A/N: Well I'm happy to tell everyone that I finally (FINALLY) received the results of the biopsy on the tumor that was removed from my oldest son's chest (it was under his right nipple) and the results were that the tumor was just a benign (Means NOT CANCEROUS (Thank GOD!)) 'fatty cyst' (Which means it was just some fat that developed in my son's breast tissue (Which turns out is VERY common in boys his age, especially boys as tall (When I say tall I'm sayin that by this time next year I'll be looking UP at him and I'm 5' 9') and skinny (Like super skinny) as my son. It was brought on by a sudden growth spurt I guess.).)... Now I can breath a little easier...
I'm glad that this tumor NIGHTMARE has ended with good results (Because it could have been bad and trust me, I do not take that fact foregranted!).).)
Now that I've gotten all the major stress out of my system (For the time being anyway.) I will hopefully be able to unwind a little (Cause boy have I been tense!.. And moody.. And well.. Y'all shurely know how a person can get when they're SERIOUSLY worried over something.. Right?).. And hopefully I'll be able to start getting out more frequent updates..
A/N: So.. Now that I can focus on writing again.. The content that's going to be in this chapter and the next may be considered graphic for some people but it's also going to be SERIOUSLY important to the overall plot so please try and stick through it. I promise to try and not be too graphic with descriptions, but I do want to do justice to the REAL mental, physical, emotional and spiritual PAIN and stress that is felt when a person goes through the sorts of hell (both figuratively and literally) the characters in this story have gone through and will go through..
|Because it hurts.| |Chapter 4.|
Sam felt weak and nausous as his body became disorientingly light.
He knew he was being lifted and that someone was taking him against his will while he was at his most vulnerable and he called out for the only person he wanted by his side.
"Dean.. Please help me." He pleaded in a broken whisper as he felt himself pulled from his hospital bed and lifted into the air and he vaguely wondered how it was that no one was noticing the fact that he was being taken as oblivion claimed his mind once more...
~0~
He felt like he'd done everything he could to make sure that the children he'd found in a man made hell were gotten to safety.. But his concious was still plagued by all the horrors still to come for all of those poor children. He honestly wished he could spare them any more pain and he felt horribly guilty that there was nothing more he could do for them.
When his phone rang.. He was expecting it. He knew every single one of those children had numbers carved into their flesh, even the infant he'd found and he knew that the local authorities would call him because the details involving the children, matched too closely to the "case" that "Marshall Taylor" was working on.
What he wasn't expecting was for his phone to ring so soon. It had only been about an hour since the children were discovered by the proper authorities..
Dean fumbled to get his cell phone open while trying not to wreck as he drove through the downpour of rain that had just started.
"Dean.".. The voice on the other end of the line sounded almost distraught.
Dean hadn't been expecting this.. But now that he heard the voice his heart fell as he stammered out "Doc.. What?.."
"Sam's gone.".. The doctor sounded genuinely remorsefull.. Like he himself was grieving the loss.
Dean felt a clenching sensation in his chest and he tried to breath but found he couldn't.. He didn't realize that at some point auto-pilot had taken over and made him pull over to the side of the road and stop the car.
It hit him all at once, the blinding pain and grief and he had to hold back a sob as he realized his baby brother had died alone, that he hadn't been there to comfort Sam and the last words he'd said to the person most precious to him in all the world had been so.. HURTFUL.. The last words he'd spoken to HIS Sammy had caused his already broken, little brother pain.
Dean couldn't bear it. He had hurt his little brother and now he'd never get the chance to see his brother alive again.. He would never get the chance to make things right.
"When?" Was the only word Dean could choke out as his world came crashing down and he vaguely wondered if Sam had passed away the second he'd realized that he'd lost the signal on his cell phone while down in that horrible place.
It was a weird thing to think about but he couldn't get it out of his head that Sam had died ALONE and while Sam was alone and dying, no one had been able to reach him...
It seemed to be the story of Dean's life.. Sam had needed him and he hadn't been there.. He had been in a place where there had been NO DAMN SIGNAL ON HIS CELL PHONE!.. Dean almost threw the phone right then and there until the doctor's voice broke through his mental tirade.
"About an hour and fifteen minutes ago." The doctor replied..
Anything else the doctor might have been saying got muted as Dean was feeling the agony of how much it sucked to be right.. Sam had died while he was down in that basement, where no one could call him.. He could have been there.. Maybe even on time.. He could have been by his brother's side, if he had gotten the call that Sam was dying .. But he didn't get that call because there'd been no signal.. It had been Dean's worst fear made real..
He had been so afraid to leave Sam's side because he'd been afraid that Sam would die the second he was too far away to get back in time to be there for Sam. But he'd also been too afraid to stay because if he did then Sam would have died because, the reason he was even in the hospital in the first place, had still been attacking him somehow.
It seemed like no matter what Dean would have done he could not have saved Sam, but Dean sure as hell wasn't seeing that.
In his mind there was no such thing as a situation where Sam couldn't be saved. And he, was always supposed to be the one to save Sam...
"Dean, I don't know what to do here." The doctor's statement barely broke through Dean's self recrimations.. The doctor didn't know what to do?.. Sam was HIS family!.. What gave the doctor the right to assume that he got to do anything? He hardly knew Sam!
"I need to know how he got out of this hospital unnoticed." Now the doctor seemed suspicious but Dean's mind went reeling.
"Wait.." Dean said in a winded gasp "You're saying that he's not?.."
"Oh god, I'm sorry.. No he disappeared from his bed and since he was in a coma and would have been too weak to have left on his own even if he did wake up..."
"He had to have been taken." Dean said, tersely finishing the doctor's sentence.
"I thought maybe you would have known something about it."
Dean had to admit, the doctor had a point in thinking that because in revealing monsters, ghosts and demons and what he and Sam did to get rid of them he'd ended up opening up about why he and Sam had practically non-existant medical histories. And admitting that they usually lied about their last names and their occupations had come with admitting that more than half the time one of them wound up hospitilized, they'd end up signing out A.M.A. (or escpaing from the hospital unnoticed) before even finding out the full extent of their injuries or illnesses to avoid ending up either institutionalised or behind bars.
"No.. I had nothing to do with it." Dean wanted to lie and say that he'd never take Sam from the hospital while he was unconscious and in need of medical care.. But that ship had sailed, because he and Bobby had done just that.. And as far as Dean knew, the heart issues, the old head injuries and the M.S. could have all been detected then if they'd just let Sam make it to the M.R.I. or had made him go through one in a different hospital since Siox Fall General had been infested with Leviathan at the time.
Hell, even with as sick as Sam was, Dean knew that if the cops had started acting suspicious that he would have taken Sam from the hospital despite the coma.. Yeah he would have taken Sam somewhere where he could get him medical attention that would be off of any official radar. But the truth was he had no idea how to safely move a person who was in an actual coma or how to care for that person during the move.
And Dean knew that none of the other hunters he was with would have taken Sam without contacting him first.
"Are there security cameras in the halls?" Dean asked trying to stay calm despite all of the nightmare scenarios running through his mind.
"Yeah, but I haven't got a way to get the."..
"I'll take care of getting the footage from the feeds.. I just need you to make sure you're ready to take care of whatever Sam might need medically when I get him back."
"Yeah.. I'll call in a few favors to make sure I'm prepared for anything."
"Thanks.. I'll call you as soon as I have him to let you know we're on our way back." Dean replied numbly as he pulled back onto the road and headed towards the hospital while dialing Garth's number to tell the others that Sam had been taken.
The doctor bade goodbye and goodluck to Dean before hanging up, then he set to work calling in favors with the O.R. staff to make sure that an O.R. would stay open and prepped and that a surgical team stayed ready for just in case Sam needed them along with making sure he could get access to everything else Sam might need on short notice, from M.R.I.'s to medications, the doctor had promised to be ready for anything and he wasn't going to break that promise..
~0~
Dean had just gotten the security guard at the hospital to relequish his post so that "Marshall Taylor" could review the security feeds for over the last four hours alone, when his cell phone started to ring again.
"Marshall Taylor here." Dean answered in the best profesionalvoice that he could muster as he searched the security camera footage for a sign of who or what had taken Sam.
"Dean." Garth's voice came out sounding panicked. "Eight other victims have disapeared from their hospital rooms in over the last two hours."
"Were they all in comas like Sam?"
"That's the weird thing, all the others that were taken had been awake. In fact, one had just talked to their doctor and the doctor walked out of the room, barely got the door closed, then realised she'd forgotten something and went right back in to get it. Dean, she hadn't been out of the room for more than fifteen, twenty seconds tops and when she went back in, the victim was gone.. There was no way in or out of that room except through the door that the doctor hadn't even gotten the chance to take her hand from when she'd turned right back around to go back in the room."
"What about the window?" Dean asked as he pulled op footage from outside Sam's hospital for just in case.
"The victim's room is on the sixth floor and the only windows in his room is a solid pane of glass and it doesn't open.. It was left in one piece. It's like the victim vanished into thin air."
Dean got to the time where Sam disappeared on the footage from the cameras on both ends of the hall outside of Sam's room and on the footage from the hospital's entire parking lot and parking garage. There was no activity in the hall and Sam's room was on the ninth floor.
But the footage from the parking garage.. That was a whole nother story.
Dean could clearly see four men having trouble getting his unconscious baby brother into the back of a van.
Dean had no idea how the men could have gotten Sam from the room without being caught on any of the cameras inside the hospital or how they had moved Sam so quickly from the room to the garage only to have trouble with carrying him now, but he'd figure all of that out later. First he had to find Sam..
He called Garth and had him get Kevin to run the van's plates while he went back to the basement of the Rodagan to search the hidden underground chamber in full, he just knew that there was something about the place that would lead him to Sam.
~0~
Sam couldn't grasp his bearings as he felt his head lulling side. His neck couldn't support the weight of his head and he found it agonizing to feel the weight of his head causing the vertabrae in his neck to click painfully out of place.
His body felt on fire with all of the tingling and aching sensations and he was regretting not having taken his medications before the oncoming attack from his M.S. could get out of hand.
But wait.. That wasn't right, he remembered there being a hospital and a doctor talking about the M.S. and his heart and..
Oh crap.. Dean had been there. Dean knew he was sick, knew he was weak.
That line of thinking made Sam's eyes snap open.
He wanted to tell Dean he was sorry that he didn't look for him. That he had been so lost without him.
He wanted to beg Dean not to leave him now that the truth about how weak he was, was out.
But instead of finding himself in the bright, smelling of antiseptic, clean hospital room he last remembered himself being in, he finds himself in a dim, moldy smelling.. Dungeon.. Because Sam had no better word for the room he's woken up in as he scans around him and sees chains, shackles and blood.
That's when fear hits him square in the chest as he realises that he's been chained to a slanted concrete slab and he has no clothes on.
He feels his heart stuttering in it's struggle to keep beating and all he can think is how he's too weak to survive going through the pain that he knows to anticipate. But he knows Lucifer won't let him die.
It feels like he's been betrayed, now that he knows the last three and a half years were never real.
Lucifer could be a truly cruel bastard.
His heart clenched in his chest as he remembered Dean swearing to be "Stone number one." for him and he felt tears stream down his face as his heart shattered with the knowledge that Dean hadn't really been there, hadn't really said those things.
There was the sound of a metal door creaking open then banging against concrete. A shadow loomed in the doorway and Sam waited for baited breath to hear Lucifer's sickeningly sweet voice speaking unwanted filth to him.
Memory and nightmare began to bleed into his real, waking present making the pain that started to rain down on him even more torturous.
He recognised the impact of a flogger on his skin.
He knew it would have only been a matter of time before Lucifer tired of the mind games and started to make things physical again.
He couldn't see the face of the person Lucifer was trying to use to taunt him with this time. He only knew it wasn't Dean or his dad.
He heard a voice shouting indicernable things about breaking.
Didn't Lucifer know that he was already broken?
Didn't Lucifer hear the doctor talking about the damage to his heart?
Didn't Lucifer hear the things Dean had said while he pointed a gun at him? Didn't Lucifer understand that, that had hurt him, that it had broken him?
He didn't know where he was anymore or what to believe. Part of him was so sure that the last three and a half years had been real. That he wasn't in The Cage with Lucifer anymore, that he could still have a chance to make things right with Dean but he was afraid to hope. Hope was almost as frightening as the despair but he catches himself hoping anyway.
Memory, nightmare, reality all churned together like a whirpool as Sam swam through varying states of consciousness. But none of those states of consciousness allowed for him to stay in their current for long and he would find himself being swept away by a different tide and there was nothing in the stormy sea of confusion and terror for him to grab onto...
~0~
Sam doesn't know how much time has passed. All he knows is that his body has been beaten, tortured and violated again and he's so sure that there have been multiple assailants.
But Lucifer does LOVE to play mind games.
The pain doesn't feel like it should.
Something about this pain feels more REAL.
But Lucifer did say that he's done a lot with pain. Maybe he's learned how to make it feel more real now?
There's a moment, he's pretty sure that he was close to lucid for a whole fifteen seconds where he realised he didn't recognise the faces hurting him.
It's the first time that Lucifer has used someone he's never known. Maybe Lucifer thought that this would be more entertaining?
He hears taunts of how no one loves him, how he's never been more than a burden to anyone, how he's never deserved anything good.. How he's worthless.
Lucifer could be a truly cruel bastard...
Fear, anger, disgust, shame and humiliation war against the battered soul that tries desperately to cling to faith, trust, hope and love.
It's a true test of strength for him to keep holding on and the pain of everything happening to him disguises the fact that more cuts have formed on his left pectoral muscle...
There's agony and so much blood that red is all Sam can see before things fade to black once more...
~0~
Blurred shapes and muted colors are the only things he can see when his eyes open again.
He hates it when Lucifer takes away his ability to see.
There's muffled voices coming from all around him and.. Lucifer is laughing at him, singing "I told you, so. I told you, so. You never, left, The Cage."
It's all too much and he clenches his eyes firmly shut and plans to never open them again.
The feeling of being torn in half, long ways, from the bottom up as someone forces something large, blunt and unforgiving into his bowels, makes his eyes fly open from the intensity of the pain.
It's a good thing he hadn't planned to not give Lucifer the satisfaction of his screams or he'd be having to deal with his failure over that as well.
He can see the shadowy form of the rapist looming over him.
He can feel a fleshy, sweat slicked, male phalicy pulsing as it slides between the flesh of his buttocks to painfully, bottom out inside him and he tries to fight back.
He's pretty sure that when he thrusted his head forward that he connected to the center of a face.
It almost gives him a good feeling to know that he can make Lucifer scream to.
He thinks Dean would be proud..
He hears yelling. He's pretty sure it's directed at him. Something about a broken nose and bad behavior and he's also pretty sure that he doesn't give a damn.
Lucifer deserved it!
There's more pain. He's pretty sure that he's being flogged again. But it's to be expected.
Lucifer would never let his fighting back go unpunished.
There's the smell of burnt flesh and he's screaming because he knows he's been branded.
Hot metal scorches his skin again and he knows it won't stop. It never stops until Lucifer has branded every inch of him.
But Lucifer will take away the burns, the skin will be like new, then Lucifer will start it, all, over, again.
The pain leaves him shaking, whimpering, there's tears pouring down his face and he feels so.. Lost.. There's so much despair because he knows it will never stop.
Lucifer will never stop. Will never, leave, him, alone.
There's so much despair and it's eating away at the good things, it's trying to take away the light of hope.
He's lost count of how many times the number on both sides of his right thigh and bottom lip has increased due to the new rapes being recorded in the macabre log carved all over his body.
The despair he felt from everything crashing together was so frighteningly overwhelming.
But he held onto hope.
He didn't even know what he was hoping for anymore. But he was hoping anyway.
He let out a pained groan as more cuts formed on his left pectoral muscle. He didn't know what they represented yet or why they were taking so long to complete. He just wanted the pain to stop.
He wanted to be found, to be safe, to finally be good enough, to finally get to deserve having something good, to be loved.. To not be worthless anymore...
~0~
Dean climbed down into the elevator shaft and pried the elevator doors to the basement open once again.
He no longer had to worry about any security guards because the entire construction site was now a closed crime scene.
The "B" button lit up the second Dean pried the doors open and the sound of the ding of the elevator doors going off almost gave Dean a heart attack. There hadn't been power in the elevator last time. Maybe the cops had to turn it on to get the children out of the basement?
He scanned everything he came across as he made his way back to the hidden underground chamber he had found the children in almost three hours ago. Everything he could possibly find meant more, was so much more important now that it might be the one thing that helped him find Sam.
Finding the cells again made Dean feel as if he were about to be sick.
There was still blood in places on the walls and floor and the smell of infected wounds still hung in the air and it took everything Dean had not to lose it right then and there.
He had to keep a level head.
He had to go further into the chamber, to wherever the rest of the tunnel led.
He hadn't been able to keep searching before, but he wasn't going to leave any stone unturned this time.
He had to find a way to get Sam back...
~0~
A/N: Well... I tried not to be overtly graphic in my descriptions, and I feel I've done justice to the pain and fear that Sam's going through, especially since he's in a state of mind where he can't tell that he's not in The Cage, which I think would be a genuine state of mind that anyone in Sam's situation would be going through. I tried to make it a mix of flashbacks and nightmares being confused for the reality that he's currently dealing with and I honestly think it would be hard for Sam to distinguish past from present and nightmare from the waking world.
Some readers may notice how I used the line "Lucifer could be a truly cruel bastard." twice.. I wanted to sort of subtly emphasize that Lucifer played the sorts of mind games where he'd let Sam think that it was over, that he was out of The Cage, then pulled Sam right back in and started up with the tried and true methods of causing Sam even more mental anguish.
As much as I feel that I've done justice to what Sam is going through (Especially with the state of mind he's in.) I also feel like I've chickened out on how dark I could have made this chapter go, I honestly didn't want to lose readers, squick people out or get tons of flaming reviews because of me dishing out too much pain and gore (Which I could. I really could.. If I weren't such a chicken... But.. Who knows?.. I might decide to not be such a chicken in the next few chapters.. I'm just working up to allowing myself to put the darkness on the page. (When that happens, hopefully the readers wanting and expecting dark (Like REALLY DARK) will be pleased).). ANYWAY.. I hope everyone who reads this story is enjoying it and as always.. Please review!