Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

Warnings: Violence/abuse. Language.

Dean tossed his shovel onto the ground and stretched his arms over his head. Grave digging distracted him to an extent, but he couldn't close the curtains on the horror show in his mind. The idea of Sam trapped in the backroom of a seedy nightclub and at the mercy of strangers who weren't interested in mercy.

Sam was too innocent for that world, and Dean would have happily sold himself to that Liu bastard if it meant Sam would be spared. If anyone so much as touched Sam, Dean was going to castrate them.

He never imagined he'd be put in a situation where he hoped Sam was at a factory doing forced labor because it was the current best option.

John and Caleb hauled over Jerry and Rich, one after the other, and dropped them into the freshly dug hole. Neither were in fighting shape, but they were aware enough through their pain to be able to tell something was wrong.

Not that they could express those thoughts after John covered their mouths with duct tape before dragging them from the motel.

Caleb poured gasoline on them, the smell sharp and quick to fill the air. They tried to say something, but it was inaudible with the tape.

Maybe they would beg for their lives. Maybe they would beg for life because they have families who needed them. Children for whom they needed to provide. Maybe they begged for the chance to do that one thing they always swore they would, but just never had the time for.

But their pleas fell on deaf ears. Dean was certain that when it was the children who begged and plead, Jerry and Rich ignored them.

John took out the motel match book and lit it, tossing them into the hole atop Jerry and Rich. With the gasoline, they burst into flames quickly. Then the smell of gasoline was overpowered by that of burning flesh.

They let the bodies burn for awhile before filling in the new, unmarked grave.

He had never heard anything good about burning to death, but Dean still felt that it was too kind of a death for Jerry and Rich.

"So, Hong Kong," Caleb said Once the bodies were hidden under a healthy coating of dirt. "That's pretty far."

"Guess we better get moving," John said. "Gotta get Sammy back before they get the chance to go too far."

Dean kept silent, but he couldn't help wondering about the possibility that they already have gone too far with Sam. Rich told him about the environments Sam faced being brought to, but wasn't selling him already going too far?

He just wanted this nightmare to be over. He wanted Sam by his side, and he wouldn't be letting Sam out of sight for a long, long time once they found him.

The other slaves kept glancing at Sam throughout breakfast (he noticed how his hands trembled now when he held his spoon) and the rest of the day as he worked. He didn't see any malicious intent in their gazes—just wariness and curiosity for the most part—but it made him feel like he was back in the little booth set up in an abandoned building and being inspected by potential buyers like a particularly scrumptious piece of meat.

He felt the phantom hands return, ghosting over his skin and over places where a stranger's hands should never be. Turning his head for better views. For a sight of all angles that encompassed him.

The sudden intensity of the memories almost made him drop the crate, which he knew would end in punishment from one of the task masters.

His body made its protests well-known while he tried to work. The crates felt twice as heavy as they did yesterday, even if they were only half as full. Every step and action left him aching. His muscles started to spasm at random, and he wondered if the abuse his body went through combined with all of the shocking he was exposed to from his collar was going to leave lasting effects. Permanent damage.

Another reminder that this nightmare had been all too real.

He tried to keep his eyes from wandering to the numbers on his arm.

It didn't take long for Sam to start praying that the machines would break down. Catch on fire. Explode. Crumble. The details didn't matter to him this time, he just wanted this place leveled.

He wanted to go home, if they would take him back.

At the thought he shook his head, if he let the slavers get into his head that much, then it would be over for him. It would be a victory for them.

The next morning, his body still ached. He tried to scrub the numbers off of his arm under the cold spray of water, but they refused to even smudge. All he accomplished was rubbing his skin raw.

He found himself unintentionally mouthing his own name as he worked throughout the day, just to be sure that he didn't forget it. Just to be sure he didn't let a string of numbers completely steal away his identity.

But he hadn't heard his name spoken in so long, he couldn't quite remember what it sounded like anymore. He wished that he could test it out, taste the word on his tongue, but the collar around his neck—so close to choking him—deterred him.

As he packed finished product into crates, Sam heard a strange sound from one of the machines. A repetitive clank. He looked up and saw a piece of one of the machines was no longer fully attached and dangled, hitting against the parts nearby. He didn't know what most of the machines did. They were archaic and it wasn't his job. Besides, he didn't care that much to know what they did, not when everyone working them did so against their will.

It wasn't a surprise, the entire thing was more iron oxide than iron and a hazard for anyone near it.

Especially the kid told to maneuver through it and fix the problem.

The kid who was about to be crushed when it creaked and started tilting.

Sam rushed over to the boy, knocking over crates in his haste to be there before the machine came down. He gripped the boy's arm (he had the sense to huddle in a ball, but that sort of protective position wouldn't help him avoid being crushed) and pulled him out from underneath.

With all of the adrenaline pumping through his veins, he didn't even feel the now-constant aches of his battered body. He almost smiled at the fact that it took a near-death to give him a little bit of reprieve, but it didn't seem that funny.

And then he was being dragged away by one task master while the boy was dragged away by another. Sam wanted to yell that it wasn't his fault. The kid didn't break the machine. He didn't ask for it to almost collapse on him. Nothing he did warranted punishment.

Sam, on the other hand, understood why he was being punished. He knocked over a fair number of crates when he rushed to the boy, and since the task masters were heartless bastards, helping the boy escape being killed was enough reason for them to punish him.

Maybe this would be the thing that killed him and finally freed him from the Hell he could only wish wasn't real.

If only it could all just be a bad dream.

If only he could open his eyes and find himself back in a crummy motel room with Dean and a decorative style that left him nauseated. He would gladly put up with Dean turning the TV on a little too loud while Sam tried to do homework, and then reciting off the lines to the commercials they saw hundreds of times before in exaggerating impressions.

As it were, he would settle for opening his eyes and finding himself with his mother in an eternal peace.

Dean bounced his leg on the ball of his foot. The plastic seat of the airport chair numbed his ass, but he'd been sitting in it for hours now.

Forging three passports took too long.

Getting on a flight to Hong Kong took too long, all because the closest airport is so small that it only has a handful of international flights depart from it on a given day. In fact, they weren't even flying straight to Hong Kong. They had to find a ticket to an international airport in Chicago, from which they would finally be able to get on a flight to Hong Kong and to Sam.

Unfortunately, the first flight was still over an hour away.

He was going to crawl out of his skin by then. Not to mention the thought of being thirty thousand feet in the air didn't help.

That little fact didn't help at all.

"Flying isn't that bad," John said. He sat next to Dean and handed him a grease stained bag of food.

Dean was about to ask for a beer instead, but he remembered what happened the last time he decided to go out and have a drink. So he settled with sad, small burgers that tasted more like sand than food.

"I like the ground," Dean said. "At least if I crash on the open road, it doesn't mean that I'll be falling back to the earth like some freaking meteor."

"You can stay if you want."

Dean was shocked that his dad could even suggest that. He shook his head and glanced out of one of the many windows at the planes outside. "No," Dean said. "If Sammy is in Hong Kong, then I'm going to Hong Kong."

John nodded, like he knew that would be the answer all along. And Dean thought that he probably did know that, but just wanted to hear it said aloud.

"Then what?" Dean asked. "What are we doing once we get Sam? There's no way he's going to want to be thrown straight into a hunt. We have no idea what shape he'll be in or what's happened to him. What if Rich was right and they—"

John cut him off there with a raised hand. "I know, Dean. We'll figure that out once we have Sammy back. We can plan according to what will be best for him and go from there. Maybe head to Pastor Jim's for a break."

Pastor Jim's was always a place of safety for them, so Dean nodded his agreement for that idea. One thing they both knew Sam would be needing is the feeling of safety. Dean hoped that, despite Sam's recent teenage attitude, his presence still provided safety and comfort like it always did when Sam was Sammy-with-no-name-corrections.

He refused to believe that there would be damage done to Sam that Dean couldn't fix. This was his fault in the end, so he needed to be able to fix it.

Maybe it would take weeks. Months. Hell, years could pass and Dean would still be doing his damnedest to patch Sam back together if he still needed it.

Sam certainly wouldn't be getting out of his sight again. Ever.

If only the airplane would freaking hurry up and get them on their way to Hong Kong.

When they dragged him outside, Sam prepared himself for another night spent in a dark chill broken only by neon signs and the rumble of cars. But instead of shackling him to the building again, they tied his hands with thick rope, and he feared that he was being shipped to Liu. That the weekend had come and it was time for the switch he heard them talk about.

That his arms were raised and tied to a pole behind the factory brought him some relief, because it meant he still had at least a little more time before being brought to the mercy of Liu. He saw the nightclub that Liu owned when the other slaves he bought were dropped off there, and he really didn't want to be on the inside there.

There were some things that Sam wasn't sure he would be able to go through without being irrevocably broken, and the threat of Liu's ownership looming over him promised to be among that list. Hell, these past weeks were filled with things that Sam wasn't sure he would ever be able to forget, granted that he escaped them in the first place.

For now, he could only go through the motions and ignore the non-physical wounds accumulating.

His felt the back of his shirt being cut away.

And just go through the motions.

He squeezed his eyes shut, with an idea of what was about to happen, but no certainty.

He heard it before he felt it. The crack of the whip and then its clash with the bared skin of his back. He cried out in surprise, but his shock collar went off and only added to his pain.

The whip collided with his back again, and he grit his teeth together to keep quiet.

He had no idea how many times they lashed him. No one told him, but he didn't expect them to really. He wasn't anything to them.

Even when his body became numb to the pain and he didn't feel much at all, he still heard the crack of the whip and felt the jolt as it struck. He felt warm blood coat his back and drip off, oozing out of his split flesh.

This was going to leave a hell of a mark (or series of marks), but he was glad that he wouldn't be able to see the scars since they were on his back.

He knew every human had a limit, that the physical body could only withstand so much abuse. He'd been in bad shape before, after hunts gone wrong. But then he always had Dean or his dad hovering over him, if only to assure themselves that he would pull through.

It ended eventually, but Sam wasn't sure how long it'd been since they started. The sun was dimmer, but that could just be his vision dimming from the blood loss and his body shutting down to protect him.

They cut his hands loose, but no one was there to prevent his collapse to the ground. Blurs in the shapes of humans moved around, pulled him away from the pole and strung up the kid he saved from the machine.

Sam watched him struggle, and tried to push himself to his feet in an attempt to help him, but his body wouldn't cooperate with him. He could barely raise himself a matter of inches, much less all the way up to his feet.

He couldn't focus his eyes on any one object, and the sound of the whip and the boy's screams sounded much farther away than they should have, but he didn't have enough left in him to process any of it anymore. He let his eyes slip closed, supposing that the bloodstains they trailed over moments ago belonged to him.

The plane creaked. The plane fucking creaked, and neither his dad nor Caleb seemed to pay it any mind. They were thousands of feet in the air inside of a creaking hunk of metal. How was that not a reason to be freaking out?

John sighed and gave Dean a couple of pats on his shoulder. "You're fine, Dean," he said. "Planes are perfectly safe."

"Tell that to the people in the planes that have crashed," Dean said with his jaw clenched. "Oh wait, they're dead."

"Afraid of a little flying, Dean?" Caleb asked with a shit-eating grin.

"At least I've never slept with a ghoul," Dean said without missing a beat. "Doesn't that make you a necrophiliac, Caleb?"

Caleb paled, the grin wiped off his face. "You remember that?"

Dean half-laughed, half-snorted. "Of course, I do. I was the one who walked in on you. And you are not a sight for sore eyes, dude."

When both Caleb and John smiled at him, he realized that Caleb was just trying to lighten his mood. To take his mind off of the flying and the darkness of their world as of late (and how could his world be light without Sam there?).

The short, light-heartened moment was over as quickly as it started, but it put the situation into better perspective for Dean. He was on a plane, sure, but he was there voluntarily with his dad and Caleb. He got to eat salted peanuts out of little blue packets and wash them down with mini cups of bubbly soda.

How different had Sam's flight been? Dean could guess that he didn't get any little refreshments from flight attendants.

And it should be Sam sitting where he was. Safe and warm and comfortable. Not on the other side of the world as a slave.

Dean should be the one alone in Hong Kong, paying for his own mistakes, but his dad was right. He was over the age gap the traffickers had wanted, but Sam fit into it (or at least looked like he did with his small stature).

The most he could do was crack his knuckles in anticipation of the moment where he could beat anyone involved in Sam's slavery until their blood coated his hands.

In Chicago, he was forced into a booth at one of the airport restaurants. Their next flight wouldn't be leaving for awhile, so John and Caleb saw it as the perfect time to force Dean into eating. Because no matter how much he felt he had to punish himself, that he didn't deserve to have a nice meal while Sam suffered, he knew that he needed to keep his strength up.

He needed to stay strong enough to put himself between Sam and the world.

The waitress tried to flirt with him unsuccessfully, then moved on to Caleb and found a little more success. On a normal day, Dean would have made fun of him for being the girl's back-up plan. But he didn't feel up to it knowing that he wouldn't be able to elbow Sam afterwards with a wink as Sam tried to roll his eyes and appear annoyed, even though he couldn't completely hide the smile forming.

"How long until boarding?" Dean asked. He ate half of the food on his plate, but even that felt like a chore. He never realized how difficult it would be to force himself to do the tasks that kept him alive when Sam wasn't there.

He never realized how he didn't truly appreciate Sam's presence when he had the chance. When he was bright and curious, qualities that Dean prayed remained intact throughout this mess. He couldn't lose Sam over this in any capacity. He couldn't be the reason Sam was lost.

"Still forty-five minutes," John said.

Dean groaned and leaned back. This was taking forever.

"There aren't any earlier flights?" he asked, for the fifth or sixth time.

"I got the earliest one I could," John said, infinitely patient with Dean (to Dean's amazement). "You know I did. It's just that not every plane departing is going to Hong Kong."

Dean nodded. He did know that. He had tried bargaining with the employee who sold them the tickets (without much success because "Sir, we can't schedule a new flight just for you") before John shooed him away.

"I want this to be over," Dean admitted.

John and Caleb both nodded, and Dean noticed that neither of them ate much more than he did.

Dean didn't look forward to boarding another plane. He would be happy to never board one again, because who actually enjoys being in a death trap that high in the air? But Sam needed him, and getting to Sam required an airplane.

So board a plane, he would.

Sam woke up on one of the thin blankets in one of the rooms used as a slave bedroom. He didn't remember moving there. In fact, he didn't remember much of the night or previous day at all.

He remembered the pain, which still assaulted him when he tried to move.

When his vision cleared, he noticed that he was alone in the room except for the other boy who'd been whipped. The task masters must know how useless they'll be after severe punishment. Even Sam knew that in their current states they would be more of a liability than a resource.

It was just a shame that his day off had to come at such a high price.

The day passed in a haze. He didn't get food. He barely got anything to drink (would have had nothing if the girl he gave his porridge to once hadn't brought him a drink at bedtime).

He heard the pained moans and muffled crying of the other boy, but it never fully registered in the haze of his mind that they felt the same pain. That Sam probably would have made the same sounds if he could. If he thought that verbalizing the pain would ease it.

He dreamt of Dean hovering over him when he woke up, like he had simply been asleep the whole time, eyes wide with worry and asking if he was alright.

For a few moments, he fooled himself into believing it was real.

But he was pulled back into cruel reality the next morning when he was expected to be back to work. The cold water on his back in the shower burned, and every movement threatened to reopen the barely-formed scabs.

He was given a new (new to him), non-shredded shirt and thrown back into the routine. If he thought that it was difficult working after he was simply kicked, he could have never prepared for the pure agony that coursed through his body now. He could barely lift anything asked of him. His walk became more of a shuffle.

He felt the eyes of all the nearby task masters focused on him. They started giving him orders when they passed by. Told him to move faster. Told him that he could carry more than that.

Work harder.

Don't stumble.

One more slip means more lashes.

He thought that more lashes might kill him, but it didn't seem like a bad thought.

A task master stumbled into him when he was moving a crate to be shipped and knocked him off balance and to the ground (he would swear that it was done on purpose).

It didn't matter that Sam did nothing wrong. He learned from his time in this new life that the only thing he needed to do wrong was exist, and he would be punished for it.

He would be punished for trying not to exist. He remembered Jerry and Rich forcing protein shakes down his throat, and he almost gagged from how real the memory was. How he could feel it like it was happening in that moment.

But then the pain of falling and the wounds on his back reopening twisted his stomach in a way that, when coupled with memories of force feedings, made him throw up half-digested rice porridge on the task master's shoes.

An arm with an iron grip pulled him to his feet and led him, half-staggering, through the factory. Sam knew what came next, and he also knew that it would be too much. His body couldn't handle any more abuse in its current state.

He looked around desperately, at the other slaves who did their best to not look like they were staring. At the other slaves who did their best to appear busy and docile so as to avoid punishment themselves. Every one of them looked the part of complete helplessness. Complete submission into a life that wasn't worth living, but somehow better than dying because of little hopes.

Everything about the scene made something in him snap. His head felt like it was splitting apart, and when he swiped his wrist under his nose, it came back bloody.

He fell back to his knees, but the task master didn't stop him. He didn't try to keep dragging Sam.

How odd.

Next came the heat. Unbearable heat surrounding him, and Sam came back to his senses enough to comprehend that a lot of commotion was going on around him. Screaming and yelling. Running footsteps. Machines crumbling apart in a mess of creaking and metal-on-metal screeches.

All he wanted was to curl into himself, to find a way to ease the pain in his head that nearly brought him to tears. The pain that was bad enough to distract from the pain of the wounds on his back reopening. When something fell and grazed his leg, but still sent it into a state made of searing torment, he knew that he couldn't stay huddled on the ground.

He opened his eyes, but all he saw was fire.

Dean knew the moment that the plane touched down. He felt the plane drop a bit as it settled on the ground, still going a speed faster than he could safely go in the Impala (which he never realized how much he missed until it was left in another continent).

Caleb managed to fall asleep on the plane, but John and Dean both stayed awake. Dean out of fear that he would close his eyes and open them to the plane falling out of the sky. John, however, spent the flight with a look of cold determination plastered on his face. The look that said he was planning on how to execute a hunt. The look of him considering every plan of action until he found the perfect one.

And God, did Dean hope that he concocted the perfect plan to get Sam back.

The pilot's voice came over the intercom and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong."

Dean let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

They were finally back in the same country as Sam.

They were finally getting closer.

Author's Note: Whipping and fire everywhere, good luck Sam. At least his family + Caleb are in the same country now. That's a plus.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who reads, reviews, follows, and favorites. I'm glad that you're all enjoying the story so far. Please stop and take a minute to leave a review with your thoughts.

Special Announcement: It seems there's a fair amount of fear about Sam being saved on time, but I'm not about to give out spoilers. Well, aside from the fact that there will be a sequel to this story that will deal with Sam's recovery. I'll give more details when the time comes, but for now rest easy in the fact that even when it's over, it won't really be over.