Disclaimer All recognizable characters/settings belong to their creators. The stories listed here are transformative works, from which I've made/am making no financial profit.

Warnings Language; references/allusions to torture and non-con.

11. Where the Wild Things Are

Sam is half awake and holding off full alert for as long as he can. The car window is cool against his cheek, the motion soporific. He grips them tight and hugs them close: these first few waking seconds when he's certain he's in the Impala and that if he flicks his eyes to the side he'll see his brother in his peripheral vision, humming quietly to himself as he guides the car along the curving highway, left hand dangling out the window, alternately stroking his baby's metal skin and lazily trailing in the breeze.

"Tell me it wasn't a dream," he whispers, as he does finally slant his eyes left to look at Bobby. "Tell me it wasn't a dream. What you said."

Bobby seems adrift in thought himself and he jumps slightly, recovers, pulls the truck off onto the verge and shuts her off before twisting in his seat.

"No dream, Sam," he says gently. "It was him, sure as I'm looking at you now, boy. Your brother's alive. Dean's alive."

Sam gazes mutely at the older man, brings his arms up, hugs himself tight for a minute. Then he explodes into motion, slamming out of the truck.

Bobby knows enough to leave the boy for a few minutes: way too much like his father, that one. It brings back memories of Winchester senior's cold, lasting anger and sullen, brooding sloughs of despond that lasted for days at a time, and Bobby finds himself longing for Dean's nuclear meltdown rage that fizzles so hot it burns itself out in an instant, leaving the boy sunshine-bright, like the sky after a thunderstorm.

He sees Sam in the rearview mirror, walking away ten feet or so behind the truck and abruptly sitting down in the dust. He lets the boy take five, hooks a bottle of water from the back seat, climbs out and stretches before making his way to where Sam slumps.

He dangles the bottle.

No response.

Bobby sits down next to Sam, his knees creaking in protest. "I know what this is, Sam, and you can stop it right now," he says, matter-of-factly. "You didn't know. And from what I'm told, it looked pretty conclusive."

Sam's lower lip trembles. "I left him there. Hurt. Defenseless. I walked away when he needed me most." He looks up. "You see a pattern here, Bobby?"

Bobbt leans back, looks at the sky, thinks he's seen the self-pity trip too many times before, from this boy's father. Then he pushes up onto his feet. "I see daylight burning, boy," he says. "Now, what say we go get your brother?"

He walks back to the truck, doesn't look to see if Sam is following. Truth be told, Bobby doesn't have the time to indulge him. "Wallowing in guilt ain't gonna git her done, kid," he hollers back as climbs in the truck and starts up the engine. And Sam is right on his heels, settling in shotgun, his face a mixture of embarrassment, relief, immense gratitude.

Bobby doesn't skip a beat. "Four nights ago now, woods north east of Hibbing. I was following up missing hikers, reckoned it might be a wendigo. Seems from what your Deputy Kathleen says, it might be this Lee Bender carrying on the family business."

He hears sputtering noises, glances over expecting to see Sam dissolving in tears, is mighty surprised to hear him start laughing instead. But it's forced, unsettling, unhinged even.

"Lee Bender," Sam hoots. "A bendigo. That's what Dean would say… it's a bendigo." And he rubs his eyes as tears start to leak out, until he can't stem the flow and they stream unchecked. "Dean," he says then, softly, as if it hurts to say his brother's name. "Dean."

Bobby keeps his eyes on the road and keeps driving. Reaches out with his right arm, pulls Sam's head down onto his shoulder, rubs his back and feels the damp soak through his shirt and tee. Finds that he does have the time to indulge him.

Sam calms down gradually, finally breathes easier, pats Bobby's leg and then pulls away, sitting up and exhaling deeply.

"Tell me about my brother, Bobby."

Bobby gives it to him straight. "I came on him real sudden, was full sure he was the wendigo. Jesus, if the moon hadn't lit him up just that second I'd have let him have the flare right in the guts." The awful what if? has a wave of nausea rising in Bobby, and he pauses for a second. "Something bad's going down there, Sam. He looked real sick… hurt. He didn't know me… he was petrified, seemed to think I might hurt him."

He looks over at the boy. Sam's face is pale but firmly set, his emotions carefully controlled. "I thought I was looking at a ghost, a revenant…" Bobby goes on, and he sucks in a breath at the mental image of what he really feared – insane laughter and obsidian eyes mocking him, a hideous perversion of the boy he loves as his own. "Or maybe worse," he voices the thought, "maybe a demon. And then all of a sudden it was like he thought of something… like a lightbulb moment. And he told me to run. And someone started taking potshots and God forgive me, I did run… I left him. God forgive me, I left him when he needed me most."

He looks at Sam, and Sam looks at him.

And Bobby thinks it might be the first thing they've ever really had in common.

Gabe's no fuckin' fun these last two days, according to his brother.

"You're no fuckin' fun no more, boy!" he yells right in Gabe's face, and so help him Gabe cowers because Lee is damned scary when he's like this.

Lee sinks his boot in Gabe's gut, reaches down and grabs Pa's bag from his frantic grasp, scattering the contents in all directions, and Gabe is horrified, rallies himself and scrabbles about desperately picking up the bottles, greedily reaching for the precious baggie with its promise of another world.

"You got no right," he cries, trying and failing to dodge another kick, pain from his leg and from hidden places deeper inside him making him clumsy.

Missy is beside herself, bleating a protest as she hovers just out of Lee's reach and finally crying out in alarm as Lee grips Gabe's collar and flings him aside, turning to follow with an inhuman gleam in his eyes. To find his way barred by the dog. The animal stands guard over Gabe as he shivers there, its soft whining interspersed with a low growl and its hackles raised.

"Well if that don't fuckin' beat all," Lee cries, and laughter bubbles up out of him, long and loud and hearty. "You got the magic touch, Gabe," he says in amusement, as he sits down and pours himself some coffee. "You got Missy here kissin' it better every night and now even the fuckin' dog is puttin' out."

He reaches down, picks up an errant pill bottle, pitches it in Gabe's direction. "Don't forget the red ones, boy," he sniggers. "You know how them red ones cheer you up!"

Gabe tucks the bag into his bedroll, retrieves the red pills, eyes his brother cautiously. "You feel better now, Lee?" he ventures.

Lee puffs out air in a whistle. "Yeah." He pats the ground next to him. "C'mere, purty boy!"

Gabe feels pathetically grateful to be forgiven for whatever it was he did – though in truth he doesn't think he did anything – and he shuffles over, sits down.

Lee drapes his arm around him, pulls his head down onto his shoulder. "Gabe, boy, you know I don't really mean it when I get mad," he says softly. "It jus' comes outta nowhere, jus' lights up like a fire. But ole Lee don't mean it. You're my family, boy. My brother."

Gabe sighs out his tension, relaxes into the embrace.

His brother is all he needs. His brother is his life, and always has been.

Sam wants his brother.

He wants his brother in that way little kids want their mom when they get an owie, when thunder claps in the darkness, when they dream about the boogeyman. Wants Dean to pick him up, set him back on his feet, tell him everything's okay because he isn't alone. Knows that when – if – Dean ever does that again, he's going to have to look his brother in the eye and 'fess up: yup, Dean, I walked away. Again.

Hudak has three backpacks prepped and parked in her hallway, and is in the middle of rolling and strapping sleeping bags when they arrive. She hugs Sam briefly, hard and tight, orders him straight to the shower.

Under cover of the water's gush, it all pours out, and Sam leans on the cold tile and bawls like he hasn't done since the night he was ordered out of the ICU where Dean lay gasping for every breath while his damaged heart beat slower and slower with every hour that passed. He remembers that at the time he thought nothing would ever leave him feeling as desolate. But these last weeks, living with the knowledge of his brother's death, living beyond Dean – for that is what this has been to him – have rendered him unrecognizable to himself.

His brother is everywhere… the phantom sitting next to him in the car, the unseen presence keeping step with him, the light touch he imagines on his back, the voice he can't quite hear rambling in his head as it's carried away on the wind. Everything smells of Dean, of gun oil, cheap aftershave, stale beer, and Sam wears his brother's worn tees when he beds down, buries his face in the fabric while sleep becomes a distant memory.

Each day has been Groundhog Day as he goes over it again, again, again: if Dean hadn't needed the can, if he'd gotten straight in the car, if Hudak had given them a ride, if they'd run upstream instead of down. Each night has been drink-sodden but though the alcohol robs Sam of any outward vocal coherence, the voice inside his head still screams loud and clear as it rages at his brother… you fucking bastard, how could you leave me like this, why come get me and then do this?

And inevitably it has always come back round to the fact that when Dean lay gray-faced and dying after his heart attack, he had been so casual about Sam being left behind – and Sam had known it wasn't just bravado. Dean really had believed that losing him wouldn't matter to Sam, that Sam cared so little he would just take it in stride, go back to school, get his degree, become some hotshot lawyer and maybe think fleetingly of his brother on Dean's birthday before putting his memory back in mothballs until the following year. "Well take a fucking look!" he howls out into the water, not caring if Bobby, Hudak and the whole town of Hibbing can hear him. "Look at what you did to me, you fucking bastard! Look at what you did when you left! How could you think it wouldn't matter? When it matters more than anything! Anything…"

He slides down and sits on the mosaic floor of the shower stall, sobs at the thought that his brother is out there somewhere full sure that he, Sam, is getting on with his life… full sure that his loss doesn't matter. And somehow that's worse than thinking his brother was dead.

He weeps until the water runs cold.

They drive up to the trailhead that was Bobby's point of access, and walk all afternoon. When they stop to eat, Bobby pores over the map and Hudak hands Sam a foil-wrapped footlong, packed to bursting with some generic deli meat and all sorts of plant life.

Sam suddenly realizes he's starving, has this mental image of himself either throwing his head back and inserting the sub straight down into his stomach like a carnival sword swallower, or his lower jaw miraculously elongating so he can dump the entire thing in there, just like those alien lizards disguised as humans did with the rats in V. He decides he'll stick with that fantasy, flashing back to his teenage brother's child-like delight at that very scene when they both sat up half the night watching it even though Sam had a math test the next day. And he resolves to make a list of all the schlock horror B-movies he and Dean have watched together and remind his brother of them often: godzilla, mothra, killer rabbits, giant ants, that one about the doberman that gets bitten by a vampire bat and becomes Zoltan, Hound of Dracula.

Hudak and Bobby have circled landmarks on the map: the Bender place, the approximate spot along the river where the dog jumped Dean – Bobby squeezing his shoulder when he points to it – the location of the abandoned truck, where the hikers' remains were discovered, the last known location of the four who are missing, and where Bobby saw Dean.

"Looks like they've been following the river pretty closely," Hudak observes, pointing to the lake marked on the map. "That's Nett Lake, where the cabin Swenson told us about might be."

"If it even exists," Sam mutters.

"Well, looking at how much time has passed and where I saw Dean it don't look like they're moving all that fast," Bobby says, and he leaves the whyof it unspoken although Sam's imagination fills in the gaps, taunting him with images of his brother's injuries as described by Swenson.

"Did he look hurt? Was he hurt? How was his leg?" he asks again, even though Bobby has patiently explained that it was too dark to see much beyond his brother's black eye.

The old man is patient as ever as he says it again. "It was dark, Sam, and he was sitting down. I didn't see his leg."

Sam drums his fingers on his knee. It's like a hunger, the desperation, the sheer lust to know, to see for himself that his brother is alive.

Not an hour after they set off after packing up camp the next morning Bobby, ten yards or so ahead, makes his way up to the crest of a ridge and abruptly drops to his haunches. Hudak and Sam follow suit, crouching as they make their way up to join him.

They're overlooking a small clearing thirty yards or so further along the course of the river, and although the tree cover is thick it's clear that people are camping there. Hudak wriggles out of her backpack, roots around in it and pulls out a pair of binoculars, senses Sam's need and hands them to him.

For long seconds Sam scopes the clearing, barely daring to breathe. And then everything drains out of him, like somebody pulled the plug. He sets the binoculars down, rolls over onto his back, his arm covering his eyes.

Bobby snatches the binoculars up faster than Jesse James reaching for his pistol, gazes through them, finds what he seeks within a few seconds. "Dean," he breathes. "Gotcha."

Hudak produces the flask she filled with coffee before they broke camp that morning, pours Sam a cup while Bobby wriggles further up the ridge, binoculars glued to his eyes.

"You okay?" she prods gently, because she's way too sharp not to have noticed that Sam hasn't taken any more than that one first glance down into the campsite.

"Yeah…" he answers hoarsely. "Yeah. It's… I never thought… I never…"

And it's true: even though Bobby had seen his brother, some small part of Sam still hadn't dared to hope or dream. But there he is, almost close enough to touch.

Bobby slides back down, hands Sam the binoculars, moves to take a draught of coffee, calm himself, take stock. And formulate a plan, Sam knows. He takes a deep, steadying breath, crawls back up the ridge, focuses on the campsite. He can see the kid pottering about, crossing back and forth in front of his brother. "Get out of the fucking way," he murmurs and she obliges as if he'd been standing right next to her handing out orders.

Dean sits and stares, his stillness unnatural to Sam, used as he is to his brother's constant buzz of manic energy. Dean twitches even in sleep, but in the circle of the binocular lenses, he's a statue, unmoving, looking at nothing as the kid bustles. It's tranquil… but not. And Sam can't help thinking that it speaks of a not-thereness. Even as he drinks in the sight of his brother, it's disturbingly like looking at something that's a very clever carbon copy: Dean – but not-Dean. But then, at last, there is a sudden movement – a distinctly odd one.

Dean puts his hands up to his face, covers his eyes.

It's quiet down there, just his brother and the kid. And something occurs to Sam. "It's just him and the kid down there," he calls softly back in Bobby's direction. "I can't see Bender or the dog, but Dean's just sitting there. He isn't secured or anything, and it doesn't look as if the kid has a weapon…"

He looks through the binoculars again, sees his brother still sitting with his hands over his eyes.

Bobby completes the thought for him. "So why is he just sitting there…?"

"Could it be the kid?" Hudak throws into the mix. "I mean, maybe he's protecting her, doesn't want to leave her with the brother?"

Bobby looks over at Sam, a meaningful glance. "Could be," he says. "Dean's always had a soft spot for kids… he'd cut off his own arm before he let a kid get hurt on his account."

Sam chews his lip. "He could clear out and take the kid with him, I guess, but she'd slow him down." He doesn't quite know what to make of it, but Bobby interrupts his train of thought.

"What about the fact he didn't seem to know me the other night?" he says. "Boy's taken more than one nasty blow to the head over the years. I hate to say this, but if he was tapped hard enough he might not be thinking straight."

"So he could have gone native?" Hudak suggests, and Sam is full sure his face falls as far as hers at the idea, at the thought of what that might involve, at the thought of four missing hikers and two bodies the FBI forensics report suggested might have been the entrée in the latest Bender banquet if its abundant use of the description butchered was anything to go by.

"Bender must still be in the picture somehow," Bobby says, after a long moment of silence. "Had to have been him shooting at me the other night. Fits in with leaving Dean staked out like that… it was like it was a set-up, the whole thing, to draw me out."

He must see Sam face fall, because he continues quickly. "But the fact your brother warned me, Sam… that tells me he had no part in it. He near jumped out of his skin when I disturbed him, wasn't expecting it at all. And he told me to run. He wouldn't have done that if he was in cahoots with Bender."

It makes Sam feel better, but not by much. He turns to monitor the campsite again, stiffens. "Fuck… it's the dog."

And now Lee Bender himself walks into the camp. And apart from the weird few minutes when Dean hid his face, it's the first time Sam's seen his brother react to anything at all, as he looks up sharply, starts jiggling his right leg up and down.

"Fuck," Sam breathes again. "He's scared."

Gabe can't shake the feeling that he's being watched. He sits as still as he can so as not to draw attention to himself, but suddenly he can't bear it, reaches up and covers his eyes so it can't see him.

He knows Missy is getting food ready for him and he doesn't want it. All he craves is release, escape, and he knows where it lies, too. But even though the rainbow pills and the peyote set him free from the confines of flesh and bone, some small part of him knows that they render the walls of his prison even more impenetrable. Because the fall will be brutal as it always is, the dream will come, the pain, and the morning will be a miasma of sheer ache, and the awful feeling that something is wrong inside, in his soul, in his head, in his body. And the awful certainty that no one is coming.

A swift clip to the top of the head jolts him back to awareness.

"Gabe, snap out of it boy," his brother says as he walks by.

"Yes sir," slips out before Gabe can stop it, and he reaches out to snag the dog as it sits and scratches, thinks how funny it is that he only really feels safe now knowing that Sam is close by, remembering how the dog placed itself between him and his brother the day before.

Lee sits and watches, smiles. "Well look at that," he muses. "Man's best fuckin' friend."

He observes them for a few seconds, gets up, roots around his pack, produces a rope.

Gabe is mute as Lee bends and loops the rope around the dog's neck. "C'mon Sammy boy," he says kindly, clicking his tongue at the dog. I'm gonna show you your new spot."

The dog placidly follows him over to the cart, where he secures the rope to the spokes of the wheel. Unperturbed, it circles around three times, tucks itself up tidily, panting gently.

"Good dog," Lee says, as he returns to sit opposite Gabe. "Well, Gabe, kiddo," he smiles then. "Alone at last."

And Gabe feels himself start to shake. "Lee…" he whispers, his throat thick and dry. "Please, Lee, please… don't."

Sam feels what's left of his breakfast curdle in his stomach as he watches Dean put his arm around the dog and hang onto it, flashes back to the animal ripping savagely at his helpless brother as he screamed impotent rage from the opposite side of the riverbank. His tension lifts slightly as Bender leads it over to the cart and tethers it before going to sit back near Dean, apparently engaging him in conversation.

The explosion of violence is so unexpected Sam cries out in shock.

The bigger man launches himself at Dean, knocks his smaller frame flying, buries his boot in his gut, then hauls him up to land a fusillade of vicious blows with his fists as Dean reaches out his hands, apparently trying to either calm Lee down or beg for mercy – certainly not in an effort to defend himself, for he isn't even attempting to fight back. It's left to the girl to grab hold of Bender's arm and scream at him to stop, while the dog barks frenziedly and practically twists itself inside out trying to escape the rope and join in.

Sam sees all of this in a split-second of time before he leaps to his feet and takes off, only to be tackled and brought crashing down by Bobby as Hudak picks up the binoculars to get a look at what has spooked him so badly.

She curses, drops the binoculars, snaps, "We need to break him out of there now."

"Let me go," Sam cries, and he tries to throw Bobby off, but the stocky hunter has him trapped.

"Look. At. Me!" Bobby hisses, right into Sam's face. It's the kind of tone his dad always used and it gets Sam's attention like nothing else can or does – except seeing his defenseless brother being beaten to death.

Bobby doesn't complicate matters any more than he has to. "Crashing in there with both barrels blazing will just get your brother or the kid killed," he says, very clear so Sam will understand every word. "I'll run interference. You will sneak, I repeat, sneak, down there and grab him once Bender's off the scene."

Sam nods swiftly, and Bobby pats him on the cheek, pushes up, crests the ridge, and bellows down at the campsite.

"Hey you! Lee Bender!"

Sam scrabbles for the binoculars, sees his brother unceremoniously flung to the ground as Bender turns and squints up, eyes widening as he sees Bobby.

"What are you waiting for, asswipe!" Bobby shouts. "You want me? Come get me!"

Bender smiles, reaches for his gun, and lopes into the trees.

Bobby heads off, crashing through the undergrowth, making as much noise as he can, while Hudak grabs their packs and conceals them behind a tree.

Sam picks up his gun and Hudak moves to follow him, but he raises his hand, thinking straight at last. "Stay here. If something happens to Bobby or Bender figures he's been had, I might need someone outside the camp pissing in."

He can tell she doesn't like it, but he's right and she nods, returns to park herself on the ridge as Sam picks his way through the trees as quietly as he can.

Roughly five minutes after he jogs off in pursuit of the pig, who he recognizes full well even in daylight, Lee gets a funny feeling something's not right about this.

Roughly two minutes after that, Bobby gets a funny feeling he's not being chased any more.

The kid sees Sam first, glancing up from where she's trying to haul his just-conscious brother up off his belly, and Sam feels an overwhelming wave of relief as he sees Dean bat at her in irritation and try to push himself up under his own steam. Missy moves as fast as a rattlesnake, rolling and rising back onto her feet in the sort of fluid motion Dean's always been so good at and Sam never has mastered. He'd probably be whistling in admiration if he wasn't looking down the barrels of the gun she has pointed straight at him.

"I know you…" she says, cocking her head, eyes glinting with a sharp intelligence Sam can't recall seeing her display back at the Bender place.

He keeps her covered with his own gun, ignores her, ignores the dog, snarling its fury and still in danger of hanging itself on its own leash as it struggles to get free. He focuses all his attention on his groaning brother, wants nothing more than to drop his weapon and race to gather Dean in his arms, hug him until he yelps for mercy and snarks about chick-flick moments. Sam knows his face is wreathed in smiles despite the gun pointed at him, and he calls his brother's name.

Dean looks up, and blood is oozing from a cut on his temple, his lip is split, his right eye and cheek are bruised. He's buried in a huge sweater and baggy combats that don't disguise his weight loss because it's so appallingly clear in his face, sharper and more fine-boned than it has ever looked, his pallor deathly, eyes circled blue-gray.

Eyes that stare at Sam, through him, with no spark of recognition.

"Dean?" Sam prompts softly, and he reaches out his hand. The effect is electrifying: his brother flips over from all fours on to his butt, scrabbles backwards, his sheer fright clear as day.

Sam can't help it: horrified, he starts towards Dean, ignores the kid and her gun, knows that he's calling his brother's name now in rising desperation. But still somewhere in the back of his mind he registers that the dog has abruptly stopped its din and some sixth sense tells him to whirl, drop, point, shoot, as it flies at him, trailing the frayed rope in its wake. It seems to hang suspended in mid-air for a fraction of a second, before flopping bonelessly to the ground.

Everything falls silent as the echo of the gunshot fades, and Sam stares at the dog, then at the kid, who still has him covered and doesn't react at all to the animal's grisly demise.

But suddenly that doesn't matter, as Sam's attention is drawn again to his brother, who sits hugging his knees, rocking back and forth, gasping and keening. And who finally quiets, looks up, meets Sam's gaze with his familiar soft green eyes unrecognizable, recast as ice-cold emerald chips shadowed with unspeakable horrors.

"Mister, you shot my dog," he says, his voice like gravel.

And a blow from behind knocks Sam into the void.