A Plan, Supernatural, NC-17, Broken!Verse
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: A Plan
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean, John, Ellen, Bobby, Caleb OMC
Rating: NC-17 (for thematic reasons)
Word Count: 3318
Summary: A sequel to Anything which was a Christmas request from nanakomatsu, Nothing, Something, To Be Good, Broken, To Be Strong, Nothing, No One, Alone, Yours, Mine, Better, Choice, Gathering, Betrayal, Taken, Remember, Training, Conflagration, Setting Up, Surviving, Pretending, Rescue, Revelations, Reconciliation, Waking Up, Guilt, Working On It, Effort, The Need to Talk, Please, Family, Wrong and Right There
Summary: John begins to see Dean as he really is, and it shakes him. Sam realizes he can't remember how he broke his leg, and is afraid that means something more is wrong. Gabe comes up with a plan...
A/Ns and Warnings: Very dark. Includes memory of torture and rape and very dark violence.
Caleb stopped the car and watched in amazement as Thomas go out of his own car with a bag of groceries and was met by a woman in a blue dress and two boys calling him “Daddy.”
He swallowed a heavy lump and looked at Ellen who shrugged. “A man can do…what he does and come home to this…like it’s normal?”
Ellen leaned around him to watch the big man kiss the woman then usher them all inside. “It changes things.”
Caleb shook his head. He wanted to say that it changed nothing, but he knew that it did. It wasn’t a straight black and white mission any more. Kill the men who did this, destroy the organization. He’d kept them faceless, automatons, men with no existence outside of the context he knew them in.
It was the only way he knew to reconcile the killing. Now he was face to face with the man who beat him, who gave him the marks that still lay purple and green and red on his back…and his family.
“What do you want to do?” Ellen asked and Caleb had to shake his head.
“Refocus. Let’s head back to scope out the complex, get the lay of the land. When Gabe gets here we’ll set him up researching the company and it’s local presence, see if we can work out what Gorlian’s cover is here.”
”They…they did things to me…and I waited for you….I fought as long as I could…and they hurt me…but you didn’t come …”
John’s eyes burned as he watched his son but the rifle back together. His face was a mask of concentration, his eyes flicking lightly over the pieces as his hands move confidently over them. It was a direct contradiction to the little boy voice in his head, accusing him.
“You didn’t come….they r-r-raped me, Dad…they took everything and I waited for you….they shoved things inside me…and…told me you would never come…I tried not to believe them….I tried…but I waited so long…”
He cleared his throat and tried to push it away…but pushing it away had been what got him here in the first place. He’d ignored Dean’s pain when he could have eased it. He’d not seen how he was hurting over Sam leaving, cause he was too caught up in his own. He’d never realized why Sam left because he couldn’t get past the pain of his losses, couldn’t see how much his boys needed one another…and how he’d done everything to push them at one another while at the same time driving the wedge between them.
Dean looked up at him, as if feeling his eyes, or his thoughts or…just expecting something. He looked like Dean…his eyes lightly guarded, his tongue just barely protruding from his mouth just before he smiled. John closed his eyes, because it wasn’t Dean…not the Dean he lost that night outside that motel.
He opened them again quickly. He looked like Dean. He acted like Dean. But he wasn’t Dean. It was almost as if he was…pretending.
Pretending.
“No…its okay…I can make it okay.”
John got up and paced away. Dean wasn’t better. Not like he’d thought. The breakdown in the bathroom was his conditioning conflicting with his memory…and despite getting him to talk, Dean was still pretending.
“I don’t want to remember…I don’t want to…make it go away…make it stop.”
Dean finished the gun and set it down on the table. “You okay, Dad?”
John looked back at him and nodded distractedly. “Yeah, Dean. I’m okay.”
“Can I make you some lunch?”
John shook his head. “No Dean. I don’t think so.” Dean was looking at him funny now, and John wasn’t sure what to do now that he saw what Dean was doing. “I’m…going to make lunch. It’s my turn.”
“I don’t mind.” Dean started to get up but John shook his head.
“No. Today I’m going to take care of you.” John heard himself say. Like he should have been doing all along. “What do you want to eat, Dean? Anything at all.”
Dean looked confused, like he didn’t understand the question. “Well, Sam should have something substantial. He ate a pancake-“
“No, Dean. You. What do you want? Not Sam. You.”
Dean shook his head. “I don’t know…I’ll eat whatever.”
John crossed to him. “I know you’ll eat whatever I make, Dean. That isn’t the point. I want to make something you want to eat.”
Dean’s forehead crinkled while he thought about it. “I…I liked the lasagna Ellen made.”
John nodded. “We have a little left over. I can heat it up. Why don’t you go watch tv or read a book or something.”
Dean stood, reaching for the rifle. “I’ll just clean up first.”
John took the rifle and shook his head. “No, I’ll do it Dean. Wash your hands and go relax for a while. I’ll call you when lunch is ready.”
Dean still looked confused, frowning at first the rifle, then John, but he went to the sink to wash his hands. John watched while he started the oven and pulled the lasagna out of the fridge, watched until Dean left the room, headed for the living room.
He was shaking as he set the pan of lasagna in the oven. Shaking because he was just beginning to realize that his son was far more broken than he knew how to care for…and that maybe Sam had been right when he’d said that it might be more than they could fix themselves.
And that didn’t even touch Sam and what he needed.
Sam woke slowly to the sound of rain and the sense that for the first time in a long time he was alone. He opened his eyes in the half light and confirmed the sense. There was a little panic, but he shook it off and sat up.
The quiet was nice. He pulled himself back against the headboard and closed his eyes. He felt so pulled when Dean was in the room. Dean, who wanted him to be okay, and Sam couldn’t help but pretend for him…because he could see the relief in Dean’s eyes when he did.
The truth was though that Sam knew he wasn’t okay.
There was a giant hole inside him, a blackness that could swallow him whole if he let it. And there were times he wanted to let it. He craved it. To fall into the dark and just let go. So he wouldn’t have to see that look on his father’s face…the pity and disgust and helplessness…So he wouldn’t have to feel the hands and cocks and beatings…So he wouldn’t hear Robert’s voice in his head anymore.
“My poor baby,” Robert’s voice whispered. “I wish there were some other way.”
Sam shook his head. He hated how helpless he was in this whole thing. How efficient they were in making him helpless. The apparatus in the van…it immobilized him, even his head. The drugs, the restraints…the physical exhaustion…and now the leg…
He ran a hand over the cast. Under it his leg throbbed, ached from the standing on it earlier. He slipped one long finger under the plaster to rub at itchy skin. As he did, it occurred to him that he didn’t know how he’d broken it.
He froze. He thought he remembered everything. He thought he’d made it through without breaking…not like Dean…he’d given up, but…he remembered himself…everything that happened.
Sam tried to calm the bubbling fear and turned his attention to things he did remember. He remembered Dean, kneeling beside Dean in the dark, waiting. He remembered James and Robert. He remembered the rack and James cutting into him.
His blood was hot as it slipped over his skin, as James cut him and it was Robert who spoke…Robert who made him stop.
“Stop. Just…Let me take him and go. Deal with the other one anyway you want…but stop.”
Robert who saved him from more. Even Dean had obeyed him.
“Dean. Get your brother out of that contraption.”
Dean looked at James, then at Robert. “Now!”
Sam was shook, whimpered as Dean’s hands slid down his legs to the cuffs and pushed the release, slowly moving Sam’s legs together until he was standing.
Dean had let Robert take him. Robert’s hand had claimed him, curling over his hip…and that was the last thing Sam remembered before waking up in the motel room with Dean.
He’d been walking then, so the break had to come after that…sometime between that moment and Dean’s voice…
You okay, Sammy?” Dean’s free hand stroked Sam’s face and Sam nodded.
“’M okay, Dean. Hurts…but okay.”
Dean kissed his cheek. “He won’t touch you now. Won’t touch anyone.”
Sam shook his head. Tears burned at the corners of his eyes. He hated them. There was a soft knock on the door and his father came into the room.
“You okay, Sammy?” he asked, unconsciously mirroring the words Dean had whispered to him.
Sam couldn’t answer for a minute and John came to sit next to him on the bed. “What is it?”
“I can’t remember.” Sam gasped out. “I thought…I thought I could…that I was okay…but I don’t know Dad.”
John’s big hand moved to brush hair out of his face and Sam cringed. “Fuck. I’m sorry.” He grabbed his father’s hand and held it to his chest. “It hurts. I don’t remember how it happened. I don’t remember.”
“Its okay Sam.” John said it softly, though he obviously didn’t really know how to help Sam. “What is it you don’t remember?”
Sam licked his lips. “My leg. I don’t remember breaking my leg, Dad. How? How can I not remember?”
John shook his head. “I don’t know Sam. I don’t know how either. Maybe Dean-“
“No. Just…No. I don’t want him to know.” Sam blew out and tried to quell the unreasonable panic. “He needs to think I’m okay. I need to be okay so he doesn’t…” He closed his eyes. “I was on my feet. Robert was going to take me away. Then…then…I don’t know. There’s just…empty…there’s noise and pain…and then nothing.”
“Easy Sam. I’m sure it’s nothing. It will all come back to you.”
Sam shivered. “No…” His father didn’t understand the significance, why he had to remember. “When you stop remembering…that’s it…that’s when they have you.” Sam whispered.
John pulled on his hand, pulling Sam’s hand to his chest and making Sam open his eyes. “They don’t have you Sammy. I do. I’ve got you. I’ve got you and Dean both.”
Gabe and Bobby made decent time, and when they pulled into the hotel where Caleb and Ellen had set up, Gabe felt a little more at ease over the recent turn of events. He got set up quickly enough, hacking a local wi-fi and scoping out the local scene. When Bobby came out of the shower, Gabe got up to take his. He’d been shaken more than he would have said by John’s suggestion that he come to Austin with Bobby. While a part of him wanted to be in on the action, the part of him that realized why his father had kept him out of it, the part of him that still shivered when he remembered the site of Caleb on his knees taking a beating for Sam, had been terrified at the prospect of getting this close.
But now, he could see his place here, and he let his father’s training guide him. When he emerged from the bathroom, Ellen and Caleb had returned with food. He took his and retreated to the computer while the older hunters talked. He checked the information he was compiling and when there was a lull in the conversation he cleared his throat.
“It looks like Gorlian’s primary office is a real estate office. It’s in the prominent building on the west side of the complex.” He pointed to the rough drawing Caleb had made. He handles industrial properties according to his website.”
He swiveled back to the computer and brought up a new page. “This is Gorlian industries, the big umbrella corp that hides a lot of other stuff. The real estate office houses their offices too…and the warehouses and stuff around the rest of the complex are listed in various names, including some we’ve already seen on other listings. These two…” He pointed at the drawing again, “…are most likely our targets. They’re listed as Ablian Imports and Derringer Exports.”
“But Michael-Gorlian, is likely in his office.” Ellen countered.
Gabe nodded. “We’re gonna have to split up.”
Bobby shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
Caleb paced away and back again. “I don’t either. It’s…too big.”
Gabe nodded. “I know. I have a plan.”
Dean was beside himself.
His father had fed him lunch, but wouldn’t let him help. Wouldn’t let him clean up. Wouldn’t let him go check on Sam. Told him to relax.
Not wait. Dean could wait.
Not sit or stand or lay down or sleep. Dean could do those things.
Relax.
As if Dean understood what that was. “Do something you want to do. Or do nothing,” he had said.
Dean stood in the center of the living room of the cabin and chewed on his lip in frustration. It was confusing. He paced a little, then came back to standing. Something he wanted to do.
He wanted to make his father happy. He wanted to take care of Sam. He wanted to be good.
He stopped and thought about that. His father would be happy if he did something he wanted to do. If he did something that wasn’t taking care of someone else. The rain was letting up. Cautiously Dean went up the stairs, pausing outside Sam’s door. He knocked and waited until his father answered.
“I think…maybe I could…go for a walk?”
John smiled. “That would be good Dean. Take a jacket, okay? And Sam’s cell phone. It’s on the table down stairs. Just in case you get lost.”
Dean nodded. It felt better to have a plan. Something to do. Even if he had to think of it for himself.
“A plan?” Ellen asked cautiously, turning to face Gabe.
He nodded and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m going to need a day to prep, and Gordon should be in town by the time I’m ready.”
“You?” Bobby crossed his arms and scowled at Gabe.
“Hear me out.” Gabe pointed at the screen, which was now flashing with security footage from the assault on the facility where they’d found Sam and Dean. “Of all the people we’ll have on hand, only Ellen and I don’t appear in any of these pictures. You can be guaranteed that Gorlian knows your faces. And, if he is who Ellen thinks he is, he’ll know hers. He doesn’t know mine.”
Ellen stood up. “No. Right there, Gabe. No. Whatever it is you’re thinking.”
Gabe stood too, determination and anger crackling in his eyes. “I’m in this just as much as anyone else, Ellen. I’m an adult with two college degrees. I may only be eighteen, but I’m smart, and I know what I’m talking about here.”
They stared eye to eye, Gabe’s heart pounding in his chest. “I can do this.”
“Do what, Gabe?” Caleb said, placating Ellen with a hand on her arm. “Let’s hear what he has to say before we shut him down.”
“Okay….so from what I can tell, there’s one sure way in to see Gorlian. Like I said, it’s going to take me doing some prep work, most of tonight on the computer, a few hours of shopping and stuff tomorrow.”
He took a deep breath. “James had a son. The files I pulled off the computers where his. He was preparing a bid on one of the lesser Gorlians. His son is my height, a little heavier than me, but blonde. I’ll need to get some brown contacts and my hair cut. I can take the information in those files, make the bid James was going to make, with the added conviction of a son whose father was killed under Gorlian’s employ.”
“No.” Ellen said again, pulling away from Caleb and moving away. “We don’t know if he’s ever met the son.”
Gabe nodded. “No we don’t, but we do know the son has been attending a boarding school in Europe for the last three years. He’s eighteen, like me. The years between 15 and 18 change a man. Even if he knew the kid when he left, he’d be a different person today.”
“I still don’t like it.” Ellen said. “If I let you go in there alone, your father will have my head.”
“He doesn’t have to know.” Gabe said softly. “No one not in this room ever has to know.”
Bobby stood up too, coming to stand by Gabe. “I know you mean well, Gabe, but I have to side with Ellen on this. We can’t let you go in there alone.”
Caleb looked up. “He doesn’t have to.”
“What?” Ellen came back from the window, staring at Caleb.
“He can take me. Let me be his slave.”
“No.” Bobby and Ellen said it in unison.
“James only handled the sex slaves…but they have other kinds. Sam’s research told us that much. James implied it when they caught me. Gabe can…I can be his, one he trained himself…show Gorlian how good he is at the job.”
“He’ll know you.” Bobby said. “From the footage if nothing else.”
“He’ll have seen me getting beaten. Nothing more. It will fit.”
Gabe was nodding. “I like it. Caleb can back me up if things get dicey.” He pulled his bag up onto the table and rummaged through it. “We’ll all take trackers, I’ve got more like the one Dean used. They’re good for up to 72 hours…longer if you don’t eat or drink too much.”
“Your father-“
“Isn’t here.” Gabe said forcefully. He sat back down at the computer and drew his legs up. “It’s this or we wait until we can gather the man power for a full assault. I think you know we can’t do that.”
The room was quiet and Gabe didn’t know if that was good or bad. He hadn’t expected the back up from Caleb, and when he met the older man’s eyes he had to be truthful that he wasn’t sure Caleb was up to the task he’d set himself.
But then again, Gabe wasn’t sure he was up to his own. “Gordon and his guys should be hitting town sometime tomorrow night. Ellen, and Bobby, you can find a way into the warehouses…find out if they’re housing more than shipping crates.” Gabe found himself saying. “And instead of burning the place down, it’s time for a more permanent solution.”
Ellen and Bobby both looked at him. “If there’s enough evidence there, we take Gorlian…but it’s time to bring in the big guns. I’ve got contacts in the FBI. If I call them tonight they’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Are you sure about that, Son?” Bobby asked and Gabe shook his head.
“Sure? No. But we’re gonna kill ourselves if we keep at it like this. Or, we’re gonna get caught. We take Gorlian, let them clean up the rest.”
Ellen shook her head. “John isn’t going to like that.”
“John isn’t here, Ellen.” Gabe said, sounding a lot more confident than he felt. “We are. We have to make do with what we have. We have to make the decisions that will break the back of this organization. Gorlian isn’t even the top, we know that. I’ve been trying to crack it, and I don’t have the tools to do it.”
“John and his boys will never be safe until they’re all gone.” Caleb said softly. “I think it’s our only option.”
“I still don’t like it.”
Title: A Plan
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean, John, Ellen, Bobby, Caleb OMC
Rating: NC-17 (for thematic reasons)
Word Count: 3318
Summary: A sequel to Anything which was a Christmas request from nanakomatsu, Nothing, Something, To Be Good, Broken, To Be Strong, Nothing, No One, Alone, Yours, Mine, Better, Choice, Gathering, Betrayal, Taken, Remember, Training, Conflagration, Setting Up, Surviving, Pretending, Rescue, Revelations, Reconciliation, Waking Up, Guilt, Working On It, Effort, The Need to Talk, Please, Family, Wrong and Right There
Summary: John begins to see Dean as he really is, and it shakes him. Sam realizes he can't remember how he broke his leg, and is afraid that means something more is wrong. Gabe comes up with a plan...
A/Ns and Warnings: Very dark. Includes memory of torture and rape and very dark violence.
Caleb stopped the car and watched in amazement as Thomas go out of his own car with a bag of groceries and was met by a woman in a blue dress and two boys calling him “Daddy.”
He swallowed a heavy lump and looked at Ellen who shrugged. “A man can do…what he does and come home to this…like it’s normal?”
Ellen leaned around him to watch the big man kiss the woman then usher them all inside. “It changes things.”
Caleb shook his head. He wanted to say that it changed nothing, but he knew that it did. It wasn’t a straight black and white mission any more. Kill the men who did this, destroy the organization. He’d kept them faceless, automatons, men with no existence outside of the context he knew them in.
It was the only way he knew to reconcile the killing. Now he was face to face with the man who beat him, who gave him the marks that still lay purple and green and red on his back…and his family.
“What do you want to do?” Ellen asked and Caleb had to shake his head.
“Refocus. Let’s head back to scope out the complex, get the lay of the land. When Gabe gets here we’ll set him up researching the company and it’s local presence, see if we can work out what Gorlian’s cover is here.”
”They…they did things to me…and I waited for you….I fought as long as I could…and they hurt me…but you didn’t come …”
John’s eyes burned as he watched his son but the rifle back together. His face was a mask of concentration, his eyes flicking lightly over the pieces as his hands move confidently over them. It was a direct contradiction to the little boy voice in his head, accusing him.
“You didn’t come….they r-r-raped me, Dad…they took everything and I waited for you….they shoved things inside me…and…told me you would never come…I tried not to believe them….I tried…but I waited so long…”
He cleared his throat and tried to push it away…but pushing it away had been what got him here in the first place. He’d ignored Dean’s pain when he could have eased it. He’d not seen how he was hurting over Sam leaving, cause he was too caught up in his own. He’d never realized why Sam left because he couldn’t get past the pain of his losses, couldn’t see how much his boys needed one another…and how he’d done everything to push them at one another while at the same time driving the wedge between them.
Dean looked up at him, as if feeling his eyes, or his thoughts or…just expecting something. He looked like Dean…his eyes lightly guarded, his tongue just barely protruding from his mouth just before he smiled. John closed his eyes, because it wasn’t Dean…not the Dean he lost that night outside that motel.
He opened them again quickly. He looked like Dean. He acted like Dean. But he wasn’t Dean. It was almost as if he was…pretending.
Pretending.
“No…its okay…I can make it okay.”
John got up and paced away. Dean wasn’t better. Not like he’d thought. The breakdown in the bathroom was his conditioning conflicting with his memory…and despite getting him to talk, Dean was still pretending.
“I don’t want to remember…I don’t want to…make it go away…make it stop.”
Dean finished the gun and set it down on the table. “You okay, Dad?”
John looked back at him and nodded distractedly. “Yeah, Dean. I’m okay.”
“Can I make you some lunch?”
John shook his head. “No Dean. I don’t think so.” Dean was looking at him funny now, and John wasn’t sure what to do now that he saw what Dean was doing. “I’m…going to make lunch. It’s my turn.”
“I don’t mind.” Dean started to get up but John shook his head.
“No. Today I’m going to take care of you.” John heard himself say. Like he should have been doing all along. “What do you want to eat, Dean? Anything at all.”
Dean looked confused, like he didn’t understand the question. “Well, Sam should have something substantial. He ate a pancake-“
“No, Dean. You. What do you want? Not Sam. You.”
Dean shook his head. “I don’t know…I’ll eat whatever.”
John crossed to him. “I know you’ll eat whatever I make, Dean. That isn’t the point. I want to make something you want to eat.”
Dean’s forehead crinkled while he thought about it. “I…I liked the lasagna Ellen made.”
John nodded. “We have a little left over. I can heat it up. Why don’t you go watch tv or read a book or something.”
Dean stood, reaching for the rifle. “I’ll just clean up first.”
John took the rifle and shook his head. “No, I’ll do it Dean. Wash your hands and go relax for a while. I’ll call you when lunch is ready.”
Dean still looked confused, frowning at first the rifle, then John, but he went to the sink to wash his hands. John watched while he started the oven and pulled the lasagna out of the fridge, watched until Dean left the room, headed for the living room.
He was shaking as he set the pan of lasagna in the oven. Shaking because he was just beginning to realize that his son was far more broken than he knew how to care for…and that maybe Sam had been right when he’d said that it might be more than they could fix themselves.
And that didn’t even touch Sam and what he needed.
Sam woke slowly to the sound of rain and the sense that for the first time in a long time he was alone. He opened his eyes in the half light and confirmed the sense. There was a little panic, but he shook it off and sat up.
The quiet was nice. He pulled himself back against the headboard and closed his eyes. He felt so pulled when Dean was in the room. Dean, who wanted him to be okay, and Sam couldn’t help but pretend for him…because he could see the relief in Dean’s eyes when he did.
The truth was though that Sam knew he wasn’t okay.
There was a giant hole inside him, a blackness that could swallow him whole if he let it. And there were times he wanted to let it. He craved it. To fall into the dark and just let go. So he wouldn’t have to see that look on his father’s face…the pity and disgust and helplessness…So he wouldn’t have to feel the hands and cocks and beatings…So he wouldn’t hear Robert’s voice in his head anymore.
“My poor baby,” Robert’s voice whispered. “I wish there were some other way.”
Sam shook his head. He hated how helpless he was in this whole thing. How efficient they were in making him helpless. The apparatus in the van…it immobilized him, even his head. The drugs, the restraints…the physical exhaustion…and now the leg…
He ran a hand over the cast. Under it his leg throbbed, ached from the standing on it earlier. He slipped one long finger under the plaster to rub at itchy skin. As he did, it occurred to him that he didn’t know how he’d broken it.
He froze. He thought he remembered everything. He thought he’d made it through without breaking…not like Dean…he’d given up, but…he remembered himself…everything that happened.
Sam tried to calm the bubbling fear and turned his attention to things he did remember. He remembered Dean, kneeling beside Dean in the dark, waiting. He remembered James and Robert. He remembered the rack and James cutting into him.
His blood was hot as it slipped over his skin, as James cut him and it was Robert who spoke…Robert who made him stop.
“Stop. Just…Let me take him and go. Deal with the other one anyway you want…but stop.”
Robert who saved him from more. Even Dean had obeyed him.
“Dean. Get your brother out of that contraption.”
Dean looked at James, then at Robert. “Now!”
Sam was shook, whimpered as Dean’s hands slid down his legs to the cuffs and pushed the release, slowly moving Sam’s legs together until he was standing.
Dean had let Robert take him. Robert’s hand had claimed him, curling over his hip…and that was the last thing Sam remembered before waking up in the motel room with Dean.
He’d been walking then, so the break had to come after that…sometime between that moment and Dean’s voice…
You okay, Sammy?” Dean’s free hand stroked Sam’s face and Sam nodded.
“’M okay, Dean. Hurts…but okay.”
Dean kissed his cheek. “He won’t touch you now. Won’t touch anyone.”
Sam shook his head. Tears burned at the corners of his eyes. He hated them. There was a soft knock on the door and his father came into the room.
“You okay, Sammy?” he asked, unconsciously mirroring the words Dean had whispered to him.
Sam couldn’t answer for a minute and John came to sit next to him on the bed. “What is it?”
“I can’t remember.” Sam gasped out. “I thought…I thought I could…that I was okay…but I don’t know Dad.”
John’s big hand moved to brush hair out of his face and Sam cringed. “Fuck. I’m sorry.” He grabbed his father’s hand and held it to his chest. “It hurts. I don’t remember how it happened. I don’t remember.”
“Its okay Sam.” John said it softly, though he obviously didn’t really know how to help Sam. “What is it you don’t remember?”
Sam licked his lips. “My leg. I don’t remember breaking my leg, Dad. How? How can I not remember?”
John shook his head. “I don’t know Sam. I don’t know how either. Maybe Dean-“
“No. Just…No. I don’t want him to know.” Sam blew out and tried to quell the unreasonable panic. “He needs to think I’m okay. I need to be okay so he doesn’t…” He closed his eyes. “I was on my feet. Robert was going to take me away. Then…then…I don’t know. There’s just…empty…there’s noise and pain…and then nothing.”
“Easy Sam. I’m sure it’s nothing. It will all come back to you.”
Sam shivered. “No…” His father didn’t understand the significance, why he had to remember. “When you stop remembering…that’s it…that’s when they have you.” Sam whispered.
John pulled on his hand, pulling Sam’s hand to his chest and making Sam open his eyes. “They don’t have you Sammy. I do. I’ve got you. I’ve got you and Dean both.”
Gabe and Bobby made decent time, and when they pulled into the hotel where Caleb and Ellen had set up, Gabe felt a little more at ease over the recent turn of events. He got set up quickly enough, hacking a local wi-fi and scoping out the local scene. When Bobby came out of the shower, Gabe got up to take his. He’d been shaken more than he would have said by John’s suggestion that he come to Austin with Bobby. While a part of him wanted to be in on the action, the part of him that realized why his father had kept him out of it, the part of him that still shivered when he remembered the site of Caleb on his knees taking a beating for Sam, had been terrified at the prospect of getting this close.
But now, he could see his place here, and he let his father’s training guide him. When he emerged from the bathroom, Ellen and Caleb had returned with food. He took his and retreated to the computer while the older hunters talked. He checked the information he was compiling and when there was a lull in the conversation he cleared his throat.
“It looks like Gorlian’s primary office is a real estate office. It’s in the prominent building on the west side of the complex.” He pointed to the rough drawing Caleb had made. He handles industrial properties according to his website.”
He swiveled back to the computer and brought up a new page. “This is Gorlian industries, the big umbrella corp that hides a lot of other stuff. The real estate office houses their offices too…and the warehouses and stuff around the rest of the complex are listed in various names, including some we’ve already seen on other listings. These two…” He pointed at the drawing again, “…are most likely our targets. They’re listed as Ablian Imports and Derringer Exports.”
“But Michael-Gorlian, is likely in his office.” Ellen countered.
Gabe nodded. “We’re gonna have to split up.”
Bobby shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
Caleb paced away and back again. “I don’t either. It’s…too big.”
Gabe nodded. “I know. I have a plan.”
Dean was beside himself.
His father had fed him lunch, but wouldn’t let him help. Wouldn’t let him clean up. Wouldn’t let him go check on Sam. Told him to relax.
Not wait. Dean could wait.
Not sit or stand or lay down or sleep. Dean could do those things.
Relax.
As if Dean understood what that was. “Do something you want to do. Or do nothing,” he had said.
Dean stood in the center of the living room of the cabin and chewed on his lip in frustration. It was confusing. He paced a little, then came back to standing. Something he wanted to do.
He wanted to make his father happy. He wanted to take care of Sam. He wanted to be good.
He stopped and thought about that. His father would be happy if he did something he wanted to do. If he did something that wasn’t taking care of someone else. The rain was letting up. Cautiously Dean went up the stairs, pausing outside Sam’s door. He knocked and waited until his father answered.
“I think…maybe I could…go for a walk?”
John smiled. “That would be good Dean. Take a jacket, okay? And Sam’s cell phone. It’s on the table down stairs. Just in case you get lost.”
Dean nodded. It felt better to have a plan. Something to do. Even if he had to think of it for himself.
“A plan?” Ellen asked cautiously, turning to face Gabe.
He nodded and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m going to need a day to prep, and Gordon should be in town by the time I’m ready.”
“You?” Bobby crossed his arms and scowled at Gabe.
“Hear me out.” Gabe pointed at the screen, which was now flashing with security footage from the assault on the facility where they’d found Sam and Dean. “Of all the people we’ll have on hand, only Ellen and I don’t appear in any of these pictures. You can be guaranteed that Gorlian knows your faces. And, if he is who Ellen thinks he is, he’ll know hers. He doesn’t know mine.”
Ellen stood up. “No. Right there, Gabe. No. Whatever it is you’re thinking.”
Gabe stood too, determination and anger crackling in his eyes. “I’m in this just as much as anyone else, Ellen. I’m an adult with two college degrees. I may only be eighteen, but I’m smart, and I know what I’m talking about here.”
They stared eye to eye, Gabe’s heart pounding in his chest. “I can do this.”
“Do what, Gabe?” Caleb said, placating Ellen with a hand on her arm. “Let’s hear what he has to say before we shut him down.”
“Okay….so from what I can tell, there’s one sure way in to see Gorlian. Like I said, it’s going to take me doing some prep work, most of tonight on the computer, a few hours of shopping and stuff tomorrow.”
He took a deep breath. “James had a son. The files I pulled off the computers where his. He was preparing a bid on one of the lesser Gorlians. His son is my height, a little heavier than me, but blonde. I’ll need to get some brown contacts and my hair cut. I can take the information in those files, make the bid James was going to make, with the added conviction of a son whose father was killed under Gorlian’s employ.”
“No.” Ellen said again, pulling away from Caleb and moving away. “We don’t know if he’s ever met the son.”
Gabe nodded. “No we don’t, but we do know the son has been attending a boarding school in Europe for the last three years. He’s eighteen, like me. The years between 15 and 18 change a man. Even if he knew the kid when he left, he’d be a different person today.”
“I still don’t like it.” Ellen said. “If I let you go in there alone, your father will have my head.”
“He doesn’t have to know.” Gabe said softly. “No one not in this room ever has to know.”
Bobby stood up too, coming to stand by Gabe. “I know you mean well, Gabe, but I have to side with Ellen on this. We can’t let you go in there alone.”
Caleb looked up. “He doesn’t have to.”
“What?” Ellen came back from the window, staring at Caleb.
“He can take me. Let me be his slave.”
“No.” Bobby and Ellen said it in unison.
“James only handled the sex slaves…but they have other kinds. Sam’s research told us that much. James implied it when they caught me. Gabe can…I can be his, one he trained himself…show Gorlian how good he is at the job.”
“He’ll know you.” Bobby said. “From the footage if nothing else.”
“He’ll have seen me getting beaten. Nothing more. It will fit.”
Gabe was nodding. “I like it. Caleb can back me up if things get dicey.” He pulled his bag up onto the table and rummaged through it. “We’ll all take trackers, I’ve got more like the one Dean used. They’re good for up to 72 hours…longer if you don’t eat or drink too much.”
“Your father-“
“Isn’t here.” Gabe said forcefully. He sat back down at the computer and drew his legs up. “It’s this or we wait until we can gather the man power for a full assault. I think you know we can’t do that.”
The room was quiet and Gabe didn’t know if that was good or bad. He hadn’t expected the back up from Caleb, and when he met the older man’s eyes he had to be truthful that he wasn’t sure Caleb was up to the task he’d set himself.
But then again, Gabe wasn’t sure he was up to his own. “Gordon and his guys should be hitting town sometime tomorrow night. Ellen, and Bobby, you can find a way into the warehouses…find out if they’re housing more than shipping crates.” Gabe found himself saying. “And instead of burning the place down, it’s time for a more permanent solution.”
Ellen and Bobby both looked at him. “If there’s enough evidence there, we take Gorlian…but it’s time to bring in the big guns. I’ve got contacts in the FBI. If I call them tonight they’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Are you sure about that, Son?” Bobby asked and Gabe shook his head.
“Sure? No. But we’re gonna kill ourselves if we keep at it like this. Or, we’re gonna get caught. We take Gorlian, let them clean up the rest.”
Ellen shook her head. “John isn’t going to like that.”
“John isn’t here, Ellen.” Gabe said, sounding a lot more confident than he felt. “We are. We have to make do with what we have. We have to make the decisions that will break the back of this organization. Gorlian isn’t even the top, we know that. I’ve been trying to crack it, and I don’t have the tools to do it.”
“John and his boys will never be safe until they’re all gone.” Caleb said softly. “I think it’s our only option.”
“I still don’t like it.”