A/N: Written for a request on tumblr.
He'd screamed, but no one had listened. The hunters that had captured Jack had thrown him into a hole. The hunters wanted to get rid of him, simply saw him as the son of Satan. So there he was, out in the middle of the woods, trying to climb out of a six-foot deep hole.
A hunter whacked him just above his right ear with a rifle, and Jack went down, sharp pain cracking through his head. He saw a flash of light before his vision went dark, there was a loud thump, and then when he came to he was down in the dirt, on his side.
Jack tried to rise, but only managed to get onto his back.
A shovelful of dirt was thrown on top of him.
"No, no, no," he whimpered.
Oh, how he wished he could continue yelling, but he was too weak, too dazed. Jack tried using for his powers, but they had yet to come back, and it seemed like a bright light just out of his reach.
More dirt was thrown on top of him, and he grunted. It was starting to hurt. It was heavy, compressing in around him, some of it already getting on his face. The blow to his head made him unable to wipe the dirt away.
More dirt piled on. More and more.
Panic set in and he could barely breathe.
Jack was going to die a slow, agonizing death beneath the earth.
He felt like he was being crushed, his left arm was trapped over his chest, his legs were pinned, and as much as he tried moving, he couldn't.
More. And more.
The weight kept adding, and he couldn't breathe, couldn't see, felt like he was suffocating. His lungs hurt, his head hurt, and he was starting to feel a crushing sensation in his chest.
That crushing sensation grew and grew, till he heard a snap, and tears were running down his face, turning flecks of dirt into mud, but it did nothing to help him move. Jack felt like he was being eaten by the earth itself, eaten for his sin of being alive. Eaten because of who his father was, eaten because he'd killed his mother.
Another snap, and Jack lost consciousness, thinking of his dads, but feeling so alone, feeling like the world didn't love him. Like no one did.
Jack came to on the ground, shocked into life. There was a sharp ache in his chest, and when he tilted his head to the side, he saw a giant needle lying on the ground beside him. He was coughing, trying to sit up, and then there were familiar hands on him. His dads. His dads had saved him. Castiel was behind him, rubbing his back, and Sam and Dean were on either side, holding him up, careful with their touches.
Jack eventually stopped coughing, his lungs finally sucking in enough air, but oh, how it hurt. Each breath hurt, but Jack still smiled up at them, and croaked out, "Dad?"
All three of them gave him gentle smiles in return, knowing he'd used that one word to address each of them. Then they were taking turns gently hugging him, their hands on his head, his face, holding him to their chests, making Jack feel safe, and warm.
The ground had been so cold.
He tried tilting his head to look at the hole he'd been buried in, but Dean hugged him harder, one hand beside his eyes to block his view.
"It's okay, kid. We got you out."
"You don't have to look in that hole ever again," Sam told him.
"Can you stand?" Castiel asked.
Jack's legs felt sore and numb, bruised even, and he shook his head.
Castiel put his hands under his armpits, Sam got his torso, and Dean his legs. "Okay, we're gonna lift you up," his father said.
Sam counted out, "One, two, three…"
Jack was hoisted up, and he cried out, throbbing emanating from his ribs, the pain so intense and deep and bright that he forgot how to breathe properly.
That only made the pain worse, and he was whimpering.
They gently placed him back down on the ground.
"Jack, what's wrong?" Castiel asked.
Sam and Dean's hands were already searching over his body, trying to find where he was injured. Castiel, with his Grace, found it first, and he knocked his other dads' hands away.
"It's his ribs. Three of them are fractured," he informed them.
"Can you heal them?"
Jack whimpered, writhing on the ground as Castiel placed his hands over his injured ribs. His hands reached up, trying to grasp at Castiel's hands, trying to get him to stop touching him, wanting the pain to go away. Sam and Dean took hold of his hands, telling him soothing things. He focused on the trees and the sky above them, the green pine needles reaching up into the bluest of blues. Light shone in his peripheral vision, a strange ache following in its wake that he didn't even have time to comprehend, and then the pain was ebbing away till it was completely gone.
The aches in the rest of Jack's body were gone as well.
He stood on his own now, and Sam used his height to carefully shield his vision from the hole.
"Come on, bud," his dad told. "We'll get you home, get you showered, and in some clean clothes."
Castiel gave Jack his coat, apparently not caring that Jack was completely brown from all the dirt on him, and they helped him through the woods and back to the Impala.
Jack didn't bother asking his dads how they'd found him. It didn't matter. He was safe now.
Though Castiel had healed him, he was still exhausted, and he slept most of the way home. It was a fitful sleep, filled with dark, cold, and a heavy, oppressive weight that wanted to kill him, like the universe itself was angry with him. The heaviness wanted Jack to die, but it wanted to hurt him first - cut off his air, crack his ribs, bruise him, rocks scratching at sensitive skin. He couldn't wake from it, couldn't move, couldn't drag himself from the weight.
Jack eventually woke up to Castiel's hand on his shoulder, the other one running through his sweaty hair. His dirty clothes clung to him, and he smelled like the ground, the scent caught in his nose.
"Hey, it's okay," his father soothed. "We got you out."
"It was so cold," Jack complained.
At that, Sam turned and reached back and patted his leg. He gave him a sympathetic look, hazel eyes filled with understanding.
"Well, the shower will be nice and warm," Dean told him.
Jack nodded, and Castiel pulled him up against his side.
He tried to keep his eyes open the rest of the way home, not wanting to let the dark take him. Sometimes when he blinked he'd get startled by it, and Castiel ended up holding him closer, while Dean told him a story about their dad coming home drunk one night. It wasn't a good story, not at all, and Jack hurt for his dads, but it was distracting at least. Sam smacked him upside the head at one point to get him to shut up, and instead started telling Jack about a girl he'd liked when he was in middle school. Jack liked that story much better.
Jack couldn't get himself to shower alone when he was at the bunker. He'd been so alone in the ground, so sure he was going to die. So Sam stayed with him, just outside the stall, talking to him.
It felt good to get all the dirt off of him. It wiped away as mud at first, but then it began to slough off of him and down the drain. Still, the tile floor was covered in the muddy remnants, and Jack felt guilty about it.
Sam had been talking about an essay he'd written in english class in high school where he'd decided to write about werewolves. The teacher had liked it, but saw it as fiction. If only that teacher knew.
Jack had been trying to listen attentively, but he couldn't help himself from interrupting, and asked, "Sam, have you ever been buried alive?"
His dad let out a sigh that he heard even over the running water.
"No," he responded. "But I know what it feels like to be cold. Really cold. A cold where it feels like you're drowning in it and you can't escape."
Even as Sam spoke Jack pictured it, felt the chill all around him, even with the hot water. He turned the heat up, not caring that his skin was starting to itch and sting.
"Why do you know?" Jack asked curiously.
"Jack," Sam began, voice heavy, "that's… that's a conversation I can't have with you. You're… You're too young, too… too good."
"No, I'm not," he argued bitterly as he tipped his head back under the water to get his hair wet.
"Listen to me, Jack. You are. I know those hunters did bad things to you, I know they may have told you bad things, but you. Are. Good. Don't think you're anything but that. Ever. Think of your mother."
"I-I did," Jack stuttered out, feeling tears prick at the corners of his eyes. "I did. I thought… I deserve this. I killed my mother. I… I thought I was going to go to Hell."
Jack started crying then, and he was sobbing. He didn't want to go to Hell, but his father was a being of Hell, and he was the reason his mother was dead, so where else would he have gone? Maybe he should've been left buried in the earth. But no, no. No. He didn't like the cold, the dark, the weight.
Sam talked over his sobs, voice loud, but calm, "Listen. You're not going to Hell. If anything, when you die you'll go to Heaven. But you're not there now. You're here, with us. I'm with you, you're in the bathroom, you're taking a shower. Can you repeat that to me? Tell me where you are."
"I-I-I'm in-in a h-hole!" he sobbed out. "I'm in a hole! I'm in a hole! I'm in a hole!"
"Jack, hey, come on. Pull it together. I know you can do it. Where are you? What are you doing?"
"I-It's getting in my mouth. There's dirt in my mouth. It's in my nose! I can't see!"
It was like Jack knew these things weren't happening to him anymore, but it wasn't important. Where he was wasn't important.
He was in a hole.
Unable to move.
Freezing.
Unable to breathe.
The earth crushing him, hurting him.
"Jack, listen to me. We got you out. You're here, in the bunker, with your family. Dean, Cas, and I. You're taking a shower. You're okay."
His sobs grew louder, and Sam raised his voice even more, "Jack, just tell me what you're doing."
"I'm… I'm taking a shower," he forced out.
A sob shook his shoulders, and he was hugging himself under the water.
Dark. So dark.
"Okay, that's good. That's good. Where are you?"
"I'm in… in the bathroom. In the bunker."
"Uh huh. I'm with you. I'm just on the other side of the door."
Jack felt like he was getting his sobs under control, and the flow of tears was ebbing. He continued to wash up.
"I'm in the bunker," Jack repeated. "I'm in the bunker. I'm taking a shower. Sam's with me."
"Can you tell me that you're safe?"
Jack thought the answer to that question would be easy. Of course he was safe. He was in the bunker.
But… he didn't feel safe.
"I don't know."
"It's okay, we'll work on that. Cas is making you hot chocolate right now, Dean's out buying you some nougat, and you can get all nice and cozy in your pajamas. And you tell us what you want to do, okay? You want to watch a movie? I think Dean bought a copy of Homeward Bound last week."
"Can we watch the movie?" Jack asked.
"Of course we can watch the movie."
Jack finished his shower, staying on the edge of panic, and it was exhausting. He felt like he just needed to lie down and rest.
Thankfully Dean came back with the nougat, and Castiel got him his hot chocolate. Dean had squeezed a TV into his room, so now Sam and Cas were on the couch, while he lay on his dad's bed with him.
The movie was good up until a scene near the end. There was a dog stuck in a hole, stuck in mud, his leg broken, his friends unable to get to him.
Dean immediately pulled Jack's face into his chest at that, and his dads were rapidly apologizing, telling him they'd forgotten that scene was in there. Jack was crying against Dean, soaking his black shirt with tears, but Dean just held onto him.
"It's okay, kid. It's okay. You're right here. I got you. I got you, Jack."
While they were doing that, Castiel put on a Dreamworks TV show that Netflix had advertised. All four of them had interest in watching it as a family, but they'd been too busy. They supposed now was a good time to start.
Castiel sat in front of the bed now, letting Jack lean his head on him as he lay on his stomach, eyes looking up at the TV. Sam was sitting at the end of Dean's bed, a hand rubbing his back, and Dean was pressed up against him. It didn't feel suffocating like he had thought it would, being closed in by his dads. But he supposed that's because he knew he was safe with them. They had saved him.
Trollhunters was a great show, and Jack was laughing will all the jokes, and eager to see where Jim's storyline headed. It had a lot of scenes in the dark, and underground, but it was beautiful underground, with so many bursting lights and colors, so much wonder, that Jack wasn't afraid.
They stopped watching the show when Dean had to go cook dinner, but Jack decided to keep his dad company. Castiel stayed with them as well, and Sam seemed worried to leave him, but he did go to his own room for a bit. Jack didn't mind. He had one of his dads and his father with him. He'd be fine.
"Sorry about the movie," Dean apologized yet again as he worked on breading some chicken. "I forgot about that scene."
"It's okay."
"No, it's not," his dad intoned. "We messed up. You shouldn't have to suffer for it. Just let me say sorry. I'm not very good at it."
"Oh. Then… apology accepted."
Castiel was sitting across from Jack, and without Dean noticing he'd grabbed Krunch Cookie Crunch, and they were snacking on it, letting it soften in their mouths, so Dean wouldn't hear them chewing.
Jack's eyes widened when he caught his dad looking at one point, but he winked at him and went back to cooking.
As they drew closer to meal time, and Jack knew it was getting dark outside, he thought of the hole again. It was like there was a vile presence in his chest, sucking him back into it, wanting the darkness to take him.
Jack stopped eating the cereal then, couldn't do much of anything. He had his head in his hands, trying to focus on the table, but all he saw was the hole.
The dank, dark hole. The evil earth.
It was swallowing him up, dragging him in, and Jack's body was hurting.
He yelped when he felt a hand on him, arms around him, and then he realized it was Castiel.
"Sh, sh… Jack, it's okay. It's okay."
"No, it's not okay!" he cried at his father as he held onto him with all his might. Maybe Castiel could drag him out of the hole. "It's not okay! It's not okay! It's not okay!"
Castiel was sitting beside him now, still holding onto him. Jack felt the vibrations in his chest as he spoke, listened to his heartbeat.
"I know, Jack. I know. What those hunters did to you was wrong. So very, very wrong. But you're here with us now."
"The hole… It… It keeps trying to drag me back in! I d-d-don't want t-to go back!"
"Listen to me, you are not going to go back. Not now, not ever. You're going to stay with us. We're going to keep taking care of you, even in the wake of this despicable thing that's happened to you. You are our son, Jack, and we'll do everything we can to keep you safe."
"S-Sam tried to get me to say I'm safe."
"And did you?"
Jack whimpered as he shook his head.
"That's okay. That's okay."
Dean must've still had to cook because Jack could hear food sizzling on the stove, could smell it, pushing aside the stench of dirt that seemed to live with him now. Still, his dad said to him, "It'll take some time to feel alright again. This is all normal."
"I don't like it," Jack complained.
"None of us do, kid," Dean told him.
"But sometimes this is the way things are," Castiel explained. "We're all hurting from different things in our past. They… cling to us, as if they can't let go. They hurt, they ache, but we're still here, Jack. We still have each other. That's what you have to hold onto. You have to hold onto us, and never let go."
"I'll never let go," Dean said, the comment seeming rather out of place.
"Dean, now is not the time to quote Titanic," his father growled out.
"Right, sorry. My bad. But Cas is right, Jack. Just gotta hold onto the good things when the past tries to eat you up. It's not gonna be easy, but I know you can do it."
Jack calmed down from his father's embrace, from the words of two of his parents, and he was relaxed enough for Castiel to let go of him, but he still sat next to him.
Dinner was eventually ready, and all of Jack's food tasted like dirt to him, but he didn't tell his dads. He didn't need them to worry. Still, they could tell something was wrong, most likely, because they kept telling him stories as he ate, keeping him distracted, keeping him with them.
Castiel told a funny story involving a drink machine, and Dean surprising him at a Gas N' Sip. Jack realized he couldn't picture his father wearing different clothes than what he usually wore, though he wasn't in his overcoat now since it was getting washed. Sam had asked Jack if he wanted his other clothes watched, and while Jack had liked the outfit, he told Sam to just throw them away. He couldn't stand to look at them. They'd been utterly ruined for him.
Jack lied that dinner was good, knew it should've been since Dean was a good cook, and then he dismissed himself and went to his room.
A few minutes after, where he just sat on the bed with the lamp on, hugging himself, trying to tell himself he was safe, there was a knock on his door. He turned to the doorway, and saw Dean standing there. Jack made room for him on the bed, and Dean settled himself down beside him.
"How you doin'?" he asked.
Jack shrugged.
"Look, I know… I know what happened is hard. I know it was scary. And it's okay to feel that."
"Is it?" Jack questioned, not sure. Wasn't fear a bad emotion that led to anger? Wasn't anger bad? All he could think about was Anakin Skywalker and his fear, his anger.
Jack didn't want to be Anakin Skywalker.
"Yeah, it is."
"But you're never scared," Jack reasoned.
His dad laughed at that.
"Never scared? That's hilarious." Jack squinted his eyes at him in the way he saw Castiel do when he was confused, and Dean understood the expression, so he went on, "Look, not to go quoting The Lion King or anything, but I was scared today. And then the next line is you asking if I really was, yada, yada, yada… But the thing is, Jack, I was scared today. I thought we lost you. We had to bring you back. Not even Cas could've done it. We had to use some medicine. You missed it. I was almost crying like a baby."
Jack couldn't help himself, but he laughed at the idea, and he knew it was okay to because Dean had said it with a slight smile on his face, his tone joking, trying to make him feel better.
"Kid, we're scared over half the time, but it's not the fear that defines us. Yes, it… it changes us, some more than others. There was one time where Cas couldn't even leave the bunker. There was another time where Sam didn't sleep for a week because he was afraid. But you look up to them, right?"
Jack nodded eagerly.
"See? It's okay to be afraid. You just gotta keep kicking, and when you're safe, you gotta tell yourself you're safe. I know Sam was working on this with you earlier, now come on, let me hear you say. 'I'm safe.'"
"I'm safe," Jack repeated, not really feeling it.
"Good. Keep telling yourself that when you're home, when you're with us. But remember, it's okay to be afraid. You got this, kid. That hole's got nothin' on you."
Castiel and Sam also came to check on him before they headed off to bed, and they each had lengthy discussions with him that were similar to Dean's.
It didn't stop Jack from waking in a cold sweat, shivering, and screaming.
Sam was holding him then, and Sam took him to his room, letting him sleep with him there. Jack liked it. Sam's bed was bigger, and his room looked more lived in, though Jack's was starting to compile books and DVDs. He also had Krunch Cookie Crunch and the decoder ring stashed under the bed, but only Cas knew about that. He eventually fell asleep with Sam's strong arm over him.
Jack took what his dads said to heart, and he looked upon them, seeing how brave they were now, still getting up every day. Jack didn't always feel it, but he knew that made him brave as well.
He'd survived the hole.
The hungry, evil earth.
Jack was going to be okay.