Plot. This is plot. Yay for plot.


Dean shifted in the passenger's seat, unable to find a comfortable position. He could stand, even walk on his own now, but he could only heal so quickly, and Sam's punishment had left him in a constant state of pain. The Impala was more comfortable than the work out truck, to be certain, but still, even while lying flat on his stomach, Dean had not had a pain free moment since Sam had ripped him open and nearly drowned him.

He thought that they were in New Mexico, but he wasn't certain. Motels were out of the question, as were gas stations and diners. When they needed gas, Sam siphoned it out of cars in people-free parking lots, never taking more than a gallon from any given tank—they needed to be inconspicuous, he said. When they ran low on food, he would break into grocery stores after hours and take what they needed. Sam had gotten them both new phones, courtesy of Bobby as an intermediary, and when he could they parked in lots that received faint wifi signals. Sam had been correct; the search for them was now federal, and they could not risk showing their faces to anyone who was not already a connection.

Sam had heard that Rufus, leader of a crime ring that John had worked with multiple times and Bobby contracted for when work got slow, had a safe house in Arizona, a place where they would be able to get haircuts and dye-jobs and learn the arts of using clothing and make-up to subtly change their appearances just enough that they could get by without being recognized. Dean had wanted to go straight there, but his brother had insisted that they drive around, taking their time and keeping the police off their tail. It was bullshit, Dean had thought, but the one time he had tried to articulate this to Sam, he had found himself gagged, unable to speak or breathe as Sam fucked his mouth in a show of dominance. Weakened from Sam's punishment, Dean knew that Sam could exert dominance over him for the time being, and grudgingly sank into the role as second in command, waiting for the day when he was well enough to take control back from his brother.

Sam glanced over at him from the driver's seat. "What do you think? Take it to the border, then head on into Arizona to meet up with Rufus?" he asked, though Dean knew it wasn't a question.

"Sounds good to me," Dean replied, looking out the window. It wasn't exactly what he wanted, but at least it was a start.

Sam grinned and drove, the open road stretching ahead of them, few cars on the road. It was hours, and nearly midnight, when he stopped at a vacant grocery store. "Back in a few!" he said cheerfully, kissing Dean on the forehead and leaving the car.

Dean groaned, leaning his seat back and stretching out. He hoped that Sam found a place to park the car soon so that he could stretch out in the backseat; in the meantime, this would have to do. He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, intent on napping until Sam got back.

0o0o0o0o0

Dean cracked his eyes open; it was still dark, and for a moment he thought that he had simply dozed off for a moment, but a quick glance at his phone told him that it was nearly four in the morning. "What the hell?" he muttered, unbuckling his seatbelt and stepping out of the car on wobbly legs. He glanced around and shut the door, making his way across the parking lot. "Sam?" he called softly, peering through the cracked door of the deserted grocery store. He did not see Sam. "Damnit Sam, not funny," he muttered, pulling out his phone and dialing his brother's number.

The phone rang, rang, and went to voicemail. Dean stared in disbelief at his phone as Sam's voice called out his missed call message. "This is not fucking funny. Leaving me in the car for four hours is not funny. Get your ass out here now, or I swear I will kill you." Scowling, Dean hung up and moved into the store. It was dark and empty, as was to be expected—Dean was grateful that it was not one of those grocery stores that opened ridiculously early for the morning crowd, and thus stuffed itself with employees before the sun had risen.

"Come on, Sam, where are you," he muttered, shining his phone down the aisles, dimly illuminating shelves of food and drinks and toilet paper. There was no reply, or even any movement. Dean snarled, stalking over to the frozen foods section, when a the dim light of his phone cast a glint on a small object on the floor. He stopped, ice filling his veins. He knelt, picking up the brand new, black cell phone that lay on the gleaming white tiles, screen cracked but still readable. 1 missed call: D Win.

Dean stared at the phone disbelievingly. "No," he whispered, because it was impossible. Sam would never leave his phone voluntarily—too much incriminating evidence—but Sam was a Winchester, and he would not have allowed himself to be taken. Cops would not have posed a problem, and cops would have looked for Dean as well. In the front seat of his Baby, he had not been well hidden; they would have found him. Dean had no idea who could have taken Sam, but it was the only explanation.

Dean shoved his panic down, striding as quickly as he could back to the Impala. He would have to hotwire her, since Sam had left with the keys, but Dean was the one who had proofed her against hotwiring—he knew how to break his own system. He called Rufus on the way out to the car, scowling as his call went straight to voicemail. "Rufus? You'd better call me back and give me the directions to your place as soon as you get this. I'm on my way right now. Someone took Sam."

0o0o0o0o0

His head was pounding. That wasn't a good sign. Sam groaned, wishing that he could fall back into blissful unconsciousness, but the ache in his cramped back simply would not allow him to zone out back into sleep. He winced, sitting up as far as he was able—that was weird, why couldn't he sit up all the way?—and twisted as far as he could, removing the kinks from his stiff spine. He reached up to crack his neck, or rather tried; his hands met a strange resistance, as though bound—

Sam's eyes shot open as his last memory came flooding back. "Fuck!" he shouted, his eyes snapping open. He had been in the grocery store, stuffing his pockets with canned goods, almost ready to move on to dry food, when someone had come up behind him and stabbed him in the neck—it had to have been a needle, although it felt like a knife in Sam's memory. He twisted, straining his eyes in the dim light. Wrists bound to the arms of a chair with zip ties, twine gripping his forearms to the back of the chair, leather straps at three points around his torso, ankles cuffed to the legs of the chair, calves lined with assorted ropes and strings and belts. Sam struggled, trying to pull the chair up off the floor, but it seemed to be bolted to the wall. Growling, Sam wrenched at his bonds, but whoever had tied them clearly knew what they were doing. Sam could not have better secured a prisoner with just these materials himself; this was no vigilante or wayward police officer. No, this was the work of a professional—either a bounty hunter, or a killer like himself.

Sam took a deep breath and weighed his options. He could play the role of the meek and cooperative prisoner, bargaining with his captors. He could act as the confused, innocent man—well, that one was out of the question. He could bluster and threaten and fight back, but that was likely to get him killed. Or he could simply be honest, cooperating when it suited him and fighting back when he was able. The last option was definitely the most attractive. Sam steeled himself for pain and slammed his head back into the wall. "Hey!" he shouted, voice surprisingly clear, considering he had just awoken from a drugged stupor. "Congratulations! You caught me! Now tell me what you want from me!"

To his surprise, the door opened. Sam caught a glimpse of his surroundings—he was in a one roomed shack situated in what appeared to be a complex of similar buildings—before the door shut. He grimaced at the darkness, and then, much to his surprise, the light flicked on, revealing his captor.

"Well, well, well," the surprisingly attractive brunette woman said, walking over to Sam slowly, even seductively. Sam swallowed hard; he had been expecting a bruiser, a tough, hardened criminal with guns and bulging muscles. Instead, his captor was slender, even delicate looking, her pretty features unblemished by fighting, her long hair down, easy to grab and use as a hand-hold. Had Sam not been tied so securely, he would most likely have been able to take her down in less than a second. "The infamous Sam Winchester. Not that the media has your name yet, but hey, we've got sources the media would cream themselves to get." An organization—that made sense, then. No way this petite little model of a woman would have been able to take him down on her own. "And here you are, playing guest with us. This is a fortunate turn of events."

"What do you want with me?" Sam snapped, jerking at his bindings.

"Not very polite, are you?" the woman asked, raising her eyebrows disapprovingly at him. "You might want to change that. My name is Ruby, and I am the person who is going to advocate for giving you a pleasant fate—if you behave yourself." She walked forward, reaching out to run a hand through Sam's hair. It took all of Sam's willpower to not jerk away from her touch. "Better," the woman said, clearly pleased.

"You are currently the property of a small, family friendly organization," Ruby informed him, as she continued to caress his hair and face. "I think you'll like it here, once you get used to it. Not quite up your alley, but I think we can find some use for you in security and taking on hits. You see, we're a fun little group that thinks it's just a shame that in this so-called land of the free, people can't even be free to choose their own escape routes. We do a little under-the-table business here and there to try to alleviate that issue." She smiled down at Sam with mirthless eyes. "The dealer your brother used to go through is one of ours. Oh, what a lovely boy he was. He's in prison now, but we just might get him back if you don't behave."

"So you're part of a drug cartel," Sam said slowly, deliberately.

"I prefer to think of us as people who distribute desirable goods and services to people who choose them as an escape route, much the way you and your brother used to do before you could get your hands on alcohol. A business, for the most part. But I suppose that if you want to call us a drug cartel, you'd be right up there with the dear old United States government." Ruby shook her head scornfully. "But you're not against drugs, now, are you Sam? Some people kill, some people drink, and some people live for their next hit. You've done all three, after all."

Sam shrugged. "I don't care who does drugs. We're all going to die eventually, might as well enjoy the ride," he replied carefully, not taking his eyes off the woman. What sort of role could a helpless looking female like Ruby play in a drug-running operation? She didn't have the muscle to move the goods, or the look that would lead people to ask her for drugs in the first place. Frustrated, Sam sighed, relaxing back into the chair, his arms sore from pulling at his bonds. "So what do you want with me, again?"

Ruby's smile widened. "Now that, Sam, depends on your behavior over these next few days," she said pleasantly. "If you're good, we'll make you a permanent part of our team. Run supplies, guard the camp, take out people who try to run out on us, or who skip paying what they owe. Of course, if you don't behave yourself, we've got some people in prison that we'd love to get back, and I think the government would be pretty interested in letting a few low-profile drug dealers go in order to bag the infamous Taft High School shooter."

"Oh, that's what they're calling me now?" Sam asked, unimpressed. "Stupid. I didn't even shoot anyone that time."

"No, but you know the press, now, don't you? Oh, you've been made out to be a bloodthirsty child-killer. And it's not even really a lie, now, is it?" Ruby purred, patting him on the head.

"I'd rather kill adults if given the choice," Sam replied with a shrug. "Kids are too easy."

"It's nice to know that you like the challenge," Ruby said, drawing away. "That's useful to know. But I'm not here to test your abilities and preferences, only your obedience." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small knife. Sam flinched away reflectively, but Ruby turned the knife on herself, rather than him. With a determined smile, she lightly sliced open her wrist, letting blood flow freely from the cut. "Drink," she ordered, holding the wounded limb out to Sam, "before it closes up.

Sam stared at her incredulously, only to meet her eyes and realize that she was not kidding. Sam shrugged—it was not as though he had never tasted blood before—and lowered his mouth to her wrist, sucking lightly at the cut, letting the blood wash over his teeth and swallowing it down, then drawing away.

Her blood tasted strange, somehow. Sam could not count the number of times he had wound up with someone else's blood in his mouth, but it always tasted the same; tangy and metallic, a cold, dead flavor. Ruby's blood tasted of smoke laced with sweetness, a sensation not quite overpowering the tang of the blood, but obviously present nonetheless. Sam stared up at her; it occurred to him that she was a member of a drug cartel, and may well have taken something that would pass from her bloodstream into him. "You don't have AIDS, do you?" Sam asked, carefully, "or anything else that would affect me?"

Ruby shook her head mockingly at him. "No AIDS, no drugs, but it will affect you." She kissed Sam's forehead in a mockery of tenderness. "Trust me Sam, you won't regret it. In fact, I think you'll come to crave it." She turned on her heel and left the room, turning the light out behind her.

Sam sat there in the dark, frustrated with the lack of answers he had received. He tugged at his bonds, adrenaline coursing through his body. It felt stronger than normal, somehow, as though he was being fueled and strengthened with a permanent energy. He strained, and the zip ties on his left hand snapped. Sam grinned at the victory—whatever that woman had put in her blood, she was damn stupid for giving it to him—and jerked his arm up, loosening the twine enough that he could slip out of the ropes. He hurriedly untied the ropes that bound his right arm to the chair and braced his right hand on the end of the chair's arm, reaching awkwardly around to grab the left arm from the underside. He jerked his left arm upwards and slammed down with all the power in his right, snapping the arm of the chair in half. Carefully, wary of splinters, Sam slid his hand back, pulling the arm of the chair out of the tie, which hung uselessly around his wrist.

The belts that bound his torso were held on with simple buckles, and the ties that bound his legs were held in knots that, while complicated, only took Sam a few minutes to figure out. Now he just had to get the cuffs off the legs of the bolted chair. He rose, moving the few inches that he could from the chair, and kicked outward with one foot, splintering the wood. He took a step forward with his free foot and wrenched, breaking free in a shower of splinters. There was no point in moving quietly now; they would have definitely heard the wood breaking. Sam bolted, slamming through the doors and into the punishingly bright, arid sunlight.

Sam only made it a few feet before he was tackled to the dry ground. He slammed face first into the dust and flipped over, struggling back up to his feet. He spun around, ready to face his opponent: Ruby stood before him, a satisfied smirk gracing her lovely features. "You bitch!" Sam growled, lunging forward to seize her neck.

It was impossible; no human could move that fast. Sam barely had time to register that Ruby had dodged him when he felt a slender, frighteningly strong hand twist his arm up behind his back. "Nice job, Sam," she breathed, her breath hot in his ear. "Got out of there a lot quicker than I thought you would."

Sam kicked backwards, knocking her away by several feet. Panting, he spun around to face her. "You really think you can stop me, bitch?" he snarled, sweat beading around his forehead as the sun beat down mercilessly overhead.

"There's no 'think' about it, Sam," Ruby replied, grinning at him as though he was some delectable food she was about to devour. "You feel powerful with that taste of blood in your system? Imagine if all your blood was like that. Then you would know how it feels to be me." She laughed. "Besides, all you've done with it is brute muscle. You haven't figured out how to do anything subtle, anything that might set you apart as more than another generic bruiser." She lunged forward and tackled him to the ground with one arm, producing a length of chain with her free hand from the waistband of her jeans and wrapping it tightly around his throat. Sam gasped as his ability to breathe was abruptly cut off, and wrenched at the chain, struggling to get his fingers under it as Ruby slowly, steadily pulled it tighter. Black spots danced before Sam's eyes and he heaved, fighting futilely to get air into his lungs. Ruby's eyes seemed to go solidly black, and the last thing Sam saw was her elbow coming down at his forehead before he blacked out.

0o0o0o0o0

Dean paced furiously, the pain in his lower body all but forgotten. Rufus had ordered him to stay in his room while he made calls to other associates, but less than an hour had passed and Dean was already going stir crazy. "Damnit, Sam," he muttered, flexing and releasing his fists. "Where the fuck are you?"

He barely heard Rufus enter the room. "Calm down, Dean," Rufus ordered, sitting calmly on the soft, well-made twin bed. "I've got everyone available out looking for Sam. We've got some pretty good connections to both law groups and underground groups. Something's bound to turn up. Ash ran some checks in the news, and there's nothing out about catching the school shooter, so if the law got him they're keeping quiet. Police databases are going to take a bit longer to check, but we're looking into those as well." The man sighed, catching Dean's eyes. "We'll find him, Dean. No one can hide him from my boys, not forever."

Dean nodded, only half paying attention. "You call Bobby?" he asked, running a shaky hand through his short, light hair.

"Yeah, and let me tell you, Bobby's gonna rip you both a new one when we find him," Rufus said with a short laugh, absently fingering the Star of David that hung around his neck. "He told you to tell Sam, if we find him before the old man, that if he's still alive, he's not going to be when Bobby gets through with him." Rufus shook his head. "But I've got my people out looking for him. Apart from keeping an eye on the media either for an arrest notice or a crime that fits his MO, there's not much we can do."

Dean grimaced. "If we're looking for a crime that fits his MO, we're going to be chasing every murder that gets reported this side of the Atlantic," he muttered, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his worn jeans. "You know Sam. He hasn't got a preferred type, he hasn't got a preferred place, he hasn't even got a preferred weapon. It's one of the things that's helped us out so much in the past." Dean flopped down beside Rufus with a frustrated growl. "Damnit, you're sure there's nothing we can do?"

Rufus raised an eyebrow incredulously at Dean. "You got connections in the media, or with the law, or with the underground, boy?" he asked, shaking his head. "Unless you want to go back to that parking lot and start searching on foot, not much you can do around here. You want to be useful, watch the screens and the internet, though I've already got a good number of my guys doing that. More eyes doesn't hurt, but that's about the only use I've got for you in this one."

The answer was about what Dean had expected, which made it no less frustrating. "Well, if Bobby wants to kill Sam himself, he's going to have to be happy with whatever remains I leave him." Dean scowled, turning his mind to anger at his brother's incompetence—worry and fear would only paralyze him, and anger might actually drive him to get something done. "Can you get me a laptop and a cable connection? I've got some news to keep an eye on."

Rufus nodded, rising from the bed with a groan. "I'll hook you up with the works. Remember, watch it steady, don't jump to any conclusions."

"I'm not a rookie," Dean snapped, annoyed. "I know I'm not a trained part of your crime ring, but I've done this more than a few times myself."

"Didn't mean to doubt you!" Rufus exclaimed, raising his hands in apology. "I know you know your shit. You Winchesters might be independents here, but John's saved my ass and helped with my guys plenty of times." Rufus shook his head. "I'd be shocked if John didn't have you boys as well taught as I keep my people. I'm just saying, looking for a mark or an ally is a lot different than looking for someone you care about. It's a lot harder to be objective with that."

"Sam and I found Dad just fine," Dean retorted, glowering at the wall. He did not want to think about his father; John would have probably skinned him for losing Sam. This would not have happened if John had still been around—if Sam hadn't gotten him killed, Dean reminded himself, gripping tight to his anger. "Just get me the stuff. I'm not gonna fuck it up just because it's my brother we're looking for."

Rufus nodded, clapping Dean on the shoulder before exiting the room. Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. He'd have to ask Rufus for some whiskey or a beer when he came back with the equipment. "Damnit Sam, you'd better not be dead," he muttered to the empty room. "I swear, if you're dead, I'm gonna find you in the afterlife and kick your ass so hard you'll wish for every other time Dad or I ever punished you here."