Fic: Locked Up, Caged In (Supernatural, gen, 2500+ words, complete)
Title: Locked Up, Caged In
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester
Spoilers: Up until 10x18 I guess
Warnings: Discussion of depression, past torture, isolation, suicidal thoughts
Summary: ""I can't die, not with this thing on my arm. What I can do is fight it, until -" "Until what, Dean? Until I watch you become a demon again?" "You'll just have to lock me up. Bind me to the Bunker. Like you did last time." (10x18)
Author's note: This (obviously hideous) proposal from Dean caught my imagination, so I wrote this, instead of the fic I was supposed to be writing... (SORRY OHSAM CHALLENGE) (YOUR belated TIME WILL COME)
Sam's been looking forward to this coffee for two weeks. He ordered it online: researched it carefully, read the relevant websites and reviews, looked at the medals and awards it's won. He's pretty certain that it's the best coffee he could possibly have gotten hold of in time, the best coffee he could find that didn't require a six week wait while it was trekked in from the Colombian jungle. This coffee comes from an estate in western Panama, via a website based in Boulder, Colorado; but it's been resident for a week in the bunker’s pantry. Every now and again it's caught Sam's eye - as he’s passed by to pick up a can of beans or a cup of rice - and he’s felt a little puff of excitement at the forthcoming treat.
There’s a satisfaction, then, in being able finally to pick up the canister, to feel the cool, solid weight of it in his hand. With a quick flash of regret for the lost pleasures of anticipation, Sam pours the beans into the grinder, wincing at the rattling whirr as the mill starts to turn. Noise aside, the process of making coffee is something Sam enjoys. He likes the ritual of it, the precision; likes the knowledge that he’s getting it right. There’s also something to savour in the enforced pause while he waits for the coffee to drip through. It’s productive downtime: room to breathe.
Sam finds his favourite cup, a big white ceramic bowl of a thing that he likes to hold in his two hands. The serving size the cup encourages is way too large to be healthy but by this point, Sam’s accepted that his caffeine habit just won’t quit. He needs it: he doesn't sleep well, startles awake at all hours seeing monsters in the shadows of his room. Something has to keep him awake during the long, quiet days. There are worse vices.
When he finally drinks it, the coffee is satisfying: rich and dark, redolent of the green hillsides it came from. Or maybe Sam’s just getting sentimental. Either way, the warmth of it down his throat is soothing: it approximates the physical contact he’s been missing for the past several years. Now that’s a road Sam doesn’t need to go down; so he stops, aborts, steers his thoughts in a different direction. Time to get on with the day.
Mammoth mug in hand, Sam pads around in his bare feet, checking the wardings at the bunker’s windows and doors. A leaking pipe in the back East wing corridor has disturbed a ring of Sanskrit symbols, so he walks back to the store room and picks up the paint. It doesn’t take long for Sam to fix the runes: the pipe can wait until the afternoon. He’s learned to pace the jobs like this, allocating tasks more time than is strictly necessary, imposing something like a rhythm on the day. It’s a skill he first practised back when he was working as a handyman, trying to fill up his brain with nuts and bolts to shut out the still-lingering shape of the devil and the disorientating, ground-shaking shock of Dean’s loss.
Now, coffee drained and cup drying on the side, he makes his way to the basin in his bathroom to shave. It’s a hard task to accomplish without studying his own reflection, and he takes a second to pause and examine his face. It’s not a gratifying sight. He’s too thin, bled out without the fat of diner dinners and accumulated hours in the car. The change has left his cheeks unflatteringly hollow, his jawline sharp; and there’s a new permanence to the creases in his forehead. Streaks of his hair glint silver. He looks old.
Sam pulls a face, sticks out his tongue, shakes his head; and carries on, carefully scraping at his chin.
Once his face is smooth and his teeth are clean, he shuffles into a fresh pair of jeans and his favourite shirt, a green-blue plaid which is old and worn and feels friendly on his skin. He’d thought about buying a new one, to mark the occasion: living small on stolen credit cards, there’s not really much to test his finances. But a lifetime’s thrifty habits are hard to shake; and again, there’s pleasure to be found in asceticism.
Sam laces his boots and checks his watch. 10.30, and it’s time to go downstairs. This is a key part of his routine, probably the reason for it: something that he makes himself do on a regular schedule because otherwise it looms too large and horrible in his head, spilling nasty into all the other parts of the day. It’s better to keep things compartmentalised; and 10.30 means down to room 53.
He’s installed extra doors in this part of the Bunker, so that he goes through three sets before he reaches the inner core. All of them are warded, ringed with silver and iron and salt. There’s an alarm code on the final door, part of a high-tech security system that Sam spent six weeks devising four summers ago. No reason to disregard Muggle technology entirely, in favour of hunters’ tricks.
The door is heavy and there’s a clang as it slides into place. As Sam steps through, the thing in the middle of the room lifts its head.
Sam steps closer, and it looks up at him through his brother’s green eyes; but it doesn’t speak, just glowers balefully, twitching its hands.
“Hey, Dean,” he says.
The demon tightens its mouth, disapproving. Sam’s heart contracts in a moment of painful hope. Maybe, this will be one of the quieter days.
“I brought the book,” Sam says. It’s a battered copy of The Return of the King. Sam’s been reading to the thing in the dungeon, beat literature and sci-fi fantasy, the stuff that Dean used to like. He settled on this, eventually, as something to do during the days when Dean refuses to speak to him at all. It’s better than sitting there staring at what used to be his brother, rehashing over and again all the ways Sam failed to stop this happening. Hopefully something about the books might get through. Sam worries about how bored Dean must be, down in the dungeon alone.
This anxiety is why Sam spends two hours a day down here with Dean. It used to be more: used to be almost all the time. But it’s not sustainable. It wrung him out: seven, eight, nine, ten hours of the demon trying to break him, playing on Dean’s intimate familiarity to yank at every vulnerable string of Sam’s heart. You’d think he would be accustomed to that kind of situation: down in the dark with a vengeful creature, shut up with somebody slicing him close and sharp. But the time in the Cage seems only to have made him weaker, less immune. It was centuries, in there. But up here, after only nine months of Dean’s unrestrained, exuberant spite, Sam could begin to feel his sanity skittering away. He couldn’t let that happen. He has to be here: has to be on top of things, to be keeping an eye on Dean. And to do that, he has to limit how long he spends in the dungeon. He needs time to recharge.
Knowing why he does it might help him to be disciplined, but it doesn’t (of course) stop the niggling feelings at night, the guilty consciousness that Dean - Sam’s brother - some of him, something of him, at least - is set to be stuck in this same small room for the rest of his life. Or. For the rest of the world. Forever. Sam can’t think about that.
Cas was supposed to be here, for that part of it. But Cas is gone, pinned like a butterfly on the end of his own angel blade the second and final time that Sam tried the demon cure on Dean. Sam had found him, stuck bloody on the Bunker’s floor; had shaken back his hot, lonely tears and gone to wrestle with Dean. That was the last time Sam’s brother left this room.
Locked down. It was what Dean had wanted, what he’d asked for. But that was a long time ago. Still, Sam has yet to come up with anything better. Another day: another failure. That’s how it goes.
Now Dean sits silent, accusing, staring at Sam.
“How are you doing, Dean?” Sam says.
“Still a demon,” Dean says. Of course.
There is a long pause while Sam weighs his options. They aren’t good. They’ve had this same conversation so many times and everything Sam says is always wrong. He can see the phrases laid out before him, turnings down different discursive roads that all lead to the same dead end. Sam failed. Dean turned. And now Dean’s pissed.
“Can I get you anything? Is there anything that you want?” Sam says.
“Get me out,” says Dean.
“I can’t. I can’t let you out. You know that, Dean.”
“Then no. There is nothing you can do for me. Big surprise.”
Sam opens the book.
The pages are dry, almost crumbly under his fingers but he holds them carefully on the tips of his fingers and begins to read. He barely hears what he’s saying, forming the words by habit, information hopping from eye to lip with hardly a detour through his brain. It’s difficult, down here. It doesn’t take long for Sam to start to feel like he’s trapped; to be reminded of the huge, heavy weight of obligation skewering him neatly and permanently in place. It makes it hard for him to breathe. So he just reads, out loud, and tries to concentrate on the sound.
“Not a bad idea.”
Dean’s voice is low and suggestive and it makes Sam nauseous. This is the sound Dean makes when he wants to play, when he’s thought of something funny that he can use to psych Sam out.
“Sorry?” says Sam, carefully level; falsely bright.
“Are you even listening to what you’re saying?” Dean asks.
Sam is silent.
“If you’re going to pretend to be interested in coming to see me,” Dean says, “don’t fucking drift off while you’re here. I don’t have the option of anybody else.”
“Sorry,” Sam says. Dean’s right. It’s not fair of him to switch off. “What was it? What’s the good idea?”
“Try reading it,” Dean says.
Sam looks down. Oh. It’s the chapter, early on, where Denethor, demented, tries to burn his sick son and himself; builds a pyre for Faramir’s living body and prepares to send the both of them up in flames.
“What do you think?” says Dean. “Not a bad idea.”
It’s not clear what he means. So Sam does what he always tries to do, and takes it at face value.
“I don’t think it would be a solution, Dean,” he says. “You… you’d just walk away from it.”
“You wouldn’t, though,” Dean says. “You’d burn.”
Sam has a flash of it, the heat and the blistering and the melting of Dean’s laughing face. The whites of his eyes in the fire. The black of their switch as Sam screams.
“I’m not going to kill myself,” Sam says.
“Oh, but you want to,” says Dean. He tilts his head. “Just… roll over, Sam. Give up.”
He stands, then, paces forward, swinging steps towards the edge of the trap; where he waits, mocking, hands clasped behind his back.
“Go on, Sammy,” Dean says. Not Dean. Maybe, Dean. “Doesn’t have to be fire. I could take care of it. So easy. All you gotta do is step in.”
Sam watches him.
“Just a few inches forward. Think about it. All of this. Over for good.”
Sam does think about it, from his place at the edge of the circle; thinks about walking straight in, bowing his head and letting his brother do his worst. He trembles down to the fibres of his muscles with how much he wants it. But he can’t. He can see it, the demon stepping out firm over his back and free, off to wreak bloody, violent destruction on the world. He can’t.
“No,” Sam says; and the thing in the circle stops pretending to care.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dean says. His eyes are huge, ferocious, black. “I’ll get you in the end, pick you apart rib by rib and laugh at your yellow insides.”
After all this time, Sam ought to be immune to this kind of baiting.
“Might be tonight,” Dean says. “Doesn’t take much for a trap to fracture and I’ve got nothing else to think about, down here in the dark.”
“It’s been eight years,” Sam says. “I think I’ve got things pretty much covered by now.”
“For all you know,” says Dean, “I’ve been out of this dungeon a hundred times."
Sam ignores him.
“I’m just prolonging it,” Dean says, “because I like to watch you squirm. Because this is more fun than killing you, straight away. I’ll have all of eternity to enjoy the fact that you’re dead. This part won’t last nearly so long.”
Sam looks at his watch. 11.30. “I need to go,” he says.
Dean’s face contorts, foul. “Sure,” he says. “Go on back upstairs to your life, Sammy. Don’t bother coming back.”
“I’ll see you this evening,” Sam says. 17.30. Round two.
Sam goes upstairs to the library, where he’s left his phone. The screen is blinking: Jody Mills, missed call. He listens to her voicemail.
“Happy birthday, Sam,” she says. “I hope… I hope it’s as good as it can be.” And then, “You need to come visit us. It’s been too long.”
The sentiment is kind, but meaningless. Last time he actually made it to Jody’s house, he woke up at 3am in the throes of a full-blown panic attack, absolutely positive that Dean had somehow gotten out. The subsequent 330-mile drive, made at something over 100mph with two stops to throw up at the side of the road, isn’t an experience that he’s felt motivated to repeat. Instead, it’s seemed easier just to stay close: and gradually, gradually the circle’s shrunk so that Sam’s not been more than ten miles from the bunker for the past three years.
Sam knuckles his fingers hard against his eyes, and goes to pour another cup of coffee. He spills it, just a little. His hands are always shaking lately. Too much caffeine. Effortfully regaining self-control, Sam picks up the mug, warm porcelain against cold fingers, and tries to slow his beating heart. It doesn’t work.
Sam knows nightmares, and lately the worst he’s been having is this: he dies. The how of it doesn’t matter. Maybe the thing in the dungeon gets the jump on him and breaks his head; maybe he caffeinates himself into cardiac arrest. Either way, he dies, and nothing changes. He’s just that bit more insubstantial than before; but he’s still tied here, locked on to the Bunker and his brother’s walking corpse, ghostly guardian of a demon who can’t die. He keeps having that dream and sometimes, in the long afternoons, he wonders if he’s got it mixed, if that’s reality and this is the dream. Maybe the knock of his heart in his ribs is a memory. Maybe the breath on the mirror is the blur in his mind.
Sam swallows his coffee. It tastes like nothing - like ash.