This will be done in 2 parts/chapters. Set somewhere in season 2. Pretty dang AU. Language and a little bit of gore. Dean's POV.
Save You
He feels a tear inside his head, like glass breaking and splintering across the floor and getting caught beneath the cupboards and the fridge where it will stay, forever unrecovered. There is a word for this, he knows, an explanation for the sudden pain, but the black claws of nothingness scratch insistently against his eyelids and he gives into it because this was a hard blow to the head (blindsided, that's the word) and he thinks it might've been the butt of a gun or a fucking sledgehammer and…
Dark Dark Dark.
Blinking, blinking back to life and he's sorry because oblivion is easier and he remembers what happened and where he probably is and now he blinks a few more times and he is sure of it, can feel the pull of his shoulder blades squeezed too close together, the friction of rope wrapped around wrists and pulling, pulling. He pulls back, tests and finds no give, ankles wrapped too but separated, spread to opposite sides of the chair he's been strapped to, chest tight and aching against the ropes there. Ropes, ropes everywhere.
"Look who's awake."
And he groans because holy shit what an absolutely unoriginal line is this really how this is gonna go?
"So nice of you to join us."
Wow. Apparently it is. Goddammit but he's tired.
"Hey." A slap to the face, probably because he had closed his eyes again, tried to will himself back into unconsciousness before this situation got anymore goddamn cliché. The slap was harder than it needed to be, so they must've seen the eye roll too.
"Listen up, Winchester."
He listens. It's the same as last time, always the same speech and the same questions (and god how did he let this happen again? Must be slipping, definitely slipping...) and then, when he still doesn't speak (just like last time), it is the same slow build of punch, punch, split lip, punch, punch, bloody nose, but not broken this time (not yet) and that's good because he can still breathe with sealed lips that won't spill anything except maybe the blood he can now feel, slow and red and sliding down his chin and he just wants a napkin or a tissue, something to stop the tickle of it.
"We have ways of making you talk, you understand? We know you know. We know you know where he is."
He doesn't, actually. Not anymore. Tracked him as far as Nevada and then lost him again, let him drift away on those desert currents in between the sparkle of casino lights and the whirring of slot machines.
They had locked eyes for a moment, a long frozen second of realization, recognition, fear and flight. Sam's hair had been a little longer and it had whipped across his face, half-covering it as he sprinted for the exit and away from his brother. And Dean had stood frozen, just that extra couple of seconds until the sleeve of Sam's jacket had disappeared through the doorway and then the heel of his shoe and that look, that look in his eyes…
Dean lost him. Lost him in the crowded street outside, and he thinks he meant to. Dean lost him in the abandoned alley. And in the grocery store before that. And in between panted breaths and the trees in the forest, and then again in the library, on the road, in the crack of the hall closet with nowhere else to go, nowhere except
Save him or kill him, save him or kill him.
A constant and unshakeable echo inside the fragile walls of his skull, the one now pounding out a steady ache as they get annoyed that he's still not talking, as they move from punches to pliers. He feels his fingernails fall away one by one and he tries not to scream but they are slow and meticulous about it so eventually he starts. Screaming and screaming. The knife is next, slicing and carving out patterns and screaming, screaming, but he won't say anything else.
(Meant to lose him, glad he lost him and pain pain pain screaming, still silent in all the other ways, in the way that matters most. No words or hints or clues because Sammy's long gone and that's okay as long as he isn't here, isn't in the hands of these hunters turned monstrous. And isn't that just ironic? Isn't that just another goddamn cliché and fuck this hurts, hurts and he's drifting now, really losing it…)
They leave him there.
At first Dean thinks it's just for the night, that they'll start in again the next day, but after hours of in and out and floating dreams and a sliver of sunlight that floods into morning, then flickers and flutters, fades to night again, they still haven't come back. He really doesn't want to die here.
Oh god. Please don't let him die here.
I'll probably just post the second (and final) chapter for this within the next day or so. Thanks for reading- I always appreciate reviews!