Stan hugged both knees tightly to his chest by the time Sam pulled Dean away. He could hear the heated tone in their voices, even if specifics were lost to him over the distance.

He kept his attention away from their conversation until Sam returned, making it as easy as possible for Stan to meet his hazel gaze.

With Dean standing back from the table, Sam went back over to Stan, this time leaning his arms on it and resting his head on them to be slightly closer to Stan's level. "We need to see if you're hurt," he clarified, his eyes wide and caring.

Swallowing thickly, Stan glanced from Sam to Dean and back before nodding to show he understood what they wanted from him.

Slowly, Stan uncurled and got to his feet, hesitating only a second before tugging off his shirt. It took a bit of effort once his arms were over his head, and it was easy to tell why. The finger-shaped bruises that mottled his skin were impossible to miss against his pale complexion.

Stan bit back a shudder in the open air, tangling his thin, worn shirt around his hands in an attempt to retain a little heat without covering up anything Sam and Dean wanted to see.

Sam had a hard time biting back his reaction to Stan's condition, and from the breath of air he heard Dean suck in, he had a feeling it was the same for him. Bile rose in his throat, making him wish they'd done this before sitting down to eat.

Stan was nearly all skin and bone. Sam could see the little guy's ribs clearly defined against his skin, his elbows knobby from the lack of nutrition. There was no doubt in Sam's mind that his legs and knees would look the same.

The bruises were a whole other story.

It was easy to tell where they'd come from and how the little guy had been abused. All his reactions to them made sense now, his stark reality painful to see. Fingers as big as Stan had put them there, relentless and impossible for someone his size to fight back against. It made Sam feel bad for what he had to do.

Sam leaned in, moving one of his arms out from under him. "Don't move," he whispered, aware of how close he was to Stan as he talked. He could see the bright red strands of hair move in the breeze those two words made.

Sam brushed a finger against Stan's chest, light and careful. That was as far as he made it before he chickened out. It terrified him to realize how easy it would be for him to put marks like that on Stan's body.

Shuffling his chair to the side, Sam looked helplessly at Dean. "Can you see if there's any broken bones?" he asked. Because of his seniority, Dean had spent more years tending injuries like that.

Dean snapped out of his shock and nodded, his mouth dry. "Uh, sure. Right."

He pulled his chair over to the spot Sam had vacated, leaning in with his eyes intent. "This won't hurt," he promised Stan. "Just need ya to keep still for me and only move when I say."

"Yessir," Stan murmured, briefly forgetting about Sam's correction in favor of concentrating on controlling the shudders that threatened to take control of his body with such large fingers approaching. Sam's touch had been gentle at least, and as scary as it had been to be grabbed by Dean that first time, it hadn't hurt at all.

Passing the tiny bundle his shirt had become to one hand in case Dean needed him to move his arms, Stan focused on breathing deeply and holding still like Dean told him to, mentally preparing himself for those fingers to come for him.

It won't hurt, he reminded himself.

"Sir is our dad," Dean said dryly, his hand covering the last of the distance between himself and Stan. When it reached the scrawny kid, he was too distracted to complain more about the deferential treatment Stan gave them.

Dean's fingers touched skin, and it took everything in him not to freeze up again.

From the start, Stan looked small when Dean saw him, but now he also looked vulnerable. The dark marks that covered his skin had been put there by a human, a man much smaller than Dean. He held Stan's life between his fingers in the most literal fashion, and didn't want to let the kid down.

Dean let two of his fingers brush along Stan's back, corralling behind him to keep him from flinching away and possibly causing Dean to miscalculate the pressure he needed. Then, he touched his thumb to Stan's chest, slowly checking each individual rib. It was a tedious process, lengthened even more by the relative size of the person he was helping, but if Stan had any hidden injuries, they needed to know.

While he worked, Dean found himself humming the tune to Smoke on the Water, music keeping him focused, just like when he listened to the radio while fixing the Impala. When he finished with one side of Stan's ribs, he moved on to the other side, then checked the kid's sides, gently shifting his thumb up to nudge the little arms out of his way.

Once that was done, Dean directed Stan to turn around. Checking over the kid's back went quicker than the rest. Though it did pain Dean to see how prominent the tiny backbone was. Stan needed more than one good meal to start recovering.

Nothing stood out to Dean, and if Stan had any bruised bones, they'd heal up if he was given time. All that was left to check was Stan's legs and feet, so Dean backed off for a second.

"Nothing's broke," Dean said, glancing between Stan and Sam, who was hovering nervously nearby, unconsciously clasping his hands. "Stan, can you sit and take off your shoes? I can do a quick check of your legs and feet, but I think we're in the clear."

Stan nodded, letting out a long sigh after the fingers retreated without incident. It was baffling, how careful Dean had been, mindful of how much pressure he applied to Stan's bones even as he had the smaller man pinched in his fingers. Nicholas never gave that much thought when it came to Stan.

With his back still to the brothers, Stan promptly dropped down to sit, hurrying to untie his shoelaces. Everything he wore had been provided by the witch as he grew up, human clothes shrunk down to fit Stan. His shoes were simple, cheap trainers, old and worn from several years of use. His other clothes followed in a similar vein, from his navy long-sleeve with a slightly stretched collar to his dark gray sweatpants with frayed hems.

The residual adrenaline from Dean's checkup left Stan's fingers a little fidgety, so it took him a bit to untie them and slip them off. He momentarily forgot about the red-tinted scar nestled in the small of his back, a mark from another lifetime contrasting the bruises.

Dean was as cautious as ever as he touched the pad of his index finger against the sole of Stan's foot, momentarily unable to look away from how the foot didn't even cover his fingertip.

So small…

Shaking that thought off, Dean repeated the procedure for the second foot, making sure they moved naturally and no flinches of pain crossed Stan's face while he worked.

Sam had taken a backseat during the examination willingly, unnerved by the sight of Stan's thin body next to his thick fingers, especially after the reveal of just how much abuse Stan had gone through from the witch. And those were only recent injuries. There was no telling what he'd gone through in his years of captivity.

Now, he leaned forward even as Dean checked Stan's calf muscles and knee. "That brand on your back…" Sam asked, his eyes glued to the pink symbol that Stan had covering a good portion of his back. Dean paused, his eyes flicking up to Stan's face for a second before he returned his attention to the legs. "How did you get it? Where'd it come from?"

Stan's head snapped up to Sam when the other human addressed him, and heat rose in his neck when he realized they could see his scar plain as day. The bruises he could brush off, those would go away, but that… He would live with that ugly mark for the rest of his life.

"O-oh," Stan mumbled, resisting the urge to squirm or cover the mark back up. He hadn't been told he could, so his shirt stayed where it was bundled in Stan's hands. "I, ah, got it before the witch. The people he bought me from."

It was a good thing Dean had finished his examination when Stan finished talking. He felt an icy cold rage fill his veins. "He bought you?"

Sam put a hand on Dean's shoulder again, pushing him back from where he hovered over Stan. Lay off, was clear in the look he shot Dean. Only the tightening at the edges of Dean's eyes gave away that he was listening to Sam, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms to let his rage smolder.

With a quiet sigh, Sam tackled the subject that hung in the air between them. "Stan, tell me everything that happened before you were with Nicholas." Their assumptions that he'd been caught by the witch were slowly crumbling, and Sam feared the answer they were going to get.

Stan's shoulders bunched up as he felt the tension in the room again, knowing he'd caused it. "Well, I-I… I mean…"

Taking a few breaths to think back, Stan shook his head helplessly. "I don't know. I don't really remember much besides… y'know," he mumbled, jerking his head to indicate his back. "It's… it's like an old nightmare now. Like it didn't really happen, but I know it did. I just…" Stan squeezed his eyes shut, turning inward and drawing out the earliest thing he could recall.

"I remember a cage. And Nicholas looking in. Smiling. He liked me…" With a shudder, Stan's knees drew in again, toes curling anxiously as he re-lived one of the worst moments of his life.

Sam had a hard time suppressing a shudder of his own, trying to imagine a man the size of Nicholas peering in at him in a cage. "That's over now, for good," Sam promised. "We're going to do what we can to find your family."

Dean swallowed down his anger, pushing back his chair to stand. "No broken bones," he announced the results of his examination. "Least, none that I can see. We'll give you some ice for the bruises. You'll need what sleep you can get so those start healing."

Moving to the mini fridge, Dean peeked in the freezer. No ice. He huffed in annoyance. "I'll be back," he muttered, snagging the ice bucket from its place next to the coffee pot.

The hunters' voices brought Stan back to the present, and he gave himself a good shake to try and banish those awful memories. While the humans carried on their business above him, Stan occupied himself by tugging his shoes back on and tying them securely in place.

Family, Sam had said. They were going to try to find his family.

Of course Stan knew he had a family, he had to come from somewhere, but like the people who sold him to Nicholas and the place they kept him, he couldn't remember them very well, either.

The closest he ever came was on the rare occasions when he was allowed to sleep deeply, peacefully. Sometimes, if he was deep enough in sleep, he could remember his mother. He never saw her in these dreams, but he felt her. Her warmth and her comfort and her love…

Stan would wake up crying from these dreams, hoping Nicholas wouldn't notice.

Back in the beginning, when Stan was still a kid, he would ask Nicholas about his family. Each time the witch would assure that Stan's family was far, far away and he'd never see them again. And the more Stan brought it up, the more annoyed Nicholas became with him. Stan learned to keep quiet, and forget about his family.

Completely.

Sam reached forward, nudging the little shirt Stan still had wrapped in its little clump. The little guy gave the tiniest of flinches, broken out of his retrospective state, and glanced up at Sam. "You can put this back on," Sam said, keeping his voice soft, the way he treated the more traumatized victims they ran into. Stan nodded and did just that, giving a slight wince when his arms were raised above shoulder level.

Dean had a habit of scaring victims back into the shields they'd erected against the terrifying things they saw. Well-meaning or not, it set people back and made them look twice at the brothers when they needed focus more than anything. Sam was the one who generally took over interactions when it came to a softer touch, able to empathize and talk them through their pain.

Sam had a feeling he'd be the one helping Stan out, more often than not.

A/N:

Birthday in a few days for me! Hope everyone's January is going well!

Next: January 28th, 2022 at 9PM est

Please leave us a review if you're enjoying the story!