Five Hours to Broken Arrow
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Sam reached for his cell, screwing up his eyes at the glare from the digital clock on the nightstand. 3.15am. He glanced at the number. Unknown.
"It's Sam."
"Uh…yeah. If that's Sam Winchester, then this…Jennifer Blain just outside Tul – a."
Sam recognized the hunter's voice immediately, but frowned at the bad reception he was getting. He snaked out from under the covers and stood near the window, as if that would help.
"…your brother at a town crossroads."
"Yeah?" He grabbed an envelope. Fumbled a pen into place. Scribbled down the details.
"…six one, kinda broad, fair…doubled back…looked like he was hitchin' or somethin'. I couldn't pick him up…job to get - "
"Did he see you, did he…recognize you?"
"He didn't see me." She replied. Then, "I thought long and hard about calling you with this to be honest…"
"No, no, I'm glad you did, Jennifer. Seriously."
After the call, he dry scrubbed his face and dropped his shoulders.
Five hours to Broken Arrow.
At this time in the morning he could make it in four.
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Two days earlier:
Pain and fear. It ebbed away.
He became aware of a warm hand clasping the back of his neck. The thumb smoothing his cheekbone in rhythmic comfort.
"Hey, Dean," Sam's voice. Quiet and reassuring. Dean clung onto it. Honed in on the tone, the inflections, the light breath that accompanied the words. Imagined the long reach. The mass of hair flopping over his eyes to look down at him.
"Sam…"
No answer.
"Be..be careful. It's bad…"
Pretty stupid thing to say actually. Sam would have already seen how bad the situation was. Would have seen the physical state Dean was in. Would have seen the wires tying him down onto the workbench.
The scalded left hand…the skin already swollen and stretched. His bruised abdomen and cracked ribs that stabbed and tortured him with every movement. Every breath.
His bust up nose. His gravel-scraped thigh shining slick through his torn jeans.
Yes. This could never be described as Dean's finest hour. But it was a better hour. Now that Sam was here.
The hand left his neck and Dean moved his head to follow it.
But when he opened his eyes – it wasn't Sam's back that retreated into the murk of the warehouse.
Because it wasn't Sam.
A gradual feeling of dread filled his stomach and made him dry swallow the mix of disappointment and shame he felt at being deceived. Again.
"Sam ain't here right now." The man said quietly. "Not until I tell him to," he added. As if to himself.
The man turned back into the glow of the single, nervous light bulb illuminating Dean's suffering. He was stout, but fit. Those hours in the gym had certainly paid off. The bloodied t shirt he wore stretched at his biceps. Handsome in his own way. Wide expressive eyes.
Big hands carried a bolt cutter. Dean inhaled and tried desperately not to stare at them.
"It's cool, bro'. I'm not gonna use them against you." He soothed. A gentle smile.
"I'm…I'm not your brother." The smile disappeared as he approached the work bench. He leaned down into Dean's personal space.
"That's right. Because I don't have a brother." The man let the bolt cutters lean on Dean's raw-skinned thigh, making him flinch and shiver.
"And why don't I have a brother, Dean?" he asked, the weight of the bolt cutters dragging now.
His brain a scrambled mess, Dean couldn't actually remember why this psycho didn't have a brother.
"Go fuck yourself is why," Dean blurted out. He closed his eyes and turned his face away – waiting for the onslaught.
But it didn't come.
Instead, Dean could feel the cold steel of the bolt cutters jam into his wrists as they snapped the wires around his right hand. The man moved around to the other side of the bench, and cut the wires holding Dean's other hand.
The wires around his ankles sliced like butter under the weight of the cutters.
The man stood admiring his handy work for a beat, before turning back to face his captive.
" There. All better now," he said lightly. "It's a little known fact that when a brain suffers a period of unconsciousness, it wipes the memory immediately before the trauma, and to some extent, the painful period afterwards."
He placed the cutters against the corrugated tin wall of the warehouse.
"So, in theory, you won't remember why I don't have a brother." He reached for Dean's shirt, grasping a handful, he forced Dean into a sitting position, and then dragged him off the bench. "So, I'll tell you again."
Dean flinched, through grit-teeth pain and forced his legs to hold him up.
"See, once upon a time, I had a Mom and a Dad and a big brother called Cal. And we all lived in a nice big house in a nice little town…"
Powerful arms forced Dean back against the wall. One giant hand around Dean's neck. With the other, he reached towards a huge water barrel and ripped off its lid.
"…and one day, six years ago this month as it happens...while my family were sitting at the dinner table, minding their own sweet business, John McGillicuddy broke into my house and blasted my parents with a sawn off shotgun."
Dean returned the hateful stare boring into him, with his own.
"And then he chased my injured and bleeding brother, out into the yard. And then he called me, using Cal's cell so I'd think it was him. And do you remember what he told me, Dean..?"
"Bring in some milk..?" Dean snarked.
If hate was a color, it was the blackest black that this guy poured upon him now. Dean braced himself against the force of what was coming.
"Jeremy Krane…if that's Jeremy Krane, I swear to God, I will hunt you down and I will kill you," He spat out. " That's what he said. That's what he said before he killed my brother."
Dean maintained eye contact with wild eyes that no longer saw through the pain and fury they expressed. And for a moment…for one tiny beat, Dean saw Jeremy's face crumble and change. As if the memory was cutting him ragged and deep, for the first time.
And then he composed himself, with a tighter grip on Dean's neck.
To Dean's surprise, he appeared to be waiting for something.
So, he obliged.
"I'm…I'm not sorry." Dean whispered.
What happened next was lightening quick in its ferocity.
And then he knew he was drowning. Knew the weight on his head and neck was forcing his head down into the water barrel. His left hand, swollen and useless, his right hand pathetically trying to push back.
And he knew it wouldn't be long before he lost it.
Not long at all…
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TBC