A/N: This grew out of a scene I've been kicking around for some time. Set sometime post season 1. No spoilers for season 2, though. Please review!

Rated T+ for a lot of language and a little Sam h/c.

One might say Dean Winchester had a love-hate relationship with the female sex. The love part was pretty simple: he loved them as often (and as in as many positions) as he could. But he also knew they were his weak point. He didn't like killing women, for example; even female ghosts made him hesitate. Always had.

That got him in a lot of trouble, first from his dad, and then from himself, because while there weren't many evil female supernatural beings, they sure liked Sammy. From the shtriga on up, Sam had a lot more luck with dead girls than with living ones.

Yeah, Dean thought, trudging along one dirt-packed tunnel of the witch's underground burrow, If Sam was into necrophilia, he would've had no problem finding chicks.

Sam was gone so Dean helpfully supplied his protest, high and shrill (even though Sam's voice hadn't been that high these past twelve years or so, possibly ever). "Gawd, Dean, you're so immature!"

Dean rolled his eyes and answered himself: "Then why is it always you, Sam?" He ticked women off on his fingers: "The shtriga, Constance, Bloody Mary, Meg, and now this witch … Let's not kid ourselves: Dead + female + evil equals: Sam love."

No one answered him, because he was of course alone, trudging along a damp dark tunnel that led probably to a trap, all in search of his missing brother.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"SAM!" Dean thundered, for maybe the fiftieth time, and his yell bounced back at him from the tunnel walls. He even stopped trudging to listen, but he was disappointed, as he had been the last forty-nine times; his brother was not going to answer him.

It was two days since the witch had taken Sam in exchange for a hostage she had taken, a little girl maybe eleven years old. It had been a shitty-ass job even before that – mass kidnappings, mass memory wipes, all wrapped up in an isolated New Hampshire town with uncooperative police officers – and well, when they finally cornered the responsible witch in the midst of another midnight kidnapping, Dean was apprehensive but willing to switch hostages when the witch offered.

Sam was more than willing. He, apparently, didn't see anything fishy about the way the witch's face had glowed when her sightless eyes landed on him. He was also completely confident about the plan, which had Dean blasting her with salt from a hidden gun when she began chanting the rituals to transport herself and Sam away.

What neither of them had anticipated was the first ritual she used, which was a blindness spell – on Dean.

That canceled any ideas he had about shooting anyone. And the sound of Sam yelling his name over the witch's chanting while Dean stood there, useless, still had him starting awake at night. But when the blindness spell wore off, half an hour later, he'd started on the witch's trail again.

This was where it had led him.

"SAM!" Dean called again, just for good measure, and stopped short when the sound didn't bounce the same way the others had. He stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what was different about it.

"SAM?"

He inched forward, keeping one hand on the wall to guide him in the darkness, the other palm on the butt of the shotgun. And then he saw it, maybe thirty feet ahead: a circle of faint light radiating out from the tunnel floor.

Dean hurried forward. Could it be--?

He came to the edge and found himself staring down into a pit. Ten, maybe fifteen-foot walls of hard-packed dirt, and a circular floor maybe ten feet across at the bottom. And the flickering candlelight illuminated what looked a lot like a human figure in the center of the floor.

"Sam?"

No answer. The figure didn't move.

"The hard way it is," Dean muttered, and unzipped his backpack to find the rope.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

It took him ten minutes to get down the walls. Ten minutes in which the figure in the center didn't move, not at all, and Dean was getting freaked out, because he was pretty damn sure it was Sam.

He dropped the last four feet with a thump and landed on his feet.

Sam was kneeling in the center of a circle drawn in what looked like blood. Ho, shit, thought Dean. That was never a good start to anything. Smaller numbers and symbols lined the inside ring of the circle; it was clearly meant to keep something in. Meant to keep Sam in, and consequently, not to keep Dean out. Thank God.

And double shit. Sam was blindfolded. His hands disappeared, probably tied, behind his back. Blood spilled down from his nose and the corner of his mouth, which was slightly open.

"Fuckin A," Dean said, and got down on his knees in front of Sam.

Dean was prepared for almost anything. Anything, he thought, when he ripped the blindfold from Sam's face, and man, that ugly mug had never looked so good to him in his life, even though it was battered and bruised and what looked like tear tracks down his nose.

Sam blinked slowly at the light, focused his eyes on Dean.

And his face fell.

Yeah, Dean was prepared for anything. Except that.

"Sam – it's me, Dean!" He waved his hand in front of Sam's face. "Dude. Bro. You look like shit."

To Dean's astonishment, Sam wasn't even listening. He was looking past Dean all around the room, taking in the walls and shelves of unlabeled bottles. "Full circle, huh," he muttered, clearly more to himself than Dean.

"You're freakin me out, Sam. You aren't makin sense. Come on. Let's get out of here."

Sam shook his head slowly, sending fat drops of blood spattering to the floor. "You can do whatever you want, buddy," he said. "It doesn't mean anything to me." His voice rasped in his throat, making it sound even more foreign.

"What?"

Sam didn't say anything. His eyes were back in the distance again.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean snapped.

And Sam laughed. He laughed, a short barking sound that Dean hadn't heard since Sam was in middle school and caught in the throes of adolescent cynicism.

"Ho boy. Okay, Sammy boy. I get it. Slight psychosis from captivity. Well, I can deal with that. After we get you out of here." He looked behind Sam to see how his brother's hands were bound. The answer was: nastily. His wrists were tied with what looked like thorny vines, which had cut into his skin and trailed thin lines of blood down his hands. Dean hissed in sympathy and reached for his knife.

Sam didn't move as Dean sliced through the thorns. But Dean felt him exhale a shaky breath as his newly freed arms slid forward to rest, trembling slightly, on the ground.

"Feel better?" Dean asked, and got to his feet. "Let's go."

Sam ignored him.

This was a bit much. "Get up, Sam, unless you want to stay here till the witch comes back? Because the barrier I put up won't last forever." As if to prove his point, the walls shook slightly, sending a small shower of dust from the ceiling down upon them both. "We gotta move."

When Sam didn't move, Dean lost his patience and reached down to yank him to his feet – he was going to get his brother out of here, and deal with the consequences later. A mental age reversal maybe? but he sure hoped it wasn't that, because those kinds of spells were a bitch to reverse, and one year of thirteen-year-old Sam had been more than enough, thank you very much –

"Fuck!" Sam gasped, and that was not something thirteen-year-old Sam said.

Dean let his hand go instantly. Sam cradled his arm to his chest, panting softly.

"What was that? What's wrong with your arm?" Dean knelt beside him, and although Sam let him look at his arm, he felt and saw Sam tensing all over.

His attention was drawn to Sam's wrist first; it was swollen, bruised, and clearly broken. "Aw, geez, Sam, I'm sorry," he said. "You shoulda said something."

Sam's lips were pressed together in a thin line. "I thought you would have remembered from last time."

"Last time what? Since when have you broken a wrist?" Dean sat back on his haunches. "Let's see. You broke your leg when you were twelve. Sprained an ankle, that same one I think, when you were fifteen, a couple of concussions – nope, no wrists."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" Dean was fed up. "Jesus, Sam!"

Sam speared him with a look so full of hatred that Dean reeled back. "The last time you freed me," he said. "The last time you got me out of here. Course, that Dean noticed right away. Gotta switch it up, don't you?"

Alarm bells clanged in Dean's head.

"Sam," he said cautiously, "Do you think I'm a shapeshifter? I'm not. This here? This is all Dean."

Sam barely bothered to roll his eyes. "Whatever. I don't know why you bother anymore."

Dean sat and watched him wind the gauze awkwardly around his wrist. "What do I have to do to convince you that I'm not a shapeshifter?" he burst out finally.

Sam turned a gaze on him that sent shivers skittering down his spine. He looked at Dean like Dean was the lowest of the low, the slimiest cockroach they'd ever found in a trailerpark during their sojourn in Alabama when Dean was twelve.

"You can't," Sam spat. "The next time you die, I don't even plan to be there."

"How many times have I died, Sam?"

That made his brother stop to think.

"This'll make eighteen, I guess," Sam said. "Drowning, hanging, stabbed, shot – you've covered all the major bases by now. So tell me – how do I match up with the others you've taken? Just morbidly curious, I guess. Did it take me more or less time to figure out what was going on?"

It all snapped into place.

"The witch," Dean whispered. "You think I'm the witch."

"I don't think it, witch," Sam said. "I know it."

tbc