in his fridge, getting out some leftovers and popping them in his microwave. “Don’t have beer; I’m not 21,” said the guy brusquely. “You can get some yourself if you want it; there’s a little grocery shop just down the street. Help yourself to whatever you want. I don’t have much.” He grabbed his food and left the room. Not a talker, even in his own home, apparently.
Still, he must have been enjoying Dean’s company, if he let him come home with him, and guy like that probably didn’t get much human contact. Dean got some food out of the fridge and followed him into the dimly lit living room, noting the salt lines on all the windows, sigils on the walls, all the comforts of home. Dean stretched out on an adjacent couch with a groan. “Thanks, this’ll save me a night’s stay at a hotel, which is ....”
“... An hour hustling pool,” the guy finished for him, and Dean laughed appreciatively.
“You know it. Nice place.”
The guy might have grunted.
There were things that were important to know if you were going to get unconscious in another man’s house, and only one thing this guy had said still niggled at him, despite his pervasive lack of social graces. “So ... that thing about enjoying drawing people’s blood and hurting them for hours ... you some kind of sadist, or were you joking? Not that I’m judging,” he added quickly. Just that the answer would determine whether he went and got some of that beer ... and whether he slept with one eye open.
The guy squinted slightly in his direction, seeming baffled by the question. “Why would I like it?” he finally asked, so naively, Dean couldn’t help but feel reassured.
“You never know with some hunters.”
The guy seemed to understand then, nodding soberly.
“So, how long did you hunt before you hung it up?”
It was the wrong thing to ask; the bare hint of a smile that had begun to develop on the guy’s face instantly dissolved. Still, when asked a question, he seemed to feel almost like he had no choice but to respond honestly, if uninformatively. “I only ever had one job,” he said, that chilling hardness back in his voice. “Finished that, and I was free.”
“Yeah, but you can’t be more than twenty.”
“Nineteen,” the kid echoed, this time sounding more helpless than angry, and looking uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken.
Still, Dean was too curious to let it go just yet. “So you were raised in the life? How many in your family?”
The guy’s expression closed completely; Dean couldn’t get a thing from it. He plainly didn’t want to answer, so Dean counted on that compulsion he seemed to feel, as if not answering wasn’t an option, as if it wasn’t allowed. “Six.”
“Yeah? Brothers, sisters ...?”
“No. Adults.”
“How early’d they start you? My dad got into hunting when I was ten, but he didn’t let me come on a hunt ’til I was twelve.”
The guy stared blankly at the wall opposite for a long, awkward minute, and Dean looked askance. Was there something wrong with the guy? Beyond the obvious? At last, very softly, he answered, “I was never allowed on a hunt.”
“Ah. Backup guy, made the salt rounds, poured silver bullets?” The guy nodded shortly, reluctantly. “Yeah. I did a lot of that. That’s good, though, that they wanted to protect you from danger.”
Those empty eyes met his, and Dean recoiled slightly from the darkness he saw there. “They weren’t protecting me from anything. They were protecting everything else from me.” He got up abruptly. “I’m gonna take a bath.” He snatched up a crucifix on his way into the bathroom and slammed the door. It took only a moment for Dean to figure out what he’d need a crucifix for. The guy bathed in holy water? Sure enough, he heard the chanting through the door after the water was run.
It wasn’t camaraderie or mere curiosity anymore. Dean was a hunter, and he’d just been told hunters felt a need to protect everything else from this guy, who had conveniently left him alone in his apartment among all his stuff. Okay, even if the sigils seemed normal, the writing over every inch of his bedroom walls did throw Dean a little. So did the separate altar for every religion Dean had ever heard of and some he hadn’t, all around the edges of his bedroom, decked to overflowing with relics, representative images, and offerings. A lot of the writing on the wall had religious themes, too, very superstitious, pleas for forgiveness for the “evil inside him,” begging for deliverance from some sort of prophecy, all sorts of stuff about demon blood. Weird shit, really weird--and then he found the photo collection, pictures of the guy at younger ages, looking varying degrees of terrified or haunted or vacant, obviously the subject of some freaky religious ritual, surrounded by these adult hunters he’d mentioned. He looked oddly familiar. And tattoos on his body, visible in the pictures even when he was just a little kid. They’d tattooed him when he was so little?! Not just once, but many times. What the hell??
What the fuck had happened to this kid? What kind of hunters--all adults--had a kid--or, well, had a kid in their possession, anyway, maybe kidnapped ....
Dean’s mouth dropped open and he tried to breathe, but his lungs weren’t working. His legs went weak and he fell to his knees. Sam. Samsamsamsamsamsam .... Dean fumbled through the guy’s stuff, all his belongings, his mail, everything, looking for a name, but this kid lived off the grid; he barely got any mail. Dean finally found something that looked promising, and wrenched it from its spot underneath some lore books to read the name of the addressee: “Sam Winchester.” Dean became aware the strange choking sound he heard was coming from himself. His brother. This was his brother.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Sam stood in the doorway wearing only sweatpants, and Dean could see the tattoos he’d seen in the pictures, some of them old and faded and stretched out. Sam seemed unsurprised to be thus betrayed by him, wary, and ... afraid. Dean could read it in his eyes now like he’d known him all his life: all his coldness, his suspicion, his circumspection; underneath all of it, this unending river of terror. Sam’s expression changed slightly, becoming at once more compassionate and more suspicious. “Why are you looking at my mail and crying?” Then a preternatural calm overcame him. “You’re a hunter,” he said, like he’d just figured it out. He no longer sounded angry or suspicious, just honest and matter-of-fact. “You came to kill me. Go ahead and try, but I killed all of them, and I’ll kill you, too, if I have to.”
“Sam,” Dean gasped, struggling to his feet. “Sam.”
“Who told you about me? I thought I’d already dealt with everyone who knew.”
“No one,” Dean choked out. “No one had to tell me about you, because you’re my brother.”
A muted flare passed across Sam’s face. “I ... have no brother,” he said uncertainly.
“Sammy, you don’t remember? You were six! I thought you’d remember ....”
Sam stumbled back a step, then another, his hard non-expression crumbling by the second. “I thought ... I thought that was just a dream. That’s what they always told me.”
“No, Sammy, it was real.” Dean stumbled toward him, to embrace him.
When Sam saw his intention, he violently shoved him away, leaping back. “No!” He was abruptly nearly hysterical. “Don’t touch me, I’m evil!”
Dean stared at him, horrified. “No, Sam, you’re not,” he whispered.
“Yes, I have demon blood in me!” Sam cried, his eyes huge, his voice shaking. “I mean, they said I’d been ‘purified’--they said they were able to purify me--but I don’t believe it, I can feel it, I’m as evil as I always was. You don’t just stop being evil.”
Dean’s agony bled through his voice. “Sammy ....”
Sam managed to gather the easily frayed shreds of himself back together enough to suddenly point at the door. “Get out. Get out of my apartment. Save yourself. If you really are my brother, then you should know better than to be near me.”
“Sammy, what did they do to you?” This wreck of a human being is what they’d made of his brother. Dean’s heart broke.
“What had to be done,” Sam said, clipped. “And that’s how I know I’m evil, because I killed them, even though ... even though they ... were only doing what was right. I just wish they’d just killed me. I never understood why they kept me alive to torture--er, ‘purify’ me; it never made sense--”
“If you hadn’t killed ’em, I would’ve,” Dean assured him, his tone suddenly cool.
Sam blinked, and a tiny glimmer of hope came into his eyes. “You’re ... evil, too?”
“Nope. Human. No human could stand for what they did to you. Not me, not Dad ... and not you.”
Sam suddenly looked so vulnerable, Dean could hardly take it. That tough veneer that got him through even despite everything he’d suffered was so thin. How had he figured out a way to function in this world after all the brainwashing and unthinkable abuse he’d been subjected to? Not like he was on top of the world, but most people who’d been through the same thing would be heavily medicated, institutionalized, or dead. “I ... can’t,” Sam said, that cold voice now soft and gentle, terribly gentle. He kept making weird faces, and Dean eventually realized he was on the verge of tears, perhaps so unused to allowing himself to feel that even he didn’t realize what was happening. “I want to, but ... I know it would be wrong to let you be nice to me. So please, get out.”
“I finally found you. I’m never leaving you again, Sammy.”
Sam looked consterned, still making weird faces. A couple of tears leaked out. Sam looked bewildered by them, wiping them away and staring at them on his fingers. “What part of ‘I’m evil’ don’t you understand?” he asked, genuinely baffled.
“What part of ‘you’re my brother’ don’t you understand?” Dean came at him again, very slowly, arms out, as he would approach a feral animal, and sure enough Sam kept backing away, until Dean had backed him into a corner and Sam was pressed against the wall, every inch of him, still seeming to try to fold more completely into it as Dean advanced.
Sam was shaking his head repeatedly, hands over his face, eyes rolling with anxiety, saying, “Please don’t--please don’t--” Dean was ready for him to suddenly lash out. He really hoped Sam wasn’t scared enough to accidentally kill him, but it wasn’t going to stop him. Nothing was. Until he’d touched him again, none of this would seem real. It would seem like Sam could evaporate into thin air--indeed, he could and probably would run off, until this connection was forged, reignited, until Sam could feel it, too, that Dean was a foundation on which he could rest, a place where he belonged, a safe haven. Home. So Dean was ready for the worst, trying to imagine how to handle a violent attack without hurting Sam even more than he’d already been hurt ... until Sam finally finished the sentence, saying, “Please don’t--hurt me.”
He was so tall, gangly but intimidating when he met him in the shop. Now he seemed almost as small as when Dean first lost him. Sam quivered there, every fight-or-flight response in his body screaming at him for action, but he forced himself to stay still, so as not to hurt Dean. Dean’s arms closed around Sam’s naked torso, and Sam flinched violently. Nonetheless, he made no move, as if everything about this situation was beyond his experience or his capacity to comprehend, and thus he couldn’t conceive how to react to the embrace, to a kind touch, to the emotion Dean couldn’t contain as he began to weep. “You’re not evil, Sam,” he told him over and over, whenever he was able to speak. “And even if you were, it wouldn’t make any difference.”
He didn’t know Sam was crying too until he spoke, sounding so agonized and broken. “I don’t want the evil to get into you! All that time, I thought, if I had really had a brother, I was just ... I was just glad ... he didn’t have to ....” He gulped. His voice dropped to a whisper. “He didn’t have to be purified, that he was okay as he was. He was the good one,” he chanted, as if saying aloud something he’d said to himself countless times. “It’s okay that I was full of badness, if ... as long as he never caught it from me.”
Dean squeezed him tighter, his face buried in his brother’s hair. Of all the things he thought had befallen Sam, of every terrible imagining in the dark when he couldn’t keep the worst fears at bay, it turned out the truth was still worse. It wasn’t a random kidnapping. It wasn’t someone who wanted a kid, or someone who had it in for their family. It wasn’t a demon or a monster, or even someone who thought Dad was just a really crappy parent. It was cruel, and personal, detailed, premeditated. At no time had it ever occurred to him it could have to do with Sam himself, an innocent little boy. He’d been mistaken. “I couldn’t ‘catch it,’” he assured him. How many such assurances would he have to offer him before Sam was able to believe him? An infinite number might not be enough. Still, it didn’t matter. He would say it as many times as it took, in this life, the next, and the next .... “And even if I could, I’ll take it. Don’t worry, Sam. Everything’s okay now. Everything’s okay.”
Unable to bear Dean’s embrace anymore, apparently, Sam suddenly made a break for it, slipping out of his arms and dashing past him. He didn’t go far, just far enough that he could dance out of his reach, should Dean try it again. Sam shifted from foot to foot in the middle of the room, pure anxiety, unable to quite meet Dean’s eyes, unable to look away.
At last, he seemed to have to ask, “But why would you come back?” He looked completely incapable of comprehending why someone would care so much about him ... indeed, why they would care at all. He had no friends, Dean was sure. He wouldn’t want the ‘evil’ to get into them, he wouldn’t believe anyone could care enough about him even to want to talk to him regularly, much less do something kind for him. He may have managed to escape, but he finished the work of his captors without meaning to, keeping himself away from everything else, willingly suffering the lack of everything a human being needed and wanted in an effort, not to be good--a goal he believed to be impossible--but in an effort simply to be less evil. Dean was suddenly glad their parents were dead. It would have destroyed them to see their son like this. It nearly destroyed him.
Most people who’d been through what Sam had would be taking it out on the world in big ways or small. Hell, plenty of the hunters Dean knew were mainly using hunting as an excuse to act on some of their murderous rage. But not Sam. Even with every excuse to turn into a psychopath, Sam was doing his best, holding down a semi-respectable job, finding a way to live, trying to make certain he didn’t hurt anybody, whatever the cost to himself, all the while believing he was unforgivably evil. He had no idea how good he really was.
How was Dean to convince him? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he would try. He would never stop trying. He was here with Sam again at last, whatever Sam had become in the intervening years, whatever Dean had become. Whatever what Sam had been through had done to himself, to Dean, to their family, Dean had finally found him, and he was never letting go. Other people might think Sam was a lost cause, broken beyond repair, but it wasn’t in Dean to see it that way. Today was the first day since he lost Sam that he began to feel like wholeness was possible.
“Sam, I would always come back for you,” he told him, and watched Sam’s eyes fill with tears. “Always.”
~ The End ~
This story now has a sequel, " Broken."
Author: brightly_lit
Rating: PG-13
Genre: gen, intense angst, h/c, emotional h/c, brother feels
Characters: Dean, Sam, OC
Word Count: 4,600
Warnings: language, horrific concepts, mentions of child abuse and torture
Summary: Dean needs a new protective sigil tattoo, and he visits the tattoo artist other hunters recommend--the only person in the area who's precise enough for the work. Getting two words in a row out of the guy is hard labor, but undeniably worth it in the end.
Kintsugi is a Japanese method of mending broken pottery with gold, where the pot is considered more beautiful for having been broken.
Bells jingled on the door as Dean walked into the tattoo parlor. The tattoo artist, scruffy and skinny, looked up quickly, suspiciously, before looking away again disinterestedly, tossing down a rag and walking behind the counter. Dean hadn’t figured this shop would be exactly upscale, but he quailed there in the doorway a moment, contemplating walking right out again ... which the tattoo artist seemed to half expect. Still, the hunter who gave him this shop’s address said for the kind of precision Dean needed for this particular tattoo, he’d better get the best, and this guy was it. Dean stepped all the way inside, and let the door shut behind him with another jingle.
The tattoo artist didn’t make eye contact. “Cash only, all of it, before we start.”
Dean edged up to the counter, took out his wallet, and threw down a stack of twenties, followed by the piece of paper with the sigil he needed on it.
The tattoo artist barely glanced at the sigil. “Another one, huh?” He spread out the stack of twenties, counting it, then left it on the counter, heading to the chair. Apparently it was enough to cover the whole thing. “Where do you want it?”
“Anywhere, on my torso,” Dean replied, feeling awkward, unable to resist eyeing the tattoo gun, trying to discern whether it got disinfected regularly, if at all, relieved when the tattoo artist started a cleaning ritual that bordered on the obsessive.
“’Kay, take off your shirt.”
Dean removed his shirt, flushing under the intense gaze of the tattoo artist, who was now seeing Dean’s life story written on his body, plain as day for anyone who knew the language: his anti-possession tattoo, warding symbols, another sigil. How much did this guy know about hunters? His shrewd stare shifted to the tattoo gun, and Dean realized he was only deciding where to put it when he said, “Left shoulder okay?” Dean nodded, and he got to work.
“Uh, don’t you want to use the drawing for reference?” Dean asked uneasily.
“I’ve done five of these this month,” he replied affectlessly, concentrating.
“Yeah, but--”
“It has to be perfect, I know,” the artist snapped. Setting down the gun, he stalked over to the counter, snatched the drawing from on top of the money, and returned, tossing it down onto Dean’s lap, never once so much as glancing at it. “Better?”
Dean knew better than to say anything after that. There were a couple of mirrors set up, via which you could theoretically see the tattoo taking shape, but it was hard to see anything through the blood. He could only hope that hunter had known what he was talking about when he said this guy was the best. It wasn’t like Dean trusted hunters, but they were more fanatical about this kind of precision than anyone else.
As the awkward silence lengthened, Dean cleared his throat. “So, uh ... how long you been doing this?”
“Eight years.”
Funny; kid only looked a rough-around-the-edges nineteen. “You like it?”
“Drawing blood, hurting people for hours on end? Love it,” said the guy mirthlessly. Was that a joke? It was impossible to tell.
Dean let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, but you, uh ... you have a gentle touch.” Oh, perfect. That sounded like a come-on. He glanced in the mirror at the tattoo artist’s face, mostly hidden behind greasy dark hair, but he showed no reaction. Every minute with him was equally excruciating; it didn’t get better or worse. Still, it was true. Dean had lots of tattoos by now, but somehow this guy managed to keep the pain to a minimum, skimming deftly over his skin, never staying in one place too long, highly efficient, if it was coming along as quickly as it appeared to be in the mirrors.
The tattoo artist said nothing, so Dean gamely tried again. “So, tell me: What’s the weirdest tattoo you ever had to do? I bet there’ve been some doozies.”
He paused to switch colors, his face as cold and inscrutable as ever. Dean wondered if he was even going to answer or if he was just going to pretend Dean hadn’t spoken when he finally murmured mutedly, “Whatever anyone wants to get is fine by me.”
Dean was a good conversationalist, he really was, but this guy was about as friendly as a wolverine. Still, the idea of sitting there in the otherwise empty shop, enduring the inescapable vulnerability and intimacy of getting a tattoo, without killing the silence with a little conversation, was worse than the painful effort of trying to get the guy talking. “You tattoo guys always have a bunch yourselves. Bet you’ve got some good stories for yours.”
This elicited some reaction evidently, as he paused in his work and huffed an audible breath, then sat breathing slowly and deeply for a few seconds--the way Dean would have taken deep breaths to try to calm himself down, so Dean got nervous for a second, because if there was one person you didn’t want pissed off at you, it was the guy doing your tattoo--before resuming, but when he finally answered, there was nothing discernable from his words or his tone of voice. “Yep,” was all he said.
Dean asked how he learned tattooing, and he gave some vague response about how it was a thing his family did and about practicing on himself at a young age, how it was the only skill he had, but if Dean thought it was chilly in the shop before he asked, the stony silence that fell after the guy let that non-answer be drawn arduously out of him made him rethink it.
Well, if you couldn’t get the other guy talking, the only thing for it was to start talking yourself. “So ... you get a lot of hunters coming through, huh?” He wanted to know if this guy knew something about hunting or not. He took it from the slight eyelid twitch and darkened expression that he did. “Yeah. I don’t like hunters, either.”
“Then why hunt?” Was it Dean’s imagination, or was the tattoo artist’s voice slightly harsher and more condemning than usual?
“’Cos, uh ... I lost my little brother. A long time ago. My dad, he, uh ... you know, he never recovered. He became a hunter and taught me everything I know--that’s how I learned about it--but in the end, I think it was losing his son that killed him. He died last year. But as for me, I, uh ... just have to find my brother. If he’s still alive.”
He saw the tattoo artist’s eyes pass glancingly across all his tattoos. “’Sam’?” He sounded even more suspicious than usual.
The first tattoo he ever got. “Yeah.”
He glanced at his tattoos again. “Demons, angels ... in so deep already?”
Dean turned around sharply, and the artist lifted the gun away from his skin quickly. Dean stared at him. “You’re a hunter!”
The tattoo artist lifted the gun slightly into Dean’s line of sight, so that it looked like an actual gun, and somehow even more menacing. “No. I’m not.”
Dean got that. Young kid, barely an adult. Probably a hunter born and raised, quit the family business after one too many hunts went horrifically wrong. That happened a lot. Seemed like everyone was either trying to get into hunting or trying to get out of it, nobody just stayed where they’d started. “Yeah. I wish I could walk away, but ... I can’t. I have to find out what happened to ’im.”
“So why not just go to the police, get a nice photo for the milk carton, why become a hunter?” Every word out of this guy’s mouth sounded like some viciously sarcastic joke ... even if it seemed like he hadn’t laughed in a decade.
“’Cos I think it’s hunters that took ’im,” Dean replied shortly, knowing this guy was probably the only person who understood that sentence who wouldn’t condemn him for saying other hunters would be capable of such a thing.
Not only did he not condemn him, he did him one better. “They probably did,” he said, getting an unmistakable thousand-yard stare, returning to work.
Dean kept talking about himself, but what little the tattoo artist had revealed during that interlude was all he got out of him. He showed Dean the tattoo when it was finished via mirrors, and Dean couldn’t believe the perfection of the rendering, down to the almost invisible squiggle at the ends of two of the thinnest lines. He wrapped it, handed Dean a crappy photocopied page describing how to care for his new tattoo, and they settled up at the counter. Dean turned to go, paused, turned back. “Um ... do you know of a hotel around here, cheap, but, you know, not ... as bad as some?” He laughed lightly, especially once he saw the faintest hint of a smile touch the usually downturned line of the man’s mouth. Funny how even the coldest person warmed up when they got to know you a little. Even this guy.
“Hunters,” he said, shaking his head, taking the key from under the counter and locking the register. “You should try making an honest living instead. Come on.”
He let Dean out of the shop and locked it behind them. It was dusk; apparently he decided Dean was going to be his last customer for the day. Dean figured he was leading him to a nearby hotel. It was only when they mounted the third set of steps in a run-down apartment building that it dawned on Dean this guy had taken such a shine to him that he was bringing him to his own apartment. It wasn’t uncommon for a hunter to let another hunter crash at their place, but Dean usually wouldn’t take them up on it, and it wasn’t a stretch to assume this guy all but never offered. Apparently there were perks to being in the hunters-who-hate-hunters club.
Dean eyed the old-timey light fixtures, dribbling golden light down the walls of old red velveteen wallpaper to the worn carpet runner down the center of the hardwood hall. This place probably cost nothing, but for all that, it was a well-built building, at one time luxurious. The guy knew how to pick an apartment. He unlocked a door (far corner, by the alley, on the fire escape, the classic hunter’s choice) and let them both in, grunting, “Don’t break the salt line.” Dean stepped over it, feeling as natural as if he were walking into his own hotel room. What the maids must think, cleaning up salt everywhere he stayed.
Sure enough, it was a spacious room, radiator heat, old fixtures and appliances, but homey and well-warded. Dean hadn’t felt so at home since he became a hunter ... or so safe. He couldn’t exactly say why.
The guy got in his fridge, getting out some leftovers and popping them in his microwave. “Don’t have beer; I’m not 21,” said the guy brusquely. “You can get some yourself if you want it; there’s a little grocery shop just down the street. Help yourself to whatever you want. I don’t have much.” He grabbed his food and left the room. Not a talker, even in his own home, apparently.
Still, he must have been enjoying Dean’s company, if he let him come home with him, and guy like that probably didn’t get much human contact. Dean got some food out of the fridge and followed him into the dimly lit living room, noting the salt lines on all the windows, sigils on the walls, all the comforts of home. Dean stretched out on an adjacent couch with a groan. “Thanks, this’ll save me a night’s stay at a hotel, which is ....”
“... An hour hustling pool,” the guy finished for him, and Dean laughed appreciatively.
“You know it. Nice place.”
The guy might have grunted.
There were things that were important to know if you were going to get unconscious in another man’s house, and only one thing this guy had said still niggled at him, despite his pervasive lack of social graces. “So ... that thing about enjoying drawing people’s blood and hurting them for hours ... you some kind of sadist, or were you joking? Not that I’m judging,” he added quickly. Just that the answer would determine whether he went and got some of that beer ... and whether he slept with one eye open.
The guy squinted slightly in his direction, seeming baffled by the question. “Why would I like it?” he finally asked, so naively, Dean couldn’t help but feel reassured.
“You never know with some hunters.”
The guy seemed to understand then, nodding soberly.
“So, how long did you hunt before you hung it up?”
It was the wrong thing to ask; the bare hint of a smile that had begun to develop on the guy’s face instantly dissolved. Still, when asked a question, he seemed to feel almost like he had no choice but to respond honestly, if uninformatively. “I only ever had one job,” he said, that chilling hardness back in his voice. “Finished that, and I was free.”
“Yeah, but you can’t be more than twenty.”
“Nineteen,” the kid echoed, this time sounding more helpless than angry, and looking uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken.
Still, Dean was too curious to let it go just yet. “So you were raised in the life? How many in your family?”
The guy’s expression closed completely; Dean couldn’t get a thing from it. He plainly didn’t want to answer, so Dean counted on that compulsion he seemed to feel, as if not answering wasn’t an option, as if it wasn’t allowed. “Six.”
“Yeah? Brothers, sisters ...?”
“No. Adults.”
“How early’d they start you? My dad got into hunting when I was ten, but he didn’t let me come on a hunt ’til I was twelve.”
The guy stared blankly at the wall opposite for a long, awkward minute, and Dean looked askance. Was there something wrong with the guy? Beyond the obvious? At last, very softly, he answered, “I was never allowed on a hunt.”
“Ah. Backup guy, made the salt rounds, poured silver bullets?” The guy nodded shortly, reluctantly. “Yeah. I did a lot of that. That’s good, though, that they wanted to protect you from danger.”
Those empty eyes met his, and Dean recoiled slightly from the darkness he saw there. “They weren’t protecting me from anything. They were protecting everything else from me.” He got up abruptly. “I’m gonna take a bath.” He snatched up a crucifix on his way into the bathroom and slammed the door. It took only a moment for Dean to figure out what he’d need a crucifix for. The guy bathed in holy water? Sure enough, he heard the chanting through the door after the water was run.
It wasn’t camaraderie or mere curiosity anymore. Dean was a hunter, and he’d just been told hunters felt a need to protect everything else from this guy, who had conveniently left him alone in his apartment among all his stuff. Okay, even if the sigils seemed normal, the writing over every inch of his bedroom walls did throw Dean a little. So did the separate altar for every religion Dean had ever heard of and some he hadn’t, all around the edges of his bedroom, decked to overflowing with relics, representative images, and offerings. A lot of the writing on the wall had religious themes, too, very superstitious, pleas for forgiveness for the “evil inside him,” begging for deliverance from some sort of prophecy, all sorts of stuff about demon blood. Weird shit, really weird--and then he found the photo collection, pictures of the guy at younger ages, looking varying degrees of terrified or haunted or vacant, obviously the subject of some freaky religious ritual, surrounded by these adult hunters he’d mentioned. He looked oddly familiar. And tattoos on his body, visible in the pictures even when he was just a little kid. They’d tattooed him when he was so little?! Not just once, but many times. What the hell??
What the fuck had happened to this kid? What kind of hunters--all adults--had a kid--or, well, had a kid in their possession, anyway, maybe kidnapped ....
Dean’s mouth dropped open and he tried to breathe, but his lungs weren’t working. His legs went weak and he fell to his knees. Sam. Samsamsamsamsamsam .... Dean fumbled through the guy’s stuff, all his belongings, his mail, everything, looking for a name, but this kid lived off the grid; he barely got any mail. Dean finally found something that looked promising, and wrenched it from its spot underneath some lore books to read the name of the addressee: “Sam Winchester.” Dean became aware the strange choking sound he heard was coming from himself. His brother. This was his brother.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Sam stood in the doorway wearing only sweatpants, and Dean could see the tattoos he’d seen in the pictures, some of them old and faded and stretched out. Sam seemed unsurprised to be thus betrayed by him, wary, and ... afraid. Dean could read it in his eyes now like he’d known him all his life: all his coldness, his suspicion, his circumspection; underneath all of it, this unending river of terror. Sam’s expression changed slightly, becoming at once more compassionate and more suspicious. “Why are you looking at my mail and crying?” Then a preternatural calm overcame him. “You’re a hunter,” he said, like he’d just figured it out. He no longer sounded angry or suspicious, just honest and matter-of-fact. “You came to kill me. Go ahead and try, but I killed all of them, and I’ll kill you, too, if I have to.”
“Sam,” Dean gasped, struggling to his feet. “Sam.”
“Who told you about me? I thought I’d already dealt with everyone who knew.”
“No one,” Dean choked out. “No one had to tell me about you, because you’re my brother.”
A muted flare passed across Sam’s face. “I ... have no brother,” he said uncertainly.
“Sammy, you don’t remember? You were six! I thought you’d remember ....”
Sam stumbled back a step, then another, his hard non-expression crumbling by the second. “I thought ... I thought that was just a dream. That’s what they always told me.”
“No, Sammy, it was real.” Dean stumbled toward him, to embrace him.
When Sam saw his intention, he violently shoved him away, leaping back. “No!” He was abruptly nearly hysterical. “Don’t touch me, I’m evil!”
Dean stared at him, horrified. “No, Sam, you’re not,” he whispered.
“Yes, I have demon blood in me!” Sam cried, his eyes huge, his voice shaking. “I mean, they said I’d been ‘purified’--they said they were able to purify me--but I don’t believe it, I can feel it, I’m as evil as I always was. You don’t just stop being evil.”
Dean’s agony bled through his voice. “Sammy ....”
Sam managed to gather the easily frayed shreds of himself back together enough to suddenly point at the door. “Get out. Get out of my apartment. Save yourself. If you really are my brother, then you should know better than to be near me.”
“Sammy, what did they do to you?” This wreck of a human being is what they’d made of his brother. Dean’s heart broke.
“What had to be done,” Sam said, clipped. “And that’s how I know I’m evil, because I killed them, even though ... even though they ... were only doing what was right. I just wish they’d just killed me. I never understood why they kept me alive to torture--er, ‘purify’ me; it never made sense--”
“If you hadn’t killed ’em, I would’ve,” Dean assured him, his tone suddenly cool.
Sam blinked, and a tiny glimmer of hope came into his eyes. “You’re ... evil, too?”
“Nope. Human. No human could stand for what they did to you. Not me, not Dad ... and not you.”
Sam suddenly looked so vulnerable, Dean could hardly take it. That tough veneer that got him through even despite everything he’d suffered was so thin. How had he figured out a way to function in this world after all the brainwashing and unthinkable abuse he’d been subjected to? Not like he was on top of the world, but most people who’d been through the same thing would be heavily medicated, institutionalized, or dead. “I ... can’t,” Sam said, that cold voice now soft and gentle, terribly gentle. He kept making weird faces, and Dean eventually realized he was on the verge of tears, perhaps so unused to allowing himself to feel that even he didn’t realize what was happening. “I want to, but ... I know it would be wrong to let you be nice to me. So please, get out.”
“I finally found you. I’m never leaving you again, Sammy.”
Sam looked consterned, still making weird faces. A couple of tears leaked out. Sam looked bewildered by them, wiping them away and staring at them on his fingers. “What part of ‘I’m evil’ don’t you understand?” he asked, genuinely baffled.
“What part of ‘you’re my brother’ don’t you understand?” Dean came at him again, very slowly, arms out, as he would approach a feral animal, and sure enough Sam kept backing away, until Dean had backed him into a corner and Sam was pressed against the wall, every inch of him, still seeming to try to fold more completely into it as Dean advanced.
Sam was shaking his head repeatedly, hands over his face, eyes rolling with anxiety, saying, “Please don’t--please don’t--” Dean was ready for him to suddenly lash out. He really hoped Sam wasn’t scared enough to accidentally kill him, but it wasn’t going to stop him. Nothing was. Until he’d touched him again, none of this would seem real. It would seem like Sam could evaporate into thin air--indeed, he could and probably would run off, until this connection was forged, reignited, until Sam could feel it, too, that Dean was a foundation on which he could rest, a place where he belonged, a safe haven. Home. So Dean was ready for the worst, trying to imagine how to handle a violent attack without hurting Sam even more than he’d already been hurt ... until Sam finally finished the sentence, saying, “Please don’t--hurt me.”
He was so tall, gangly but intimidating when he met him in the shop. Now he seemed almost as small as when Dean first lost him. Sam quivered there, every fight-or-flight response in his body screaming at him for action, but he forced himself to stay still, so as not to hurt Dean. Dean’s arms closed around Sam’s naked torso, and Sam flinched violently. Nonetheless, he made no move, as if everything about this situation was beyond his experience or his capacity to comprehend, and thus he couldn’t conceive how to react to the embrace, to a kind touch, to the emotion Dean couldn’t contain as he began to weep. “You’re not evil, Sam,” he told him over and over, whenever he was able to speak. “And even if you were, it wouldn’t make any difference.”
He didn’t know Sam was crying too until he spoke, sounding so agonized and broken. “I don’t want the evil to get into you! All that time, I thought, if I had really had a brother, I was just ... I was just glad ... he didn’t have to ....” He gulped. His voice dropped to a whisper. “He didn’t have to be purified, that he was okay as he was. He was the good one,” he chanted, as if saying aloud something he’d said to himself countless times. “It’s okay that I was full of badness, if ... as long as he never caught it from me.”
Dean squeezed him tighter, his face buried in his brother’s hair. Of all the things he thought had befallen Sam, of every terrible imagining in the dark when he couldn’t keep the worst fears at bay, it turned out the truth was still worse. It wasn’t a random kidnapping. It wasn’t someone who wanted a kid, or someone who had it in for their family. It wasn’t a demon or a monster, or even someone who thought Dad was just a really crappy parent. It was cruel, and personal, detailed, premeditated. At no time had it ever occurred to him it could have to do with Sam himself, an innocent little boy. He’d been mistaken. “I couldn’t ‘catch it,’” he assured him. How many such assurances would he have to offer him before Sam was able to believe him? An infinite number might not be enough. Still, it didn’t matter. He would say it as many times as it took, in this life, the next, and the next .... “And even if I could, I’ll take it. Don’t worry, Sam. Everything’s okay now. Everything’s okay.”
Unable to bear Dean’s embrace anymore, apparently, Sam suddenly made a break for it, slipping out of his arms and dashing past him. He didn’t go far, just far enough that he could dance out of his reach, should Dean try it again. Sam shifted from foot to foot in the middle of the room, pure anxiety, unable to quite meet Dean’s eyes, unable to look away.
At last, he seemed to have to ask, “But why would you come back?” He looked completely incapable of comprehending why someone would care so much about him ... indeed, why they would care at all. He had no friends, Dean was sure. He wouldn’t want the ‘evil’ to get into them, he wouldn’t believe anyone could care enough about him even to want to talk to him regularly, much less do something kind for him. He may have managed to escape, but he finished the work of his captors without meaning to, keeping himself away from everything else, willingly suffering the lack of everything a human being needed and wanted in an effort, not to be good--a goal he believed to be impossible--but in an effort simply to be less evil. Dean was suddenly glad their parents were dead. It would have destroyed them to see their son like this. It nearly destroyed him.
Most people who’d been through what Sam had would be taking it out on the world in big ways or small. Hell, plenty of the hunters Dean knew were mainly using hunting as an excuse to act on some of their murderous rage. But not Sam. Even with every excuse to turn into a psychopath, Sam was doing his best, holding down a semi-respectable job, finding a way to live, trying to make certain he didn’t hurt anybody, whatever the cost to himself, all the while believing he was unforgivably evil. He had no idea how good he really was.
How was Dean to convince him? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he would try. He would never stop trying. He was here with Sam again at last, whatever Sam had become in the intervening years, whatever Dean had become. Whatever what Sam had been through had done to himself, to Dean, to their family, Dean had finally found him, and he was never letting go. Other people might think Sam was a lost cause, broken beyond repair, but it wasn’t in Dean to see it that way. Today was the first day since he lost Sam that he began to feel like wholeness was possible.
“Sam, I would always come back for you,” he told him, and watched Sam’s eyes fill with tears. “Always.”
~ The End ~
This story now has a sequel, " Broken."