Author notes: This is officially the last chapter of A Monster by Any Other Name, after eight years and 500,000 words (not counting timestamps). Thank you all, so much, for joining us on this wild ride. It's been an honor.
This is officially the last chapter of A Monster by Any Other Name, after eight years and 500,000 words (not counting timestamps). Thank you all, so much, for joining us on this wild ride. It's been an honor.
Thank you so, so, so much to our betas whereupon, onlythefireborn, firesign10, and sylvia_locust. Our story is so much better thanks to all of you.
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Chapter 41: The End
Sam sat, hands clasped tight in his lap, while Dean paced the small room.
Step. Step. Step, shuffle, and turn.
Step. Step. Step. Huff, step, shuffle, turn.
Sam closed his eyes and thought very hard about breathing and nothing else. That simple act was harder than it should have been, and not just because of the bulky and unfamiliar vest he wore, or the stuffy darkness of the room.
When the burner phone chirped cheerfully from the tiny motel room table, Sam flinched and Dean stumbled.
"Sam," Dean said.
"Yeah." Sam grabbed the phone and checked the text, marveling at how his hands remained steady on the cheap plastic.
GO.
The message was brutally brief, for everything it meant.
Sam didn't trust himself to speak, with the shaky rush of adrenaline and fear now coursing through his system. Instead, he just gave Dean a short nod.
They left their bags, already stripped of any identification, and Dean tucked the motel key deep in his jacket pocket. Either they would return later that night, or they wouldn't.
Their borrowed crossover, a battered Honda CR-V more dust-colored than white, was already loaded with everything they needed. It had been packed since they'd left Bobby's and the Impala behind. Sam eased himself into the passenger seat, while Dean took the driver's side, swearing under his breath as he hit the windshield wipers while reaching for the lights. Dawn was still an hour away.
He might have fumbled less were it not for the explosives in the back seat. Draped in a battered tarp (as though that would really help them if the cops pulled them over), it looked like they had a body back there.
Not yet, Sam thought, and then returned to thinking about his breathing.
The surrealism only grew as they drove the hour and a half from Argenta, past Winnemucca, to their final destination. The car was too new to have a tape deck, so Dean had been stuck flipping through the radio stations on their drive down from South Dakota. His latest oldies station was playing Zeppelin, and Sam could almost imagine they were anywhere but here.
Except for Dean's tight-lipped silence. And the unfamiliar rumble of the CR-V's engine. And how, for Sam, nothing felt real, down to the press of the seat behind him, the blue sky above, and his own hands folded in his lap.
That was also when he noticed that Dean, for maybe the first time in Sam's experience, was driving exactly at the speed limit.
Sam laughed, a harsh sharp sound, and Dean jumped, making the car jerk on the highway like a skittish horse.
"Jesus, Sam," Dean snapped. "Are you… are you laughing?"
"You're driving the speed limit," Sam said, half chortling.
Dean glanced at him again with a mix of irritation and worry. "I mean, yeah. I don't want to… you know, draw attention."
His hands were at fucking ten and two, and Sam was having a hard time keeping the semi-hysterical laughter in his chest. It was ridiculous that Dean, who habitually drove five over even when they were trying to keep a low profile after a hunt that left something on fire, would choose now to start sticking to the letter of the law. Sam found that incredibly, painfully funny, but he knew that if he broke now he wouldn't be able to put himself together again by the time that Dean needed him.
Sam drew a deep lungful of air to stifle the rest of the laughter, then said as soberly as he could, "We're about to commit an act of domestic terrorism on a secure government facility full of all types of monsters. Based on a plan we put together with an informant we don't completely trust and a man we trust completely but who thinks we're out of our collective mind. And it looks like we've got a body in the back. So, yeah, I guess I see where you're coming from."
Dean's mouth quirked. "At least it's just C-4?"
"Yeah. Just C-4."
They drove in silence for another ten minutes, Sam's shoulders occasionally shaking, though even he couldn't tell whether it was from laughter or a panic attack trying to fight its way out. But he was so far beyond panic that he couldn't predict if he would be hyper-alert or in a stupor when they arrived. Sam could only hope that instinct would kick in when they pulled into the Freak Camp parking lot, or he was going to get both of them killed. Just as John Winchester had once warned Sam he would.
"Hey, Sam. You okay?"
Sam drew another shaky breath. He kept forgetting to breathe, even though it felt like all he was doing was thinking about breathing. "Dean, that's a really stupid question. Right up there with 'Do you want to stay with Bobby while I go attack the camp?' Really stupid. So do me a favor and don't ask it again until we're out."
Dean smiled, and his mouth trembled. Sam both hated and was grateful for how that made him feel better. At least Dean wasn't going in hot and reckless. Sam didn't necessarily want him to be terrified, but in this situation, in this moment? Maybe a little terror was a good thing.
The rest of the drive took a little over an hour and a half. Fifteen miles out, they left the road to approach from the rear and pull up to one particular section of the wall. As Sam got out and pulled out the first bundle of C-4, it occurred to him that he would never see those front doors in person. At least not if everything went according to plan.
"Something not wired right?" Dean asked over his shoulder.
Sam almost dropped the explosive, which could have been a bad end for both of them. "No, it looks fine. Blasting caps and triggers are all set." He knelt to fasten the package to the wall and checked the corners, making sure it was secure. He glanced at the camera that was clearly facing toward them as he did. Either Alice was going to come through for them, or they were both fucked before this began. "It's funny, you know," he said conversationally. "You promised me you'd shoot me before you would ever bring me back to Freak Camp."
He had Dean in the corner of his eye, so he saw him flinch, his jaw tighten, his hands clench on the second load of explosives. Sam could remember when those small gestures would have conveyed that he was going to get hit. He could remember when he would have wanted Dean to hit him, because he thought a beating was the best of the options available.
When rape, a bullet, abandonment, and Freak Camp had all been on the table, a couple of punches had seemed like nothing. And now he was going to walk back into hell with this man by his side.
Dean took a breath. "Sam, I would never…"
"Yeah, not exactly the same thing," Sam interrupted. "But still, seems to violate the letter of the promise. You better make it up to me. Salads, for a start. Nothing but salads for weeks."
Dean crossed the space between them and pulled him up and into his arms. They were as solid and warm and grounding as they always had been, and Sam clung to him for dear life.
"I would never leave you in that place," Dean said, emotion thick in his voice. "We're going in together, to end it together. I swear to you, Sam, this isn't me being a selfish bastard, or just angry or, fuck, it's about…" He stopped, pulling away to search the desert like it would give him the word he needed. "Revenge," he finished.
"Revenge." Sam chuckled. His laughter didn't sound as crazy as it had the last time. Dean met his eye and grinned too. "Sounds stupid when you say it like that."
"Yeah. I know." Dean looked a little sick. Then his face hardened, inner pain and exhaustion making him look so much older than his twenty-six years. "Let's get this done."
Sam closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. "Yeah, let's get this done." But it would be nice to know I'll get you back when this is over, if we make it out alive.
Instead of voicing any more of the destructive thoughts that would just trip them up during this insane plan, Sam followed Dean back to the Honda and laid his hand on Dean's knee as they drove around to the service entrance.
Alice had given them the codes to get inside without anyone asking questions. Dean punched them in while Sam watched the heavy steel doors swing in. When the doors ground to a halt, they drove slowly through.
Unlike the relatively neat visitor parking lot, with its faded yellow lines and cracked asphalt, the service entrance was gray gravel. No potholes that would interfere with the loading and unloading of the black ASC vans and supply trucks, but nothing fancy, either. Neither of them had ever been in this end of the camp, at least that they could remember. Sam might have come here in a black van the very first time, but he had no recollection.
He'd always known he would come back to this place. A huge part of himself, a part that he tried to fight down for Dean's sake, would always believe that this was where he belonged: in hell, with the other freaks. In his nightmares, this was where Dean turned, smiled at him, and said, This is where I leave you, Sammy. It's been fun. This is where his world fell apart.
Two battered cars were already parked in the area, so they weren't able to pull the Honda quite as close to the door as they had hoped.
"That's inconvenient," Dean said. He palmed his gun from the center console and held it loosely as he prepared to get out of their car.
Sam caught his hand. He forced the best smile he could. "I love you, Dean. No matter how this ends."
He saw pain flash across Dean's face, a struggle to control himself, and he gripped Sam's hand tight. "I love you too, Sammy. Not a single regret." Dean coughed and tucked his black ski mask into the front pocket of his tactical vest. "Let's get our shit out of the back."
The bags seemed heavier when hauling them out of the back seat and cargo area than they had going in. Dean set a back-up charge by the gates while Sam verified the information from Alice one more time. His hands trembled slightly. That could be a problem with a gun.
He looked over at Dean as he returned. They both had several guns, plenty of extra ammo, and three duffels each of other armaments. They certainly weren't going to move quickly, and if a bullet caught them the right way they would be toast, even with the vests. Emphasis on the toast.
Dean slammed the liftgate of the CR-V into place, Sam picked up his last bag, and they headed into the camp.
Alice's code got them inside. Halfway down the long, fluorescent-lit hallway, Dean, who had the lead, muttered, "Shit."
Two hunters were coming down the hallway right at them: Tony Giordano and Dennis Beam. Giordano tended to hunt the east coast, but the couple of times he and the Winchesters had crossed paths, Sam had thought Giordano and Dean would end up slugging it out, civilians be damned.
And of course, in Sam's time, Beam had loved visiting Freak Camp.
Sam braced himself to be recognized, his hand clenching around the gun he had already drawn. Dean stopped in the hallway, and Sam came to a halt behind him.
Beam and Giordano also came to a stop ten feet in front of them. One tooth in Beam's familiar nasty smile had been knocked out since Sam last saw him.
"Making a delivery, Winchester? Didn't think you had it in you to actually bring a freak in. Thought your MO was just fucking them." If Beam noticed their bulletproof vests, or the weapons they were carrying, he didn't show it.
"You making a return while you're at it?" Giordano leered at Sam and didn't even bother looking at Dean. "I've been dying to see if the stories about Pretty Freak's mouth are true. So what do you—"
Dean shot him in the head, and the top of Giordano's skull vanished in a fine grainy spray. Sam shot Beam in the chest when he went for his gun. When he fell, Sam kept moving, and Dean followed, double-tapping Beam as he passed him.
Just watching Dean's back, Sam thought as he strode down the hall. Just following the plan. Maybe that explained why he felt numb, and his hands weren't shaking anymore.
They paused at the next door, and Dean shot him a grin that was just a bit crazy, a little monstrous, and only then did Sam feel his stomach flip over.
Please, God, let him be okay after this.
"You know what they call two dead sadistic fucks, Sammy?" If his reloading was a bit frenetic, Dean didn't seem to notice. "A good start."
At least I'm still with him.
"Time for masks," Sam said. "Before we go out there." Before we have to kill anyone else just because they are running away and can identify us.
Even with the thought, Sam knew he didn't regret the bullet that had gone through Beam's chest, or the one through Giordano's head. He could remember his own fear, the sneers on their faces, the pain and crawling terror that they had handed out with glee, and he couldn't, in that moment, think of anything to regret.
Dean pulled his mask from his pocket and pulled it over his head, and Sam followed suit. From then it went just like the plan—disturbingly like the plan.
Dean sent a quick text to Alice, and the Special Research sirens went off as they pushed open the door and entered the yard. Dean shot the lock off the closest enclosure they came to, and then shot a vamp in the head when it charged at him. The other monsters in that enclosure, probably djinn or witches or something else that looked human, stared between Dean and the open gate with empty eyes.
A guard, running toward Special Research in response to the klaxons, stopped in his tracks as he saw Dean and Sam. Sam shot him high on the chest. Seeing a guard brought down, the monsters from the enclosure surged from the pen like a toothy wave and fell on him. The Winchesters were already moving on as the guard started screaming.
They had talked about that. About laying the charges and opening the cages. Whether or not it would be smarter, and safer, and better for the towns and people closest to Freak Camp and Winnemucca if they just burned the whole damn place to the ground. Neither of them had been able to commit to it. Sam knew that Dean was thinking of him when he thought of the freaks pinned inside those walls, burning alive.
Sam didn't have that ideal to fall back on. He couldn't say that he had ever wished better for his fellow inmates than a fast bullet. There were monsters (not only the freaks) within those walls, and the cold part of him knew that it would probably be better if he just brought the whole thing down on everything inside.
Except for Kayla. Except for the handful he had known so long ago that were probably already fucking dead. In the end, he couldn't burn the place to the ground knowing there were creatures—maybe monsters, maybe not—trapped alive in those damn cages. So he'd gone along with their plan of creating a distraction, of opening cages and barracks as they went, because some part of him couldn't be the one to blast to pieces all those he had known before.
Honestly, he'd thought he would feel more guilty. But the strange numbness that had seeped into him while they drove only worsened as they laid the charges and shot down the guards and the occasional monster that rushed them. For all that it was dangerous work, and that triggering even one brick of C-4 at the wrong time would be the end of them, it seemed as though the moment Sam had pulled that mask over his face, he was no longer the boy who had been known as Pretty Freak, who had knelt and been whipped in this yard. He was Sam Winchester, Dean's partner.
He and Dean split apart at one point, when Dean turned right around a barracks to get to the next pressure point and Sam kept straight to clear the path. Even with Dean out of sight, Sam felt confident because he could hear the report of Dean's shotgun and the occasional shout and jeer. Everything was going according to plan.
Then he saw Crusher ducking around a corner.
Sam glanced toward Dean, emerging from behind his building with one fewer explosive charge.
Sam looked at where Crusher had disappeared. This was the first time a feeling had fought its way through the dull blank horror of being back in Freak Camp, and that feeling was oh hell no you're not getting away.
Left to his own devices, Sam would never have returned to this place. He would have gone anywhere in the world rather than return to Freak Camp. But he was here now, because Dean was here. Blood was running through the dirt from guards and monsters alike, and there was no way he was going to let escape that fucking guard who had almost broken him and Dean. Not the bastard who had literally ripped people apart and gotten off on it, who had forced him to his knees time and again.
And Sam had been forced every time, even when he had said yes, when he had asked for it. He knew that now, even though he still struggled every day to believe it.
Sam caught Dean's eye, and Sam gestured toward the barracks where he had seen Crusher disappear. Dean gave him a thumbs up, but Sam was already jogging toward his quarry. He hadn't really been asking permission, because that wasn't what partners needed to do. He was going after Crusher. If he didn't take out that bastard, there was no point behind this whole ride back to Hell.
Sam felt the bile rise in his throat and his palms slick with sweat as he cautiously edged around the corner. He recognized the spot viscerally, a second after his skin began to crawl and his heart rate spiked.
This was Head Alley. He might have tried to pretend it was just fear of an ambush, but Sam knew that wasn't the reason for the adrenaline spike. His body remembered what happened when he followed Crusher into this alley.
When he turned the corner, weapon ready, he saw Crusher swearing and fumbling with his gun. Sam could see blood on the magazine that wouldn't quite fit into the gun any more. He wondered distantly if Crusher had gotten the blood on the gun during the fighting, or if it had been there since he'd raped some poor bastard another day. The man had never kept a clean dick, why would he keep a clean gun?
Rape, that's what it is, whether you're fucking a vamp, or a shifter, or a little girl, you son of a bitch.
"Elmer Rosenstein," Sam said, and pulled up his mask to his forehead.
Crusher looked up, teeth bared, his expression animalistic. Then he recognized Sam. A hint of triumph came into his eyes. Crusher had hurt Sam before, used him, and Crusher was not smart enough to understand that their positions were different now. Maybe because Crusher fucking Rosenstein had never changed, except to learn how he could better get away with the same old depravities.
"Well, if it isn't Pretty Freak." Crusher straightened and smirked at the weapon in Sam's hand. "Looks like someone let you hold a gun."
Sam's hand clenched involuntarily. He had to consciously flex his fingers to re-tighten his self-control. He wasn't going to waste a single fucking bullet because he let Crusher get to him.
"Yes," Sam answered, ignoring the distant ghost of himself that whispered sir at the end. "Dean gave me a gun, and I'm going to put you down with it."
Crusher's face twisted into a snarl. "I'm gonna cut your fingers off for that, freak. I'm gonna take that gun and fuck you with it, and fucking blow off the roof of your mouth afterward."
"You're never going to fuck anything again, Crusher." Threatening a guard meant torture. Pointing a gun at one would have been death. But that Freak Camp had already started to burn. Sam raised his gun.
Crusher brought his weapon up and got a shot off wide. He started to rush forward, and Sam pulled the trigger.
A thousand, a million times—he'd never counted, for the same reason he tried so hard not to remember anything but Dean from his childhood—Crusher had come at him with a club, a crazy light in his eyes. A thousand, a million times, Sam had taken it because he was helpless, worthless, powerless. A thousand, a million times, Sam had taken whatever this bastard gave him because he had to, because he hadn't believed he deserved anything more and it wouldn't have mattered if he had.
But Sam wasn't that monster any more, if he had ever been a monster at all.
Crusher stumbled and fell, gurgling from the bullet hole in his chest. Sam hadn't wanted to risk missing a head shot. He walked toward him.
Crusher looked up at him, eyes widening, bloody foam bubbling at his lips. "Please," he whispered. Even as he choked, Sam could see him fumbling for the knife he always kept at his belt.
"We begged," Sam whispered. He could barely speak. It wasn't nausea in his throat any more, nor fear clouding his eyes. It was the memory of how he had felt every time Crusher had forced him to his knees, cut into him with that knife, or had someone else screaming under him. "We begged, and it never did any damn good." With his gloved hand he grabbed Crusher by the hair, careful to keep one eye on the hand trying for the knife. "But you'll never hurt anyone again." Sam shoved his gun against Crusher's temple and pulled the trigger.
Crusher jerked, and Sam let him drop. He fired two more rounds into Crusher's chest, where the heart should have been, and then Sam had to stop and just breathe.
For the first time, Sam didn't hate being inside Freak Camp, didn't feel distant guilt gnawing at him for every human life he and Dean had taken. Monsters came in all shapes and sizes, and this, right here, was the worst one he had ever seen.
Sam had killed monsters before, things that had destroyed families and communities and lives. Looking down at Elmer "Crusher" Rosenstein's bloody, shattered corpse, Sam remembered Jacob, Kayla, himself, and dozens of nameless others. He couldn't think that it was anything but a job well done.
Sam met up with Dean after that, and except for a silent look and a nod between them, they didn't discuss it. Dean didn't need to know why there was blood on his glove, and Sam didn't need to ask where Dean's second back-up bag of weapons and ammunition had gone. He could see a handful of prisoners shooting guards instead of just ripping them apart. Most of the ones with guns were witches missing a hand or the occasional shifter. Sam had a fleeting moment to wonder again if he would see Kayla among them, if she had survived, before they turned to the main building.
The basic core of their plan was guns-blazing and burn-the-walls-down, but in order to get away with it, they had to be smart, too. Alice had told them where the facility's records and little black boxes were kept in Administration, and she stressed that if they didn't want footage of their faces splashed across the five o'clock news, they had to make sure to reduce that particular area to rubble.
Administration was also where Director Jonah Campbell kept his office, but Sam knew for Dean that was more a feature than a bug.
Alice hadn't said as much, but they both assumed that the Director would be present on the day that she gave the all-clear for the attack.
Sam entered the building a little before Dean, past the guard station that was already empty and broken before him, laying charges as he went. He already knew where the video surveillance hub was, but he slowed down as he moved through the familiar hallways, alarms screaming in his ears and the sounds of monsters and guards in the yard fading out with distance and the thick walls. When he came to the door he knew so damn well, he stopped.
He could keep walking, following their plan. Dean had already stopped at the first room they'd targeted to distribute C-4 blocks. Sam could go on to the central hub, lay the charges, wipe the on-site servers, and assume that the Director would go down in the flames. But he couldn't, really. Sam took a deep breath, then put his hand on the door knob and pushed it open.
Sam had known that the Director's office was insulated for sound—there were too many private meeting rooms for visiting functionaries in the same hallway, and not all of those visitors would have wanted to know what went on in the Director's interrogation room—but he'd never quite realized how much until he stepped from the hallway into the cool, still office. Behind him pounded the alarm klaxons, chaos, and screams from what he and Dean had begun, but here, where Jonah Campbell waited quietly at his desk, there was only silence.
The Director looked up. He had, by all evidence, been doing paperwork. Sam knew he hadn't been oblivious to the invasion, he couldn't have been, but the sight still sent shivers down his spine.
"88UI6703." The Director's tone was somewhere between greeting, identification, and criticism. "Shut the door."
Sam heard the latch click before he realized he had obeyed.
The Director's voice was the same. Smooth and cold and implacable. "In this life, even with all I've been able to achieve, I always wondered if a freak would be the death of me. But I thought I'd trained you better, 88UI6703. Lock it."
Sam's hands didn't seem like they belonged to him, jerking toward the lock on the door before he stopped himself, just barely. He touched the lock, but did not turn it. He was shaking like a marionette hung from a drunk's hands. I should never have come without Dean.
Breathing desperately, Sam turned to face this man who had made him.
The Director's eyes were somber, almost angry, but a bitter curve to his mouth qualified as a smile. "Of course, you could kill me now. That would prove once and for all that you are exactly the monster I tried to beat out of you. What a disappointment."
Sam flinched in spite of everything he wanted to do, wanted to say, and dropped his eyes instinctively, no longer able to even look the Director in the face. It took everything in him to stay where he was, keep his grip on his gun, and watch the Director's body language for any movement to a weapon. He tried not to listen. He couldn't let Jonah Campbell finish destroying him now.
"More of a disappointment because even among freaks, you are particularly useless." Jonah Campbell picked up a slim file and frowned down at the page, as though there wasn't an armed intruder in his office. "They always suspected you were more. You were special. What shit. Whatever demon blood contamination is supposed to do to the human body, it clearly didn't take." His smile grew wider and more pained. "Or maybe whoever whelped you knew what kind of worthless piece of trash you are, and dumped you with some fake story about demons coming to your cradle."
Sam was shaking. He wouldn't put it past the Director to have a fake file on his desk, but the man used truth like a scalpel or bludgeon, depending on the need. Sam believed that every word he'd just said was true.
Dean didn't even try the door when he arrived—he just kicked it in. Sam forced his eyes up as relief burned through him, and he caught the smile dropping from the Director's face. If any fear was in him, he buried it beneath ice-cold focus. All he let through was a flash of irritation, as though Dean had arrived early to an appointment and the Director didn't like the disruption to his schedule.
On another man it could have been harmless, but more than once Sam had had the skin whipped off his back for disrupting this man's schedule. There was nothing farther from harmless, not even the wendigos. The Director's eyes flickered to Dean's masked face, his gun, and then back to Sam. Sam had to drop his eyes again. Even then, he could see the Director lean back in his chair, one long hand visible in Sam's line of vision.
"Hands where I can fucking see them," Dean snarled.
Director Jonah Campbell slowly raised his hands and laid them on the desk, palms facing each other, rather than up or down on the polished wood. "Cousin Dean, I presume."
Dean's gun never wavered from its lead on the Director's head, but with his left hand he peeled his mask up to his forehead. His face showed fury colder than Sam had ever seen. "You can presume that I'll splatter your brains against that wall before you call me cousin again."
Dean's eyes were tracking the Director's hands and body, watching for any signals of violence, but Sam's attention was immediately caught when the Director glanced toward him and smiled with the corner of his mouth. The Director flicked two fingers. Kneel.
Sam felt his knees bend without his conscious control and had to fight a lifetime of training to straighten them again. He shifted the gun between his hands and brought it forward. He couldn't quite point it at the source of his nightmares, but he knew if he couldn't get his head in the game, neither he nor Dean would survive.
"Sam, what did he just do?" Dean's voice was angry, and Sam thought distantly that neither of them were in a place where they had a hope in hell of besting the Director. "Sam!"
"Nothing," Sam said, soft, hollow. "I don't kn-know, Dean, n-nothing, I don't know w-why."
"I know why." The Director's voice was soft, calm, and every time he spoke, Sam couldn't stop himself from flinching away, as though the calm words were hot irons laid against his skin. "But then again, I should. I put a lot of work into that freak beside you, Dean. I know what makes him tick better than he does. Damn well better than you do. Would you like to know what I've done with him?" He moved his hand slightly on the table, and Sam raised his gun.
"D-d-don't m-move." Sam's voice shook, like the bad old days when he hadn't even been able to look Dean in the eye, and he knew Dean was looking at him, but he couldn't stay silent. Not when the threat was almost thick enough to choke them in the room. "Don't move. Leave your hands where De—where we can see them."
"Why?" The Director looked at him, and Sam couldn't meet his eyes. He watched the Director's body, his hands, ready for any sign of movement (or his next order). "To make it easier to shoot me, unarmed, when you've done whatever monstrous things you plan? What was your plan in bringing him here? That's a stupid thing to do, and after he's dead you'll wish I had that much mercy in me for a dog like you."
"Don't threaten him," Sam whispered. He wasn't convinced either man heard it, at least not over Dean's snarled, "Shut up!"
That anger made Sam wince, but brought him some focus as well, because ultimately that was why they were here. Not because Sam hated the hunters that had fucked him up, or because he wanted revenge, but because Dean couldn't hold it together knowing that this smooth-voiced man was still alive—the one who had cut Sam into so many little pieces and then sutured him together in the shape he wanted. The Director had formed Sam into the only shape that he had thought Sam deserved, the shape of a freak as tortured as Frankenstein's monster but carved out of a little boy who might never have been a freak in the first place.
Dean had told Sam that for years, and Sam had just begun to believe it. Now he might lose fucking everything because he had let these two men who had defined his life be in the same room.
Dean had given the Director an order, but Sam could have told him that it wouldn't work. The Director didn't need to listen to anyone.
"You never thanked me, you know," the Director said to Dean.
"Last thing I'm going to do is thank a son of a bitch like you," Dean spat. "I should drag you into the fucking yard and let the monsters rip you apart for what you did to Sam."
The Director let a slight look of surprise cross his face, the shadow of amusement. "But that's exactly what you should thank me for, Dean. Poor as he is, I've always considered Sam to be my best work. Perfect for a hunter of your talents and appetites, at least. In six years, I've never duplicated the results that I achieved with him. Wouldn't you call him a perfect little submissive tool, perfect for every use?"
"I'd call you a twisted bastard who should've never been born," Dean snapped.
"Am I? I prefer to think that I do what needs to be done. Unlike some, I don't flinch at what others may deem excessive."
"You tortured Sam—"
"I made him useful." The Director's voice was a whip, and Sam cringed from it. "I made him worth the time of a hunter with your potential, Dean Winchester. Hasn't it been nice to have an obedient boy at your beck and call? One that will throw himself between you and any danger without hesitation? One that can take the abuse of the hunter lifestyle and rarely slow down? His pain tolerance was something I paid special attention to," he added with a note of pride. "He started with a tremendous immunity to pain, but I brought that up to something on par with monsters that can't be injured by traditional weapons. Smart, educated in what he needed to know to be useful, functional with a computer and with a few basic exorcisms under his belt, flawless memory. These are all things I gave him, Dean, so that he could be more than a body in your bed. Though I assume he is also satisfactory there. I wouldn't know, I let others deal with that part of his education, as long as they left him untouched where it mattered. Though I assume, 88UI6703, that you've been obedient in bed as well?"
Sam didn't answer, wouldn't share something so precious with the voice that haunted his nightmares and his flashbacks, but he couldn't fully hide his flinch. The Director almost smiled again.
"So you see," the Director said to Dean, "I gave you this freak, perfectly trained, and then you spent all these years undoing my hard work. But some of it still sticks."
Kneel and crawl, his hands said. Sam gritted his teeth and did not obey.
"I should shoot you right now," Dean said, his voice breaking. It sounded like he was already breaking.
Sam felt those words twist in his chest, like one of the Director's knives. He couldn't even raise his gun to stop it.
"Maybe you should." The Director was easing back in his chair, hands drifting down out of sight. "Would prove once and for all you're no better than the freak you fuck."
"Damn right." Dean took a step forward.
Sam would have told him not to get closer, not to give the Director another opening, but Jonah Campbell was already speaking as he rose to his feet. "I guess I shouldn't have expected better from a freakfucker and traitor like—"
Sam, attention fixed on the Director's hands, saw the motion first. "Dean get down!"
The Director fired the handgun before the words were fully out of Sam's mouth. Dean's arm shot upwards, and then his entire upper body jerked back, a flash of blood splattering behind him as he dropped to the floor.
Sam knew he was screaming. He could feel the vibration in his throat. But all he knew was the feel of the gun in his hand as he swung it up, the pressure of the trigger as he fired.
The Director got off another shot, but it went wide before Sam's bullet ripped into his chest.
Through dozens of Wednesday sessions, Sam had never seen the Director unsettled, much less surprised. The shock on the man's face when the bullet hit was the first time Sam ever believed him to be truly mortal.
The Director toppled into his office chair, sending it crashing into the wall, and fell behind the massive desk.
Sam took three steps forward and put three more bullets into the man's chest, then spun back to Dean.
There was so much blood. Sam dropped to his knees and pulled Dean to his chest, careful of the shattered mess of Dean's arm and a face covered in blood. When Dean shuddered in his arms and whispered, "Fuck," Sam thought he would pass out from relief. He's not dead. Not yet.
"Dean! You can hear me?"
"I'm fine, Sammy. Oh fuck." Dean's eyes were wide and unfocused, eyes streaming from pain. Sam could feel the agony in his shaking body and uneven breaths, but Dean didn't scream. "My face still look okay?"
Sam laughed, only so that he didn't cry. "The blood really brings out the color of your eyes." The bullet had gone through Dean's arm and then cut a gory furrow through his scalp, above his temple. Dean's eyes still weren't focusing, though whether that was due to shock or a concussion from hitting his head against the floor when he fell, Sam didn't know.
The Director didn't miss, with his bullets or his words. That would have been a headshot, if Dean hadn't flung his arm up in time. Sam was glad, fiercely, that he himself had shot to kill.
"Let's get that wrapped up and get out of here."
The moment they walked through the first door into Freak Camp, Sam had turned on his watch's timer. They'd agreed in advance that the whole mission should take no more than an hour and a half, and one quick glance now showed him that fifty-seven minutes of that time was gone. He took five more to administer quick first aid on the floor of the Director's office, wrapping up Dean's arm and head with the roll of gauze he had stored in his pants pocket. He tried not to think about the sounds of pain Dean fought to keep behind his teeth, or the way at least one bone in his arm was definitely broken, if not shattered. He finished by using another length of gauze to press down on the furrow in his scalp and the gush of blood that came with a head wound. He finished by picking Dean's gun off the floor and sliding it into Dean's holster.
"Okay, that should hold." Sam pulled Dean up, and Dean screamed through clenched teeth.
Sam hissed in sympathy. "Fuck, fuck, I'm sorry. You're gonna be okay. C'mon, let's go."
"I want to make sure." Dean tried to reach for his gun with his good arm and almost unbalanced both of them.
Sam caught him and hauled him up firmly under his arm. Blood slicked his hands, and his nose filled with the sharp copper tang. Too familiar, here. "He's dead."
"Sam, gotta…" Dean strained toward where the Director's corpse lay behind the desk.
Sam relented, bringing him there. They both stood over the body, its open eyes and shattered flesh, bone and gore where the Director's heart had been. Dean swung his gun out and put a shot into the head from barely two feet away. When he looked up, Sam expected to see rage in his face, the mask of fury and pain that had become his regular expression for the last few weeks. Instead, what he saw was a sort of grim peace that Sam didn't understand at all.
"Okay," Dean said. "Let's… let's set the last charges and light up this hellhole."
Together, they staggered out of the office and down the hall to the places they'd pinpointed on the blueprints as focal points for the explosives. Sam laid more charges in the tech room, with special care to wipe and then light the servers, while Dean tried to stay upright and alert enough to shoot or distract anyone who tried to approach. Across the hall, Sam saw a storage room filled with files and racks of DVDs, and after making sure Dean could hold himself steady against the wall, he went to set a charge in there as well.
He stopped just inside the door. There were neat folders, tall stacks of DVDs, and a box of jumbled VHS tapes in a corner, all worn, some unspooled or cracked. A booklet of mailing labels lay on the desk next to them.
He stood for a long minute, just staring, until Dean shouted for him.
"Sam! We gotta go!"
Sam turned. Dean had his injured arm tied tight to his chest after their crude first aid, but he was still far too pale and swaying on his feet.
"Yeah." Sam gave with one last glance at the room with the tapes. "Let's go."
Outside, the yard and compound was pandemonium, with freaks rushing everywhere, some swarming guards and falling by the dozens, others trying to climb the walls. Some had even succeeded and were helping pull others up.
One guard, no one Sam recognized, took a shot at them even as a muzzled vamp grabbed his shoulder. Sam felt a bullet fly past his face before the vamp spun the guard around and ripped his throat out with his fingernails, twisting his victim so that the blood ran into his mouth through the muzzle.
Beyond the dying guard, a ragged man and woman, each with only one remaining hand, moved together in a complicated dance that seemed to keep the guards and other monsters at bay. With their final synchronized gesture, a section of wall crumbled, and more of the monsters rushed toward the new exit.
Sam and Dean headed in the opposite direction across the camp's yard, and met no more resistance, even though a handful of monsters raced in the same direction. When they reached the service entrance, Sam was grateful to find the corridors empty as Dean leaned more heavily against him, his steps stumbling more often. The doors leading out had been left wide open, and nothing was left of Giordano's and Beam's bodies but bloody smears leading to the exit.
Sam barreled shoulder-first through the final door and back into the sunlight on the other side. Sam blinked in the brightness. Strange to think this was the same light that bathed the bloody scene behind them. Impossible to believe that the world inside Freak Camp was the same as outside of it.
Their Honda CR-V was the only car left in the lot. Probably the escapees had found car keys in Beam's and Giordano's pockets.
Sam eased Dean into the Honda's passenger seat and kissed him, quick and hard, and then got into the driver's side.
They were half a mile from Freak Camp, passing the occasional monster also fleeing that place, when Sam hit the code on his phone to trigger the blasting caps. The earth shuddered, and a flash bright as a supernova half-blinded Sam through the rearview mirrors, followed by fire that shot skyward. Sam could feel the heat on the back of his head, and wondered if the Honda's gas tanks could light up if the fire caught them.
Sam glanced back at the mirror, just once, while the fireball that had once been Freak Camp rose into the sky and rivaled the sun for brightness.
When he looked back to the road, his hands were shaking. Bright spots swam in his vision, not completely explained by staring into the flames. He checked that Dean was still breathing, extended one hand to grip Dean's knee, and then turned his attention to the road. In another five miles, if no one was on their tail, he'd call Bobby to let him know they'd made it out alive.
There was a weird lightness in his chest, a dizzy relief buzzing in his skin, that he wanted to blame on adrenaline and fear and Dean's injury. Maybe because of the seconds that he had thought Dean was dead.
But he was afraid to admit that maybe that C-4 had burned some of his fear away, along with the foundations of Freak Camp.
The Director had told him that the freak in him would always rejoice at destruction like this, at the slaughter of humans, at monsters winning the day and living to kill again. Dean had told him that fuckers like the Director and guards needed to die, that they were worse than any of the inmates.
If the Director had ever told Sam anything of the truth about who he was—including that strange, stomach-churning reference to demons and cradle—the Director would never be able to tell him anything again. Sam could let the Director's poison seep through him as it had once done, or he could trust Dean's instinct, believe that Dean saw him truly.
With the open road speeding before them, the ruins of Freak Camp falling farther and farther behind, Sam already knew it was no choice at all.
Beside him, Dean shifted gingerly. He reached up to touch his head wound, but stopped before Sam's hand could do more than twitch on his leg. "Nice fireball." He looked over at Sam, his face pale, bloodless under the blood, exhausted—but he was alive, satisfaction written in every line of his face. "You okay?"
Sam let out a shaky breath. A hell of a lot had changed since the first time they had been on the highway together, driving away from Freak Camp, but some things never would. "I'm good, Dean. No regrets."
THE END
End notes:
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