Better Off Forgotten 1/1
Better Off Forgotten
Summary: Highest bid gets the kid. Unless...
A/N: Sam is thirteen.
XXX
The door bursts open with a bang like a gunshot, the explosive force driving the handle through the drywall. An orange glow from the neon motel vacancy sign spills into the room and Sam jolts awake, startling upright in bed, his heart in his throat and his hands reaching for the knife Dad insists he keep under his pillow.
The bed beside his is empty, sheets smooth and untouched, and Sam, stomach sinking, remembers Dean warning him not to wait up, strutting out the door with a wink and an incredibly inappropriate comment about what he planned to get up to with head cheerleader Sara Meadows that evening. Dad might be in the room next door or, more likely, at the bar down the street, too far away to hear the commotion or see the figure that appears in the doorway, no more than a hulking shadow in the darkness, face lost to the night. The shape moves, fast and fearless, into the room, bringing with it a stench so strong Sam almost gags. He thinks he recognises it but he can't figure out where from.
Then there's a flash of light, a crackle that splits the air. A bolt of electricity slams Sam back to the mattress, seizing his muscles in a violent spasm, and the time for thinking is over.
XXX
Vaguely, Sam remembers bumping around in the trunk of a car, the rumble of an engine vibrating his spine, his arms twisted awkwardly behind his back with rope chaffing his wrists and duct tape pressed over his mouth, but when he wakes up properly he's unbound and his face is sticky and raw but free of tape. His surroundings are still dark but now they're motionless, the grumble of the engine gone, and even smaller than the trunk he recalls. Wherever he is, he barely fits, not even folded up as uncomfortably as he is, with his knees pushed up to his chest and his arms pinned at his sides.
Groaning, Sam tries to shift, to stretch some of the cramping from his limbs, but his feet, his knees, his elbows and shoulders and head, all of them bump into a criss-cross of metal, the links of some kind of cage. A dog crate maybe, and not even a particularly big one. He can't stretch out or sit up or... is it getting harder to breathe? He read something once, about how people can suffocate if they're held in certain positions for too long. Maybe this is one of them. Maybe his lungs can't expand properly. Oh shit, maybe he's about to die all alone in the dark in a fucking dog crate.
“Scared?”
The cage rattles when Sam jumps. He tries to twist, straining his eyes in the darkness, but he can't find the source of the voice.
“Who's there?” he demands, pleased when his voice doesn't shake. He sounds brave, like Dean or Dad.
The response he waits for doesn't come. The darkness breathes slow and steady and silent all around him. Did he imagine the voice? Or is someone lurking nearby, invisible, watching?
“Hello?” he tries. This time he can hear the apprehension in his voice when it bounces back at him, unanswered. Sam shivers. He wishes he'd gone to bed in something more than boxers and an old threadbare t-shirt. It's cold and he's sure he can feel eyes on his skin, prickly and uncomfortable, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He wonders if Dean is back from his date yet. How long has it been since he was taken? Did Dad hear the attack or was he at the bar? Does anyone even know that he's missing?
“Hey!” he yells, suddenly desperate for an answer from the silent, lurking presence in the room, desperate to be released from his tiny, cramped prison. He kicks out awkwardly at the cage. His bare feet rattle the door on it's hinges and a loose wire stabs the underside of his big toe but nothing else. He slams a fist into the side of the cage. “Let me out of here! Let me out!”
Blood slowly curls around his toes. No one answers.
XXX
Somehow, Sam manages to fall asleep.
For what feels like hours, he yells and beats up the cage and generally panics about the whole situation, but the truth is, being kidnapped is turning out to be, well... boring. Eventually, he falls into an uncomfortable, fitful doze, his throat dry and his fists and feet sore from slamming into the unyielding metal.
Sam dreams of faceless shapes hidden in shadows, hands that grab him from out of nowhere, and he wakes up to a screech and a burst of light. Forgetting about the cage, he jerks upwards and bashes his head, adding a sharp pain to his body's long list of complaints. His neck is stiff and strained. His fingers and toes are frozen. His back and his legs have cramped into tight knots and the twists of wire beneath him have pressed grooves into his skin. He can't stop the moan that rises in his throat as he squints against the sudden, violent light.
He's in a garage, he realizes, tucked into a corner by a workbench and a stack of empty cages, just like the one he's in. The screeching noise was the garage door rising, allowing daylight to spill over his cage for just a moment before the opening is blocked by the rear end of a reversing truck.
“Hey,” Sam tries to yell. His voice is scratchy and dry and not loud enough to attract any attention. He rattles the cage. “Help! Someone help!”
He hears the door of the truck open, then close. “Don't bother,” a man's voice says. “There's no one round to hear you.”
“Help!” Sam yells louder. As if he would take this guy's word for truth. Who knows, maybe Dad and Dean have already tracked him here somehow. Maybe they're nearby and if he yells loud enough they might hear him. “Somebody help me!” Maybe someone will hear him.
“Oh shut up,” the truck driver says. Sam quickly tugs his fingers back inside the wires so they don't end up crushed by the boot that rams against the side of the cage as the man heads to the back of his truck.
“Screw you,” Sam snarls, glaring. “Let me go.”
He tries to size up his kidnapper but it's difficult from his position on the floor, trying to look up through the criss-crossing wire. He can't see any claws or fangs, no obvious signs of a monster. It just looks like a man, middle-aged and balding... except for the smell. The same one Sam remembers from the motel room when the door burst open, like... like that time he and Dean found a tray of rotten eggs in their motel room refrigerator.
“What are you?” he asks.
The man laughs as he hauls open the truck's roll-up door. It isn't a pleasant sound. “Rich is what I'm gonna be. Once word gets round that I got a hunter's kid for sale.”
“For... sale?” Sam echoes numbly, stomach sinking.
The man leans in, smiling with far too many teeth. “Highest bid gets the kid,” he sing-songs. He picks up the dog crate, and Sam, as though it were weightless, swinging around to place it in the truck's cargo bay. Sam swallows down a dizzy swoop of nausea.
“My dad-” he starts, but the man cuts him off with a short, sharp laugh.
“Last I saw, your dad was drunk off his ass in a crap-hole bar two towns away. He ain't gonna find you.”
Sam hopes his glare covers up the dismay that hollows out his chest. “You don't know my dad.”
“Let me guess.” The balding man is unimpressed. “Drives a big truck, carries a big gun, and thinks he's a big man? All you hunter kids are the same; you all think your parents are superheroes.”
Something rattles between the cage bars, jabbing Sam roughly in the shoulder. He opens his mouth to complain but a rush of electricity snaps it shut. His breath sticks in his throat, shuddering uselessly in his lungs. Panic swells like a wave, rising higher and higher with every second that air eludes him.
After an eternity, the flow of electricity stops. Sam gasps, breathless and light-headed. The cage is rattling. No, he's trembling, rattling the cage as spasms continue to shiver up and down his limbs.
“Did your dad save you from that?” the man taunts.
This time, the jab hits Sam in the thigh.
“What about that one?”
The next zaps him in the stomach, then his chest, the side of his neck, the soles of his feet, again and again, until Sam's screaming and thrashing and begging for it to stop. He doesn't even know when he started yelling, only that everything is pain. Everything is pain and he can't stand it, he needs it to stop, please, please, make it stop.
Sam sobs when the prod is finally taken away and doesn't come back. He can't help it, undignified and childish as it is. It feels like he's been beaten over every inch of his body, reduced to a single, throbbing bruise. Anywhere the prod touched his skin feels raw and burnt, and his mouth is filling with blood, his tongue gashed by clenching teeth. His head pounds, his face wet with tears, and he struggles to drag air back into his battered, quivering lungs.
“You idiot! What have you done?” There's a new voice, a woman, and for a brief, desperate moment, hope surges - has someone found him? - only for it to be dashed when the man replies, unperturbed.
“Calm down,” he drawls lazily. “I didn't kill him. It's not even up high enough to knock him out.”
“I told you to watch him,” the woman snaps, “Not play with him.”
“He's fine. Maybe a little less mouthy, that's all.”
Sam cracks his eyes open, trying to see past the dark blur of his lashes. The woman is short and squat, hardly tall enough to see into the back of the truck. She looks Sam over critically, lips pursed.
“He better be,” she say, “Or it's coming out of your cut.”
Undaunted by the threat, the man perks up. “You found a buyer then?”
“Maybe.” The woman raps her knuckles smartly on the cage in front of Sam's face, making him flinch. “What's your dad's name, kid? He been hunting long?”
Sam swallows a mouthful of blood. “Bite me,” he replies.
“Tempting,” the woman hums. “But this is business, not pleasure. Your father, what's his name? Quick now, or I'll let my friend have some more fun.”
Sam is torn. Should he tell her? What would Dean do? That's probably a stupid question. Dean would've gotten himself out of here by now. Dean wouldn't have let himself be taken in the first place. Dad's probably already planning a speech on all the things Dean would have done differently and all the training exercises Sam should have paid more attention to.
He's never wanted to hear one of his father's lectures so badly in his life.
“It was some guy called Winster,” the man answers, before Sam can figure out what to say. “Winster or Westchester or something like that.”
Inexplicably, alarm flashes across the woman's face. She spins to face her companion. “Winchester?” she demands.
“That's the one!” the man confirms, gleefully oblivious to the sudden shift in his friend's demeanour. At least, until his friend fists her hands in his shirt lapels and lifts him clear off of the ground. His feet dangle and he chokes, eyes wide.
“You idiot!” the woman spits. “John Winchester has two sons. Which one is this? Which one?”
“The youngest!” the flailing man splutters. “It's the youngest!”
By the stiffening of the woman's spine, Sam can tell that this is the wrong answer. With a thump and a burst of coughing, the flailing man drops to the floor, hands at his throat.
“What the hell?” he rasps, reproachfully. “What's wrong with you?”
“With me!” the woman spins on her heel and paces across the garage, high heels clicking against the concrete. “What's wrong with you? You have no idea, do you? No idea what you've done. Who you've just crossed.”
The man clambers to his feet, rubbing his neck and frowning at Sam curiously. “What are you talking about? What do you care about some hunter?”
Sam can't help but wonder the same thing. His dad might be tough but these people - these things that definitely aren't people - are unnaturally strong. More than that, there's some sort of power crackling just below the surface, under their skin, hiding beneath their human faces. Something dark and twisted. Something evil. No way would these things be intimidated by a mere human, not even a hunter as good as John Winchester.
“You moron!” The woman shakes her head, aghast at her companion's stupidity. “Don't you know who this kid is? Who he belongs to?”
She grabs the man's shirt and drags him away, out of earshot. Sam strains to try to hear. All he can make out is some sort of buzzing sound, a quick “Zz-zz-zz” that makes no sense he can figure out. Nor can he figure out why horror floods the bald man's features, why two monsters turn to stare at him, a thirteen year old in his underwear, locked in a dog crate in the back of a lorry, with actual, undeniable terror.
XXX
When the engine grumbles to life, Sam lies still in the empty darkness in the back of the truck and doesn't bother yelling or rattling the walls of his cage or hoping for help that isn't coming. Instead he tries not to imagine auction halls or think about the kind of monsters that might want to buy hunter's kids and what those monsters might want to do to those kids, and then he spends a long time trying not to throw up.
He tries to come up with some sort of plan of attack for when he's let out of the cage - if he's let out of the cage - but he'll be lucky if he can move, let alone mount a successful assault on multiple assailants. He wishes he could stretch out, even just a little bit.
From the front cab, Sam hears raised voices, a sudden burst of angry conversation.
“-your damn idea to nab that brat in the first place!”
“How was I supposed to know-”
“You were supposed to-”
The argument continues until the truck pulls to a stop. Sam holds his breath as the front doors open and close, waiting for the couple to come around the back, but they don't. Instead, a different set of doors creak open, a different engine sputters to life, and before he fully understands what's happening, Sam is listening to his kidnappers drive away.
“Hey!” he yells, alarmed. “Hey! You can't leave me here! Come back!” He slams his fist uselessly against the cage and listens to it rattle in the darkness. “Come back.”
XXX
He's going to die.
Whatever is wrong with him, whatever it was that seemed to scare the monsters, it must make him unfit for auction. This realization would be a relief except that now, he really is going to die in this fucking dog crate. He'd cry if he had a single drop of moisture left to create a tear. How long has it been since he had anything to drink? A day? Two? How long does death by dehydration take? Probably not much longer. His mouth and throat are so dry, he can barely swallow, his breath scraping roughly in and out, loud in the silence that surrounds him. His chest is tight, almost like the air is running out, and his head throbs.
He's going to die. In this fucking dog crate. With his feet cut up from useless kicking, sticky and itchy with dried blood, his fingers torn from desperate attempts at unravelling the unravel-able weave of wires. With his heartbeat pounding in his ears and his thoughts getting harder and harder to hold on to. Is it getting hotter in the back of this lorry or is he imagining it? Maybe the sun is coming up. Maybe this truck is about to become an oven.
He's so thirsty. So, so thirsty. Fuck. He's going to die. He's going to die in this fucking dog crate...
XXX
“Sam.”
Now he's imagining things. Hallucinating a voice.
“Sam.”
It sounds like Dad, but echo-y and warped, far, far away. Maybe he's dreaming. He's not sure if he's actually awake or asleep. At some point, it became difficult to tell the difference, and at some point after that, he stopped trying and just let himself drift. He must be sleeping, dreaming about Dad showing up, all gruff curse words and sharp knuckles rapping on the cage in front of Sam's face, ordering him to wake up.
“Leave me alone,” Sam tries to say, because he's far too tired to deal with dream-Dad and his stupid orders right now, but his mouth is so dry, what comes out sounds more like 'limalo', which he can't expect Dad to understand and it doesn't seem like he'd dreamed up a Dean to translate.
Predictably, Dad ignores him. Isn't that just typical, that Dad won't even let him dream in peace? Instead, the cage jolts and rattles, something banging against it again and again, until there's a screech of stiff hinges, hands around his ankles, and, suddenly and not at all gently, Sam is dragged backwards out of the cage.
It's not until he's halfway through the bottle of water that's shoved in his face that he realises that this isn't a dream. Deadened limbs spring to life, the returning blood-flow hot and prickly under his skin, and a dream has never hurt as much as this does. Dad actually is here, holding Sam up against his chest, pressing the bottle into Sam's numb fingers so he can gulp the water down. It's warm, stale, and probably the best water Sam's ever tasted. He growls when his father pulls it away.
“You'll make yourself sick,” Dad warns, which Sam resents, because he doesn't care; he just wants more.
“Give,” he demands, but Dad sets the bottle aside. They're on a dirt road, surrounded by trees, rustling quietly in the moonlight.
“In a minute. Sam, listen - listen. This is important.”
Sam gives up trying to reach for the bottle. His rubbery arms aren't working properly. “Where's Dean?” he asks. Dean would give him the water. He doesn't seem to be here though, which is weird.
“Just listen,” Dad says. “I need to know, Sam. Those-” he hesitates, just for a second, just long enough for Sam to know that the next word is a lie “-people, what did they tell you?”
Sam frowns. What did they tell him? That they were going to sell him. That his father would never find him. That he was worth a lot of money. “Why isn't Dean here?”
“Focus,” Dad snaps. “When they decided to let you go, did they tell you why?”
Sam tries to focus, he really does. It's hard when he's still so thirsty and pins-and-needles are burning in his reawakening limbs, when his head is pounding and - damn it, Dad was right - the water he gulped down is sloshing nauseatingly in his empty stomach. It is strange. Why would he be let go if he was worth so much money? Why go to all the effort of snatching him just to give him back?
“They were scared of me,” he remembers. Behind him, his father seems to sag, like this answer is the disappointing conclusion to a mystery Sam has only just discovered. “Why would they be scared of me?”
Dad doesn't explain. Instead, he reaches for something in his pocket. Sam hears the crinkle of paper.
“They said... they said that I belonged to someone. But not, like, to you or Dean, not like...” Sam trails off. Understanding comes suddenly, like a blow to the face. “They couldn't sell me because something already owns me.”
He's right. He knows he's right. Especially when Dad starts whispering something, not to Sam and not in English. Stomach sinking, Sam shifts, pulling away from his father so that he can see what's going on behind his back.
From a small brown paper bag, Dad shakes a fine scarlet powder into the palm of his hand, murmuring under his breath in that strange, unfamiliar tongue.
“Dad?” Sam asks uncertainly. “What are you doing? Is that witchcraft?”
Fear creeps up Sam's spine. His head is spinning, trying to put the puzzle pieces together. Finally, his father looks at him. And for some reason, the thought that forms in Sam's mind is this must be how the other monsters feel.
Then Dad blows and the last few days dissolve, just like the cloud of dust.
END