Chapter Twenty-Five

The floor was wet. His body was pressed up against the hard concrete and he was shivering. Cold.

Mornings were supposed to be warm. Soft mattress, soft covers, soft pillow, and a firm line of warmth along his back. Gentle puffs of air against his neck.

This was wrong.

He fought to open his eyes, but everything was dark. He struggled to get his arms underneath him and pushed his chest off the floor. His elbows threatened to buckle beneath his weight; his muscles weren't cooperating, as though they were still half-asleep. He shifted his legs and somehow balanced on one foot. He attempted to stand – and promptly hit his head on a mesh of metal.

The shock of the aborted movement sent him sprawling, and as the unforgiving cold hit his body anew he realised that he was unclothed.

He couldn't remember what had happened.

There was a cowboy movie, a soft couch, a different brand of beer with an unusual taste, and Dean's lips against his. Then nothing.

It wasn't unusual to fall asleep under the thrall of a post-coital haze, but Cas didn't think they had ever made it that far. He frowned, trying to force the sluggish memories to the surface. He had pinned Dean beneath him, planning to take things nice and slow until his husband was a trembling mess and the pleasure reached new heights. But everything had become blurry. Dean had tried to say something but either his words made no sense or Cas had been unable to understand him; possibly both. His arms had suddenly felt like jelly and he had collapsed onto Dean's chest.

He should have woken up on the couch with him.

Instead he was here, wherever here was, and Dean-

Worry spiked through him. "Dean!"

He tried to stand again and encountered the same barrier as before. It was parallel with the floor, suspended less than three feet above the concrete. Standing was impossible and if he sat up he would have to duck his head; he could only lie down or get onto his hands and knees to move around.

He crawled forward, the rough flooring biting at his skin. He stretched one hand in front of him, trying to feel out any barriers or open space. The metal mesh was a looming spider-web over him, reinforced by solid bars that ran in a criss-cross pattern and supported by the occasional squat pole in his path, but he shuffled over almost 15 feet before he encountered a solid concrete wall. He followed the wall around and worked out that he was enclosed in an almost perfect square except for a strange chunk taken out of one corner. There were thick metal bars framing the inverted square, spaced so he could barely fit his hand through, that were interrupted only by a metal door that had absolutely no give when he slammed his shoulder against it.

He was caged in.

The pieces fell into place and Cas realised what must have happened.

He had been abducted. This wasn't random or spontaneous. Someone had been lying in wait until the perfect opportunity presented itself. The house had been unlocked; Dean and Cas had both been absent. It must have been a simple matter to plant the drugged beer. Once they were unconscious, their years of hunting experience would count for nothing; they would have been completely defenceless.

The question was, had Cas been taken on his own, or was Dean here somewhere as well? Cas sincerely hoped it was the former, because he knew what this was. The similarities between his current situation and what had been done to Dean were impossible to ignore.

"Dean?" he called. He didn't know whether to be relieved by the lack of response or not. Dean could still be unconscious.

Cas crawled around his prison, covering every inch of space until he felt claustrophobic. He didn't find Dean.

Alright, so Dean wasn't here. That left three possibilities. Dean was at home, safe but panicking because Cas had vanished without an explanation; Dean had been taken too, but their abductor was keeping him somewhere else; or Dean was dead. Cas chose to believe it was the first option, because he didn't want Dean to have to re-live this horror and he couldn't bear the thought of Dean dying.

If Dean was at home, his first port of call would be Sam. That was good. Sam would make sure nothing happened to him. The trouble was that Dean would undoubtedly want to come looking for him, and if he did he could start to remember. This small taster was enough to convince Cas that Dean's memories were better left buried.

Which meant that he needed to find a way out of here on his own, and fast.

Cas rolled over onto his back and pushed his fingers through the mesh. The metal was sharp but he gripped the wire as tightly as he could and yanked down hard. There was barely half an inch of flexibility; the mesh was secured tightly to the framework of bars and it was not going to break easily. Still, he tried again, hoisting his body off the floor so the return of gravity would set his weight against the strength of his prison. He dropped down heavily and almost tore his fingers off. His hands came away coated in blood, and he didn't even have a scrap of shirt to bind the injuries with.

He didn't give up. He crawled over to one of the poles and tried to prise the wire off the top by pushing up at the join with his foot. His muscles strained with the effort and the mesh bit into his sole, but the bolts would not give. He tried at the wall next but the wire was secured in place with a solid bar that had been fixed to the concrete.

It occurred to him that Dean had been trapped in here for over seven months, and that if there was a way to break out he would have found it.

Alone and helpless. For the man who had a deep-seated fear of being abandoned by the people he loved, and the hunter who could handle anything as long as he had something to hit back at, being caged like this would have been his worst nightmare. He couldn't even stand up to confront his captor face-to-face with all the cockiness and bravado he could muster; he was forced to kneel. He had been stripped of his clothes, his dignity. All of that, before the pain had even started.

And there had been pain. The scars were mapped out all over his body. Seven months of torture, while Cas and Sam had been chasing their tails, failing to find him. There had been no rescue. Dean had just been discarded on the side of the road after his captor grew bored with him. After Dean had lost his memories.

The timing of this suddenly struck him. The attack could have come at any time, but whoever it was had waited until Dean had regained most of his memories. Dean was supposed to know who he was and what had been done to him; they wanted him to be excruciatingly aware of every last detail. There would be no fun in this otherwise.

Cas wasn't the one being targeted. All of this had been orchestrated to torment Dean further. He would know what was being done to Cas because he had lived it himself.

Cas thought that perhaps he should have been afraid of the pain that was surely coming for him. But he didn't feel afraid.

He was angry.

He was fucking furious.

The monster who had stolen Dean from him, who had traumatised him to the point that forgetting his entire life was less painful than remembering what he had been through, who had left him lying in a ditch, who had damaged his knees beyond repair, who had haunted him through panic attacks, who had allowed him to scrape his life together and then tore it all away from him again – the monster that had eluded them for almost a year and had laughed at them all the while… he was here. He had made a move, an arrogant stupid move, that had brought Cas right to him.

Cas was going to kill him. It was going to be messy. He would tear him limb from limb as he screamed and kept screaming until the room was drenched in his blood and the light in his eyes went out like a snuffed candle.

He had just signed his own death warrant.

When he heard the sound of a door opening and footsteps on the stairs, Cas did not feel an ounce of fear.

He bundled up his rage, twisted it tightly in his chest, and snarled.

ooOOoo