Warnings: This story references to underage rape, torture, non-con.
————————-
"There's nothing left alive
As we watch the spirits die
The world keeps turning
My heart keeps learning
Do you know where the guilty sleep"
(from Truth Hurts by Deep Purple)
———————
"Dicem veritatem tuam!"
The witch screamed her curse through the old glass, just as Dean tipped the mirror to the floor and it broke into a thousand pieces. The mirror had housed the ghost of the witch for decades and breaking it finally put her to rest. However, despite wanting to deny it Dean had glanced in the mirror for just a second. He guiltily turned towards Sam.
"You didn't!" Sam exclaimed though already knowing the answer from the look on Dean's face. Sam turned his back to hide his anger, his frustration. "Dammit, Dean," he said in a tired, quiet voice, betraying he had already said those words far too many times.
"Now the mirror is broken, the spell probably won't work?" Even to his own ears, Dean could hear that he didn't believe the words he'd spoken. Sam's angry glance confirmed he didn't either. Since when had their luck held?
"Let's go home, see if there is any lore that'll help". Sam glanced at his watch, "in any case we should have time to prepare, witching hour is still four hours away."
Back at the bunker, they didn't find an immediate solution to their new problem. Not that either had really believed they would, as they had already researched and come up empty-handed when working the case.
They emptied the small bedroom at the end of the corridor. Sam fixed three heavy bars across the doorway. "Think it'll hold?"
As the sun set their fears were confirmed. From the other side of the door Sam could hear grunting, coughs and the rasp of movement against the concrete floor. Almost an hour went by before he heard the unmistaken rumble of a snarl.
Behind the door, the large grey shape was standing, ears peaked towards the door. The slow rise of the head belied the unnatural animal. The eyes retained their original green colour, but there was no human reason behind them. Claws raked across the door, the heavy weight of the body bounced against it.
The wolf wanted out.
—————
Hours spent listening to the gnarls, the angry barks, and by the start of sunrise the sorrowful howling, yet the door held. Sam waited patiently for the day to fully arrive, but never left his guarding position seated by the door.
A soft whimper woke him. He must have dozed off waiting for morning and Dean to return. The whimper sounded again. Sam could hear the faint noise of flesh and bone remoulding and the whimpers grew louder to eventually turn frantic. Sometimes Sam could hear the crunching sound of bone breaking, a sound Sam was only too intimately familiar with. The whimpers changed to screeching, the sound of a wolf screaming.
A pale Dean looked up as the light of the opening door fell upon him. Sam gently placed a set of clothes in the doorway then left wordlessly as he released Dean from the improvised prison.
A race against time had started. None of the previous victims of the witch's curse had lasted long - the longest surviving victim had survived for nearly a month, but had also killed several when in wolf form.
All victims had died by their own hand. Listening to Dean's transformation, Sam now had a good idea why.
——————-
Dean went straight to the bathroom. He didn't bother dressing in the clothes Sam had left. In the shower, the sour sweat and clammy feel washed off easily, but the memory of the pain still lingered. Only Alastair, his torturer in hell, had ever managed to evoke this level of pain in him, and Dean knew that it was only a matter of time before he broke. He always broke.
They spent the day in the library researching, Dean nursing a beer but staying sober enough to take in the material he read. Sam, always the faster reader, with a single-minded focus (stubbornness in Dean's view) had already scanned a stack of books from the far-side bookcase, whilst Dean was still on book number two.
By evening and too many books to count later, Dean went to his old room where he undressed and wrapped himself in an old blanket. Then he trudged across the hallway to his new, bare room. He mourned the loss of his comfortable bed, then lay down on the cold concrete floor in the small room. He didn't answer Sam's weary platitudes of "we are going to find a way out of this", "you and me", and "us" before the click of the lock sounded as a final full stop to Sam's old-worn sermon. He had heard it all before, and it made no difference when the pain came. Then all that was Dean faded away.