The Road So Far:
The both men got to work.
Dean started to clean Sam's face with a soft sponge, getting all the blood off, while Bobby started to stitch him up. They had to work fast and precise. This one was a two-men-job.
Sam was drifting in and out of it. His finger's twitching every now and then. They didn't dare to give him anything else but saline for the moment. They had to wait for Ellen. She'd know.
CHAPTER 9
Ellen came.
She took care of the wound to Sam's chest and thigh. A lingering look on the boy's screwed face.
She had told them, he'd need a ct-scan.
Dean told her, that they wouldn't bring him to the ER. So she propped and touched Sam's stomach and ribs and declared that it didn't look like there were internal bleedings.
She told them to be observant, when it came to the kid's breathing.
Gave Dean precise instructions on how to dose and administer the meds. Reminding him of getting Sam warmed up slowly otherwise he could fall into a severe state of shock.
Long story short.
There were quite some injuries to add to the list beside the obvious.
Cracked ribs on both sides.
Bruises.
Two removed back-teeth, three loose. He may as well would have to visit a dentist anytime soon.
A concussion.
Sam's left eye was swollen shut, but it didn't seem to be anything broken.
Dislocated shoulder.
Lacerated feet.
A broken metacarpal bone and thump. Jarred skin on the same hand. Maybe from trying to get out of a pair of handcuffs. Ellen had casted the hand and arm.
Ellen couldn't stay. She would have loved to though, since she hadn't seen Dean and Bobby since their showdown at the devil's gate.
She promised to drop by in two days with meds and other supplies they would might need, checking on their patient.
SPN
Dean kept an eye on Sam that night. He'd stay in the basement in some rotten, squeaking chair. A bottle of whiskey and a cup of coffee beside him. Sam's blood-stained purse in his back-pocket
Sam was out could, since Ellen had drugged him with just enough morphine, so he wouldn't suffer from respiratory depression, but wouldn't be under that much pain either.
So Dean had time to think. About that evening, the night. The way he had felt before Sam's call and the eagerly rising anger within him after spotting the hurt man on the road.
Now that he was all by himself, some of the tension floated away. He reckoned what Sam's been saying.
And just then it got to him. That maybe Sam knew, that Dean was a hunter. That the kid didn't actually talk to some random hallucination floating above him.
Might as well he was talking to Dean, telling him that he knew …
Dean shot a curious look at Sam's face, the only part of his body that had to be seen under a pile of blankets. His mind wandered off to the purse in his pocket, not belonging to him.
He inched closer up to the bed, fumbling with the blankets to get to hold Sam's hand. It felt cool although they were about to warm him up. Dean squeezed it all so tenderly, rubbing his thump over the kid's backside of the hand.
„So … you know what I am, huh?" Dean thought out loud, chewing his lower lip unconsciously He knew Sam wouldn't hear him at all. „You're all business and shit about that, right? You don't generally care about who's paying you. As long as it's for the money you hop in to their cars and drive off to god knows where. Ending up … Ending up like THIS." His eyebrows narrowed. „Why would you do that? - Never heard of gambling? Credit card fraud? Something like this. - Cause that's how we deal with this. We're taking what we need to live. Not more, not less either. We're not selling ourselves out." It nagged at the back of his mind and he damn well had to get it out of his system like yesterday. „This is going to end. - You won't do this thing anymore. You deserve better. - Everyone deserves better than this." Dean exhaled sharply and took a deep breath. „And I'm going to hunt those sons of bitches down. They're going to pay for this."
His subconsciousness helped him to put pieces of Sam's puzzle together.
He told Dean that he knew what he was.
He's had a broken hand, and the scratches along it. Like he had broken it all by himself to get out of a pair of handcuffs. Though Sam hadn't been carrying them anymore when they found him.
He had told him, that he took one of the guys out. So … Sure Sam wasn't weak. But he had been injured, dehydrated. And the men high likely have been armored at least with knifes.
So if he wasn't trained to do so, he couldn't have possibly even hurt one of them properly to get away. He would have been too slow. Too weak.
Right?
Maybe Sam also has had a hunter's life? Maybe he's been here on job? Or did he meet hunters in his past who filled him in?
The more Dean thought about it, the more theories he spun in his mind; the more questions popped up.
He remembered the purse again, reaching for it.
Usually he wouldn't go through someone else's personal things (actually he would, but never admit it). But he figured it was about time to get to know Sam some better.
So he went through the purse.
Five-hundred dollars and a driver's license.
No pictures, no cards. Nothing.
Well, it wasn't nothing nothing. It was something.
It was a driver's license with Sam's picture on it. „Angus Young", Dean read out loud. „Wyoming."
Dean huffed out a breath. „Nice alias there, kiddo."
SPN
Later that day – the sun was already setting – they moved Sam upstairs, settling him down in Dean's bed, since it was the only room not stacked with boxes and supernatural stuff.
Sam continued to tune in and out of consciousness His breaths shallow and weak.
Dean wouldn't leave his side, except for visiting the bathroom, getting coffee, or following Ellen's instructions on how to care of their patient.
At some point, Dean called Rufus.
If Sam had killed one of those bastards, they had to get rid of the body. Dispose the body and all the other things properly so that no one would ever get a hold onto what had happened in the warehouse.
It was easier and faster to do this together, since there was the possibility that the other guy would come back and find something that would lead him to the salvage – or even worse. To Sam.
SPN
They took Rufus car to the warehouse that night. More room to stash the patrol-cans they might needed.
At the entrance they were greeted by a bloody smear on the door-handle and triplets of blood on the ground.
Dean and Rufus didn't have to look for it. It all seemed untouched, what had been set up in the big hall of the abandoned building.
Maybe the dead man's partner was still waiting for his sidekick to come back...
Sheets laid out in the middle of the floor, Tables draped around a wooden cross. Metal-cuffs installed along the horizontal beam, and leather straps at the very top of the vertical one.
It smelled like iron, pain and death.
Dean strode by the tables, having a brief look at the utilities on top of them. - This was quite an arsenal there.
BDSM-Stuff, syringes, small med-bottles, knives, pliers and a whole lot of other nasty, dirty tools to make someone scream in agony.
Nope. Dean wasn't going there. He didn't even want to imagine what had went down at this place last night.
Not far from the cross, they found a body. Face down. Frozen to the ground in a pool of blood.
Rufus cocked an eyebrow at Dean. He's been filled in to what they were doing here, though no details had been told.
They went through the man's belongings, looking out for anything that could lead them to his sidekick. There were pictures of the dead man with another guy, to their feet a dead deer. The other picture showed a family-photo. The dead man, his wife and two kids. Pictures which you would carry with you because it was about someone dear to you.
A driver's license, credit cards, some cash.
"Well, look at you, Bert Birchowic Harrisburg South Dakota." Dean memorized the address. He stashed the pictures, money and driver's license in his pockets.
The emptied purse landed on the corpse beneath him with a thud.
„Well, that's gonna be real fun.", the hunter huffed. . He and Rufus shared a knowing look. „Let's burn this place to the ground."
And that's just what they did.
No one would ever know.
SPN
Sam was dead to the world. Tugged into a soft bed, comforter and blankets spread out on top of him to keep him all warm and comfortable.
Bobby checked in on their patient a couple of times, changing the empty saline-drip to a new one. Administering antibiotics and other meds to it. He changed Sam's lying-position, so the kids back wouldn't be all that sore and achy when he'd wake up.
Shallow even breaths, well audible in the silent room.
An hours-drive away, an old abandoned warehouse went up in blazing flames.
SPN
When Dean returned to the salvage, warm sunlight flooded the driveway and gave Baby a memorizing gleam, drawing attention away from the old rusty bowl parked right behind the Impala.
Inside the house, Bobby went into the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers.
Ellen looked troubled, though she wore her most warm smile.
„You sure about that?" Bobby took a seat across from his old friend and filled up the tumblers. „Never heard about Jody ever having a kid." Deep lines of thoughtfulness altered Bobby's face into something more dark.
„No one would know" But she knew.
„Could be anyone else though. - It's been fifteen years now since Jody vanished." He seemed to rummage around in his memories, trying to figure out when he could possibly had missed out on it. „No one ever knew what happened. There have been no traceable leads."
Ellen sighed, looking down at the filled tumbler for a moment. „Long story short, she had to tell someone at some point. And that one was me back then. Like I said, I only saw the boy once when he's been a teen. But I'll be damned if this isn't him. This is Samuel. Beting my ass."
Bobby bit his lower lip. Thinking. „For sure, Angus Young ain't his real name.", sharing his thoughts with Ellen. „Might told Dean his birth-name though. Never became or continued hunting. How could she hide him from all of this?"
Because Robert Singer knew everything. Everyone. There was no way in heaven, hell or on earth, to hide information like this from him.
"She never wanted the boy to be a part in this. - And if she wasn't forced to tell me, she wouldn't had. Trust me.", her smoky voice vibrated.
"Anyway. - I think he's doing good so far. He's looking better. You should try and get some food into him. Broth or something soft." She tipped down her Whiskey. "When he's awake … he should move. Get back on his feet anytime soon. Sit him up, get him to take deep breaths."
Bobby filled it back up, giving her another shot. "If this is Jody's son. He's family."
Ellen nodded. Because she knew. Everyone knew in their line of business:
Family doesn't end with blood. And blood doesn't mean family.