Post-season 11 finale fic, started shortly after the ep aired, so not based on any season 12 spoilers, just our own speculation. After working on it for the last month, it's not quite done, but I'm starting to post now before too many spoilers joss it before it even begins.

Much as I love Sam, I've always been a Dean girl. But I'm writing this for my own little sister, who loves Sam best, and has been in an agony of anticipation over what might be happening to him. So while Dean's presence is a constant, his actual appearance won't be for a while.

The worst part isn't the trial. As big a mockery of justice as it is. Sam knows the wigs and robes are British custom, though it doesn't stop them from looking ridiculous to his American eyes. But the porcelain masks over their faces are from an entirely different tradition. And holding the proceedings in Middle English is not part of any legal practice Sam knows of.

Sam's reading knowledge of the language is good enough to get through Chaucer, but when it's spoken loudly and at intense length he can't catch one word in three. It effectively prevents him from mounting any defense, or even understanding exactly what the charges against him are. Ending the world, he guesses, between what he can make out and what he was told back at the bunker. That the world is clearly still here, he'd think would be evidence in his favor, but by the angry arguments that keep breaking out, it's not a convincing case.

He's not even sure what they're arguing about. As far as he can tell he doesn't have an attorney on his side. The prosecution is fighting with itself. Possibly over whether to actually crucify him or just burn him at the stake. Or whatever the Men of Letters do to, what was it, jumped-up hunters, doing more harm than good.

And yeah, that sucks; it's humiliating, to sit and listen to these old men (and women, by the voices; the British Letters are egalitarian, at least) in their ludicrous costumes rant in a tongue he barely understands, about things they understand even less.

(And where were you, when Lucifer was walking the Earth, when the Leviathans were released, when the angels fell, when the Darkness was freed? If you didn't approve of how we were cleaning up this shit, why didn't you grab a goddamn shovel yourselves?)

At first Sam tried to speak in any pauses, but every time he was talked over, shouted down. He doesn't know if it was because he wasn't using old enough English, or maybe they wouldn't listen regardless. By now his tongue is too dry to yell. The man sitting in the raised pulpit, the judge he assumes, has yet to so much as turn his half-white, half-black mask Sam's way. And Sam can't stand up to draw attention, not shackled as he is to the wooden bench.

The chains aren't the worst part, though after the past—five hours? Six?—the weight of the iron and the manacles around his wrists have started to bruise. His right shoulder is throbbing; the bullet wound was mostly healed (already; and wouldn't that particular magic poultice have come in handy on so many hunts) but its ache now is an increasing distraction.

He's barely trying to follow the arguments anymore, instead looking at the 'courtroom'—stone walls, not mortared pieces but solid: a cavern or a catacomb, he thinks, by the lack of windows. No hint or clue to where he is, whether he was actually transported overseas, or did this assemblage come Stateside. Wherever this is, every inch of the rough-hewn rock is etched with symbols, from tiny runes no larger than newspaper copy, to the giant Enochian sigil carved in the wall behind the judge, extending from the floor to higher than Sam could reach.

'Justice' is one translation for that symbol. Also 'Wisdom,' 'Command,' and 'Vengeance.' Sam wonders which meaning applies to the courtroom. Or maybe it changes depending on the case.

If he weren't in pain and chained up and also on trial, possibly for his life, he would want to study these walls. The characters over the doorways, for instance, he assumes are for protection; he recognizes some from the bunker, but it's beyond anything he's read up on. The men and women with him now could probably teach him all about them. If they weren't too busy passing judgment on his ignorance.

Such pompous sanctimony is painful in itself. All the more so because Sam understands it, knows all too well the intoxication of self-righteousness. It's not even a drug; it's a poison, crippling your reason, your empathy. He doubts he could get through to these people even if they were willing to listen to his modern tongue. But that's not the worst part, either.

The worst part is looking at these be-robed, be-wigged figures in their painted masks, and hearing in his head Dean's snide comments about Sam's clown phobia. The worst part is thinking how Dean would've thrown a fit hours ago, to hell with who was listening, hollered and rattled his chains until the judge was forced to bang his gavel or rock or whatever he has and cry order.

The worst part is how, wherever this trumped-up court is, whatever is going to happen, Sam would almost rather be here than at the bunker, with nothing left to do but arrange his brother's funeral.

x x x

When the trial ends for the day (night? He's yet to see daylight since he woke up here) the guards bring Sam back to his cell. They don't unlatch the manacles; he shuffles along dragging the chains with him, like Marley's ghost or that spirit in the cannery in Bruceport, back in '07.

The cell is less dungeon, more monastery. There's a foam pad spread over the stone block against the left wall, with a blanket if no pillow. There's a sink with clean running water and a light switch. There's even a small stack of paperback novels, mostly sixty-year-old mysteries and pulp SF.

Like the courtroom, there are no windows, and the solid stone walls are carved with symbols as well, if fewer of them, most running along the top of the walls just below the ceiling. Out of reach of most prisoners. Sam can brush his fingers along them, but it's a strain, fighting against the weight of the chains.

He wonders if all their guests get shackles, or if he should feel honored. The Letters are obviously not taking any chances. When they bring him meals, they order him to stand back against the far wall before they push open the door. It's heavy oak, bound in steel bands, and thick enough that when he bangs his manacle cuffs against it there's only a muffled thud, no movement.

Most of the food they bring is from McDonald's. Wendy's a couple of times. That might be a clue as to his location, except Sam can't remember if England had Wendy's or not. The burgers don't taste any different to him.

Dean would say that at least they're feeding them right, and he might even mean it. Only Dean doesn't say anything, of course, because he's gone.

Sam tried asking for a salad the second day. Since then there's always a cup of greens included with the burgers and fries, but they're from the same places, crappy iceberg lettuce and one mushy tomato wedge. He makes himself eat it all anyways. To keep his strength up, until he gets a chance to make a move.

Usually it's the guards who bring the meals, adding an extra element of incongruity, with their precise black suits and ties contrasting against both the rough stone walls and the bags of cheap fast food. It'd look silly if they weren't such big guys, broad-shouldered, almost as tall as Sam. Hired bodyguards, maybe. Or else recruited from a top-secret government agency—Sam's pretty sure there's a joke there, about the Men in Black and the Men of Letters, but he can't find the words Dean would.

But when the door creaks open tonight, it's not a wannabe Secret Service agent, but the woman who confronted him back at the Bunker. Who shot him, and banished Cas.

"You," Sam says.

She's holding a white burger bag instead of a gun this time, but she's got the same look, skittish but resolved. "Stay back," she says crisply.

"Not moving," Sam tells her, keeping his shoulders against the wall. But the chains shift, and at that jangling the woman's head jerks up, shoulders stiffening.

"This cell is warded," she states. "If you make a move against me, you'll suffer for it."

So I could try, and see if your definition of suffering measures up to Lucifer's—but Sam stays put. "It was Toni, wasn't it? Toni Bedell?"

"Bevell," the woman says.

Sam nods. "And you're a Man of Letters—Woman of Letters? Like me."

"Hardly," she says. "I'm no hunter."

"Hunter, yeah; but we—but I'm also a legacy."

"Through your grandfather, Henry Winchester. A distaff branch of one of the lesser families. Still, it would've been enough for you to be accepted into lower-tier training, had the American chapter still been active. But it wasn't, and you weren't trained at all."

She still doesn't sound quite as disdainful as the masked guys in the courtroom. Or maybe that's just because Sam can understand all her words. "So that's why you're here? To mock my credentials?"

"No." She tilts up her chin to meet his eyes. "I came to see how you were doing."

"How I'm doing?" Sam almost laughs. He lifts his cuffed hands to rattle the chains. "I was taken from my home and chained in a cell, who knows where, to be put on trial for my—I don't actually know for what, my life? Soul? Whatever—because I didn't save the world exactly how some armchair quarterbacks overseas thought I should save the world, and my—"—my brother is—but he doesn't say it; refuses to give her that.

Her eyes break from his gaze, dart down to his bandaged injury. "How is your shoulder?"

It's aching still, with the weight of the manacles pulling his arms down. But he won't give her that satisfaction, either. "It's okay."

"Good."

Her lips are pressed together tightly, but she sounds like she genuinely means it. "Your first time?" Sam asks her.

"First time?"

"Shooting someone."

Her eyes narrow; then she turns on her heel. As she exits she drops the fast food bag on the floor.

"Wait—Toni, wait," Sam says, as she starts to push the door shut.

She pauses, looks back into the cell.

Sam makes his best go at a smile, keeps his voice calm and his shoulders to the wall. "Back at the bunker," he says. "That Enochian sigil you used—I haven't seen one like it before."

"No," the woman says, "you wouldn't have done," and she swings the door back in place with a crashing thud.

x x x

Though Sam racks his memory, he can't clearly remember the banishing sigil. He only caught a glimpse of it, and that memory is shaded by grief and then the shock of a bullet in his shoulder. On top of the emotional blow of being attacked in their home—his home—

Or the Men of Letters', of which they were only a small part of a larger legacy. Maybe too small to matter.

It wasn't the standard angel banishing symbol they usually used, him and Dean and Castiel himself. From the visuals, the primary elements were the same, but try as he might Sam can't recall what the major sign within the circle was, whether it's a figure he knows. If it didn't just send Cas flying up to Heaven or to the ends of the Earth; if it cast him further, or hurt him...

But Cas will be fine—Cas is always fine.

(If he isn't, there's no one to bring him back anymore.)

After Sam eats, sitting on the floor on a rucked-up blanket, leaning against the stone slab of the berth, he tries praying again. Even if Cas is somewhere in range, in a condition he can hear, Sam doubts the prayer will get through; enough of the symbols carved into the top of the walls are Enochian that he suspects magic shielding is at play. But just in case.

"Cas," he says, subvocalizing, lips moving but not even breathing the words. Not when he doesn't know who might be listening. They knew something about Cas already, obviously, but he won't give away more willingly. "Can you hear me? I'm—wherever the hell I am. But I'm still here. I'm fine. They've got me on trial for...I don't know. Doesn't matter. I'm still looking for a way out—nothing yet, but I'll keep trying.

"I hope you're okay, man. Wherever you ended up. Don't do anything dumb, all right? If you're hurt, then you've got to get better before you try to look for me. Be careful—be careful with yourself, okay, Cas? Because, you know, there's no one watching out for us now. So we've got to watch out for ourselves. And once I get out of here, I'll come looking for you. So just hang in there."

He leans his head back against the foam pad, sinking in until he feels the hard stone underneath. Shuts his eyes and swallows. "Cas, I hadn't gotten a chance—I forgot to say, sorry. Sorry about your dad. Even if you weren't close, if you...I'm sorry."

It's been years since Cas lost his wings, but Sam still has to fight the urge not to listen for the rustle of feathers, to look around expecting to see his friend. He keeps his eyes closed, and the cell remains silent.

He'd thought the silence was easier at first. At least it wasn't like last time, the year after Dick Roman, when Sam would be fine, until a car would drive by with the windows down and the radio blaring, or he'd walk into a grocery store with the speakers tuned to classic rock—always some stupid song or another that he didn't even like, not really, but he knew every word to anyways, and he'd find himself hunched over the sidewalk or in front of the shopping carts, eyes stinging and fighting to take a breath that wasn't a sob.

There's no radio to ambush him here. There's no rattling fan; even the light overhead is inaudible, no electric hum—an LED bulb, or maybe it's magic.

Last time he'd thought—he'd hoped, he'd prayed, that Dean had gone to Heaven. That wherever Dean had ended up, he was at peace, the peace he'd craved, that he deserved. That Sam had no right to drag him from.

(Or maybe that had just been his excuse. A deterrent, to stop him from doing something even worse than summoning demons and drinking their blood.)

This time—he hadn't asked; none of them had. Whatever would happen to all those hundred thousand souls—and the soul of the body that carried them—none of them wanted to know. No cost is too high, when literally everything is at stake. So why bother looking at the price tag at all?

And Sam had been willing to pay, same as his brother. Would be willing again, of course he would. Billions of lives on the line—more, if Earth's not the only world out there. It wasn't even a choice, when everything would end either way.

Sam is grateful it worked. Glad that the universe is still here. He is, even imprisoned as he is in this cramped, dark corner of it.

Once he would have prayed. Asked for strength, and maybe what he found was only the strength that was always in him, but it was the asking that brought it out.

But Cas probably can't even hear him through the cell's warding. And there's no one else now to listen.

Sam lies on the padded stone and all he can hear are his own breaths, in and out, in and out. This is what it means to be glad: to keep breathing.

x x x

The trial lasts six days. Or six sessions, at least; with no daylight and no clocks Sam isn't entirely sure that he's sleeping on a twenty-four hour cycle anymore.

The seventh time he's brought to the courtroom, still bound and chained, the prosecution has been unmasked. They're still wearing the robes and wigs, and amid that show their lined and weathered faces barely look more human. They watch with bright, impassive eyes as Sam is led, shuffling, chains dragging, to the bench.

The judge is standing in his pulpit. He still has his mask on, bisected black and white halves. He waits for Sam to reach the bench, then starts to speak for the first time. His voice is thin and reedy, quavering with age.

Unlike the rest of the trial, the verdict is delivered in Latin, but there's a lot of idioms and the pronunciation is far from the standards Sam's familiar with. He gets enough to understand that he's been found guilty.

(Big surprise there, Dean doesn't say.)

What his sentence is, Sam is less clear on. Not the death penalty, he doesn't think; at least he doesn't hear any declensions of mors in the judge's speech.

When he glances at the prosecution, the reactions are mixed. The one on the left is frowning slightly; the one on the right continues to hold a stare as fixedly expressionless as her former mask.

The man in the middle is smiling, as slight as his colleague's frown, but the dry corners of his mouth are definitely curling up as he meets Sam's eyes. Not happy, nor encouraging. His fixed stare is nothing but pleased.

That bodes well. Sam looks away.

The judge's frail voice finally trails off, like a whistling teakettle taken off the heat. He reaches up, pulls away the mask to reveal a face as wizened and seamed as a walnut. Holding the mask in both hands, he brings it down on the edge of the pulpit. The porcelain shatters, black and white pieces chiming on the stone floor.

At that signal, the suited guards step forward again, unhook Sam's chains from the bench and lead him once more out of the courtroom. Though the stone corridors are mostly featureless, by now Sam can recognize the well-traveled route back to his cell. "I take it I'm not getting off with time served?" he says.

The guards don't answer, no more than they ever do.

x x x

For possibly the first time in his life, Sam is wishing that he'd watched more TV. Maybe if he'd paid more attention to MacGuyver when he was a kid, he could figure out a way to turn one of the paperbacks into a lockpick or a knife. Or an explosive, at least. From what he remembers when Dean used to watch, MacGuyver could make anything blow up.

As it is, he's lying on the berth, paging through an Agatha Christie mystery he may or may not have read before, when the cell door opens, admitting Toni Bevell. No bag of burgers this time; no gun, either. Instead she holds a folding chair.

This she sets on the floor in front of the door, seats herself and takes out a leather-bound notebook and a fountain pen.

Sam sits up with a rattling of chains to watch her, wariness giving way to confusion as she opens the notebook. "Umm...?"

Bevell clears her throat, meets his eyes. "I realize this may be a touch…awkward. But I've been given first crack at it, and I'm not going to pass it up. So, shall we? Or will you refuse to cooperate?"

"Cooperate with...?"

Her lips press together. "Don't get me wrong; we will obtain what we seek, one way or another. But if you are willing...it will be easier, if you are." Her eyes drop to the notebook, and her voice drops, too. "I told them that I thought you would be reasonable."

"Reasonable about—what are you talking about?" Sam looks around the cell, almost expecting to see a candid camera to make sense of this. "Do you want me to testify now? I thought the trial was over."

"Obviously it is," Bevell says. "Hence me being here."

Sam looks back at her, a head shorter even sitting, with the notebook and pen in hand. "You're my punishment?" and Dean really should be the one here, to make some crass, sexist remark about how she needs more leather and higher heels. Maybe a whip.

The Woman of Letters looks unimpressed even without the wisecrack. "You were there for the sentencing, weren't you? I realize the prior proceedings were a trifle esoteric; but I assumed you know basic Latin. You are the more educated one. Or did you merely memorize exorcisms phonetically?"

Like a trained parrot, she doesn't actually say, but Sam can hear it in her voice. He's already bristling at the 'more educated one,' but he closes one hand into a fist, squeezes his anger between his clenched fingers. It won't help him here. "Yeah, so I'm not used to using Latin conversationally. Classes at Stanford are in English."

Bevell sighs though her nose. "Yet you'd claim yourself of the Letters. Oh, very well. After reviewing the evidence and your history, Lord Scantlebury—"

Sam can't help himself. "Scantlebury? Seriously?"

"—Lord Scantlebury," Bevell raises her voice over his, "decided that it would be unreasonable to pass judgment on you as a true Man of Letters, since you hadn't been initiated into even an outer circle, and therefore couldn't be expected to comprehend the laws and codes you broke. Instead you were judged as what you are: a hunter, who got illicit access—"

"—Illicit? Our grandfather gave us the key!"

"—to some of our most profound mysteries and artifacts, and inevitably misused them in ill-conceived and catastrophically dangerous ways."

"Saving peoples' lives!"

"Or ending them," Bevell says. "We've seen the records from the bunker since your tenure there. The Styne family members; the Prophet Kevin Tran..."

Sam's not ready for that reminder; it hits him like a punch in the gut, leaves him too breathless to ask about the nature of those records. Is the whole bunker wired? Magic CCTV? How much of their private lives have these bastards spied on? Digging up all their failings and transgressions, laying them bare—for a moment he's almost grateful he couldn't understand the trial after all.

"So what was my sentence?" Sam asks finally. "For taking up my grandfather's legacy without your permission?"

Bevell lifts her chin. For the first time since entering his cell she looks uneasy. Like she did at the bunker, aiming her pistol—her confidence faltering, and she trying to shore it up with bravado. Before, she pulled the trigger. Now she says, "Abutor."

Sam frowns. He'd heard the word in the judge's speech but hadn't had the context to make sense of it. On its own it's just as inexplicable. "'Misuse'? How we misused the bunker...?"

"'To make full use of,'" Bevell corrects. "Not your crime; the ruling. Very traditional," though the way she says that makes the custom sound more archaic than time-honored.

"So you're going to punish me by, what, putting me to work?" and for an instant Sam pictures himself cast in the opening of Conan the Barbarian, pushing some giant grindstone.

"Not punishment," Bevell says. "It's not intended as a deterrent, but a solution. Hunters are prone to abusing our knowledge, but we take the opportunity to learn what we can from your blunders."

Sam looks down at the notebook in her hands. "So what you want from me—"

"—is information," Bevell says. "The complete accounting of what you've done, with the devices of Letters, and before you found the bunker. We know the consequences of your actions, but not the details. Not how you managed all that we know you're responsible for."

Sam looks at her, at her slender fingers clutching the enameled pen. Looks down at his own hands, his clenched fist resting on his thigh, the iron manacles digging into the flesh through his jeans. He thinks of reciting all of their missteps, everything they did wrong in all their years hunting.

His own catalog of sins he could list off in his sleep. They hardly even sting. Those from before the Cage, he's paid his dues for; those after he's already talked about. Less comfortable in chains, without a beer in hand; but he could do it.

But to talk to this woman, with her fountain pen and her condescending eyes, to tell her those things that Dean did, sometimes too hastily, sometimes regretted—but always what he thought he had to do, to save Sam, to save everyone. Because Dean might have been a hunter or he might have been a Men of Letters legacy; but he was always, first of everything, a hero.

"No," Sam says.

"No?" Bevell repeats, brow furrowed.

"I'm not cooperating." Sam lays back down on the padded berth, crosses his arms as best he can with the chains and shuts his eyes. "Pick another solution; I'm not telling any of you anything."

to be continued...

More to come, if anyone's interested!