Dean and Sam and Dad, Supernatural, NC-17, Broken!Verse
Fandom: Supernatural
Title: Dean and Sam and Dad
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean, John, Ellen, Bobby, Caleb OMC
Rating: NC-17 (for thematic reasons)
Word Count: 3691
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, Right There and A Plan
Summary: Dean starts the inexorable slide. Gabe cuts his hair and takes a stand. Sam has to face Dean falling apart without losing it himself.
A/Ns and Warnings: Very dark. Includes memory of torture and rape and very dark violence.
Dean let his feet carry him away from the cabin, down the trail that Gabe had told him led to a stream. The ground was wet and his boots made squishy sounds as he went, sounds that reminded him of something he couldn’t place.
The air was cool and thunder rumbled off in the distance. There would be more rain before the storms passed. He couldn’t see the cabin behind him any more as the trail carried him down a hill. It was quiet here.
Dean wasn’t sure he liked the quiet.
He did like the smell. It was pleasant, not anything like the antiseptic nothing of the cage…or the smell of sweat and urine and come after they’d finished with him. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to think of that. He wasn’t going to remember that.
Except he couldn’t seem to stop.
Dean found the stream and the boulder Gabe had told him would be there. Perfect for sitting and watching the water. Dean climbed up onto it and tried to calm the racing of his heart. It seemed that everything was a reminder today. The squishing sound came back to him as he picked mud off his feet. It was the sound they made after they’d been at him for a while, when his ass was come-filled and they kept at it.
He made a face and bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.
The water ran fairly fast here, over rocks, slapping against the banks. Dean closed his eyes and tried not to hear it as the sound of leather against his skin…or the sound of flesh hitting flesh.
It came in pieces…incoherent flashes of things before he broke…before he gave up, gave in…Thomas and Razz and the others whose names he’d never learned. Beatings that left his throat bloody from screaming, yet left no scar, no permanent proof…except for one. His hand drifted to his chest, tracing the one scar through the material of his shirt.
“This is my mark, so everyone will know that you belong to me. So that everyone will know that you are nothing, no one, alone.”
Dean shivered.
He remembered using his bound hands to lift himself off the floor and wrap his legs around the neck of one of the trainers. He remembered laying in puddles of bodily fluids whispering his own name to himself. He could hear his voice, raspy and broken repeating it. “Dean. My name is Dean Winchester. I am somebody. I am something. They will come for me. Sam will come for me.”
He lost his own name first though. Dean bled away into the endless incantation of Nothing. No one. Alone.…Dean disappeared under Slave… Dean slid off into the dark long before he stopped fighting. In the end he didn’t really know why or what he was fighting only that it was important, somehow.
Important until his father’s voice had slid into that dark, shoving Dean further away with each word. ” My son, Dean. Pretty face, might be hard to break. Once you do though, he’s obedient. Trained him that way myself.”
Obedient.
Always obey. Obey Dad. Obey Master. But he hadn’t. Dean hadn’t always obeyed. Somehow he knew that.
”You’ve got a smart mouth on you Slave. Master says I should beat it out of you.” Thomas glowered over him, the whip in his hand.
“You gonna talk about it, or just get on with it?” Dean asked, crawling up to his knees to offer up his back. “Come on tough guy…let’s see what you got.”
Dean whimpered a little and drew his legs up close to his chest. He lost his voice once…from the screaming and the abuse and the constant whispers to himself when he was alone.
“Dean.” He said it aloud, as if he was trying it on for size. It didn’t fit quite like it used to. “My name is Dean Winchester.”
He licked his lips and looked up. The sky was dark with clouds. He knew he should be going back. His father would worry. Wonder where he was. Come looking for him.
”I waited for you….I fought as long as I could…and they hurt me…but you didn’t come…
Gabe felt a little nervous leaving the barber shop, couldn’t stop running his hand over his head. He’d never had his hair this short, not since he was in the fourth grade. It was his first rebellion against the geek image, the first expression of his personal style over his extreme intelligence.
Long locks had always given him a place to hide when he was out of his depth socially, something to do with his hands, and a reason for the girls to see past his GPA. Now they were gone, the brash blonde highlights from years of tracking prey and training with his father left behind on the floor. In their place was a preppy, spiky hair style that made him look more like his ivy league classmates…well except for Sam.
He sighed and shook off the feeling. It wasn’t like it wouldn’t grow back. He eyed the late afternoon sun and headed down the street toward the leather shop. With the addition of Caleb to his plan, he had more supplies to get, and he had another hour before he would meet the others out by the complex, go over their plans, lay out entry points, exit strategy.
He’d had to leave the room once he got them to see it his way…had to get things moving. It was too hard to sit with them looking at him. They were right, of course. His father was going to be furious and John? Gabe shook his head. He wasn’t going to think about that.
His cell phone rang and he reached for it, checking the caller id and cringing. He was expect Juliana or Megan to call him back after he’d left messages and faxed them some preliminary information. It wasn’t either of them.
“Hey Dad.”
“Don’t. Gabriel Bartholomew Barris, don’t you Hey me.”
“Ellen called you.”
“Damn right she did. I’m getting on a plane. I’ll be there tomorrow. Don’t you dare make a move into that compound. Do you hear me?”
“No Dad. Not this time. This is the right thing. I know it and Ellen knows it, she just won’t admit it. I’m going.” Gabe’s heart pounded tightly in his chest. In all his years he had never spoken back to his father. He only hoped his father would see that he was determined, and not hold it against him later. “I gotta go. I’m meeting the others in a little while. I’ll see you when you get here.”
He closed the phone and shoved it in his pocket, ignoring the vibrating that started almost immediately. His father didn’t have to like it. Gabe didn’t care.
Sam struggled out of the shower with his father’s help. Everything seemed so quiet without the others. He swiveled around on his good leg and let his father pull of the garbage bag and help him into a pair of boxers. “I’m good. I’ll come down when I’m done.”
“I’ll go start on some dinner.”
Sam watched him go, then turned to face the mirror. There were still dark circles under his eyes from the broken nose and his face looked pale and gaunt. There was a shadow of growth on his face. It made him look older.
He turned so he could see his back in the mirror. The dark black and purple was starting to fade away into dusky blues and greens and yellows. He could feel the stitches Bobby had sewn to hold the deepest of the wounds closed. The stitches were gone from his stomach wound, though he wasn’t sure who had done that. He sighed. His father had tried to convince him that the gaps in memory should be expected.
Sam wasn’t sure he believed it.
Right now he was numb. It was better than the fear. Shaking himself out of that train of thought, Sam reached for his crutches and hobbled across the hall to his room to pull on the sweatpants his father had washed for him. And a t-shirt from his bag. He was nearly to the bottom of the stairs when his father emerged from the kitchen, a towel over one shoulder and a frown on his face.
“Was Dean upstairs?”
Sam shook his head. “I haven’t seen him.”
They both looked up as thunder shook the cabin and the lights flickered. John opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. “Dean!”
“Where would he go?” Sam asked, panic rushing into chase away the numb. “What if they found him?”
John exhaled heavily. “No one found him, Sam. He went for a walk.”
“We have to go find him.” Sam was nearly out the door.
“No. You’re staying here.”
“No. Dean needs me.”
“He needs you to be safe and not hurt yourself more. It’s pouring out there. The trails are muddy. You’d kill yourself.”
“Dad!”
“Sam. Just relax.” John pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He held it up to his ear after thumbing Sam’s number. “Dean?”
John frowned. “Dean? Where are you?” He shook his head at the look in Sam’s eye. He held out the phone to Sam. “Talk to him. I heard water, I think I know where he is.”
John grabbed his jacket as Sam put a shaking hand up to hold the phone to his ear. “Hey Dean, it’s Sam.”
He could hear Dean breathing, and the water his father said he’d heard. “Can you say something for me, Dean? Anything?”
“S-Sam?”
“Yeah baby, it’s Sam. You just hang on okay? Dad’s coming to get you.”
“D-daddd….he didn’t come…you did.”
“Not this time Dean.”
“C-cold, S-Sam.”
Sam closed his eyes and maneuvered himself out onto the porch. “I know. But Dad’s coming. We’ll make a fire, okay? We’ll roast marshmallows and have hot cocoa.”
It was quiet and Sam tried not to panic. “Dean? You there?”
“S-s-scared Sam…cold and scared.”
“Dad’s coming, Dean. I promise. This time he’s coming for you.”
Sam could hear their father yelling Dean’s name, both from the trail into the trees and through the phone. “Hear that, Dean? He’s coming.”
“I’m here Dean.” Sam heard through the phone. “I’m here. Can I have the phone?” There was fumbling then his father’s voice more directly in his ear. “Sam, I’ve got him. We’re going to need towels and blankets, he’s soaked and naked.”
“I got it Dad, just get him up here.”
Sam hung up the phone and set it on the table by the door before struggling back up the stairs to the closet where the blankets and towels were crammed in beside first aid supplies and equipment he didn’t recognize. He struggled a little with figuring how to get it all downstairs, but ended up just throwing the bundle down to the bottom and hobbling back down.
He could just make out his father, struggling in the mud carrying Dean. Sam swallowed the fear eating through him and went to the fire place. His hands shook as he set newspaper and kindling in and set a match to it. It took him three tries, but he got it lit and carefully fed slightly larger pieces of wood in. By the time he had a tidy blaze burning he could hear his father huffing with the effort.
Sam got up and to the door, two towels in his hands as he pushed the screen door open. “God.”
Dean’s lips were blue, and he was shivering. “I started a fire.” Sam said, draping one of the towels over his brother. John hefted him and moved closer to the fire before slowly lowering him until he was sitting on the floor. Sam nudged the pile of blankets and towels closer while John rubbed the first one vigorously over Dean’s skin.
“Come sit behind him, Sam. The body heat will help.”
Sam nodded and slid onto the floor, moving behind Dean, with his bad leg off to one side. Dean’s skin was cold to the touch. Sam pulled his brother back against his chest, wrapping his arms around Dean while their father wrapped a blanket around Sam’s back, then around them both. Sam rubbed his hands over Dean’s skin, urging warmth back into him.
Dean’s teeth chattered and the sounds coming from him might have been words, but Sam couldn’t make them out. “Something hot to drink.” Sam said as John wrapped the second blanket around them.
John nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. “It’s going to taste like sludge, but it’s hot.” He knelt in front of them and held the cup up to Dean’s lips. “Come on Dean, I need you to drink this.”
Dean jumped back away, but Sam’s closeness held him in place. “No.” He said through clenched teeth. “Dean. I’m Dean.”
Sam closed his eyes. “Yes, you’re Dean. You’re my brother Dean.” He whispered in his ear. “Dean Winchester.”
When he opened his eyes, his father’s face was confused and hurting. “Drink it for me, Dean? For your Sammy?”
Dean’s head was on Sam’s shoulder, as far from John as he could get it in his current position. “Sammy?”
“I’m here, Dean. I need you to drink it so we can warm you up.”
“No. Don’t want it.”
Sam sighed and pulled Dean against him. “It’s just coffee. I promise. Just a sip Dean. You’re so cold.”
“C-cold.” Dean repeated, then slowly he lifted his head, eyeing John with suspicion. “One sip.”
John nodded and held the cup up to his mouth again. Dean moved cautiously, licking his lips a few times before he actually moved to take a sip. He made a face and leaned back against Sam. “Hot.”
“Yeah, it’s hot. It’s good for you.”
“Tastes like shit.”
“Drink all of it and Dad will make you cocoa. You like cocoa, right Dean?”
“Cocoa?”
Sam extricated his hands from the cocoon of blankets and took the mug of coffee from his father. “Yep…if you drink this first.” He brought the cup down to the top of the blankets, where the heat radiating off of it could be felt against Dean’s skin. Dean’s hands came up to cup the mug. “That’s it.”
He looked up at his father. “I’ll get started on that cocoa.”
Sam nodded. “Food is probably good too. You hungry Dean?”
Dean sipped at the coffee, grimacing, but swallowing. “No.”
“Well, I’m hungry.” Sam said as John disappeared into the kitchen. It wasn’t true, but right now he’d do anything to get Dean to respond. “You don’t want me to eat alone do you?”
Dean turned in the circle of Sam’s thighs so that he was facing the fire. “Dean,” he said again as if trying to convince himself. “Not gonna forget, Sammy. I say it every time I’m alone so I don’t forget. Dean and Sam and Dad. Dean and Sam and Dad. Not alone cause you’ll come for me. Me. Dean.”
Sam groaned and pressed a kiss to Dean’s neck. “That’s right Dean. You and me and Dad. Winchesters. Together.”
Dean drank from the cup, leaning into Sam. “It was dark, Sammy. Dark like the trunk…remember hiding in the trunk? It was dark and I was alone. But I said it so you would know I wasn’t going to forget. Did you know, Sammy?”
Sam exhaled and tried to shake the trembling terror building inside him. Dean needed him. He couldn’t afford to fall apart now. “Yeah, Dean, I knew. I was trying to find you.”
The shivering was easing up and the coffee was nearly gone when John came back a new mug in his hands. Steam rose up from it as he stopped in front of them. Dean cringed away from him, so Sam took the cold cup from him and reached up for the cocoa. “Dad made you cocoa Dean.” He settled the cup in his hands and shook his head at the question on his father’s face. He didn’t have a clue what this was.
Dean huddled down deeper into the blankets with his cocoa, leaning against Sam. “I got it, Dad.”
John shook his head. “Not leaving.”
Sam sighed. “He’s going to need to eat.”
“Got stew cooking.” Sam could tell his father was spooked, and seriously, he was too. He hadn’t seen Dean like this since…since he’d found him, since he’d bought him. How long ago was that?
Sam tried to ignore his father’s eyes watching him as he snuggled into Dean, kissing his cheek. “Better, Dean?”
Dean nodded, cradling the cocoa cup to him. He seemed dazed now, drifting. Sam looked up at the fire and shifted to reach enough to put a log in. Dean stiffened and clutched at him. “Don’t leave me Sammy.”
“Not going anywhere Dean. Just gonna put a log on the fire, okay.”
“You were gone so long.” Dean whispered. He didn’t look up. “I waited for you to come home.”
“I know, baby…but I’m here now…Okay?”
Dean shook his head. “No. It isn’t okay. I was alone. I was all alone.”
“But you’re not alone now, Dean. Dad and I are both here.”
“They made me not me anymore, Sammy.” Dean whispered into Sam’s chest. “Not me…not right…alone….and I waited for you to come.”
“I know Dean.” Sam could only hold on to him…he had nothing he could say to the quiet accusation in his brother’s voice…he could only wrap his arms around him and hold him close and hope it was enough.
Gabe let the others work on the exit strategies while he worked the computer, creating false trails all over the world for the young man he was going to impersonate. He was attending school in London, and Gabe managed to get a hold on his passport, so even if he tried to leave the country, he wouldn’t be able to.
He set up one false trail into Asia, and another into Africa, then the one that mattered, from London to LA, and LA to Montana. He looked up when Ellen dropped a bag of take out next to him and said “Eat.”
“You shouldn’t have called him.”
“He should be here.” Ellen countered, taking her own bag across the room. “I don’t like this. He don’t like it. You aren’t going in there.”
“You have something better?”
She didn’t answer him, just turned away and started eating.
“Yeah, when you do I’ll consider not going.” Gabe said, turning back to the computer. He still had a lot of work to do…and with his father coming, he had to do it fast.
“You sure you want to go through with this?” Bobby asked as he leaned against the rail outside the motel room.
Caleb held a leather collar in his hands, turning it over and over. He shook his head. “No. I’m not. But I won’t let him go in there alone.”
“Maybe Ellen’s right. Maybe we shouldn’t be letting him go in there at all.”
Caleb nodded slowly. “Maybe. But the only way we’re stopping him is if we tie him down to the bed.”
Bobby shrugged. “I’m sure we got rope.”
Caleb smiled. “I was kidding.”
“I’ll bet Allen would rather we tied him down than let him go.”
“He’s right about one thing, Bobby. He’s a man, not a boy. He knows what Gorlian is capable of. It’s got him spooked something awful. He needs to do something.”
“I don’t think that something is getting you killed.”
Caleb sighed and shook his head. “No. We’ll be fine. You guys have our backs.”
“I’m hoping that back is in better shape than the last time I saw it,” a voice said in the dark and they both turned. Gordon and two others stepped out of the shadows. “Caleb. Bobby.”
“Gordon. You made good time.”
Gordon’s smile was eerie. “I hear I get to smoke out some bad guys, maybe cripple them? I’m here quick as can be. We got a plan yet?”
Caleb nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Come inside. We’ll talk you through it.”
John watched Sam sooth Dean by the fire. He couldn’t hear much of what was said, but he’d gotten an earful of it coming up from the stream. It was like some dam had busted and Dean’s head was just drowning in disconnected memory and bits of the conditioning. His words hardly made any sense…and even when they did they weren’t linear, jumping from childhood to the years without Sam to recent memories and back with no real connection.
It was dizzying and terrifying, and watching Sam…the tender way he spoke and touched…the instinctive way he knew when to pull back and when to not let go…John knew that look on Sam’s face. He’d seen it in Mary’s when she tended him while he was down with the flu. The concentration, the love…as if nothing else in the world existed but him and Dean.
He knew Sam wanted him to leave them alone, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. These were his boys…his broken, lost boys…except that there, wrapped around each other, as broken as they both were, they didn’t seem quite as lost. Sam’s eyes were closed and his forehead was leaning against Dean as they whispered to one another.
Then Sam’s hand was up, out of the blankets and reaching for him. John went slowly, sinking out of the chair and onto the floor, taking Sam’s hand and letting him guide him, first to touch Dean’s back. “Dad.” Sam said softly and Dean nodded, his hand reaching up and out for John’s other hand. As John slipped his fingers into Dean’s, Sam said, “Dean.”
John slid down to sitting, stretching his legs out to either side of Sam’s, encompassing his boys. Dean’s free hand slipped into Sam’s and he whispered Sam’s name. Sam nodded. “Dean and Sam and Dad.”
John whispered it back, leaning into Dean, resting his head on Dean’s shoulder.
“Dean and Sam and Dad.”
Title: Dean and Sam and Dad
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean, John, Ellen, Bobby, Caleb OMC
Rating: NC-17 (for thematic reasons)
Word Count: 3691
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, Right There and A Plan
Summary: Dean starts the inexorable slide. Gabe cuts his hair and takes a stand. Sam has to face Dean falling apart without losing it himself.
A/Ns and Warnings: Very dark. Includes memory of torture and rape and very dark violence.
Dean let his feet carry him away from the cabin, down the trail that Gabe had told him led to a stream. The ground was wet and his boots made squishy sounds as he went, sounds that reminded him of something he couldn’t place.
The air was cool and thunder rumbled off in the distance. There would be more rain before the storms passed. He couldn’t see the cabin behind him any more as the trail carried him down a hill. It was quiet here.
Dean wasn’t sure he liked the quiet.
He did like the smell. It was pleasant, not anything like the antiseptic nothing of the cage…or the smell of sweat and urine and come after they’d finished with him. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to think of that. He wasn’t going to remember that.
Except he couldn’t seem to stop.
Dean found the stream and the boulder Gabe had told him would be there. Perfect for sitting and watching the water. Dean climbed up onto it and tried to calm the racing of his heart. It seemed that everything was a reminder today. The squishing sound came back to him as he picked mud off his feet. It was the sound they made after they’d been at him for a while, when his ass was come-filled and they kept at it.
He made a face and bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.
The water ran fairly fast here, over rocks, slapping against the banks. Dean closed his eyes and tried not to hear it as the sound of leather against his skin…or the sound of flesh hitting flesh.
It came in pieces…incoherent flashes of things before he broke…before he gave up, gave in…Thomas and Razz and the others whose names he’d never learned. Beatings that left his throat bloody from screaming, yet left no scar, no permanent proof…except for one. His hand drifted to his chest, tracing the one scar through the material of his shirt.
“This is my mark, so everyone will know that you belong to me. So that everyone will know that you are nothing, no one, alone.”
Dean shivered.
He remembered using his bound hands to lift himself off the floor and wrap his legs around the neck of one of the trainers. He remembered laying in puddles of bodily fluids whispering his own name to himself. He could hear his voice, raspy and broken repeating it. “Dean. My name is Dean Winchester. I am somebody. I am something. They will come for me. Sam will come for me.”
He lost his own name first though. Dean bled away into the endless incantation of Nothing. No one. Alone.…Dean disappeared under Slave… Dean slid off into the dark long before he stopped fighting. In the end he didn’t really know why or what he was fighting only that it was important, somehow.
Important until his father’s voice had slid into that dark, shoving Dean further away with each word. ” My son, Dean. Pretty face, might be hard to break. Once you do though, he’s obedient. Trained him that way myself.”
Obedient.
Always obey. Obey Dad. Obey Master. But he hadn’t. Dean hadn’t always obeyed. Somehow he knew that.
”You’ve got a smart mouth on you Slave. Master says I should beat it out of you.” Thomas glowered over him, the whip in his hand.
“You gonna talk about it, or just get on with it?” Dean asked, crawling up to his knees to offer up his back. “Come on tough guy…let’s see what you got.”
Dean whimpered a little and drew his legs up close to his chest. He lost his voice once…from the screaming and the abuse and the constant whispers to himself when he was alone.
“Dean.” He said it aloud, as if he was trying it on for size. It didn’t fit quite like it used to. “My name is Dean Winchester.”
He licked his lips and looked up. The sky was dark with clouds. He knew he should be going back. His father would worry. Wonder where he was. Come looking for him.
”I waited for you….I fought as long as I could…and they hurt me…but you didn’t come…
Gabe felt a little nervous leaving the barber shop, couldn’t stop running his hand over his head. He’d never had his hair this short, not since he was in the fourth grade. It was his first rebellion against the geek image, the first expression of his personal style over his extreme intelligence.
Long locks had always given him a place to hide when he was out of his depth socially, something to do with his hands, and a reason for the girls to see past his GPA. Now they were gone, the brash blonde highlights from years of tracking prey and training with his father left behind on the floor. In their place was a preppy, spiky hair style that made him look more like his ivy league classmates…well except for Sam.
He sighed and shook off the feeling. It wasn’t like it wouldn’t grow back. He eyed the late afternoon sun and headed down the street toward the leather shop. With the addition of Caleb to his plan, he had more supplies to get, and he had another hour before he would meet the others out by the complex, go over their plans, lay out entry points, exit strategy.
He’d had to leave the room once he got them to see it his way…had to get things moving. It was too hard to sit with them looking at him. They were right, of course. His father was going to be furious and John? Gabe shook his head. He wasn’t going to think about that.
His cell phone rang and he reached for it, checking the caller id and cringing. He was expect Juliana or Megan to call him back after he’d left messages and faxed them some preliminary information. It wasn’t either of them.
“Hey Dad.”
“Don’t. Gabriel Bartholomew Barris, don’t you Hey me.”
“Ellen called you.”
“Damn right she did. I’m getting on a plane. I’ll be there tomorrow. Don’t you dare make a move into that compound. Do you hear me?”
“No Dad. Not this time. This is the right thing. I know it and Ellen knows it, she just won’t admit it. I’m going.” Gabe’s heart pounded tightly in his chest. In all his years he had never spoken back to his father. He only hoped his father would see that he was determined, and not hold it against him later. “I gotta go. I’m meeting the others in a little while. I’ll see you when you get here.”
He closed the phone and shoved it in his pocket, ignoring the vibrating that started almost immediately. His father didn’t have to like it. Gabe didn’t care.
Sam struggled out of the shower with his father’s help. Everything seemed so quiet without the others. He swiveled around on his good leg and let his father pull of the garbage bag and help him into a pair of boxers. “I’m good. I’ll come down when I’m done.”
“I’ll go start on some dinner.”
Sam watched him go, then turned to face the mirror. There were still dark circles under his eyes from the broken nose and his face looked pale and gaunt. There was a shadow of growth on his face. It made him look older.
He turned so he could see his back in the mirror. The dark black and purple was starting to fade away into dusky blues and greens and yellows. He could feel the stitches Bobby had sewn to hold the deepest of the wounds closed. The stitches were gone from his stomach wound, though he wasn’t sure who had done that. He sighed. His father had tried to convince him that the gaps in memory should be expected.
Sam wasn’t sure he believed it.
Right now he was numb. It was better than the fear. Shaking himself out of that train of thought, Sam reached for his crutches and hobbled across the hall to his room to pull on the sweatpants his father had washed for him. And a t-shirt from his bag. He was nearly to the bottom of the stairs when his father emerged from the kitchen, a towel over one shoulder and a frown on his face.
“Was Dean upstairs?”
Sam shook his head. “I haven’t seen him.”
They both looked up as thunder shook the cabin and the lights flickered. John opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. “Dean!”
“Where would he go?” Sam asked, panic rushing into chase away the numb. “What if they found him?”
John exhaled heavily. “No one found him, Sam. He went for a walk.”
“We have to go find him.” Sam was nearly out the door.
“No. You’re staying here.”
“No. Dean needs me.”
“He needs you to be safe and not hurt yourself more. It’s pouring out there. The trails are muddy. You’d kill yourself.”
“Dad!”
“Sam. Just relax.” John pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He held it up to his ear after thumbing Sam’s number. “Dean?”
John frowned. “Dean? Where are you?” He shook his head at the look in Sam’s eye. He held out the phone to Sam. “Talk to him. I heard water, I think I know where he is.”
John grabbed his jacket as Sam put a shaking hand up to hold the phone to his ear. “Hey Dean, it’s Sam.”
He could hear Dean breathing, and the water his father said he’d heard. “Can you say something for me, Dean? Anything?”
“S-Sam?”
“Yeah baby, it’s Sam. You just hang on okay? Dad’s coming to get you.”
“D-daddd….he didn’t come…you did.”
“Not this time Dean.”
“C-cold, S-Sam.”
Sam closed his eyes and maneuvered himself out onto the porch. “I know. But Dad’s coming. We’ll make a fire, okay? We’ll roast marshmallows and have hot cocoa.”
It was quiet and Sam tried not to panic. “Dean? You there?”
“S-s-scared Sam…cold and scared.”
“Dad’s coming, Dean. I promise. This time he’s coming for you.”
Sam could hear their father yelling Dean’s name, both from the trail into the trees and through the phone. “Hear that, Dean? He’s coming.”
“I’m here Dean.” Sam heard through the phone. “I’m here. Can I have the phone?” There was fumbling then his father’s voice more directly in his ear. “Sam, I’ve got him. We’re going to need towels and blankets, he’s soaked and naked.”
“I got it Dad, just get him up here.”
Sam hung up the phone and set it on the table by the door before struggling back up the stairs to the closet where the blankets and towels were crammed in beside first aid supplies and equipment he didn’t recognize. He struggled a little with figuring how to get it all downstairs, but ended up just throwing the bundle down to the bottom and hobbling back down.
He could just make out his father, struggling in the mud carrying Dean. Sam swallowed the fear eating through him and went to the fire place. His hands shook as he set newspaper and kindling in and set a match to it. It took him three tries, but he got it lit and carefully fed slightly larger pieces of wood in. By the time he had a tidy blaze burning he could hear his father huffing with the effort.
Sam got up and to the door, two towels in his hands as he pushed the screen door open. “God.”
Dean’s lips were blue, and he was shivering. “I started a fire.” Sam said, draping one of the towels over his brother. John hefted him and moved closer to the fire before slowly lowering him until he was sitting on the floor. Sam nudged the pile of blankets and towels closer while John rubbed the first one vigorously over Dean’s skin.
“Come sit behind him, Sam. The body heat will help.”
Sam nodded and slid onto the floor, moving behind Dean, with his bad leg off to one side. Dean’s skin was cold to the touch. Sam pulled his brother back against his chest, wrapping his arms around Dean while their father wrapped a blanket around Sam’s back, then around them both. Sam rubbed his hands over Dean’s skin, urging warmth back into him.
Dean’s teeth chattered and the sounds coming from him might have been words, but Sam couldn’t make them out. “Something hot to drink.” Sam said as John wrapped the second blanket around them.
John nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. “It’s going to taste like sludge, but it’s hot.” He knelt in front of them and held the cup up to Dean’s lips. “Come on Dean, I need you to drink this.”
Dean jumped back away, but Sam’s closeness held him in place. “No.” He said through clenched teeth. “Dean. I’m Dean.”
Sam closed his eyes. “Yes, you’re Dean. You’re my brother Dean.” He whispered in his ear. “Dean Winchester.”
When he opened his eyes, his father’s face was confused and hurting. “Drink it for me, Dean? For your Sammy?”
Dean’s head was on Sam’s shoulder, as far from John as he could get it in his current position. “Sammy?”
“I’m here, Dean. I need you to drink it so we can warm you up.”
“No. Don’t want it.”
Sam sighed and pulled Dean against him. “It’s just coffee. I promise. Just a sip Dean. You’re so cold.”
“C-cold.” Dean repeated, then slowly he lifted his head, eyeing John with suspicion. “One sip.”
John nodded and held the cup up to his mouth again. Dean moved cautiously, licking his lips a few times before he actually moved to take a sip. He made a face and leaned back against Sam. “Hot.”
“Yeah, it’s hot. It’s good for you.”
“Tastes like shit.”
“Drink all of it and Dad will make you cocoa. You like cocoa, right Dean?”
“Cocoa?”
Sam extricated his hands from the cocoon of blankets and took the mug of coffee from his father. “Yep…if you drink this first.” He brought the cup down to the top of the blankets, where the heat radiating off of it could be felt against Dean’s skin. Dean’s hands came up to cup the mug. “That’s it.”
He looked up at his father. “I’ll get started on that cocoa.”
Sam nodded. “Food is probably good too. You hungry Dean?”
Dean sipped at the coffee, grimacing, but swallowing. “No.”
“Well, I’m hungry.” Sam said as John disappeared into the kitchen. It wasn’t true, but right now he’d do anything to get Dean to respond. “You don’t want me to eat alone do you?”
Dean turned in the circle of Sam’s thighs so that he was facing the fire. “Dean,” he said again as if trying to convince himself. “Not gonna forget, Sammy. I say it every time I’m alone so I don’t forget. Dean and Sam and Dad. Dean and Sam and Dad. Not alone cause you’ll come for me. Me. Dean.”
Sam groaned and pressed a kiss to Dean’s neck. “That’s right Dean. You and me and Dad. Winchesters. Together.”
Dean drank from the cup, leaning into Sam. “It was dark, Sammy. Dark like the trunk…remember hiding in the trunk? It was dark and I was alone. But I said it so you would know I wasn’t going to forget. Did you know, Sammy?”
Sam exhaled and tried to shake the trembling terror building inside him. Dean needed him. He couldn’t afford to fall apart now. “Yeah, Dean, I knew. I was trying to find you.”
The shivering was easing up and the coffee was nearly gone when John came back a new mug in his hands. Steam rose up from it as he stopped in front of them. Dean cringed away from him, so Sam took the cold cup from him and reached up for the cocoa. “Dad made you cocoa Dean.” He settled the cup in his hands and shook his head at the question on his father’s face. He didn’t have a clue what this was.
Dean huddled down deeper into the blankets with his cocoa, leaning against Sam. “I got it, Dad.”
John shook his head. “Not leaving.”
Sam sighed. “He’s going to need to eat.”
“Got stew cooking.” Sam could tell his father was spooked, and seriously, he was too. He hadn’t seen Dean like this since…since he’d found him, since he’d bought him. How long ago was that?
Sam tried to ignore his father’s eyes watching him as he snuggled into Dean, kissing his cheek. “Better, Dean?”
Dean nodded, cradling the cocoa cup to him. He seemed dazed now, drifting. Sam looked up at the fire and shifted to reach enough to put a log in. Dean stiffened and clutched at him. “Don’t leave me Sammy.”
“Not going anywhere Dean. Just gonna put a log on the fire, okay.”
“You were gone so long.” Dean whispered. He didn’t look up. “I waited for you to come home.”
“I know, baby…but I’m here now…Okay?”
Dean shook his head. “No. It isn’t okay. I was alone. I was all alone.”
“But you’re not alone now, Dean. Dad and I are both here.”
“They made me not me anymore, Sammy.” Dean whispered into Sam’s chest. “Not me…not right…alone….and I waited for you to come.”
“I know Dean.” Sam could only hold on to him…he had nothing he could say to the quiet accusation in his brother’s voice…he could only wrap his arms around him and hold him close and hope it was enough.
Gabe let the others work on the exit strategies while he worked the computer, creating false trails all over the world for the young man he was going to impersonate. He was attending school in London, and Gabe managed to get a hold on his passport, so even if he tried to leave the country, he wouldn’t be able to.
He set up one false trail into Asia, and another into Africa, then the one that mattered, from London to LA, and LA to Montana. He looked up when Ellen dropped a bag of take out next to him and said “Eat.”
“You shouldn’t have called him.”
“He should be here.” Ellen countered, taking her own bag across the room. “I don’t like this. He don’t like it. You aren’t going in there.”
“You have something better?”
She didn’t answer him, just turned away and started eating.
“Yeah, when you do I’ll consider not going.” Gabe said, turning back to the computer. He still had a lot of work to do…and with his father coming, he had to do it fast.
“You sure you want to go through with this?” Bobby asked as he leaned against the rail outside the motel room.
Caleb held a leather collar in his hands, turning it over and over. He shook his head. “No. I’m not. But I won’t let him go in there alone.”
“Maybe Ellen’s right. Maybe we shouldn’t be letting him go in there at all.”
Caleb nodded slowly. “Maybe. But the only way we’re stopping him is if we tie him down to the bed.”
Bobby shrugged. “I’m sure we got rope.”
Caleb smiled. “I was kidding.”
“I’ll bet Allen would rather we tied him down than let him go.”
“He’s right about one thing, Bobby. He’s a man, not a boy. He knows what Gorlian is capable of. It’s got him spooked something awful. He needs to do something.”
“I don’t think that something is getting you killed.”
Caleb sighed and shook his head. “No. We’ll be fine. You guys have our backs.”
“I’m hoping that back is in better shape than the last time I saw it,” a voice said in the dark and they both turned. Gordon and two others stepped out of the shadows. “Caleb. Bobby.”
“Gordon. You made good time.”
Gordon’s smile was eerie. “I hear I get to smoke out some bad guys, maybe cripple them? I’m here quick as can be. We got a plan yet?”
Caleb nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Come inside. We’ll talk you through it.”
John watched Sam sooth Dean by the fire. He couldn’t hear much of what was said, but he’d gotten an earful of it coming up from the stream. It was like some dam had busted and Dean’s head was just drowning in disconnected memory and bits of the conditioning. His words hardly made any sense…and even when they did they weren’t linear, jumping from childhood to the years without Sam to recent memories and back with no real connection.
It was dizzying and terrifying, and watching Sam…the tender way he spoke and touched…the instinctive way he knew when to pull back and when to not let go…John knew that look on Sam’s face. He’d seen it in Mary’s when she tended him while he was down with the flu. The concentration, the love…as if nothing else in the world existed but him and Dean.
He knew Sam wanted him to leave them alone, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. These were his boys…his broken, lost boys…except that there, wrapped around each other, as broken as they both were, they didn’t seem quite as lost. Sam’s eyes were closed and his forehead was leaning against Dean as they whispered to one another.
Then Sam’s hand was up, out of the blankets and reaching for him. John went slowly, sinking out of the chair and onto the floor, taking Sam’s hand and letting him guide him, first to touch Dean’s back. “Dad.” Sam said softly and Dean nodded, his hand reaching up and out for John’s other hand. As John slipped his fingers into Dean’s, Sam said, “Dean.”
John slid down to sitting, stretching his legs out to either side of Sam’s, encompassing his boys. Dean’s free hand slipped into Sam’s and he whispered Sam’s name. Sam nodded. “Dean and Sam and Dad.”
John whispered it back, leaning into Dean, resting his head on Dean’s shoulder.
“Dean and Sam and Dad.”