Part Two

It's been a while since Sam has had to deal with such an overwhelming hunger. There had been… unpleasant times, times Sam doesn't like to look back on for very long, but they bubble up over the surface, tease the matter of his brain every time his stomach gurgles. He isn't able to hear it anyway. He can barely hear himself think, when the monsters are all riled up and thrashing around in their cages. He sits there alone for about three or four days (he thinks), tired grey-green eyes flicking through the sea of bars. Vampires with seared flesh healing slow. Wraith whittled down to bones, curled up in a defeated and bloody heap. To Sam's horror, the sound of a small child, easily five, maybe six, as they cry for their mother; he's not sure what sort of monster it is, but he feels bile in the back of his throat to think it a monster at all.

"Kid? Can you hear me?" he calls out, and he thinks he hears them scream back.

He's not sure of much here.

That young voice is gone from the crowd on his fifth day in. That same day, he's given a tray with grilled meat on it, and his haggard mind can only wonder what the meal is made of. It could be beef. It could be. But it isn't. But if he ignores his meals, he'll be weak. He'll be dead — and then what about Dean? Dean, who's trapped with the Mark, who had left him behind to face Metatron. If he didn't eat, he'd either die eventually from malnutrition and starvation, or he'd die in a fight he has no doubt will be coming any day now.

So — he eats. The apologies stream out of him like spit, like a rancid stain inside himself that threatens to cripple what little purity he had left that the Trials had provided him. He hopes it's animal, over and over again. He hopes, and he wishes Dean would find him. If Dean's even alive. For all he knows… He doesn't want to think about it; he doesn't want to think about anything but drinking, eating, and biding his time, studying the violent, desperate fighters around him.

Often, he knows exactly when one of the monsters wins or loses based on whether the overhead lights snap back on — then their captors would push a squeaking, old cage back into its original position. The shapeshifter girl who had been dumped beside him all this time had returned, her body now that of a man, curled up and bleeding from numerous cuts. He sometimes attempts to speak to her — well, perhaps it's a 'him', but it's impossible to tell what she wanted to be without her saying as much — but she doesn't so much as glance his way, curled in on herself as she sheds her skin and shivers from shock. The vampire that mocked him is always returning every round himself, covered in blood that isn't his and chuckling like a madman; Sam's not sure if he's one of those truly bloodthirsty vamps, or if he just lost his mind somewhere in the middle of all this. Calls himself Vicks, though. Like the rub. The longer Sam has to sit next to him, the more he's starting to think the guy really smells like that sharp, medicinal smell.

Food comes in once a day after a while, with a bottle of water. Thankfully, it's not always meat; he crams stale bread in his mouth and watches his black-eyed captors with enough venom in his glare to kill, as though his gaze alone could be a hunter prowling the woods at night, ready to find them, to strip them down to their bones. The demons just laugh him off, shake off his piercing glower like it's the rain off a windbreaker. They see him as they do all the others, here in this place. He wears the same stained gray sweats, eats the same food, drinks the lukewarm water. Sam realizes that very early on, and is a little scared at how easily he accepts it, that he's toeing the edge of being a monster himself.

It wouldn't be the first time.

He wishes Cas could hear his prayers. He's pretty sure those sigils on the walls are the cause of his disappointment.

It's not for a few weeks until he's actually thrown into the ring himself. His cage is hoisted up and wheeled out like a fucking delivery at a store, placed down in the middle of a wide, rounded area that is packed with dirt. Sam brings himself to sit upright entirely in his claustrophobic prison, moving from side to side within it and trying to get a better look at the world around him — all he sees are murky shadows in the audience, the ring itself blinding; white teeth are barely visible as they laugh and shout, taunting him, their gaping mouths like nightmarish torturers, metaphorical daggers raised to cut flesh. Words, screamed to cut through bone. He thinks about the shivering shapeshifter, how her eyes looked pleadingly at the floor as through she wanted it to swallow her up.

Sam's door clicks open, and feels like it echoes through his bones as he stumbles out into the noise and lights, covering his eyes with the shade of his palm. The relief of freedom is bittersweet and short-lived. His bones are reverberating from the noise and clopping of feet against the outer bleachers. Across from him in the blood-smeared arena, a vampire with golden locks pushes open her own door as she's done time and time again, her face bruised and stoic and both readable and unreadable all at once: her emotions are in check, but it's enough to know she's experienced, used to the thrum of energy that is the bloodbath. He doesn't remember seeing her, but he does remember hearing about someone much like her sinking her fangs into a werewolf. That's how they know each other, in the warehouse: they close their eyes, they listen, they learn. Sam's a very studious boy.

The vampire woman sniffs the air as if jonesing for the scent of human blood, hunkers down, and is ready — is hungry. He sees it in her eyes, a blue-gray color of sudden blood lust that looks through his skin, to the core of his beating heart. She's not a taunter, doesn't try to egg him on; she simply survives from ring to ring, licking her wounds in private before the next big act of utter violence. Before the next big meal.

Sam only notices the array of weapons littered on the floor when his bare toes bump the dusty syringe on the floor. Dead man's blood. Tools he's alloted for the struggle close at hand. He lunges for the needle and the rusty machete as the vampire snaps her teeth his direction, and before he knows it, he's rolling on the floor, the air rushing out of his lungs as she sits on top of him. She's strong, so strong, and her teeth graze against his neck over and over as he shoves her back with everything he has — the syringe caves in beneath his shoulder, glass sinking into the flesh there. His muscles bulge in his arms. His teeth grate together. But the machete is in his hand. He swings it wildly before she can get to the vein in his pulsing throat, her right arm falling to the floor despite the dullness of a blade. Blood sprays across Sam's forehead, relief in his eyes that it hadn't hit his mouth.

She howls, falling backward, and Sam swings his machete again. It lodges into her throat but doesn't cut like butter.

No, Sam has to straddle her and hack away at it until her decapitated head rolls and collects dirt. Her mouth works once, twice. Her eyes roll to look at him once more time before stilling. Dirt cakes the wetness of her wounds like the crumbling crust of a cherry pie, white bone jutting. Vomit threatens to climb up his sandpaper-rough throat, and he swallows it down like he does everything else, his humanity included.

Sam has earned his first point. And ultimately, he's earned his life for the day.

Sam fights for many weeks like this. Vampires, werewolves, black dogs, wraiths — a never-ending variety, a wave of things he's always hunted. He walks away often with a limp, or a cut, or a mild concussion. A bruise here. A burn there. Swollen eyelids and lips. His pinky finger on his right hand has only just started feeling better after being broken, snapped like a twig. And yet despite his injuries, he's gotten better. Stronger. Faster. He eats his food greedily, somehow savoring the taste — somehow finding it familiar. All he knows is he licks his plate clean and wants more, even as his stomach clenches and rolls over on itself. It's better to just pretend you're eating steak and greens. Lukewarm water is desert. Somehow he always finishes his plate wondering where the hell it'd all went so quickly.

Every time he's wheeled back into the warehouse after a fight, he passes Vicks, the thrashing hell hound, and the shifter that is always curled up. Today, the shifter is a young boy, bony and vulnerable. Sam is sagging tiredly against the thick bars of his cage and resting an oozing head wound when he finally gives in and speaks up toward the boy — partly out of sympathy, because the creature never seems to uncurl until it's their turn to fight. Also, partly because Sam is lonely, isolated in his own mind, and he fears if he keeps this up for long he'll go insane.

"Hey," Sam says, rubbing a hand over his unevenly chopped hair. How long has he been here again? It's soft and messy on his scalp. He's always allowed a blade to keep things short. Keep it fair. No hair-pulling in fight club. He winces as he shifts to lean the other way, his legs and back aching. This cage is so fucking small. "Shifter — uh. You. You… over there. Are you okay? You… wanna talk?"

The boy looks over slowly, paranoia in his liquid-blue eyes.

"No. No, I wanna go home," he whispers. Sam's honestly surprised he replied at all.

He smiles, the motion wistful. "Yeah… Yeah, me, too. I've got a brother out there… don't know if he's okay."

"Yeah, I know your kind," the boy replies, without malice. "Winchesters. You kill us for a living."

And… yeah. Yeah, it's true. Sam couldn't exactly deny the obvious. He was a hunter, and even locked up here, getting the life sucked out of him with every battle, he knows it's not so far different from what he faces out there for a living. Sam figures this is the boy's way of cutting off anymore conversation, so he lets him be, but it seems to not be the case at all; the boy lifts his head a little from his knees, looking curiously at Sam. His gray sweats aren't big enough for someone his supposed age, and they hang pathetically off his hips.

"You're the nice one," the boy says. "Your brother is the one who'd be better off here."

"He's not — he's not as bad as you'd think," Sam's quick to defend. The bruise that Dean'd given him on the jaw has long-since healed.

The boy just sighs like there's no convincing Sam of anything, turning his face away. That's actually the start of many conversations. He learns the boy prefers to be a girl — she's always been a daughter, always been the little girl in the family. Her mother had been adamant about hiding her from everyone else, from hunters and monsters alike. Of course… well. Then she'd been taken by this place. Snatched up on a walk back to her high school, back in Nevada. Her name is Glenda. Like in the Wizard of Oz. He mentions it, and she looks at him like he's an uncool dad.

"She's the good witch, anyway," he finishes, slumped over with a hand on a cluster of claw marks on his forearm. The bleeding had stopped, but he's lethargic for now, the fighting spirit drained like a nasty boil. Instead, he finds some semblance of calmness, half-lidded stare focused on Glenda's tanned face. She's a older black woman today, and it makes him wonder. "Why change yourself so much, anyway…? I mean… you had a face you used every day, didn't you…? Back home, with your mom and grandma?"

Glenda fidgets, looking guilt-ridden. Her forlorn stare burrows into the earth once more, as it usually did.

She shrugs, an aborted, tired gesture. Her left eyelid is swollen, bruises all over her neck. Sam's gotten used to the pools of skin around her cage; honestly, at this point… however long it's even been… there have been far more unpleasant sights. His stare flicks from the traces of an old identity around her, realizing she's pulled her knees up close to her chin again. "Glenda?"

"I just," she whimpers, mouth working. "Being the good witch. I just want to be the g-good witch. But I learned how to fight… learned how to kill people really good here… If I just look like someone else until mom finds me, I can… pretend this wasn't me."

Sam's heart clenches. He pushes himself roughly against the side of his cage, reaching out with a long arm towards her.

"Hey," he says, nearly drowned out by noise. Always noise. "It'll be okay, Glenda. My brother'll find me. When he does, I'll make sure you get home to your mom, too. Okay? You don't deserve to be here."

She slips her hand through the cage, curling her fingers around his warm fingers.

"There's no place like home," she breathes, a mimicry of his own words. "No place like home."

Sam crumples into a heap back into his cage. Blood is running down into his eyes, the ragged tear in his hip bleeding freely as he struggles to sit upright into the confines of his cage, his home. Red slicks the iron bars. He coughs, and pain tears through him with every shudder of his body. Done in by a ghoul, he thinks. There's no way he'll be able to fight the next one at a healthy enough percent. His leg barely supports him thanks to the thick metal pipe lodged there through the muscle of his thigh, and though he's considered pulling it free, he knows he doesn't have the willpower to do it right now. He'd faint for sure, and if it had impaled the artery there…

Sweating and shaking, he collapses and curls inward. He vomits his daily meal.

"Sam? Sam," Glenda says urgently, trying to stand tall enough to see his face; her head hits the roof. "Sam! Sam, don't die! Sam! You have to… you got to do something! You still got another round left. They're gonna take you again, and you'll be…"

"M'not… gonna die," he rasps. "Not me. Not gonna die yet."

He's not allowed to anyway, never was. Dean says so. He wants to tell Glenda as much, but his mouth doesn't want to work because he's pretty sure he's two steps away from blissful unconsciousness. Peeling open his eyes, he slides in his own blood, cheek red when he turns himself with all he has to look at the tall man in Glenda's cage. Those eyes are definitely hers, though. "It's okay. It's gonna be okay. Dean'll come."

He'd said it. He said it was him and Sam, fighting the good fight, together.

… Then why was he here in this place? For so long? Why weren't they fighting together?

He closes his eyes, unable to open them again. Glenda's desperate voice fades out into the vast expanse of darkness that blankets the mind. Everything is light, calm, quiet. There's a squelching sound of flesh, the plop of it slapping the floor. Something reaches out and touches the heel of his foot as it juts a bit from his tiny prison. He hopes it's not the demons, the wranglers. They won't care how damaged of goods he is. They'll send him out flat on his face in that ring. They'd enjoy watching him get torn apart, carrion in the den of mangy, bony lions.

Sam's voice says, "It's okay, Sam. It'll be okay."

He doesn't feel his mouth move, though.

He doesn't feel much of anything for a long while.

When he finally does peel his eyes open, he finds Glenda's cage gone. Carted away for yet another big fight in the ring. He slides himself to sit on his elbows, wincing at the swollen, stiff feeling in his trembling thigh. The claw marks aren't bleeding now, clumped and sealed with ugly scabs. Pushing away his abandoned tray of food, he waits for Glenda. Waits and waits and waits as he does every time she goes away, expecting at times for her to be dragged by like so many corpses are. The excited, muffled voice of the announcer finally dies down in the distance. He can make out the words, just barely: "Aaaand it looks like that's the end of the road for Sam Winchester! And he had such a good run, huh, fellas? At least that hell hound got itself a good rag to throw around!"

Laughter, boisterous, rowdy.

He's so tired, but the confusion gives way to focused thought.

It's okay, Sam.

"Glenda, what have you done," he whispers, voice cracking. He drags himself to sit up, bruised and battered and shaking with fever. His listless, glazed eyes gain a sudden impossible clarity. No. No, no no — "Glenda… What have you…"

The torn apart corpse of Sam Winchester is dragged by minutes later, barely a coherent image of the human body, twisted and mutilated and left frozen in fear.

The demon dragging the corpse by the ankle stops, looking at Sam in the cage, mouth twitching and eyebrows furrowed. "What the fuck…" he starts, then grins. "Well, I'll be fucking damned all over again. Shoulda' checked the cage number I guess." Sam doesn't look at him, red-rimmed eyes focused on the mimicry of his own face, at the coagulated blood in her hair and the guts barely boweled up in her stomach, at her long limbs, one twisted around and around and held there only by would have been him. He would have died in the ring. He should've died. The demon chuckles like he's reading Sam's mind, then carries on with his job, dragging the body with Sam's face away as if it were a heavy trash bag.

And Sam — spared for another fight, gory, eyes full and hot with tears — curls up against his cage and buries his face in his knees.

Please.

The next fight, he kills his first human hunter.

Dean pops the lid on a fifth cold beer.

His arms are smooth. Not a mark on them. The bunker is quiet.

"I wish I could tell you where he is," Castiel says softly, sitting across from him. In Sam's seat. Castiel's eyes are gentle and full of concern, and sometimes Dean can hardly stand it. Sometimes it reminds him too much of Sam. Sam, who is gone without a trace. "… He's not in Heaven."

Dean bows his head. How many years has it been now…?

"Maybe he's — in Hell."

He smashes the emptied can in his hand.

This was his fault.

Sorry little brother, he remembers saying… It's not your fight.

Sam limps out into the blinding lights.