Translations
Author: Cheryl W.
Disclaimer: I do not own Dean, Sam or any rights to Supernatural, nor am I making any profit from this story.
Authors note: Sorry about the delay in posting! The chapter just wouldn't come together and then my internet connection went AWOL!
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Chapter 12: Winchester Water Torture
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Pain. Dean Winchester was no stranger to it, knew the hot feel of its touch intimately. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, its phantom tendrils would jerk him awake, would have him clawing at a wound long since healed. Left disoriented, stripped of his guard, fear would then slither into his soul, fear for the future, for the pain that might be in store for him the next day or on the next hunt or on his final hunt. But maybe worse than the fear was the dread, the doubt that coiled in him, that he might not prove strong enough or brave enough or man enough to endure what lay ahead.
It was a bitter irony that holy water was proving Dean's self doubt well–founded, that something only evil should fear was igniting a level of agony in him that was doing its best to break him, body and soul. That, when that first drop of holy water fell upon the wound on his side, a raw scream ripped from him as the water felt like acid, burning through his skin and veins, muscles and bones.
Whatever uncertainties Sam had about the validity of their "holy" water or doubts that the wolf's evil had any effect on his brother's health vanished at Dean's reaction. His brother's scream of agony decimated Sam's composure, scared him, broke him in ways he hadn't been before. With trembling frantic hands, Sam tilted the water bottle upright. Unwilling to allow another drop of the water to touch Dean, to hurt his brother, to garner another cry of unmitigated agony from someone that endured pain better than anyone else Sam had ever met. In misery, Sam watched Dean roll onto his wounded side, left hand clutching the source of his agony, knees drawn up, head tucked down almost touching Sam's knee as his scream died down to a low moan in his throat.
Quickly sitting the water bottle down, Sam raised his right hand and rested it at the base of his brother's bowed head. Leaning down to see Dean's face, Sam felt sick at the agony that lined his brother's facial features. Giving Dean's neck an encouraging squeeze, Sam stammered, "I'm sorry, Dean. I'm sorry. It's over now." But Dean only coiled into a tighter ball, groaned lower in his throat, gripped more of the mattress in his right hand, because the agony wasn't lessening, was intensifying, was threatening to spread across his torso. "Just hold on, the pain will fade, I promise," Sam soothed, using that gentle tone that he had never heard from his own father, had instead picked up from Dean.
Dean wanted to hold onto Sam's promise, to let it blindly lie to him, to have the agony stop now, to just this once take the easy path and to heck with the consequences. But somewhere down deep, where all his lies melted away to truth, Dean knew what consequences there could be if he gave in now, let the job go unfinished, half done. Consequences that he alone wouldn't bear, consequences that would also affect Sam, endanger Sam. And that just wasn't acceptable.
His eyes clamped shut, his body still curled tightly to ward off the agony, Dean lowly ordered through his clenched jaw. "Can't…stop. Finish it, Sam. Now."
"Dean," Sam pleaded, shaking his head in denial, railing against the idea of inflicting further torture on his brother, even as he knew that the wound might not be clean.
"Please…Sammy. I want it …done," Dean breathlessly ground out, physically unable to move, to raise his head, to convey his need to Sam with a look. Instead all he could do was let his desperation seep through his words, his raw voice, to hope that Sam would honor his request.
Biting his lip, Sam nodded in agreement, though Dean couldn't see the gesture. "Ok…alright," he finally forced from his constricted throat, his reluctance mingling with resolve to not let Dean down, to not fail Dean when he was counting on him. With a final squeeze on the back of Dean's neck, Sam slid his hand down to Dean's shoulder and gently but forcefully eased Dean onto his back again. Sam kept his hand on Dean's shoulder as an anchor as he patiently waited as Dean uncoiled from the tight ball he had instinctively went into, forced himself to drop his knees and let his head fall again back onto the mattress. But Sam still couldn't even consider removing his hold on Dean, of proceeding with the next round of cleansing the wound, not until he knew Dean was ready, was really ready, wanted him to do this, understood that the last thing Sam wanted to do was this, was hurt him.
When Dean pried his eyes open, focused his gaze upon Sam, amid the pain, there was undeniable trust in the green depths. "Do it, Sam," Dean sanctioned, his voice still wracked with pain even as it conveyed strength, conviction, and trust.
Swallowing hard, his mouth dry, Sam clenched his jaw, set his teeth gnashing against one another as if it was his throat that would ache to unleash a scream this time around. Increasing the pressure of his hand on Dean's shoulder, Sam picked up the bottle of holy water and, with his eyes locked on Dean's, he poured more of the water on his brother's open wounds.
Groaning loudly, his body arching upward against Sam's restraining hand on his shoulder, Dean, for the first time, wanted to beg, not to save Sammy, not for some noble outcome, but for himself, to have the pain stop! Because this pain, it was well on its way to breaking him, of proving, once and for all, that he wasn't man enough to handle it. But where his pride faltered, his love for his brother filled in the gaps. Had him clutching the mattress under his hands instead of griping Sam's arm, knocking the bottle from his brother's hands, had him letting loose an inarticulate yell of agony instead of the 'Stop Sam! Please stop!' that was screaming in his head. Because if he broke under Sam's hands, under his brother's ministrations, Sam would break too, would think he had brought Dean to this edge, would heap his brother's pain, his brother's breakdown onto his own head, would bear that hurt in his heart.
With tears threatening, Sam knew that he couldn't bare witnessing Dean's pain for much longer, knew that his hands would increase their trembling if he didn't complete his task soon. So with resolve, he generously poured more water on the open wound and sent some of the water splashing over his brother's ribs, grateful that there was no reaction on that part of his brother's body. Then, before he lost all nerve, before Dean managed to roll away again, Sam leaned over Dean's chest, slid his arm around Dean's shoulders, pinning Dean to the ground. With a glance to his brother's pale face, closed eyes, Sam emptied the remaining water over the cut on Dean's forehead, the gashes on his cheeks. When the dousing of those wounds didn't evoke a heightened reaction from Dean, was not yet another source of agony for his brother to endure, a muffled sob of relief escaped Sam. In angry frustration, Sam tossed the now empty bottle away from Dean, as if it were the instrument of his brother's agony and not his own actions.
Remaining as he was, his arm across Dean's shoulders, his head coming to tilt against Dean's, Sam held on, didn't try to shut out the howl of agony that erupted from his brother as an anguished moan. When he felt his brother's arm on his back, he thought Dean would try to pull him away, to break free. Instead Dean's arm pressed against his back, pulling him tighter to his brother's chest with a desperation that scared Sam.
"I'm done, I'm done. The pain's gonna lessen soon, Dean. I'm here, I'm not going anywhere," Sam promised his voice gentle even as it was wracked with regret and pain and love. Tightening his grip on his brother's shoulder, Sam vowed, "And neither are you. We're staying together from here on out. I'm not going to run off on my own anymore or go getting possessed and taking shots at you…you know when I get a weird weed up my butt."
A hitch in his moan was the best Dean could offer up as a response to his brother's humor because laughter was beyond his power, not when agony was singeing along every nerve he had. But regardless of his agony, of his weakness, of the strong pull of unconsciousness, Dean refused to surrender to the void, to pile more weight onto his brother's already warped sense of guilt. Instead, Dean forced his fingers to gather some of the back of Sam's shirt into its grip, hoping that Sam would understand what the gesture meant, that he had heard his promise…was going to make him keep his word.
Feeling Dean fist his shirt in his hand, Sam slid his hand to cup the side of Dean's neck. "Hey, Dean, do you remember that time Dad got that cut on his butt and he wanted you to douse it in holy water? As soon as Dad dropped his pants you closed your eyes and you ended up pouring the water all over his back, missing his butt completely," Sam recalled with a forced laugh that trembled. "When Dad caught you closing your eyes, he asked you why and you…you said you didn't want to be mentally scarred for the rest of your life." Sam shook his head marginally against Dean's. "Crap, Dean, no matter how bad things got…you saw us through it, made us laugh, kept Dad and I …together the best you could, anyone could. I never thanked you for that, for making us a family."
Clamping his eyes shut tighter, Dean gasped out in protest, "No," feeling that he was totally unworthy of that praise, not when he had been the reason their father was dead. "No, Sam. I…I didn't," he denied, a shattered edge to his tone.
"Yeah, yeah you did, jerk. Even at the end. If you had died," Sam shook his head swallowed, was glad he didn't have to face Dean to say the words. "Dad and I…we would have never …it was always you, Dean. You were always the thing that kept us together, the one thing that Dad and I could agree on when we couldn't agree even on the color of the sky. Don't belittle that Dean, don't belittle your importance to Dad, to me. Just…don't, dude. Don't."
Feeling the edge Sam was on, what he was asking of him, needing of him, Dean opened his eyes and loosened his hand on Sam's shirt. Sliding his hand to Sam's head, Dean agreed "'Kay," because he couldn't find it in himself to deny Sam much of anything. He felt Sam's chest swell with a deep intake of air and then Sam was pulling back from him. Dean let his hand fall to the ground, let Sam go even as his eyes tracked him.
Sitting up beside Dean, Sam had intended to see how his brother's side was faring but he found he couldn't tear his eyes away from his brother's gaze. "Are you alright?" his voice breathless, worried.
"Getting there," Dean answered lowly, opting for the truth in light of his brother's emotional state.
Sam nodded his head but it took him half a minute to be able to look away, to force himself to face the damage he had inflicted on Dean's flesh in an effort to help him. The claw marks that marred Dean's flesh were now starkly visible, whatever blood had still been seeping from the wounds had stopped flowing. "Looks clean…sorta. How does it feel?" Sam asked anxiously, his eyes sliding to Dean's.
"Like some wolf clawed the crap… out of me and then acid… was poured into it," Dean wise cracked, his breath coming to him a little easier now.
"Oh, good, here I thought it might hurt or something," Sam wisecracked back, a fake smile on his face. Picking up a dry towel, he ripped it into a longer strip. "Ok, I'm going to cover it so…" he halted as he held up the fabric and eyed his brother's prone body. Suddenly his next plan of action didn't seem so easy.
Anticipating his brother's intentions to wrap the towel around his waist, Dean reached his hand toward Sam with a long suffering look that clearly said, 'what I do for you'.
"You…you sure? I could roll you over…" Sam stammered with uncertainty and concern, his dark eyes assessing his brother's state of health.
Dean's reply was to snap his fingers on his outstretched hand, "Today, Sammy," he prodded, leveling Sam with an impatient glare.
With a sigh of exasperation at egotistical big brothers, Sam wrapped his hand in Dean's offered hand and pulled his brother into a seated position. Dean's throaty groan had Sam cursing and quickly slipping his hand around Dean's back to ensure that Dean didn't topple backwards.
Though he kept his look straight ahead as if he was oblivious to his own weakness and pain, Dean wrapped his hand around Sam's knee to anchor himself, to remind himself that though the room was tilting on him, he was fine, that Sam wouldn't let him take a nose dive into the barrack's floor. After a few moments of inaction, of a span of time where Sam didn't move, simply sat there, his arm wrapped around his back, Dean chanced turning his head toward his sibling and was met with Sam's intense, inspecting, worried gaze. "Sam. You need…me to sign…a release…form or what?" Dean groused, effectively breaking his brother out of his scared stupor. But then, as Sam wrapped the towel around Dean's waist, Sam's hands hit a sensitive section of Dean's ribs, eliciting a hiss of startled pain from Dean.
"Sorry," Sam apologized, cursing himself for not taking more care. With even gentler motions, he tucked the end of the towel into the wound fabric, completing the makeshift bandage. "Done. Lay down again?" Sam said, half in question and half in order.
"Yeah," Dean breathed out, forcing himself to release his grip on Sam's knee when Sam started to lower him back down onto the mattress again. He gritted his teeth as the skin around his wound pulled and his ribs seemed to constrict around his lungs at the motion. By the time his head was carefully resettled onto the mattress by Sam's long fingered hand, he was breathing shallowly to defuse the pain.
Fussing a moment with the towel bandage, making sure it was still in place, Sam purposefully did not look to Dean, didn't want to see the haunting pain in his brother's eyes. But when Dean's fingers caught his hand, halting his movement, Sam's eyes skidded up to his brother's.
"We have to get out of here, Sam. Tomorrow," Dean announced, trying hard to instill strength in his words. Immediately, he saw Sam's face telegraph his brother's protest.
"What?! Dean, you can't! You're…" Sam objected incredulously, but Dean spoke over his words.
"Listen to me, Sam!" Dean cut in, his eyes singeing into his brother's, desperate to make his point. Drawing in a deep breath into his tight lungs, Dean worked to slow his heart rate, to even out his breathing, to put the pain away. He knew that he had to sound sure of himself, that his breath couldn't hitch, his eyes couldn't flicker away from Sam's hard stare, not if he wanted to convince Sam that staying was a death sentence. "Sam, Commando Ken is gonna waste us sooner or later." Dean stopped to let that sink in with Sam as much as to allow himself time to catch his breath. When Sam didn't offer a protest to his statement, Dean pressed on, "Even if he keeps us around a few days… all it will take is him dropping my name into a database …and then we'll have Hendrickson showing up." He conjured up a smirk then, hoping Sam couldn't see how shaky his intake of breath was. "And yeah, I might like Hendrickson better than Dylan …but I'm really not down with taking a lethal injection in the veins. So I'm ready to shag butt out of here."
A smile crept onto Sam's face at his brother's words.
Confusion
stopped Dean short, caused him to tilt his head and level a
bewildered look to his brother "What?"
"Nothing, it's
just….you saying things like 'Commando Ken' and 'shag butt'.
I …I missed that…you know, the way you talk," Sam revealed,
affection in his tone and a light in his eyes.
Caught off guard by his brother's sentimental attachment to his turn of phrase, Dean shrugged his shoulders, "I'm…I'm just saying…"
"I know what you're saying," Sam reassured, his tone unchanged, still sporting a smile. 'I always have, Dean' he left unsaid. "I guess I'm not supposed to point out that you were the one that told Dylan your name?" he stated, a slight accusation in his tone,
"You really think he would have fallen for Hector Aframian or Agent Ford or any of the other aliases we came up with?" Dean parried, eyebrows raised. "'Sides, we needed to buy ourselves some time. If he runs my name he's gonna just peg me ..us in the same class as the other convicts he has on his work detail. You know, no threat to his little housing development thing."
But a caution look of disagreement settled on Sam's face, "Dean, we started his barracks on fire, pissed off all his workers and his guards and you were working really hard to antagonize him."
"Antagonize him?! Sam he was going to have Chase blow your head off!" Dean growled, menace in his tone, sparkling in his eyes. Dean's exhaustion, physical hurt was shoved aside in lieu of the fury he still felt at Dylan's threat against his brother.
"You accused him of being dishonorably discharged," Sam pointed out, hoping to shift Dean's focus away from some misguided need to retaliate for the aggression made against his little brother.
Dean's
dark eyes watched Sam a moment, knew what his brother was trying to
do. "Yeah, so. He probably was," Dean grumbled, conceding Sam's
point. Surviving had to be his focus, not revenge.
"Yeah,
well, that didn't earn a lot of goodwill with him," Sam lightly
drawled, a tight fake smirk on his lips.
"That's exactly why we should bail tomorrow. Why wait for him to finally decide he should have been more pissed about that comment," Dean looked steadily up at Sam and unleashed his 'I've got a plan' smile, the one that made Sam's gut clench in dread.
"Dean, it's not going to be easy getting out of here. We're pretty far off the main road," Sam warned, feeling a spike in the level of tension settling on his shoulders.
"Guess that's one of the selling points for their housing development: isolation, seclusion," Dean glossily countered, wearing a bigger smile. And his eyes shone in anticipation of the next day, of finally getting the opening to act instead of being relegated to reacting, of putting a stop to his helplessness.
Reading his brother's excitement, Sam felt he had no recourse but to play mother hen, to make Dean face his own weakness because the alternative, losing Dean, was out of the question. "I know we did the whole holy water thing, that it should lower your fever or get rid of it, maybe. But Dean, you still have bruised maybe cracked ribs, three deep slices in your side and a headwound that was serious enough to have you talking Latin for two days. You..you're not …"
"I know, Sam," Dean lowly admitted to his own weaknesses, his eyes meeting Sam's unflinchingly. "I know I'm going to be a liability to you and, hey, if you want my real vote, I say you make a run for it on your own."
"Dean,
NO! I said no and I meant it! Why can't…" Sam protested, his
voice spiking higher like it had always done during his yelling
matches with his father.
"Then stop sending mixed messages,
dude!" Dean's own yell slashed across Sam's. "It's either
we go together or you go and I stay. But what isn't negotiable is
the departure date. It has to be tomorrow."
His voice dropping lower to his 'I'm making sense and you know it' tone, Sam rationalized, "One more day won't…."
But Dean shook his head, "My gut says we leave tomorrow or we won't ever leave."
Falling silent, Sam stared at Dean, saw the seriousness in his brother's eyes and knew that he trusted Dean's instincts as fully as he trusted Dean's promises. "Alright but I'm taking the lead. You do what I say, when I say to do it," Sam ordered, steel in his tone that rarely surfaced.
"Sam.."
Dean growled in refusal.
"No, that's the way it's going to
play out Dean. I don't know how we're going to do this but if we
end up on foot, I don't want you refusing to let me carry you,
getting all sacrificial again. I won't let your pride get you
killed…or me." With those last two words Sam knew he was playing
dirty, was using his brother's love for him against him. But there
was little guilt rising in him because he had learned a long time ago
that there wasn't much he wasn't willing to do to keep Dean safe.
"So say it," Sam demanded, his sharp eyes on Dean as if they
themselves were lie detectors.
"Say what," Dean grumbled like a kid, a scowl on his features.
"Promise me that you'll do what I say, when I say it, that you'll let me take the lead," Sam clarified, his tone void of compromise.
"Fine," Dean snapped out, eyes dropping from Sam's.
"No. Promise Dean," Sam insisted, needing this from Dean to be able to even think about making some crazy grab for freedom the next day. Heck, Sam knew Dean's promise and only his promise would keep panic from running rampage within him.
"Yeah, yeah, I promise. I'll let you play big man on campus and I'll 'yes sir' you and flip you a salute" Dean agreed gracelessly, saying under his breath, "Yeah, a one fingered salute".
"Alright, since I have your word," Sam pressed, hoping to guilt Dean into making a more serious sounding promise.
"What? You need it in blood? I mean you can probably scoop some out of my side yet…" Dean shot back, lifting his head to look down in the direction of his wounded side.
Putting
his hand on Dean's forehead, Sam pushed Dean's head back onto the
mattress. "I've seen enough of your blood to last me a lifetime.
Now do you have a plan for getting out of here?"
"No, Sam, I
just thought I would just convince Dylan to let us make a run to Home
Depot tomorrow for supplies to fix up the ole barracks here. You
know, to do our penance and all that," Dean drawled with ridicule.
"Plan, Dean. You got one or not?" Sam demanded, barely keeping the sigh out of his words.
"I always have a plan, Sammy," Dean boasted, offering up that full blown smile on his face that always made Sam want to groan or curse.
"Yeah, but whether it'll work, that's the real question," Sam voiced but the showcased doubt was more reflexively than truthfully. Dean's plans were reckless but they had a tendency to work.
"Ye of little faith," Dean mockingly accused, eagerness and hope in the look he bestowed on his little brother.
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TBC
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As always, thank you for the awesome reviews last chapter! I was so relieved that no one wanted to lynch me for how I resolved Dean's Latin problem. Thank you all for your support!
Though this chapter didn't hold much "water" (ha ha ha) to the story's progression, it's the bridge to the great escape we've been waiting for!
Thanks to everyone one who took the time to read this chapter and is still willing to continue the journey with me!
Have a great day!
Cheryl W.
