Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
Warnings: Death.
The thin beam of his flashlight illuminated the halls of the dilapidated building that was once a mental hospital, closed down decades ago. The kind of place that performed lobotomies and where brain surgery was an accepted treatment for all types of mental illness. Old hospitals were too convenient for traffickers to use, and he hated it. He hated that they were twisting the image of a place that was meant to save people.
He stepped through a path of disturbed dust—footprints visible enough to let him know that he was right in believing that this building wasn't as abandoned as the rest of the city thought—and over chunks of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling and walls. He wished that he had sought out a mask to keep from breathing in the dust and debris, but he would have to manage with stinging eyes and a burning, scratchy throat that sent him into fits of dry coughs.
Some of the doors lining the halls were open, and Sam knew he could skip them, but he glanced in each of them anyway. Just in case.
The real problem was that he didn't have a way to open the electric door locks. Not yet.
"Second floor. Asleep in a janitor's closet."
Quiet sobs found their way through the doors and into the halls. As much as Sam hated it, he couldn't do anything to help them yet. He couldn't let the sounds distract him. They would be okay waiting for just a little longer.
Nights were the hardest. Not because he was afraid of the dark, though he was sure some of the other kids kept there had to be. Not because he was alone in a strange place, although that knowledge did nothing to make the nights easier either.
Nights were the hardest because only then could he really hear the others kept there. Only then was he reminded that the nightmare he was living was a shared one. It was then that the choked sobs from other rooms were the most audible, like the wailing of ghosts, and they echoed all the way to Sam's room.
They were the sounds of those who were afraid and had given up hope. The sounds of the lost who only wanted the comfort of their family. Some of them had to be miles away from home, the same way Sam was miles away from where he'd been taken. They had to know that no one was coming for them, that their families had to rely on the police for answers.
Sam knew that his family would be doing the best they could, but for a second, he believed that he was just as abandoned as everyone else.
Sam found a staircase and slowed his steps so that they were careful and silent. The janitor's closet was easy to distinguish, being the only closed door without any strange locks. No, it was a slab of unassuming wood with a lock that Sam picked with the speed that years of practice brought.
True to the demon's words, one of the traffickers in charge of the night shift was asleep in the closet, slumped against a wall with his head drooped down enough for his chin to nearly touch his chest, slowing rising and falling with his deep breaths.
Sam crouched in front of the man and pulled a knife from a sheath fastened around his lower calf and hidden by his jeans. He clasped his hand over the man's mouth, tilted his head back, and dragged the knife across his throat.
The man's eyes opened wide in his sudden panic, and he tried to raise his arms to stem the flow of blood or to pull Sam's hand from his mouth. All he accomplished was a few feeble flails while he made wet, gurgling sounds of protest (probably). Sam watched his strength fade and his eyes become dull as his life faded. Through it all, he felt nothing. No sympathy. No sadness. Before him was a man who deserved to die. A man who made choices that hurt others because he was selfish and it was easier to prey on the weak.
Sam removed his hand, wiping the smudges of blood that escaped the man's mouth away on his jeans. He went through the man's pockets until he found a plain, white proxy card.
"There are over a dozen kids here, you better hurry up if you want to be done by sunrise."
He left the closet, closing the door behind him. That was one trafficker who would not be making it out of the inevitable fire that would eat the building away. One more soul sent down to Hell to be at the mercy of demonic torturers for eternity.
The first door beeped open after a quick scan of the proxy card, leaving him silently thankful for slackers. If there were more than a dozen kids being held in that building, he'd have to work quickly and keep his eyes out for any other traffickers skulking through the halls.
Not that they could hurt him if they tried.
The door slid open and he saw a shivering shape on the bed in the corner, a worn blanket draped over it. The kid looked like he was around the age Sam was when he laid trapped in a room because of traffickers. Although, the traffickers and buyers all thought that he was younger than he truly was.
He approached with slow steps, and his flashlight glossed over writing on the wall from when the hospital was open and active, half of the marking scratched away or faded with time.
'The Devil whispers in my ear,' it said, the letters written in black varied in size and formed a jagged line.
He didn't like how well that single sentence described the past three years of his life. While it might not be The Devil whispering in his ear, one devil could do more than enough damage to the mind.
He thought back to Dean's assertions that the demon was using him. Killing humans was not going to lead him anywhere good, even if he was saving innocent lives in doing so.
He ignored the words scrawled on the wall along with his own doubts, leaning over the boy in the bed. It took only one forceful shake to wake the kid, and Sam clasped his hand over his mouth much like he did to the trafficker earlier. The missing piece that made this time different was the lack of his intent to kill.
"I need you to be quiet and listen to me," Sam whispered. "I know you're scared, but I'm going to get you and all of the others being kept here out. Understand?"
The boy nodded.
"Your wrists are bound aren't they?"
He nodded again.
"Alright. I'm going to remove my hand from your mouth, and you're going to stay silent. Then, I'm going to cut your wrists free. After that, we're moving on to the next room until everyone is out and safe. Got it?"
One more nod, and Sam was cutting through the ropes binding the boy's hands in front of him (why did this kid get ropes when he had gotten zip ties?). While Sam worked, the boy stayed silent, not making a sound. Sam didn't delude himself into thinking it was out of blind trust. He knew that if someone came in to save him when he was the captive, he would have gone with because any other option was better than waiting around to be sold like a piece of property.
The 'over a dozen' turned into nearly two dozen, and Sam was beyond grateful that he'd managed to find and save them. It was the largest group he'd come across so far.
One of the girls had her hand fisted around the hem of his shirt and hid behind his leg as he led them through to the exit. She reminded him of the girl who'd been strapped into the plane to Asia beside him, and the girl trapped at Liu's club for whom he made a deal to keep safe, if only for a few nights.
He ushered them out of the building, glancing at one of the traffickers he'd telekinetically thrown and pinned against a wall out of sight from the children before they noticed him at all. They didn't need any additional trauma piled onto the mound they already had.
He told the older kids to watch the younger ones while he did a final sweep of the building, then he promised to get them away and call the police to come collect them. A small taste of freedom was sweet enough for them to be satisfied with his plan of action. Though, he suspected that their silence was due to more than just the possibility of rescue. He knew that there were darker reasons that they held their tongues.
Back in the building, he cut the throat of the man pinned to the wall, letting his limp body slump like the others, the mere handful he'd found in the building.
The demon appeared in another new vessel, eyes flashing yellow as he handed Sam a gallon of gasoline and kept a gallon for himself. "A little something to accelerate the fire and keep it going."
Sam made a trial of gasoline down the main hallway of the first floor, just a little insurance that his fire would continue spreading after he left as there wasn't nearly enough to coat the floors of the entire building. It was a little insurance that he could do more damage before any firefighters were called to the scene. He didn't know where the demon poured his gallon of gasoline. He just knew that none of the buildings he burned had been salvageable.
He started the fire near the main entrance, and immediately left to usher the kids farther away as quickly as he could. Thankful that it was night, he moved them a few blocks under the shroud of darkness before he found a good enough place to stop and call the police, leaving an anonymous tip.
The first boy he saved, and the one that he thought was about the same age as he had been, stopped him as he started to leave.
"How did you know we were there?" he asked.
Sam shrugged. "I've been doing this for months now. You get used to patterns."
"What did they want us for?"
"You don't want to know," Sam said. In this case, ignorance was bliss. It was best for all of them to try and forget that any of this happened. Try to get back to their normal lives.
"Please?" he asked. "I'm old enough to know. I deserve that much."
"They wanted to sell you," Sam said. "Make you someone else's slave."
"How do you know?"
"It happened to me."
Sam stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked away, leaving the boy and the rest of the kids behind. He didn't want to be there when the police showed up. They'd have too many questions he didn't want to answer. They'd hold him as long as they could to get information out of him. Hell, they'd probably find plenty to try charging him with (arson and murder, at least).
If the kid had any more questions, he kept them to himself. He didn't follow Sam, and Sam was glad to shuffle back to his motel room in silence.
"You did well."
Sam shrugged. "I saved a lot of kids, but killing only a handful—if that—of traffickers at a time feels like too little. There are so many out there. I just… it feels like I'm never doing enough."
This connection with the demon felt natural now, but he was aware of how unnatural it was. How the demon shouldn't be able to dial into his mind and listen to his words like they were doing something as simple as talking on the phone.
"You're destined for something greater, Sam. Once you reach your full potential, they'll tremble before you."
"Why are you helping me? What do you get from all of this?"
"Fresh souls sent to Hell."
"That can't be all. That's not your only reason."
"Everything will be clear in time. Right now, just be glad for our mutually beneficial partnership."
He felt the connection cut off, like the quick snip of a thread in his mind. Dean's implications that he was being used (the thoughts that he always tried to push away and not think about) left him more uneasy the more he thought abut them. He'd taken the demon's help for granted, although it had felt wrong to be working with something he was raised to see as the epitome of evil.
He originally planned on burning down the warehouse where he was auctioned that same night and leaving the town the next morning, but his racing thoughts held him in place. Instead, he lied on the bed of another cheap motel room, the likes of which would have sent him spiraling into flashbacks years ago. While he stared at the ceiling, he wondered where the point of no return was.
More importantly, had he already passed it?
Dean flipped the pages of his book back and forth. He wanted to fall back into his pattern of going out to the nearest bar and drowning his thoughts away because there was no Sam waiting back at the motel. No Sam for him to send into flashbacks with the scent of alcohol clinging to him.
No Sam needing him.
It'd been easy to go back to comforting himself with women and whiskey without a Sam needing his comfort. Although, when he spent his time at bars, guilt ate away at him. He couldn't get it out of his head that he would go back to the motel room, and he'd find himself back in the room where Sam was taken from, bloodied floor and his silver knife left behind. It was irrational and he knew that it wasn't going to happen, not when Sam was safe at Bobby's.
Then, Sam 'went to Stanford' and he hadn't felt the need to rush and check-up on him. He should've, but he got caught up with hunts, and his dad now suspected that they were being purposely led around the country by the demon poisoning his little brother's already broken mind so that Sam could get a headstart.
He wasn't reading the book on the table in front of him, no matter how many times he flipped the pages. The longer they looked and came up with nothing, the more disheartening the entire process became.
From the kitchen, he smelled Bobby cooking a late dinner for them. It was nothing extravagant, and he wasn't hungry, but it would fill him enough. (Food, he reminded himself now, was for energy, and he'd need plenty of energy for this Sam hunt.) He remembered loving to visit Bobby in the winter for the promise of warm meals and hot chocolate. For the promise of Sam having a place that would be reliably warm to sleep that night, and a bed for each of them that they knew would be soft and clean.
John sat across from him, trying to track down the fabled Colt gun.
"You think that really exists?" Dean asked. "The Colt."
"Monsters exist, I don't know why something that could kill any of them can't exist, too," John said, not taking his eyes off the mess of scattered papers in front of him.
Bobby placed a bowl of soup in front of each of them before setting one down for himself.
"Any word from your friends?" Dean asked.
"Not yet."
Dean took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, stirring his too-hot soup. "Do you think that they'll find him? That they'll be able to trail him?"
"I don't know, Dean," Bobby said. "Sometimes, we just have to have faith in others."
Dean scoffed, but hid the sound by shoving a spoonful of scalding soup into his mouth, barely feeling the burn. Having faith in others was far from being a strength of his.
He wanted to be the one doing whatever it took to fix their current problem. Giving that control over to someone else was tough.
Especially where Sam was involved.
"What did you tell them?"
Bobby shrugged. "I told them to look for fire."
Author's Note: Sam is still following the demon, but he's starting to ask questions. John is set on finding The Colt. Dean is still feeling hopeless. It's a great time for Winchesters all around.
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