AN: Daisy, I forget to remind you to breathe last chapter….I hope you remembered on your own ;) Sorry this chapter is late today, I didn't get it up before school… also, disclaimer about Sam and Olivia, I never claimed they were the model of a healthy functional relationship…..and they still aren't, as you'll see in this chapter.

Elizabeth finished the last sentence and turned the sheet of paper over onto the stack she'd made. She flipped the whole thing again so the first page was on top and looked expectantly at Crowley.

After a few seconds he glanced up and raised his eyebrows. "Finished love?"

A curt nod signaled the affirmative.

"Wonderful." He stood and circled the desk taking the stack of papers from the table and leafing through them. "Need anything for that hand?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, "sure, a few aspirin and an icepack would be great."

Crowley chuckled at her choice of words, "I think you'll need that a bit more after the next part dear." All his little pet names were beginning to get under her skin.

"Well then let's just get on with it. The sooner you believe me the sooner I can shower." She shrugged.

"Of course." A snap of his fingers had two soldiers appear in the doorway ready to escort her somewhere. "See you in a bit then."

The nearer one took her arm and she snatched it away jabbing her elbow back into his chest. "I can walk on my own thanks."

The second soldier took a firm hold of her upper arm and refused to let go until his partner had recovered enough to grip her other side. Neither of them spoke and they largely ignored her struggles as she was half led half dragged down a long stone hall. Eventually they arrived at a door and she was thrust inside the room, the door closing behind her. A few seconds later lights clicked on over her head, blindingly bright. She clamped her eyes shut after trying and failing to squint through the light. Then the sound started up, a piercing shriek like a cross between an alarm and heavy machinery.

Visual and auditory overload had her eyes clamped shut and hands covering her ears for any escape from the constant jarring noise. Even the inside of her eyelids light up a bright red and she curled up on her side trying to block out all the incoming information with images of Dean, the sound of his voice.

After a while the effort of keeping the thoughts flowing became too great and she slid down against a wall with her head pressed into her knees. The position helped with the lights, but now she could feel the vibrations in the walls of the sounds.

She had no way of knowing how long she was in the room alone when the lights shut off and the sounds cut out abruptly.

The shower was heaven sent as far as Dean was concerned. Being a rogue agent afforded little time to enjoy the human comforts of steamy water and soap that didn't smell like a drugstore.

He stood with his chest in the stream of water, trying to convince himself that turning and letting the spray hit his back couldn't be too awful could it? He'd had worse injuries that he'd either patched up himself or had Elizabeth take care of, but with the marks so fresh he was having second thoughts about it. The mind games he was playing with himself weren't helping either. Finally he spun and steeled himself for the white hot flash of pain that inevitably came before turning around again quickly. Not that it helped much. Now that he'd aggravated the raw skin it was acting up again and he couldn't even reach it to try and do something about the pain.

Suddenly the shower lost its appeal and he quickly finished rinsing suds off himself and shut off the spray fumbling for the towel Olivia had given him. Sitting just inside the door was a neatly folded pile of clothes. He pulled on the pants and hesitated at the shirt, toweling off his hair instead.

Dean opened the door to the bathroom still holding the shirt and his wet towel to find Olivia with a first aid kit, and Mandy perched on the loveseat at the end of the bed. Sam was nowhere to be found.

"Just throw that anywhere, I'll take care of it." Olivia indicated the towel; Dean awkwardly draped it over a chair on his way towards her.

Mandy watched with rapt attention as he approached, and he shot her a smile trying to help her relax.

Her eyebrows pinched in a way that painfully reminded him of Sam as a child and he focused on Olivia instead. She seemed fine, physically anyway. Dean knew most of the scars Sam had caused her weren't physical anyway.

"Come here, I need to get a look at those welts." Olivia beckoned. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned his forearms on his knees. "God, Dean, who did this to you? It wasn't S-"

"Alastair," Dean cut her off for Mandy's sake. The kid obviously thought Sam was an angel, why confuse her now.

"Alastair," Olivia repeated, face contorted in a grimace, "I can't stand that man, I don't want him in the same country as me."

She pulled out a packet of iodine and squeezed some on a gauze pad. Dean flinched a little and hissed as she dabbed at the worst of the welts first. It wasn't that the iodine hurt on its own, just anything touching the raw skin felt like a while hot flame right now.

"It'll be easier if you lie down," Olivia suggested and Dean complied shifting to lie on his stomach with his arms pillowed under his head. The new position brought him almost nose to nose with Mandy. The child's face had shifted from apprehension to concern.

"Somebody hurt you?" She asked cocking her head a bit and letting her brown curls fall.

"Yeah baby, somebody hurt him pretty bad, but we can fix him right?" Olivia answered for him.

She moved on to a fresh welt and Dean pressed his face into the sheets to muffle a curse, pretty sure that profanity wouldn't win him points with his nurse.

"Mommy fixes Daddy sometimes too when he gets hurt." Mandy said in a serious voice, she held up a finger with a band-aid wrapped around it, "And three days ago I got a cut on my finger and she fixed it."

"Sounds like I'm in good hands," Dean managed a smile for her sake.

Mandy reached out tentatively and patted his hand. "You have green eyes like me." She said after studying him a bit.

"Yours are prettier," Dean replied and Mandy giggled. The sound almost made up for the fact that her mother was trying to kill him with a gauze pad.

Elizabeth was dragged back to the office and made to sit in a chair. Everything was blurry and sounded like she was underwater. She stumbled forward into the chair thankful that she didn't have to stay upright, her balance wasn't too good right now either. A few feet in front of her Crowley took another chair holding the stack of papers she'd written before.

"Alright love?" He asked, the words bounced in her brain for a while before she could attach meaning to them, but once it clicked she nodded. "Not much experience with sensory overload I take it?" It wasn't something the government of the South approved of for interrogation purposes, but the rules were different here.

"So right to business then," He picked up the first sheet, "Tell me about the day you arrived at recruit training."

Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut and tried to recall what exactly she'd written. It was all the truth, but even her own memories were hazy right now.

"I was the only girl on the bus, when we pulled up all the others were given squad assignments and the sergeant was about to walk away,"

"And his name was?" Crowley interrupted.

"Cam-Campbell," Elizabeth stuttered.

"Go on."

"I asked for my assignment, he didn't like women in the army, another officer came then and told him off, she led me to the women's barracks and I changed and went to meet my squad and our leader."

"And who exactly was your leader?" Crowley asked following the story on the sheet, he glanced up over the page every now and then.

"I knew him as Commander Harvelle, his real name is Dean Winchester."

"The very same Dean Winchester you're currently married to?" Crowley asked, Elizabeth nodded. "Scandalous."

He flipped a few pages ahead. "Now this is interesting, let's talk about the squad leader position."

What felt like hours later, Olivia finished cleaning all the welts and cuts on Dean's back and covered each in a clean bandage strip. Once the injuries were covered the constant pain of air moving and dust particles settling on them scaled back to manageable.

"Why don't you sleep for a while?" Olivia suggested, helping him roll up to a seated position and leading the way to what appeared to be a guest room in the lavish apartment.

"You're really roughing it up here huh?" Dean commented with a smirk and Olivia swatted at his arm with an eye roll. It was almost like they were just meeting at the office again, instead of being held prisoner in hostile territory.

"I'll get you something for pain and you can just sleep this all off." Olivia nodded towards the bed and Dean padded over to it lowering himself softly onto the covers on his stomach. Better not to risk agitating the welts again he thought.

Olivia appeared with a few little pills and a cup of water and not a few minutes after that did Dean finally surrender to sleep.

Olivia sat in the main room staring at the closed door of Dean's room, thinking. He was here, Elizabeth was here, somewhere. She was so out of the loop now she had no idea what was going on in the war except what Sam told her, and who knew if he was even telling her the truth.

The front door opened and closed again and she heard Sam calling Mandy's name. It must be time for her lessons. With a quick "Bye, Mommy," she flitted past and left with her teacher.

A few seconds more and Sam's boots clomped across the entryway before he came into view in the doorway.

"Hey," He greeted with a sigh. That was different.

"Sam, what's going on? Why is Dean here?" Olivia asked standing, but not moving any closer to him.

He kicked off the boots, dirty and wet from the snow, before crossing the carpeted part of the apartment.

"I'll tell you everything, but first can we just relax a little, this day isn't going very well," He promised.

Curiosity got the best of her and she followed him into the bedroom where he collapsed on top of the covers with a long arm splayed over his eyes. Olivia sat lightly on the edge of the bed and Sam let out a groan of pent up frustration.

"Are you alright? I saw Dean's back and he said that Alastair-"

"Don't worry Liv, he didn't do anything to me," Sam assured her rolling onto his side and poofing a pillow under his cheek. "It's just been rough. I know we're kinda rocky too, but could I just, maybe hold you? Or something?" He smiled a sad smile and his dimples popped out, he looked so sweet like that, it was hard to believe half the time he came home covered in someone else's blood.

"Yeah, sure," She climbed up next to him and let him pull her close, nuzzling against her hair.

"Liv, I'm an awful person." Sam mumbled into her hair.

"Sammy," Olivia sighed out, while she couldn't technically argue with the statement, she had at least seen enough of his humanity since Mandy was born to know that he could change, given the chance. "Tell me what happened."

Sam held his arms around her as he spoke over her head, recounting the events of finding Elizabeth and his brother all the way up to now. Olivia was quiet as he explained, gasping at the mention of having Dean torture his wife.

"The only reason they let themselves get captured at all is because she's pregnant." Sam finished with a huff.

"Oh God," Olivia whispered. Dean hadn't said a word about a baby, but he must have known choosing a side would be their best chance.

"Why would they come here rather than go back to the South?" She wondered aloud.

"They're rogue agents Liv, the South would arrest them for desertion and probably treason too. It was here or nowhere." Sam explained.

She was quiet then, and when Sam's hand crept to her hip she didn't shrug it off. He started rubbing slow circles on her hip bone and his breathing relaxed audibly.

"Liv, you know I won't hurt you right?" Sam asked quietly shaking the hair out of his face.

"Yeah, I know that." Olivia responded uncoiling her arms from where they'd been sandwiched between their bodies.

"Sometimes you flinch away when I try and touch you though," He continued.

"Old memories die hard Sam, you know that too." Olivia sighed. One of her hands slid up to his shirt collar fingering the buttons on the front casually.

"But now you're not doing that," He pointed out, hoping she wouldn't freeze.

"I have some new memories too Sam. And they're much better than the old ones." She managed to slip one of the buttons open before he rolled them so he was on top.

"Never hurt you," He murmured nuzzling down her jaw ticking her ear on the way. "Never again Liv," it had become like a mantra in the time since she'd arrived, it worked for them when other words failed.

"I know, I know it Sam," She returned with the standard reply they'd developed together.

"Don't want to," Sam continued pausing to pay special attention to the sensitive skin on her neck.

"Don't worry Sammy, you won't" She cooed, working the rest of his shirt open more shakily now. She kept murmuring praise, reassurance as he suckled on her neck and ran his huge hands up and down the sides of her body.

"Don't want to hurt you Liv," Sam mumbled, and Olivia reached around him with one arm tangling her hand in his hair and pulling him harder against her neck.

"Never Sammy, you would never," She felt so small underneath him, but his constant need to be reassured gave her a power now. The dichotomy was interesting, being physically powerless, but mentally in control had its charm. At the first gentle scrape of teeth she let out a soft whimper and Sam pulled back, unsure. Though they'd been through the exchange before, he needed her to say it was alright every time.

"You won't hurt me Sam, I promise," She assured him, planting a kiss on his forehead.

Another bolder press of his mouth on her skin made her breath catch, but she kept up the litany of "I know you won't hurt me Sam. Don't worry its ok." He grew bolder at her assurances and bit down softly on the juncture of her shoulder and neck.

"Sammy," Olivia cooed into his hair, as his hands slipped under her shirt, "That's it Sam, you won't hurt me will you, only good feelings now right?"

He nodded against her and pushed the silky fabric of her blouse up pausing to pull it over her head when it got in the way of his mouth. He took the opportunity to shrug out of his shirt as well and leaned on one arm so he could free up a hand to splay over her stomach as he returned to her neck, now red and slightly inflamed from biting. He slid the arm he was laying on under her head and ran his fingers through her hair.

"So nice Sam, it's alright," She tugged a bit with the hand she had wrapped up in his hair and he groaned, "See, it's good, you won't hurt me,"

"Never again," Sam sighed as he slipped lower onto the newly exposed skin. He ran his free hand over the scar on her arm and trailed kisses down her chest, "Never hurt you again Liv. I won't."

"I know Sammy, I know." She tugged at his hair again, trying to get him to do the same, and at the first pull she let out a small moan, "See," She was panting a little now with all of the sensations, "Not hurting me right?" She asked between little kisses down his chest and stomach. "Make me feel good Sam, so good at it,"

Her words seemed to flip a light on inside Sam, everything he'd been doing increased tenfold, the kisses all came with bites now, and the hand in her hair didn't stop pulling until she groaned out loud. He nudged a knee between her legs and grinned as she flailed under him.

"Feels good?" He hissed into her ear, biting at the lobe. She got out a shaky "uh huh" before his hand dipped under the fabric of her bra and she arched into the touch.

He stopped for a minute to undo his belt and rid himself of the rest of his clothes, and then helped her with hers.

Poised above her he said again "I won't ever hurt you Liv." He looked into her eyes and she nodded replying with, "I know,"

What it really meant was 'I love you.'

She knew he felt it, he just didn't know how to say it.