They tortured every inch of me
Then expect me to forget it
They thought that they would finish me
But I pull through every time
Punish me everyday
But I'll never break

- "Vengeance is Mine," Alice Cooper

For fifteen years, Sam has watched the development of the persona in front of him, the careful construction of his big brother. Dean had always been protective of him, always been caring, but when they were kids he was just. . . Dean. The obedient son, dedicated to raising his brother. Sam thinks that this began shortly before Dean dropped out of school, after he'd recovered physically if not emotionally from the assault.

It started with layers of leather and plaid to make him look more built, until manual labor broadened his shoulders and chest to fill out their father's jacket. It continued with Busty Beta Beauties probably stolen from a gas station (or more disturbingly, from their father) and Casa Erotica, always Alpha on Beta, as if he could trick his body out of his heat instincts if he tried hard enough. It was in his teenaged belligerence daring anyone to try and touch him again without his permission, and as he honed his self-defense, listening to their father's every word like it was gospel. It was in the meticulous way he showered every morning, drowning his scent in pungent soaps, and scrubbed himself clean like he was trying to take his own skin off at the end of the bad days.

And it culminated in this: the slight curl of his mouth, the confident set of his shoulders in his funeral suit, and the complete liars' persona that could probably fool most people in this room into believing him an Alpha himself, if his Omega designation hadn't been a topic of conversation through every single witness, every moment of this trial.

For all the days Sam's watched Dean be able to turn this on like the flip of a switch, for all he knows that this is Dean's every day now, on his own for years, it's never hurt him to have to dig at it, to tear at the edges and try to get to Dean behind the defensive shell, the way it does in this courtroom.

Because right now, Dean's defensive instinct could hurt Castiel's defense.

Sam's showing his own nerves, rubbing his hand over his mouth as Dean finishes telling them about the encounter at the Roadhouse, and he's always been able to keep himself cool in the courtroom before. This is screwing with him, not because he hasn't heard about this in the pre-trial, but because he knows he's going to have to hurt Dean to reveal him.

His brother is amazing, especially after what he's gone through. And he needs the jury to see that.

"Dean. . ." It's a calculated choice, referring to his brother by first name, humanizing him to the jury and keeping it as natural for his brother as he can. "Tell me about the morning Dad died. When you met Doctor Novak again."

It's a low blow and Dean's perceptive enough to spot emotional manipulation. Pulling their father's death into this in front of an audience is not winning Sam any favors with his brother. Jaw flexing as he bites back whatever response he has to that, Dean shifts in his seat, folding his arms. He's trying, it's obvious, but he's too guarded for it to seem natural, and at that first prod at an emotional situation he's gotten factual and clipped.

"Got up early and found out they'd keyed my car up pretty bad after they were kicked out of the bar. Decided to drive it anyway to the hospital. I'd been there the night before, when I got into town, and they made it pretty clear he wasn't coming back from the accident. Cas was his doctor, introduced himself. . ." Dean's eyes cut to the table behind Sam, where Cas is sitting with Charlie, and Sam breathes out in relief when Dean shrugs awkwardly, a slight smile curling his lips. "I only figured out Cas was the one who bought me the drink at the bar because he was awkward as hell when he saw me. Think I bit his head off. It. . . uh. It wasn't a good morning."

And he handled it alone, to keep Sam from having to make the choice himself. He's redirecting the testimony back into Cas, trying to keep Sam out of it now too. And that's what Sam was going for.

"So you and Doctor Novak were unaware at that time that you were mates?" Dean turns his head to look at his brother again, eyes narrowing, and Sam takes the step to put his back momentarily to the jury in his prowling, widening his eyes at his brother with his next words. "The encounter was professional?"

Since they were kids, he and Dean had always been able to communicate fairly well without speaking. Their warning system was nuanced; a look, a tone, tilt of the head, and they knew how to steer each other clear of trouble. He isn't leading his witness. . . but he damn sure wants Dean to know what these jurors are currently thinking of how his relationship with Castiel must have started, if they're buying the excuse that Cas tried to murder Dean's assailants for touching his mate.

He can see the moment it clicks for Dean.

"Dude, it wasn't. . . he stuck in the room while I waited for the pastor to do Last Rites, and explained to me what was going on, that's as 'racy' as it got in there." Raking his hand through his hair, Dean's brow furrows and he frowns, shaking his head. "I was there because my dad was dying, I wasn't looking for a hookup. And it's not like that."

"Not like what, Dean?" Sam is coaxing, pushing for further detail, and he can handle Dean's righteous indignation because it's real and right now they need to deal with Etheridge's testimony before they move on. So he feeds it, just enough of the goading little brother creeping into his tone to get Dean talking.

"Like a friggin' porno plot or something! That whole thing, dropping each other to the floor the second you meet your mate, every Omega panting after every Alpha's knot all the time, it's all a pack of bullshit lies. It's cheap way for skin flicks to skip to the fucking. . ."

"Language, Mr. Winchester." Judge Turner's warning clicks his brother's teeth together, full lips pulling down as he looks back over his words to find out when he started cussing, gathering himself to continue again.

"Yeah. Sorry, your Honor." The title and apology are tacked on, Dean remembering the judge's pretrial warnings and curbing himself accordingly, but he's built up steam. "It just pis. . . ticks me off. Either Omegas are some kind of sex-starved skanks, 'breeders' desperate to be knocked up all the time, or we're like poseable blow-up dolls, and that's not how it is."

Sam's courtroom pacing has taken him back to the front of the defense table, and Dean's tracking his motion, now facing his family and his friends and Cas at the table. Castiel's coloring is already a little better, as if he just needed Dean there standing up for himself, proving them all wrong, to feel better about this. Dean offers a faintly encouraging smile to Cas, and Sam knows they're in this together. He's not manipulating his brother, Dean's in this show with him.

"So how was it with Doctor Novak." Dean's eyebrow arches minutely, a hint of the smartass, and Sam clarifies the question quickly so he doesn't sound like he's asking Dean to grade sex with Cas or something. Behind him in the courtroom, he can hear Gabriel stifle a snicker, and the smack of Ellen's hand to the back of his head. "I mean, at what stage was your relationship with Doctor Novak on the morning of June 20th."

Dean shrugs slightly, licking his lips and glancing past his brother to Cas. "There wasn't really a relationship. I didn't even know his first name. He was just. . . he was a damned good doctor. Took care of Dad, stuck with me when . . ." Dean shrugs, looking his brother in the eye again. "Cas never denied buying me the drink the night before, but he didn't expect anything from me and kept it about Dad. If there was any 'mate' crap going on. . ." Cas grimaces at the dismissive tones for the concept. ". . . I was a little too distracted to notice it with Dad dying there." The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. Dean shrugs awkwardly, and amends that statement before Sam can move on or Cas can take that the wrong way. "He was comforting. I dunno."

Sam nods, as if he's said something important, and latches onto Dean's words. They're getting there, easing into the narrative he knows Charlie wants him to touch on. "Did Doctor Novak say or do anything that indicated he was interested in you, on the morning of June 20th?"

Dean smirks, but it's Dean's smirk, and he watches Cas with his next words. "He made me a fresh pot of real coffee, bought me a hospital breakfast, and gave me a couple aspirin for my headache, tripped over his tongue a couple times." Cas is nodding as he ducks his head down, agreeing with that assessment silently, and beside him Charlie nearly beams at them. Obviously that was the right thing to admit to. "So, yeah. I guess. Cas sucked at hiding he was interested, but like I said. He wasn't making an issue of it, and the morning was about Dad, not about that. I mean, he tucked Dad in like he was a kid, talked shop with the pastor. . ."

Sam shifts back into motion again, and Dean's eyes immediately flick to his brother, narrowing, assessing the change in his posture carefully and his suddenly clipped words, the two of them attuned to each other's tells. It had been Dean who taught Sam how to play poker, after all.

"So when you went into the parking lot, you weren't expecting Doctor Novak to follow you." It's a simple question, and Dean answers it simply, Sam's changed position leaving him with the jury in his peripheral view now.

"No."

"And you weren't expecting to encounter Mr. Hardey, Mr. Etheridge. . ."

Dean's response is more emphatic this time, as he interrupts. He'd probably make it more colorful too if he wasn't aware of the Judge a few feet away. "No."

"You didn't arrange to meet them. . ."

"No! Why the hell would I arrange to meet them?"

Sam sucks in a breath softly, steeling himself as he turns to face his brother again. "Can you tell the jury what you were thinking, then, on the morning of June 20th when you encountered them in the parking lot?"

Dean knows where this is going, and he's known it all along. It doesn't make it any easier to spit out, though. Sam's eyes are huge, pleading with him to understand that this isn't him, that this is his job, that they have to do this, but all he can see is his overgrown little brother. His surrogate family, all of them that are still in Kansas, are sitting in the first row staring at him. His fifth grade teacher scowls at him from the center of the courtroom. Crowley with one foot out in the aisle, leaned back in his place on the bench with both hands folded over the top of his cane. Charlie, trying to make herself more obvious without moving, their plan for him to tell this crap to her still there as an open invitation. And Castiel, so still he doesn't appear to be breathing, blue eyes wounded already, hands clamped on the edge of the table before him as if to keep himself from reaching out to Dean.

"Mr. Winchester, you need to answer the que. . ." Rufus Turner's brusque voice is tempered, treating him like a skittish victim, and that pisses Dean off more than anything.

"I was thinking that if those sons of bitches were going to rape me again, they were going to have to fucking kill me this time." Language be damned. They want the whole truth? That's the whole fucking truth.

Turner's remonstration for his language rolls off him; he's tense in his seat, expecting Sam's next question, the gentle prodding for him to explain, for him to air some of the most demeaning moments of his life to this whole damn room, and he doesn't know what to do with his hands. He sucks at this crap. Sharing and caring bullshit, he's always sucked at it.

Looking at Charlie means looking at Cas, and he can't, any more than he can look Sam in the eyes right now. He just. . . can't. Dean knows he sounds angry, that they didn't want him angry, but he's going to make them listen to him, just this once. So he turns slightly, scouring the jury, this group of people who were picked out to judge him just as much as they were Cas. A dozen complete strangers who've been fed bullshit about him being a slut, or a whore, a mindless Omega panting after a knot. . . whatever those assholes had come up with to excuse themselves.

"I was thirteen. A kid. Spent my whole life thinking I'd grow up to be an Alpha like my dad. I only found out I was an Omega like a week before that, and the entire damn town knew right away because I was at school when I started to feel sick and feverish. You know what I was 'thinking' when they jumped me in the parking lot, the day my Dad died?"

Dean drags a hand over his mouth, unconsciously rubbing his jaw, green eyes shining with unshed tears and his entire body rigid, his voice low and rough as he focuses first on the woman he made laugh earlier, a kindergarten-teacher type with dark hair, the kind of pretty Beta he'd have tried to pick up before Cas. "I was thinking how Nate Hardey broke my jaw because I kept trying to bite him."

His eyes slide to the man beside her—an Alpha, blonde, typical Kansas boy. "How even when I was a skinny kid it apparently took five of them, two to hold me down while they took turns knotting me, one behind me, one in front of me, and then one catcalling and cheering on the others and jerking off, waiting and keeping an eye out. That was Roy."

A matronly African-American woman sits in the front row, her eyes fathomless and sad as she watches him watch her. "About how bad it hurt when they didn't want to wait, how it felt like they were tearing me in two because they pulled out before their knots went down, and how once I couldn't bite any more they didn't care about the fact that I was trying not to throw up or yell when they shoved down my throat."

He can't do it anymore. Closing his eyes, he shuts them all out, and the words are hollow and emotionless. "I was thinking about how I don't even remember any more all the times the fact that I wasn't willing meant jack to the people around me who just wanted to get off. But I remember that first time." Dean's laugh is bitter, broken, and humorless. "My first time. Lost my virginity behind the bleachers at the stadium, where they dragged me when I was waiting for my little brother to get out of his study date for a science fair thing. I remember thinking when I was bleeding out how much I didn't want to die, and leave him like Mom did. How I couldn't pass out, even though I wanted to check out and not feel it anymore, because I was pretty sure I was dying. Then how embarrassed I was that Ellen and Bobby had to see me like that, when they got there first after the campus cop, while they were loading me into the ambulance."

He can't look over there. He doesn't want to. He knows Ellen remembers—knows she would have happily used that shotgun if they hadn't left the Roadhouse that night.

"I spent two weeks in the hospital eating through a straw, and months healing." It destroyed them financially, and they'd never been well-off to begin with. It tore his father and Bobby's friendship apart, too, sent Bobby packing to Sioux Falls after enough arguments that hushed the moment Dean walked in the room, and ten years later when things went to shit all over again he remembered Bobby hunkering down to tell his younger self that if things ever got bad, if he ever wanted out, he'd always have a safe place to live and a job to go to with him. John took off without them more often, building that obsessive web of information on the wall of their apartment over the garage with every trip. He never looked at his eldest the same way again; it was all too soon after him presenting as Omega for Dean to know if it was him and how he'd turned out, or if it was what was done to him. Whether he was raising Sam because they came second to his father's obsession, because his father trusted Dean to raise Sam right, or because he's the bitch and raising kids is all bitches are good for. "They walked away from it. Not even a slap on the wrist by the cops, or the school."

"So all I could think about when those same guys got me pinned against that car was they were going to have to damn well kill me this time."

The silence in the courtroom is oppressive, and Dean can hear Sam just a few feet away, can hear the thickness in his voice when he finally finds it again after clearing his throat. Sam's never cried pretty. Even as a kid it made his nose run, his face blotchy, sorrow etched itself deep in his features like he was taking on everyone else's pain and making it his own. He didn't cry often, but every time he did Dean felt like a failure as a big brother somehow for not making it better before he reached that.

This time he feels like shit for causing it.

"So when Cas showed up . . ." Sam fumbles, trying to get himself under control, aware that he's gone from Doctor Novak to Cas in the span of an answer, and trying to find the rest of his question. Dean tries to make it easier on him, answering the question before Sam has to finish it.

"Cas saved my life. In more ways than one. But that day showing up like that. . . one way or another I wasn't gonna live through that again." Opening his eyes, Dean licks his lips again, his mouth dry and eyes wet after his confessions, but he's not going to cry over this again. He's done with it. Taking in his little brother in front of him, he shakes his head and tries to comfort him with words.

"Cas took me home. Popped my dislocated shoulder back in, got me patched up, and didn't try and touch me, or ask for anything in return. He slept on his couch that night, gave me the bed. So yeah, Cas is a frikkin' hero. He didn't kill them; stopped once they were down. And yeah, we're together now. He was the first person outside of family and those close as family to ever know what I am, and still give a crap about my feelings outside of how I could make them feel."

At the prosecution table, Victor Henriksen sits with his elbows on the table, fingers steepled at his chin and eyes watching Dean carefully. He doesn't look away as Sam turns to him, voice rough as he curtly tells him "Your witness," clearly reluctant to walk away with his brother still on the stand, angled to look at Henriksen while still between the lawyer and Dean.

In a day or so, there's a strong possibility he'll be hearing this from the other side, he'll be the one asking these questions, putting Dean through this. Green eyes stare him down warily, guarded, Dean's jaw set and his shoulders square, but there's the sense that he's waiting for a physical blow and refusing to back down from it.

Henriksen is a prosecutor. When he goes up against someone on the witness stand, they're up there for him to prove someone guilty, or they're hiding something to keep a criminal out of jail. This is the rare instance of the victim being on the defense's side, without it being an obvious abuse situation. He didn't take this job to grill any victims and try to tear them down. That's what scum defense lawyers like Crowley do to victims: it's what the Brit intends to do to Dean at Henriksen's next trial, he knows it. But Dean isn't the one he has on trial.

There'll be another witness after this. He can address the only relevant questions there.

"The prosecution has no further questions for this witness."

Rufus Turner banging the gavel down on the sounding block makes Dean flinch in surprise as he turns, but the judge is looking to the bailiff. "We'll take a ten minute recess before the next witness. . ."

The scrape of a chair across the room is loud, and Dean's barely on his feet, the words are still falling from the Judge's lips, when Castiel is there. Sam hasn't had a chance to move, the jury hasn't finished shuffling out, but Dean finds himself rocked back on his heels, and Cas coiled around him. "Woah. Hey. Cas. . . it's okay. I'm okay now."

Castiel's cheek against Dean's neck is wet, the tears Dean never let himself turn to see Cas shed obvious now. He curls his hand along the back of Cas's neck, his other hand bunching into the back of Cas's shirt beneath his suit jacket is keeping him there for Dean, or making sure Cas doesn't pull away until he's ready himself. Dean couldn't say. They're probably spitting on the stereotypical Alpha/Omega dynamic in public again, though, as Dean shelters Cas from the watching eyes of the jury as they get to their feet, murmuring meaningless comfort into his hair as he rests his head against the top of Cas's. Cas's arms around him are almost bruising, but it's Dean who's dry eyed and collected, comforting Castiel.

On the bench at the front of the courtroom, Ellen has her arm slung around Jo's shoulders, the blonde turned in towards her mother as Ellen strokes a hand over her hair soothingly. Gabriel looks furious, as if he's reconsidering having settled for embarrassment and threats with Hardey, and is watching what he can see of his own little brother. Ash looks incredibly uncomfortable, trying to decide if he should be there when he can't just give Dean a beer and tell him 'that sucks,' and like he's considering joining Gabriel to cover up some kind of violent revenge for him. Charlie and Sam look like they're both waiting in line for a turn to hug him or something. But everyone, his entire damn family, is looking like they're about to cry.

"Shit, guys. I'm fine. It's okay. Stop looking at me like. . . like I died or something." Movement at the corner of his eye catches his attention, and he wonders when Henriksen turns to face the room what is running through Crowley's head when the two attorneys lock gazes for a moment.

He doesn't have time to consider it. Blue eyes are suddenly the only thing he can really see, Castiel's hands cupped to his cheeks, fingers skating the line of his jaw as if he expects to feel the wires and pins that once reshaped it, forehead resting against his own. "I'm sorry, Dean. You shouldn't have had to. . ."

He loses all words, and after a moment Dean scowls, pulling Cas's hand off of his face and linking their fingers together. Turning, he hauls Cas with him towards the defense table, Sam trailing them like a lost duckling as Dean addresses his family. "If you guys sit there throwing pitying looks at me, I am going to kick your ass. Okay? This is just. . ."

It's just the way it is. The way it always has been. And with four months as Alastair's property, he can't even claim it's the worst thing that ever happened to him, not anymore. It was just the most physically violent. Castiel being his boyfriend, or mate, or whatever, doesn't change the shit that happened before. And even if it never happens again to him, even if by some miracle he shakes the nightmares forever, it'll still be there in the background because it's not just him.

Dean doesn't catch the teary eyed determined look Sam shoots Charlie, or her slow nod of understanding as she worries her lower lip between her teeth. Even if he had, he wouldn't know the significance of it, yet.