NOTES: I had to bring John into the mix, I hope I can do him justice, he's a complex character. More from his POV in the next chapter, but in the meantime...

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Broken Silence
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It was a brisk morning; it must have been about 3am. Sam hugged his chest to keep out the cold as he waited. John had called and said he was in the city, and they had agreed a meeting point. Sam couldn't quite get his head wrapped around the thought of John actually answering a phonecall, let alone the fact that he was on his way and would be there to help him find Dean in under ten minutes. As if the past weeks hadn't been enough of an emotional roller coaster, here was another upside down twist in the track.

Sam had been unsuccessful in his search so far. That Dean had even come to this city had been a guess. He was checking the hospitals every hour, unsure of whether he wanted to find Dean there or not. The thought that Dean might already be...that Sam was too late; it was too much to bear.

There were a few people about. Men and women walking home after a good night out, or a bad one, stumbling drunks and homeless people stalked the streets. Sam stopped everyone who passed, asked about Dean and showed them a photo, one of the ones Dean used to make his numerous IDs. So far he'd had reactions ranging from 'Get the fuck out of my face, boy' to 'no, I ain't seen him, but have you got his number?'. Most people wouldn't even look at the photo, and Sam had gotten angry more than once.

A homeless man with several carrier bags walked slowly by. Sam stopped him and showed him the photo. "Have you seen this man? He's a little shorter than me, wearing a brown leather jacket..."

The man stopped. "Hmm...yeah. Yeah, I saw him," he said, moving the picture closer to his eyes.

Sam hadn't been expecting the answer. "Wh...really? Where!"

"I just paid him a visit."

Sam furrowed his brow. "What?"

The man looked up, an unnatural grin across his face. His eyes were swirling with a grey mist. "It's Sam, right?"

Sam's defences took over and he whipped the gun from his pocket, pointing it directly at the stranger. "It's you, isn't it? Where's my brother?"

"He's not your brother anymore."

Sam knew when someone was possessed, which ruled out shooting the son of a bitch, but he couldn't do nothing. He grabbed the man and swung him round, throwing him against the wall and pinning him there.

"Where is he!" Sam demanded. There was nothing else he could do. The source of all of his problems was staring him in the face and he couldn't do a damn thing about it. Spare thoughts of simply killing the homeless man passed through Sam's mind, and if he had any proof that the act would kill the demon, and set Dean free, he might have pulled the trigger. But it was Dean that was losing his soul, not Sam. He couldn't kill a human being, an innocent party who just happened to have the misfortune to be walking by.

The Braken laughed with its victim's voice. "Dean doesn't want you to find him. I respect his wishes. You should too."

Sam tightened his grip on the man's throat, enough to make breathing a struggle, but still careful of the force he was using. "Tell me where he is."

"You won't like what you find. Your brother is almost completely gone." The man bared his rotted teeth in a sneer. "But there is one way to save him."

"What way?"

"I think you know."

In a second, the grey swirl in the man's eyes was gone.

"Hey...hey, what? Get off me!" the homeless man coughed, confused as he started to struggle under Sam's grip.

Sam let go immediately and watched the man walk hurriedly away, cursing and shaking his head. Sam knew exactly what the demon meant, but any further thought on the subject was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder.

"Sam."

Of all the ways Sam had envisaged meeting his father again, this had not been one of them. "Dad," he breathed, a sigh of relief riding along with it.

"Are you alright?" John asked, concerned.

Sam nodded. The presence of his father was still a little too much to comprehend. He hadn't seen the man in years, and his absence had been there for so long that Sam was almost used to it. There were so many questions, about the demon that killed mom and Jess, about the Braken, about where in the hell John had been and what he had been doing. So now here was his chance. Here John was, after months of searching, and Sam couldn't find a damn thing to say.

"It's been a long time," John said, his voice heavy with emotion. "It's good to see you again."

Sam found his throat getting a little tighter. Thoughts of the Braken were washed away in the intensity of the reunion. "You too," he finally managed.

Neither man was renowned for being the hugging type, but at that moment it seemed like the thing to do. As they embraced, the reality of John standing there finally came home to Sam.

John pulled away after a moment, his eyes heavy with emotion. "Now what do you say we find that brother of yours?"

John had always been a straight to business kind of guy, and for once, Sam was just fine with it.

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"Do you know what the soul is, Sammy?" John asked. They were sitting in his truck, which was parked around the corner from where they had met. Sam had wanted to continue searching for Dean, but John insisted they compare notes first. Both of them had information that needed to be exchanged.

Sam thought about the question for a moment. Of course he knew what a soul was. Didn't everyone? But the more he thought about it, the more complicated it seemed. No clear cut definitions came to mind. He didn't know why they were siting there having a theological debate while Dean was god knows where.

"A lot of people believe a lot of different things," John began when Sam didn't answer. "But from what I've seen? It's everything that makes you human. It's everything good and everything bad inside you. This demon, this son of a bitch that feeds on them...if it continues doing what it's doing? There won't be anything left of Dean to save."

"All the more reason we shouldn't waste time when we could be looking for him," Sam replied.

"I want you to be prepared for what we might find," John told him. "Dean won't be...himself. The Braken's victims..."

Sam waited for him to finish. John was clearly having trouble finding the right words, and it worried him. He was sure he didn't want to be hearing this. Anything that his father was afraid of, scared Sam a hundred times more.

"It takes who they are. We visited some of this thing's past victims. They...they turned on their families and friends. Some of them killed."

"What are you saying, that Dean might attack us?"

"I'm saying that we have to be careful. Just remember that Dean is dangerous in his current state. Don't trust him, don't let your guard down."

Sam couldn't believe what he was hearing. He hadn't expected this, on top of everything, but somewhere inside him something clicked. Dean hadn't just left because the Braken was dangerous, he had left because he was turning into something dangerous too. Sam couldn't help feeling guilty. Why was Dean was so ready to sacrifice everything for him? For someone who abandoned him on more than one occasion, who didn't pick up the phone for two years to see if he was okay, for someone who couldn't even protect him from danger when he had seen it coming in a vision.

"Are you with me, Sammy?" John pressed.

"Yeah," Sam said, pushing the anguish into the overflowing box he kept at the back of his mind. "So once we find him, what happens next? How do we kill the demon and get Dean back?"

John didn't reply right away and Sam didn't like it one bit.

"Dad?"

"I've got it covered. Let's just concentrate on finding Dean."

Sam nodded, but was left mildly unsettled by John's hesitation. He knew there was no time to get angry over the 'need to know' crap that his father was still pulling after all this time, but it still irked him.

"You've checked the hospitals?"

"Every hour. I was checking the bars when you called, I got through about fifteen with no luck."

John nodded and glanced at the clock. "It's around throwing out time, so we should get back to it."

Sam rubbed his forehead. "He might not even be in this city, dad," he said, painfully. "What if we can't find him?"

John met his eyes. "We'll find him."

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There were always stragglers. The ones who just wouldn't go home. Ray was used to them. He'd been running a bar downtown for years and was no stranger to the types that frequented his establishment, and every other establishment like it. He's seen them all. The loud ones, the quiet ones, the horny ones, the underage ones, and the ones who just didn't want the night to end. They all blurred into one big mass of strangers.

But he would never forget this one.

"He was fairly young, mid-twenties, I'd say. He had light brown hair," Ray told the police officer taking the report. "Leather jacket, jeans. He was sitting in the corner for most of the night, knocking them back. He was alone, the type I usually watch out for. The lonely ones usually attracted the most attention from groups looking for a fight, picking on the weakest of the herd, and all that."

"And tonight was no exception?" the Officer guessed.

Outside, the ambulance pulled away.

Ray nodded, and peered over the man's shoulder, trying to get another morbidly curious look at the beaten body they were lifting into the second ambulance. "There were four of them, large guys with attitude. The kind that go from bar to bar, staying long enough to get themselves thrown out, then moving on to the next. I don't know how it started..." Ray trailed off, remembering. Not the fight, but what happened afterwards.

He could never repeat it, especially not to a cop. How could he explain when he barely understood it himself? When he looked into that man's eyes, and he'd looked right back and there had been...the only way he could think to put it...there had been more nothing in that man's eyes than Ray ever thought possible.

"Mr Thomas?"

"One of them started yelling stuff, stupid stuff. I thought...I was watching it and I thought he'd be the one in trouble, you know? There were four of them. They were just saying stuff..." He wanted to forget. He just wanted to go home and never think about what he had seen that night again.

"Then what, Mr Thomas?"

Ray sighed. "Then there was a whole lot of chaos," he explained. "And a whole lot of blood."

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John opened the trunk of his truck and divided up some supplies between himself and Sam.

"Keep you phone on. You get a lead, you call me straight away," John ordered, though it was unnecessary. Sam had been checking his phone every two minutes in the thin hope that Dean would call. "I mean it. If you find Dean, don't try and talk to him, don't approach him without me. Remember what I told you."

Sam nodded grimly. The fact that his brother could be a monster by now, or a comatose shell of a human being wasn't exactly something he was going to forget any time soon. "Same goes for you."

"I'll cover the other side of the city and check the police stations. You carry on calling the hospitals." John slammed the boot and went to get back in the driver's seat. "We're gonna find him, Sam."

Sam looked away, then back at his father. "We'd better."

He was two steps away from the truck when his cell phone rang.

Sam stopped in his tracks and pulled the cell from his pocket. John got out of the truck and appeared beside him.

"Dean?" John asked expectantly.

Sam shook his head slightly. It wasn't Dean's number, but he still couldn't help his hands from shaking as he expectantly answered the call. "Hello?"

There was background noise, but nobody responded.

"Dean? Dean, is that you?" Sam tried.

He listened hard, trying to hear a voice, a sound that would give some indication of where the call was coming from, because it had to be Dean. It had to be.

Then he heard it. It was barely audible, but it was there.

"Sam?"

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End of Chapter Eleven
Next Chapter: Lost & Found