INSIDE THE BUNKER

Part 1.

They'd come and gone a million times through that door. Left in anger, or heartbreak...had come back cooled down and more often then not drunk off their asses, back to each other and their only comfort found in their brother. They'd stumbled through it bleeding and exhausted, had left with ambition and exhilaration headed for a hunt.

They had opened it to friends, greeted their loved ones in the doorway with hugs and smiles, had watched Cas open it slowly and traipse down those stairs a thousand times. And slowly but surely it had become their door...the door they opened and shut...the door to their home.

It was thick iron, the lock unlike any other. Sigils and spells were cast on it to protect the bunker and its occupants and soon it became that sound of clanging iron when they shut it that allowed the Winchester brother's to finally, completely relax...to allow themselves the luxury of feeling safe.

To allow themselves the luxury of knowing, he's safe.

Sammy's safe.

Dean's safe.

It was a pain to open with your arms full of groceries and beer; but it was safe. When your bloody and aching and can't see straight from a concussion the screech resounded like church bells in your ears, and it felt like it weighed a ton; but it was safe. It slammed shut and the whole world could have beat on it and demanded their attention but once inside, Sam and Dean were safe.

And best of all...it never kept them in. It was their door. It couldn't lock them in, it couldn't lock them out...they were in control. Anytime they needed air, anytime they needed to see the sky, feel the breeze, hear the birds singing...it opened for them, because it was theirs. Their door, their home. And that mundane privilege, that little thing we all take for granted was something the boys needed like air to breathe. They needed their freedom, they needed to know they could leave it they wanted... it was what hell, purgatory and two and half months of not seeing each other's face would do to a man.

( "Hey! Ketch, you son of a bitch, let us out!" Dean yells, his fist banging on the door, the toe of his boot sounding like it was denting the thick iron. "...Mom, dammit," his voice chokes out and he swallows, "Mom come back! Come on, it's us, it's Dean and Sam!" His breaths puff loudly in and out, his chest heaving.

Sam skips two or three stairs each time as he runs up to Dean, wraps his arms around his shoulders pulling him back from the door even as Dean struggles to bang against the door with all his strength. "It's us, mom..." he pleads one last time, desperately frustrated as he fights Sam, but the plea in his voice is bitter sweet and evident.

Sam pushes Dean against the wall making him look into his eyes. He swallows around the lump in his throat with the heartbroken panic in Dean's green eyes...that same panic that Sam too is feeling at being shut in.

"Dean, you're gonna hurt yourself..." He says softly, and his older brother simply goes limp against him and Sam lets him slide down the wall to hit the floor with a 'humph'. Sam goes to his knees in front of him, a hand on his knee, searching into Dean's eyes watching that confused blurriness bleeding into the glossiness of them with Dean zoning out.

"De, hey," he says firmly, shaking his knee, forgetting about Toni for the time being, his hand reaching up to cup the side of his neck and pull him to face him. His thumb pats softly at his cheek, smooths against the roughness of his five o'clock shadow. "Stay with me, okay? C'mon, we got this."

Dean looks at him eyes wide but clear, hand fisting in the front of Sam's coat, "What the hell'd they do to mom, Sammy?" He asks, sounding young and broken and scared. "What the hell?"

Sam's never felt so guilty for not having answers he knows he has no way of having.)

They never had a table before, like really just theirs. It was there every day, the same table. Ugly and plastic with that stupid map on it...but it was there and they loved it because if they put something there it was always right there when they came back for it. They'd leave notes for each other, and things they had 'borrowed' from the other brother and needed returning with out a fight.

They ate there, drank there, played there. Glared at each other over it, had slept bent over it before. It wasn't like the library table, nearly sacred with their initials carved into it, they'd each sat on the map table while the other stitched them up, usually Sam standing over a still hunting-endorphins-high Dean, who'd gotten reckless and was bleeding from somewhere somehow.

It was a constant in their life, a place where they gathered for security and encouragement, to put their minds together or to simply joke around and giggle. It was a stability, a little piece of normality they'd never had before...a table of their own in their own home.

God, they'd eaten a meal there with their mother. Their mother! They never dreamed of having that opportunity, that miracle, that gift...but right there at that table they'd eaten and talked and laugh and smiled with their mom, the mom they'd lost all those years ago, the mother who had set them on this path they wouldn't reverse for anything.

It was plastic and ugly and they didn't understand it or how it worked but Sam and Dean loved that table even if they didn't realize it. They wouldn't have been rid of it for anything.

(Dean is eerily silent pulling himself up from the floor, walking down the stairs, brushing past Toni Bevel. Though the way his shoulders tense and angle away at her near proximity made Sam wonder what the next few moments would hold, he hurries down the stairs, cautiously staying clear of Toni too, hand reaching out towards his brother who is stalking around the map table.

"Dean..." he starts, warning in his tone because, if he can't even predict his older brother then they were in for a wild, violent ride, and Toni's life could more than likely be forfeit. Dean completely ignores him, bends reaching under the table with one smooth movement ripping the microphone from underneath it.

He straightens gripping the small piece nearly too tight, his eyes unerringly find Sam's and they don't look away as Dean begins to talk, the anger and thirst for vengeance surging between their connection, the fire alight in their eyes.

"Whichever of you dickbags is listening," Dean growls low, "This message is for Ketch. You tell him I'm coming. I'm coming for him." He pauses and Sam nods, reassuring him 'I got your back the whole way'. "And you tell him me and my brother...we are coming for our mom."

Sam gives him a firm nod, a sad, hopeful smile on his lips, his eyes burning with sudden tears of pride and fear...in his heart he knows Dean will keep his word will make sure they both do...that doesn't keep him from being apprehensive about the road ahead.

"And one other thing, tell Ketch if he wants the blonde torturing bitch dead he's gonna have to do the deed himself, we're not doing his dirty work for him." Dean drops the microphone carelessly to the floor with a serene expression on his face. The whole bunker resounds with the sound of his booted heel coming down on top of it, Sam takes great satisfaction listening to it crunch and crack into a thousand little pieces. Dean grinds his heel into the floor just for good measure.

Even so Dean's eyes light up as they land on Toni and Sam's seen that dangerous glint before, that look that had frozen fear in the stomachs of angels and demons alike. Toni stumbles back as Dean surges towards her pure malice on his face, in his eyes. Sam jumps to intervene not sure if he'll be in time...

"Dean no...!" He yells.

...tbc

Thought this would be a perfect opportunity to explore the bunker and what it exactly means to the boys. REVIEW!?;);):)

Btw I may be dead after the finale so basically...I'm sorry if there are no more stories.