It was about an hour later, after Gabriel had scrubbed the blood from his hands and arms, burned most of the clothes that he was wearing out back and poured himself a glass of whiskey when he came to the conclusion that Sam wasn't Sam. Well, Sam wasn't the same Sam that Gabriel fell madly in love with, at least. He knew that she was in there; that strong, stubborn girl who thirsted for knowledge, who hated mornings and savored the first sip of coffee more than all the others. He knew she was there. She had to be. But it was so hard for him to see that when he looked at the girl sitting in front of him.
Sam had her knees under her chin and her arms wrapped protectively around herself, looking so scared that she might bolt into the night that held more unknown terrors than the ones she faced here. She was trembling slightly and her eyes were racing around the room, checking and rechecking all the places for someone to hide.
It broke Gabriel's heart to see her like that, and he wished with every fiber of his being that he could torture Lucifer so he could see what he inflicted on Sam. That wasn't love. That was hate, and rage and-
"Gabe," came a voice quietly to his right. Gabriel watched Sam flinch at the noise before he responded to Bobby.
"Yeah?" He asked as quietly as he could, his eyes never leaving Sam.
"We need to check her over. She could need medical help. I know that you don't want to freak her out anymore than she already is, but she doesn't trust me, and you can at least get close to her."
Gabriel looked defeated at the thought. "It can't wait?"
Bobby knew that it could, but he didn't want to risk it. There were too many things that could go wrong if something were left unchecked. "No," he told the shorter man.
Gabriel sighed quietly. "...Alright," he told Bobby and pushed away from the kitchen doorframe. He walked slowly toward Sam and called her name quietly. She flinched and her eyes whipped over to him. He watched as her eyes widened and her breathing visibly picked up. He stopped then and held up his hands placatingly. "Sam, I need to talk to you. Will you talk to me?"
Sam looked at him for a long moment, but didn't say anything. Gabriel waited in silence for what felt like a century before she nodded her head slightly and immediately scanned the room for an unseen enemy.
"Sam," Gabriel called out getting Sam's attention back, "I know that you don't want to hear this, but I have to tell you...We need to make sure that you're okay...That nothing is infected or otherwise life threatening," At this, Sam's eyes widened again and she shrank back into the couch cushions, bringing her arms more firmly around her legs. It broke Gabriel's heart, but he kept talking. "We need to see what needs daily care in order to heal," and with that, Sam started to shake her head emphatically. Gabriel bit the inside of his cheek so he didn't break down and cry at the sight of what Sam had become. Gabriel took a deep breath and begged, "Please, Sam..." he asked, and his voice broke with all the held back emotion.
A tear spilled down Sam's cheek as she continued to look at Gabriel with pleading in her eyes. He bit into his cheek so hard that he tasted blood, but it held back the tears that were threatening to fall. He would not cry in front of her. She needed to have someone who could help her carry her burden and not break with the strain. She needed someone who could be there and listen to every terrible detail if she needed to tell someone and Gabriel was determined to be the one that she could go to.
Sam cried for a few minutes silently before she broke eye contact and nodded shakily. She only murmured one word, and it would have been lost if anyone took a breath in that moment. "You."
Gabriel was torn between a sigh of relief and wanting to run. Instead, he nodded at her and then glanced at Bobby who turned the corner so that he was fully in the kitchen. He rustled around in there for a moment before Gabriel heard the clinking of glass on wood as Bobby placed a bottle of whiskey on the ground and returned to the kitchen.
"Whenever you're ready," was all that Bobby said.
Gabriel looked at Sam and jerked his head in the direction of the bottle. "You want a drink?" he asked her quietly, but she just scanned the room. Gabriel narrated his motions as he walked over to the bottle and picked it up and brought it back so that it was within reach of both of them. He didn't know why he thought he needed to narrate, but it made him feel better, and he suspected it made Sam feel a little better too, so he did it.
"Can you stand for me, Sam?" he asked her quietly once he was in front of her. He was crouching so that they were at about the same level. Sam looked at him with fear and something else in her eyes, but she slowly unfolded her body and placed her feet on the ground. Sam rose slowly on uncertain legs, and Gabriel was there, rising with her, keeping a hand out in case she needed to steady herself.
Once she was on her feet, she took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders back as though preparing for a fight. It would have been amusing, Sam in a shirt that was slightly too big for her looking resolved to punch someone in the face if they made a wrong move, but in this case it was...wrong. She seemed like a kid who was squaring off with the monster in her closet; fear evident in every inch of her, but she was trying to stay strong and bury that fear. It was...not Sam.
Gabriel mentally shook himself before walking up to Sam slowly. "Can you take the shirt off, Sam?" He nearly lost his nerve, called the whole thing off when Sam's face blanched, but he didn't. The inside of his mouth would never be the same from all the biting he was doing to the insides of his cheeks and now his tongue, but he kept his mouth shut as she nodded; glued his hands to his sides as she struggled with the buttons of the flannel that she wore. Once she got all the buttons unclasped, she took a deep breath and rolled the shirt off of her shoulders and let it pool on the floor.
Gabriel did his best not to gasp.
He didn't quite manage it.
There were marks all over her body. It was too much to take in at once. He wanted to shut his eyes, to turn his head away, to run away from this pain and suffering, but he stayed. He looked at her eyes then and saw that they were wet and staring at the wall behind him. It was then that he noticed that there were tears running down her face.
"You okay?" He asked her even though he knew the answer. She waited a few moments too long before nodding her head slightly. He nodded in reply and then told her, "I don't know where to start..." which caused Sam to choke back a sob and made the tears run faster down her cheeks. Her neck and her faced flushed then, and Gabriel called out to Bobby.
"Where do you want me to start?" It wasn't exceptionally loud, but Sam flinched at the difference between the whispered conversation that they were having to the conversation that he was having with Bobby.
"Start from the top and work your way down. Start with her front and then loop around to the back. I'll tell you if you need to do anything further," Bobby told him calmly.
So Gabriel did. He took a few steps closer to her until there was barely any distance between them and he started his exam. The top of her head looked to be fine, there was no blood in her hair or any other lump that he could see, so he moved down to her face. Again, there were no marks and no bumps or lumps to cause alarm, so he moved down her body.
"Her neck is bruised," he told Bobby. The shape of a thumb and a few fingers were wrapped in purple around the sides of her throat. Gabriel heard what sounded like pen scratching on paper and Bobby asked him, "What color are the bruises?"
"Purple and yellow at the edges," Gabriel replied. Bobby scratched a few more things down and when he didn't hear any other questions from Bobby, he continued with his exam.
"There are two slashes on her chest, below her collarbone but above her breasts." Gabriel tried to determine how deep they were, but he didn't know how. He knew they were more than superficial, but he didn't think that they were deep enough to need stitches. Gabriel didn't hear any questions from Bobby, so he continued with, "There are bite marks...on her right breast..." Gabriel said quietly and when he looked up, he saw that Sam was as red as a tomato and that she was sobbing quietly. He looked away from her face and pretended that this was someone else in front of him. Refused to believe that this was his Sam.
He moved down and then back up her arms and found rope burns on her wrists and bruises from where he held her arms down. Once done with her arms, Gabriel looked further down her body and found a number of superficial slashes on her abdomen and one deep slash, not unlike the ones on her chest, on her left hip. He reported all of these to Bobby and then took a moment to steady himself before he moved further down to her legs.
Those legs that he loves so much had fresh wounds. The words that her father and then the fucking psycho and carved into her were fresh again. It took almost everything that Gabriel had not to get up and leave right then. The words were careful and deliberate, but there were nicks and bruises and smaller slashes all over her thighs. She had fought him through all of it, and Gabriel was equal parts grateful and astonished. Grateful because that showed that Sam didn't just take it, that maybe she still had some fight and strength in her yet. Astonished that she would take on the person that was holding her hostage even though she knew what he had in store for her.
The rest of her legs were fine, there were rope burns on her ankles, and one of her ankles was slightly swollen. When Gabriel told Bobby about her swollen ankle, he made a few notes then asked for any damage on her back. Gabriel went to move to Sam's back, and she tried to turn with him. He smiled sadly at her and moved around her to take stock of her back.
It looked as though she had received lashes. Her back was covered with criss crossing slashes from what looked like a whip. Gabriel reached out a hand to touch, then thought better of it and brought it back before asking, "Are these...Sam, are these lashes? Did he whip you?"
Sam's head sank so that her chin almost touched her chest. She nodded slightly and Gabriel inhaled sharply through his nose and left, abruptly. Sam stayed standing for a moment until she figured that he wasn't coming back and that he was done with his exam. She slipped the shirt on and curled back up into the couch. She was so tired, she realized and all she wanted to do was to sleep and pretend like this never happened. She just wanted to forget everything.
"I really hope that she never asks me to do that again, Bobby. That was traumatic. I can't even imagine that some sicko would do something like that to her. What could she have possibly done in his fucked up head to ever even come close to deserving something like that?" Gabriel ranted quietly as he finished telling Bobby the extent of Sam's injuries.
"I don't know," Bobby told him honestly. There was no explanation that the older man could give to him. It was awful, but there was nothing they could do except try to help her through it. "But you do need to tell me what happened in there."
Gabriel sighed and sat down at the table across from Bobby. He folded his hands together and told Bobby everything. Told him how Sam looked happy in the pictures that he saw, told him about the documents that he looked at, told him Lucifer's name, told him about the room that Sam was kept in, told him about killing Lucifer, told him everything. Bobby was quiet the whole time, letting Gabriel go at his own pace and when he finally finished Bobby stayed quiet, trying to process the whole thing.
"That's quite the story," was all that he said after Gabriel started looking at him expectantly. "I'll look into Lucifer and see who's going to start to miss him and see if we need to get ready to be on the run. I don't know what's going to happen, Gabe, but I'll help you out as much as I can," Bobby told him.
"I appreciate that. Thanks, Bobby," Gabriel said with a tired smile. He got up then and walked to the doorway again. He started watching Sam as she slept on the couch. She didn't look comfortable with her legs tucked up around her like that and her head angled up on the armrest as a makeshift pillow, but Gabriel didn't want to risk moving her and waking her up. So, Gabriel grabbed a spare blanket and laid that over her and started to make a nest on the ground next to the couch.
"Why don't you take my room?" Bobby asked Gabriel and Gabriel turned and stared at the older man. No one took Bobby's room. Mostly because he never offered it, but that was beside the point. Gabriel gathered his wit enough to tell him no, "I want to stay with her." Bobby seemed to understand and laid an understanding hand on Gabriel's shoulder as he passed the younger man on the way to his room.
Gabriel finished his nest and sat with his back against the bottom of the couch. He was numb, his whole body ached and all he could think about was Sam's safety. How he almost lost her, what she had to go through without him, how terrified she must have been, wondering if she would tell him what she went through...
Gabriel felt the a tear escape his eye and fall down his cheek and he didn't have the energy to wipe it away. He knew that there would be more and that there was no point in trying to stop the flood that was coming. He took a deep breath, then, and just cried. He cried over the pain that Sam had gone through, the scars that she had both physically and emotionally from her hard life, the scars physical and emotional scars that were still red and raw and painful- scars that may not ever heal and if they do, they'll be painful for the rest of her life.
Gabriel cried until he didn't know what time it was and his eyes were heavy and scratchy and he was pretty sure that there weren't even tears falling anymore when suddenly he felt a hand cup his face and a fingertip slip underneath his eye, brushing the tears away. He stopped moving. Hell, he stopped breathing waiting for Sam to get startled and pull away, but she surprised him by murmuring to him, "Stop."
The softness of the word and the utter surprise that Gabriel was feeling was too much and as he turned and saw Sam's rumpled hair and her sleepy eyes, he broke down again and cried. He moved to cup her cheek in return, but thought better of it. Instead he said, "I thought I lost you," and there was sheer honesty and relief in his voice.
She didn't say anything back to him, but she did move her other hand to his face and let her thumbs methodically wipe away the tear tracks that were staining his face. They stayed like that for a long time, Gabriel contorted so that he could see Sam's face and Sam leaning down to cup Gabriel's cheeks. Wether it was to make him feel better or for other reasons, he had no idea. He just knew that he never wanted Sam to stop touching him. Eventually she fought back a yawn and the spell was broken. Gabriel smiled a soft, heartbroken smile and said, "You need to rest, Sam."
She nodded and curled down into the cushions and under the blanket so that only her head peeked out of the top of the blanket and one hand off the side of the couch. Gabriel clasped the outstretched hand and Sam made a content noise as Gabriel cuddled down into his own nest. Sam was sleeping as soon as her head hit the makeshift pillow, and Gabriel was left with his thoughts again.
"Goodnight, Sam," He whispered into the night as he waited for sleep to take him.
