Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

Sam shifted his weight from foot to foot. He felt his dad and Dean watching him from the shadows of the warehouse, but no amount of security could calm his nerves.

"Just hold on, Sam. It'll be over soon enough," Bobby said.

The hand on his shoulder was meant more for comfort than for restraining him. So different from the last time he was sold, but still too similar.

Sam nodded, not trusting his ability to speak at the moment. They'd been there for over an hour already (Sam freezing a little more each second in the unheated warehouse), arriving early to get into place before the traffickers came.

But every minute that passed put him a minute closer to facing people who wanted to put him back into a life that broke him.

It felt like another hour passed by the time Sam heard the rumble of old, rusted cars grow closer and doors open and slam closed.

The men who walked in looked like anyone from the street, completely ordinary aside from their corrupted, twisted souls.

And Sam felt his blood boiling in a way that might be a little more literal than he liked.

Sam stood beside the demon and watched Harold come through the door to his room in the abandoned hospital. He knew what came next, could feel himself silently planning and preparing in the past.

He kicked the side of Harold's knee, sending him to the ground, and took the meal tray. He beat Harold with the tray until he, himself was sent to the ground, his head rammed into the tiles. Even as a spectator, he felt each blow to the head and the pain brought him to his knees.

"Where is that fight?" the demon asked. "You've felt how strong you are. You've felt your potential. Why are you letting it slip through your fingers?"

Where had his fight gone? What had he really done since being rescued from Liu? Hide away from the world. Get himself nearly trafficked again. Nearly get himself killed.

"I wanna see his number," said one of the men. "Make sure you ain't trying to pull one on us for some quick cash."

Sam felt Bobby's hands on his shoulders and he spun him around.

"By all means," Bobby said.

Sam heard a few footsteps, then felt hands grip and twist his arm. With all of his willpower, he avoided pulling away, even though the man touching him was unnecessary in the first place. His tattoo was clearly visible with the way his wrists were tied, they made sure of it.

Yet the man still decided he needed to put his hands on Sam, and Sam couldn't promise that he wouldn't throw up right there.

He tried to find Dean in the shadows of the warehouse, but his mind was shutting down and he couldn't remember the positions Dean and John said they'd be in.

"Yeah, those are the numbers Liu wants," the man said. He slid his hands so slowly up Sam's arms and lifted the sleeves of his t-shirt. "And the brands on his shoulders."

Sam gagged at the feeling, but he hadn't eaten anything that day (or the day before), so nothing came of it beyond painful dry heaving.

Weren't they supposed to be trying to subdue the traffickers by now so they could get information about Liu? The plan fell apart in Sam's head and he couldn't remember what was supposed to happen and when. All he knew was that he felt hands on him that didn't belong there (and stayed until he fell to his knees and continued his heaving, curling in on himself), and Dean should be helping him, but he wasn't. Why wasn't Dean there?

He heard yelling and a few gunshots, but they weren't enough to pull him from his knees.

The ropes around his wrists gave way, and Dean pulled him up from the ground, taking him to a corner where the old warehouse still held boxes left behind that offered a bit of cover.

"You're fine, Sammy," Dean said. "Just stay here, okay? We can take care of them."

Sam looked around the warehouse. Three people taking on nearly a dozen traffickers? Hunters or not, that didn't seem like a fair fight, even if they expected Liu would warn them to bring back-up.

Dean gave Sam a quick pat on his shoulder before he left to help John and Bobby. They were trying not to kill anyone, but Sam figured that they only needed one alive for information and John already held a knife in one hand as he fought. They just had to hope that at least the one left alive had the information they wanted.

Sam hated himself for it, but he trembled in the corner and watched instead of helping. People talked about facing their fears, but how many of them had been faced with their fears in a way like this? How many of them went through with it?

Dean didn't have enough limbs to deal with the number of traffickers trying to beat him down, and he would have a fair number of bruises by the time it was over, if not worse.

Every motion seemed to slow down once Sam caught sight of a trafficker sneaking up behind Dean, a long rod of scrap metal in his hands, left behind from the days that the warehouse was used and now rusted, but sturdy enough to do a fair bit of damage.

The boy in that room was not Sam. He was far too feral, aggressive the second someone came to close to him. The second that he felt an unwelcome touch. His eyes were dilated an impossible amount and he snarled at the sight of any human.

Even as an observer, Sam felt the heat pumping through his body—through his very soul—and he felt the energy that never seemed to dwindle from the tablet Liu gave him. The difference this time was that his mind was clear and he comprehended everything that went on.

"Do you have any idea how many souls that passed through here are destined for Hell?" the demon asked.

"All of them, I hope." He wanted every soul that dared to violate him to burn eternally. He wanted to hear their screams.

And some of them he did hear scream. They screamed because of him and the newfound power that burst from within him that night. The power that he couldn't shake the feeling of since that night.

"Places like this, where the damned are lured, are so… magnificent. The sheer amount of sin that fills the air, I love it. The most depraved of humanity has set foot through that door to you, man and woman alike, and you gave them a taste of what awaits for them after death."

Flames filled the room at irregular intervals, but their source was always Sam, who felt the heat, but never the burn. His own blood burned hotter than the flames could. They did no harm to him. They could do no harm to him.

"It felt good, didn't it? To be so powerful. To have others fear you."

"Shut up," Sam said. He saw a monster in his own skin, but the kind of monster driven to protect itself from worse monsters.

Those who screamed were not human.

"You wanted me here. You wanted me to show you," the demon said. "You wanted me to break you so you could be rebuilt stronger. Sammy, I'm simply granting you that wish."

He watched his latest victim stumble back into the hallway, fire still licking at his skin, and collapse. His screams died down, and Sam was certain that he couldn't be alive with his body charred so badly. Where his skin wasn't burnt to a crisp, it was a deep, oozing red.

"What happened to that power in you? I know it's still there, but where did your fight go?"

Just like when he relived bashing Harold with a tray, the demon made him wonder again where did his fight go?

"You've been laying around. Hiding from the world and letting others be your shield. Why haven't you taken control yet? What happened to you, Sammy?"

"It's Sam, and I chose not to be a monster."

The demon laughed. "Being a monster isn't a choice. It's a reality."

Sam witnessed the rest of his night of fire in silence.

The man with the metal rod was too close to Dean. He had his arms raised high and was about to swing it down on the back of Dean's head.

Sam yelled Dean's name and outstretched his arm towards him, drawing Dean's attention. The spark of fear for Dean's life ignited his pyrokinesis in full force, and the man with the rod crumpled to the ground, bathed in fire.

Dean looked at the man, then back at Sam, with wide eyes. They held all the emotions Sam expected to see when his secret came out. Fear. Confusion. Worry. All except hate, but he supposed that would come once what he did fully registered with Dean.

Dean's attention on him was short-lived. He turned back to avoid another trafficker trying to take advantage of his moment of distraction, but he kept glancing over his shoulder at Sam.

Now that his power had been unleashed for a second, it begged to be used more. It felt like its own entity, begging for a taste of human flesh. Begging to burn the sinners and begin their torment a little ahead of schedule.

And Sam gave in. Dean saw what he did, what did it matter if John and Bobby witnessed it now, too? At least he could help them one final time.

The screams started quickly and the scent of burning flesh filled the warehouse. From his corner, Sam wreaked havoc on the traffickers and the warehouse itself, entire walls soon catching fire. Collateral damage.

Blood dripped from his nose in a steady stream, and his head started to feel ready to collapse in on itself, but Sam helped as much as he could, evening the fight.

It didn't take long for the traffickers to realize the source of the commotion and start trying to get to Sam, but Dean always managed to put himself between them and Sam before they got the chance to get close.

By the end of it, three or four of them laid unconscious on the ground, the rest no longer alive. John and Bobby worked on tying their new captives' wrists and ankles with the extra rope they brought along, but Sam noticed the way they looked at him. He knew that they knew what he did. Fires didn't start spontaneously, not like that. They didn't target only one side of a fight.

Dean, on the other hand, did not help with the captives. He walked straight towards Sam, who, for one of the first times in his life, couldn't read the emotions in his brother's eyes.

All Sam could think was that this was the end. Dean was going to kill him, put him down like the monster he was. He thought he'd made peace with the idea a long time ago, but now he didn't want to die. He couldn't die yet. Liu was still alive and he had so many questions for the demon with yellow eyes who called him his favorite and haunted his dreams when he had the chance.

"Sam…"

Sam raised his arms up towards Dean and took a step back for every step that Dean took forward. "Stay back."

Dean held his own hands up in surrender, but still took one slow step after another. "I'm not gonna hurt you, Sammy. I just want to talk," he said.

Even his voice was so controlled and calm that Sam couldn't read any emotion or intention from it either.

"I'm serious, Dean. Stay back."

Sam's words didn't sound threatening, not even to his own ears. Not when his voice shook and cracked in the middle of his words.

"Sammy, please. I promise, I'm not gonna hurt you. I just want to talk to you."

Dean used the same voice he used to coax frightened victims to trust him, and Sam wondered if that was how Dean saw him now. Not that it made much sense. He was a victim back in Hong Kong and in Chengdu, but today he had been the monster.

Dean stepped too close, and Sam was pressed against the wall. So, he did the one thing he could do to keep Dean away.

He separated them with a line of raging fire across the floor of the warehouse, forcing Dean to take a few steps back.

Sam ran to the closest exit, hidden in a cover of fire and smoke and ignored Dean calling his name. The only piece of luck he had was that some of the traffickers left their cars on, expecting to make a quick getaway.

Sam hopped in the driver seat of one. He might not have a legal driver's license (and he certainly didn't look old enough to have one), but Dean and his dad had been teaching him to drive since he was twelve, just in case there was an emergency and they were both incapacitated. As long as he could get to Minneapolis without being pulled over, that was good enough for him.

He looked in the rear view mirror once to make sure that none of them had gotten out of the warehouse in time to follow him.

When it came to fight or flight with his family as the opposition, he was in full flight mode.

"Dean!" John yelled. "Get over here and help us!"

Dean was still looking for a way past the fires and to his little brother, but John's command had him walking over and helping to carry the living traffickers out of the warehouse before it burned to the ground.

"Dad, we have to go after Sam. I don't know where he went. We shouldn't be wasting time with these bastards."

John turned and glared at him. "Why the hell would you let Sam out of your sight?"

"It wasn't by choice! He set a freaking line of fire between us and made a break for it. We have to get back in the warehouse and find him."

"Dean," Bobby said. "That place is ready to fall apart from the damage done by the fire. It's filled with smoke, and quickly filling with flames. I know for a fact that Sam isn't dumb enough to stay in there. He's probably already made his escape."

Dean shook his head. "You're wrong. He wouldn't run away like that. Not from us. Not again."

John closed the back of the truck on the traffickers. "Well, I hate to break it to you, Dean, but it looks like he has."

"Then, we have to find him!"

John looked at him for a long moment with quiet calculation in his eyes. There was no warmth to be found in them, and with Sam as the object of concern, that scared him. "We'll deal with these fuckers first, then we'll look for Sam."

"What the hell, Dad?" Dean asked. "The last two times Sam went missing, you dropped everything to find him. Why is this time any different?"

John stayed silent.

Dean shook his head. "This is about what happened in the warehouse, isn't it? The fire?"

"What he did in that warehouse was not human," John said. "You can't tell me that doesn't scare you."

"Of course it does. It fucking terrifies me, but you know what? That was still Sam. Did you even realize that not one of us has a single burn, while some of the traffickers laying in there are extra crispy right now? Yeah, the fire thing is freaky, but Sam fucking saved our skins in there. He faced something that gave him nightmares, and he fought back because he saw that we needed him to."

"I told you we would look for him after we get the information about Liu," John said, carefully enunciating each word, like that was the reason Dean had difficulties understanding him.

But it was the intention that Dean didn't understand.

"Leave them tied up in the motel room, and we can deal with it once we find Sam."

"Dean…"

"I can't believe you, Dad. You won't take the time to go out and look for your own son."

When Sam was walking away from him, Dean saw fear in his eyes. Sam was afraid of him, and if he was afraid of him, he was probably more afraid of their dad. Maybe even a little afraid of Bobby. But Dean couldn't figure out why.

Didn't Sam know that Dean would never hurt him? Maybe their dad was being a bit of an ass at the moment, but he wouldn't hurt Sam either.

Would he?

"Once we get back to the motel and secure these sons of bitches, I'll go out and start searching for Sam," Bobby said. "Y'all don't need me around for the interrogation."

John's response was a curt nod, but Dean thanked Bobby. At least there was still someone other than him who thought Sam's safety was a priority.

He spent the car ride back to the motel staring out of the window (just like he'd seen Sam do so many times) and putting the pieces together in his mind. The charred room in Liu's nightclub. Davies' destroyed factory. The comments about Sam not being human and the fear he instilled in the workers. The newspaper clipping that had burnt edges only after Sam held it. Sam's bloody nose when Dean found him out in the woods behind Bobby's house, surrounded by scorched sticks that he never took a second to stop and wonder about. The fire in Pastor Jim's library that was put out shortly after he lit it, while only Sam was left alone in the room.

It all made too much sense now that he saw the truth. But it hurt to think that Sam had been struggling all alone with more than they could have guessed.

Recovering from a month of Hell was hard, but how much harder was a layer of supernatural making it for Sam?

Dean didn't know, but he did know that he needed to find Sam so he could prove to him that, freaky fire power or not, he was still his little brother.

John had the traffickers tied together on the floor of the motel, shoes and socks pulled from their feet. He sat in front of one of them, pliers in hand, slowly tearing another toenail away from his screaming victim.

"Please! Please, stop!" The man was close to sobbing.

"Tell me what you know about Liu," John said. "Tell me how to find him."

The man shook his head, so John shrugged and moved on to the next toenail. Methodical. Cruel. Efficient.

Dean sat on one of the beds. Bobby left on his own to start searching Minneapolis for Sam. The problem was that it'd been hours, and Sam knew how to disappear.

John didn't need him for interrogation, and he wasn't entirely sure about why he insisted that Dean stay back with him. He wasn't sure why he was so cold now when it came to Sam.

Well, he had an idea. It just wasn't one he wanted to dwell on. It wasn't one that he wanted to believe.

He didn't want to think that his father might see his own son as a monster.

Dean had plenty of questions himself, finding out his brother could start fires with his mind called for such, but none of them were about whether or not Sam was a monster.

Sam was Sam, and never anything else.

Sam ditched the trafficker's truck once he made it to the edge of Minneapolis. He didn't think his plan through, which left him wandering the streets in a t-shirt and sweatpants on a day with subzero temperatures and a killer headache from overexerting himself when it came to using his powers.

He made his way to the Greyhound bus station by asking for directions from strangers, all of whom slipped him some money after directing him through the next leg of his journey. They seemed to pity him (he probably looked pathetically under-dressed for the weather and his face had to still be a mess from his nose bleeding earlier), but Sam didn't blame them. He was pitying himself a fair amount as he walked, shivering and wondering how long it would take for him to get frostbite.

If he was lucky, the fire inside of him would at least prevent frostbite, but it couldn't ward off the cold completely.

He arrived at the station and slipped inside. He hoped that the money from kindhearted strangers would be enough to get him to his destination.

But first, he had to figure out what that destination was. He huddled in one of the corners and pulled out his cell phone, one of the few things he'd been allowed to have on him during their plan. Just in case things went really wrong, and he was beyond grateful that Dean insisted upon it.

He worried that his call would go to voicemail, but it didn't.

"Hello?"

"Amy," Sam said. "It's me, Sam. I need to get away from here."

"Sam? Are you okay? Where are you?"

"At a Greyhound station in Minneapolis. They found out. They know, and I can't stay here. I can't. I don't want them to kill me."

"Okay. Okay, Sam. Just calm down for a second. I'm in New York City now, do you think you could make it here?"

Sam took a few breaths, slowly calming himself. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

"Okay. Great, Sam. Make your way here, and you can stay with me as long as you need to, okay?"

"Okay."

"You're doing great, Sam. Call me when you get here, and try not to worry so much. We'll be freaks together, and freaks watch out for each other. No one will hurt you again, not even your family."

"Amy," Sam said. "Thank you. I… just, thank you."

"Don't worry about it, Sam. I really want to help you. I want you to get better. I'll see you soon, but please call me if you need me beforehand. Promise?"

"Yeah… Yeah, I promise."

Sam hung up. He never imagined that he'd be sitting in the corner of a bus station, trying not to freeze to death and having the only person he felt he could trust not be Dean.

But he knew it would happen eventually. Once his powers were revealed, he could never stay with a family of hunters. He'd have to stay with monsters.

He waited for his turn to buy a ticket, finally reaching the counter and laying out all the money he had. "I need to get to New York City," he said.

The lady behind the counter looked at his money, then back to him with a frown. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, but there isn't enough here."

"What?" Sam asked. "How-how much do I need?"

The woman's frown turned into an unsettling smirk. "You didn't let me finish, Sammy," she said. "There isn't enough here, but I'm willing to make an exception. Just for you."

She printed out a ticket, and Sam took it from her with shaking hands.

"How do you know my name?"

She blinked, but when her eyes opened again, they were a familiar, sickly yellow. "Because you're my favorite, Sam."

She threw her head back and billows of smoke poured from her mouth.

Sam looked behind him, but no one else in line seemed to be paying any attention to the supernatural display right before their eyes.

The woman stood and looked around her, confused. "Can I help you?" she asked Sam.

He shook his head and ran.

Nowhere felt safe anymore. He'd never seen the demon in person, and the taste of sulfur wouldn't leave his mouth now that he had.

He found a secluded part of the station and huddled in it while he waited for his bus. A demon following him and helping him run away. Running away from his own family in the first place. Being able to start fires with his mind.

Nothing made sense anymore. He just knew he had to get to Amy.

Author's Note: Yes, we've gone from loving, brotherly moments to Sam running away in unnecessary fear. An early chapter? Yeah, I get my wisdom teeth removed at the end of this week, so I wasn't sure if I'd get one posted afterwards. We'll see.

Thank you to everyone who reads, reviews, follows, and favorites! The support keeps me going.

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