Night was inevitable. That's all there was to justify her presence outside this late, especially when she knew what she did. She was fairly certain that anyone else wouldn't have hesitated to return home but there was something entertaining in knowing but not acting on the knowledge of it. The idea of what was waiting and the fact it had to wait, had no other choice but to wait for her had begun creating anticipation in her gut a few hours earlier. It had started to rain, the weather growing to a crescendo when she reached a door and delicately placed a key in the lock, twisting it with rehearsed precision. One ear pressed lightly against the door frame, she waited for the familiar click to sound from within and stood back, letting the door swing open on loose hinges. Once inside she moved her index finger to a light switch in the dark and flicked it, listening for any tell-tale thumps. She locked the door behind her, straightened a photograph on the wall, stepped on the heel of her shoe to ease out her foot and repeated before advancing into the apartment with anxiety swelling in her chest. Her heart beat a little faster and her smile reached a little further.
The first thing she made sure to do was wash her hands. After rubbing them dry until they were red and raw she set about preparing food. By preparation I mean microwaving, of course, the bowl of soup spinning almost mesmerizingly in the small oven. She watched the timer tick down, humming distractedly, eyes wondering to the staircase. It wasn't a large apartment, a single modest floor that lead straight out onto a narrow pavement outside, a small staircase in the kitchen which lead down to a room she'd struggled to find a use for and her bedroom. She didn't class the two bedroom floor as a story as the stairs were shallow and few, the rooms themselves had been cold stone walls which jutted out of the communal garden outside and originally been unusable. However, she had changed that significantly when she'd decided that she wasn't paying for two useless rooms. So she renovated them, and now they both had their uses. Without a doubt. The microwave protested as it's cycle concluded, beeping nearly rhythmically, she thought. She skipped her own dinner, instead pacing directly towards the aforementioned staircase. From half way down the steps she could hear a quiet, staccato grinding.
"I'm home, and I bare goods." She said into the darkened room, glancing at the soup rippling in the bowl. She reached the final step, her foot descending confidently to the ground before slowing nearly to a halt midway and proceeding only a toe at a time to the wooden floor. "Jesus Christ, what'd you do?" The soup rolled dangerously close to the rim of the bowl as she lurched toward him, splatter patterns left around the ceramic as it stilled, placed haphazardly on the floor beside a spoon. One hand flew out to the left, fingers wrapping around a cord dangling from the ceiling, the other moving swiftly to towards the ground and grabbing his shoulder, pressing it flat against the panels. He squirmed beneath her grasp and she sunk to her knees as light fractured the scene and pulled him against her chest, taking in the damage.
"Sam Winchester, care to explain what all this is?" Inevitably there was no response other than muffled grunts. He'd kicked in a section of the wall, the only wall that hadn't been constructed from stone, leaving a coating of drywall on the floor and a smashed frame in the corner. The results of his struggles were visible, various scratches that had never been there lined the skirting board and the man himself lay heaving on the floor, shaking with fatigue or fury, in her arms. "What did you hope to achieve, hm?" She stilled his frantic thrashing with an arm around his throat, pushing two fingers between his wrists and the rope. "Seems you were hoping for something more than just loosened knots, but I'm afraid that's all you've achieved." She felt his throat jerk beneath her hold, felt him swallow, heard him attempt to object. "One second." She said.
She pushed him away from her chest, fumbling with the knot at the back of his head.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realise it was this tight. That probably hurts, doesn't it?" Sam kicked his legs uselessly into the air in front of them. "Alright, alright. I said hold on."
And with that it came undone, and he felt the pressure release with huge relief.
"Motherfu-" He began, cloth still between his teeth, but she yanked both lose ends taught against his head before he finished.
"We'll have none of that, if you please." She said gently. Sam cried with pain. "I said, we'll have none of that." She repeated, pulling it even tighter. He nodded as well as he could against the gag. "That's more like it." The rest of the cloth had been wrapped around his head twice and came undone stiffly, peeling away from his sweat-slick skin.
"Go on, cough." She thumped the side of his head before he'd had a chance to cough, making him wince in her grasp.
"Where's Dean?" He said, voice hoarse.