Chapter 2
Dean stares at the vibrant rows rainbow-hued selections of beverages in the rest stop cooler, and bites his lip.
He doesn't remember what his mother likes to drink.
He's delirious with something akin to happiness, but it's also lined with an edge of unfathomable fear. What if she hates man he's become? What if she's disgusted by what he's capable of? What if she never recovers from losing John?
Dean pushes that from his mind, and instead scans the nutritional facts of each one. He dismisses purple and green drinks, because they look disgusting and unnatural. He nixes the energy drinks too. He's fairly certain they didn't even exist in 1983. Bottled lattes are axed for the same reason.
He decides on a cup of caffeine, and buys two: standard black and one of the girly sugary ones that Sam likes. And while he's thinking about it, he fires off a profane text to Sam for next answering his phone, and walks up and down the aisles, tossing things into his little basket. Lip glosses, candy bars, deodorant, hair clips, magazines, toothbrushes, lady razors. Does his mother wear make-up?
Dean's comparing two eyeshadow quads when Mary ventures down the aisle after her trip to the bathroom, that damned nightgown bundled under one arm. She's wearing a pair of Charlie's jeans from her go-bag he hadn't had the heart to burn, his Queen t-shirt and is swaddled in Sam's hoodie that she found in the Impala and refuses to part with. Mary seems steadier and calmer as she approaches. Dean wants to hug her again, maybe never let go, but he abstains. "Sunburnt Smokes or Pure Romance?"
Mary studies the disarrayed contents of his cart. "Neither...what...on earth are you doing?"
Dean frowns and shrugs innocently. "I'm just, um. I'm helping?"
Mary seems amused, fighting a smile. She peers up at him fondly, hand pressed over heart. "You're so handsome...I never thought. You looked like a frog when you were a kid," She admits, and Dean barks a shocked laugh. So that's why John called him "his little hopper" until he was 15. "And you'd do the same thing then. You thought you were helping, but you were making a freakin' mess. You were so serious, too. I never minded." Mary pats his arm and sorts through the basket. "Let's save you a little money, okay?" Dean's not sure what a Mom Voice is, but he thinks this gentle-firm tone edged with exasperation might be it.
She clears out the basket, and Dean catalogs ever preference and dislike. Mary never liked fashion magazines. She seems to prefer any color other than pink or red. She takes her coffee black with sugar. And she likes Pepsi, not Coke; turkey, not ham.
Mary tugs him towards the register, impatiently helps pack the bags, and hurries to the car while Dean's pocketing his receipt, tossing a "Hurry up, Dean!" over her shoulder.
She's impatient to get to her son.
Dean beams when he walks out of the store, into the lavender gleam of dawn, and laughs, "I'm coming, Mom."
-SPN-
Sam likes the drugs. They're medicinal fireworks, flashing bright and loud in his bloodstream, distracting from the trepidation and prettying up the pain.
He can sleep with them too, and he takes full advantage of even a few moments of unconsciousness even though Toni slaps, shocks or strangles him awake.
Sam, with all of his experience on the flipside of this equation, quickly learns that lying or even omitting truths does not work in his favor. The truth is slippery, and everywhere. It yearns to be free. Sam's psychic powers may have diminished greatly, but he's always been wired with an ethereal strength, an odd aversion to supernatural curses or mind-altering drugs. He could fight this one if he wanted to. Toni's other means of persuasion are extremely convincing.
The interrogations sessions last for hours. Or is it days? It's hard to keep track when your existence consists of chains, a chair and the banal barn where you'll probably die, but the drugs at least make enduring the invasive, battering probes into the worst, most nightmarish times of his life—Mary. His childhood. Jessica's death. Special kids. John. Dean's deal—easier to handle.
He speaks until there's no moisture left in his mouth or words in his brain, until they've dissected and examined the haunted corners of his lifetimes, and he's sore-throated and dehydrated.
Toni's pale face is all hard angles and hatred, even if the thin lips are arranged in a chilling facsimile of a smile. "So after your brother was slaughtered by hellhounds, what did you do?"
Niggling itches slither across his skin and water floods his eyes. He's alive with amplified sensations, the unrelenting cinch of the handcuffs, the leadened weight of the chains, the vibrant throb of his skewered leg, the thunderous cadence of Toni's voice. Freshly dosed, Sam can't remember how to operate his mouth. And his neck has turned to mush, his head is a boulder, rolling down the plane of his body. All he can see is Dean's chest shredded by claw marks, the ivory glow of bone and fat. He gags on the memory,"s-started training with Ruby-"
"The demon," Toni amends.
"...to get stronger, so d-do more...tried to turn my curse into something good."
"So you formed an alliance with the very monsters that slaughtered your entire family most recently the brother..." Toni regards him as some beastly thing...a freak, a junkie, a murderer. "How did you get stronger, Samuel?"
She's circling him, the rhythmic click of her heels only accelerating the already lopsided beat of his heart. She holding a long cylinder of wood with a rubber handle and whacks the skeleton of the chair with it. She's tickled when Sam, who's drugged out of his gord, jerks. Sam's not sure if he's more frightened of the weapon or her judgment. He hesitates by licking his lips, and fumbling over his words. "I wanted to save more people. He made me promise to keep hunting."
"And that's very noble, Sam, but you're stalling."
Sweat drips into his eyes. "I d-drank demon blood."
Toni thrusts the cattle prod into his ribs, zapping the tender flesh there. He absorbs the surge of fluid pain that bows his spine. "You deserve this, Samuel."
And it becomes a mantra spoken with the reverence of a prayer just every time she hurts him. And when he doesn't subscribe to her sadistic faith and repeat it (the drugs reinforce her truth) she gets the blowtorch and the spoon, an ice-pick or a knife.
Sam understands now, as he's writhing and rutting out the anguish of yet another burn that this isn't an interrogation. It's a MOL-sanctioned execution of spirit before the body.
She leaves him, the lock of the door behind him spells that she won't be coming back for awhile. Night renders the barn pitch dark and worryingly cold, but Sam doesn't care. Exhaustion drags his head down, chin to chest. With a fleeting thought of his brother, Sam sleeps.
Sam slams into consciousness with an operatic inhale as he's pummeled by a dilluge of frigid, rusty water from above. Gurgling and dazed, he tries to dive from the chair to escape, forgetting he's cuffed and chained, and only manages to fray his wrists even more ragged and jostles his already aching gunshot wound. The harsh spray plasters his hair to his forehead and into his eyes, soaks his clothes and chokes him.
The water disappears as abruptly as it appeared. Sam looks upward, head bobbing to dodge the errant stream of water to see a rudimentary piping system and a sprinkler erected just over his head. "Welp, they thought of everything," he sighs with lethal sarcasm.
He shakes his head like a dog, wiggling his body to rid himself of as much puddling water as he can. It's a futile attempt to lessen the intended cooling effect, but it's already taken hold. Goosebumps prickle every inch of his skin, and he's trembling in a matter of moments, and it only intensifies by the minute.
Hypothermia is a tidy method of torture. It muddies the mind, weakens to body and shatters the resolve without getting too messy. Except Sam Winchester is depressingly familiar with torture and the depravity of the beings that do it. He bows his head, flexes his fingers and toes to maintain circulation. He closes his eyes, and sinks deep into his subconscious. It's less of a mediation and more of a mental escape. In the cage, when Michael and Lucifer warred against each other instead of ganging up on him, Sam used to gather whatever pieces of himself he could, and check out, erecting high-def dreams of an wonderfully imperfect life in which he married Jess had three kids and lived across the street from Dean and his family. Their wives were best friends. It's loud and chaotic and decadently normal.
Sam snaps back to his gruesome reality of convulsing muscles and dangerous cold.
Dean is dead.
The love of his brother is what's powered him through from horrific obstacle to the next. If it were up to Sam, he never would've left that dirty demon's trap of Cold Oak or he would've kept his appointment with Death after closing the gates.
Sam had made grand speeches to Dean about choices and agency, and had honored his brother's decision to become a supernatural suicide bomber, and face Amara alone. And now, if he could change anything about his life, he would've gone with him.
Pain, Sam knows, is an assault on the physical body, and while he's shackled, it's still escapable. Loss, however, is an imprint on the soul, a weeping wound that diffuses to the marrow of his bones, drapes of black veil in his DNA. Sam has recovered and survived Lucifer's torment, demon blood addiction, Jessica's death, all because of Dean. That touchpoint is gone, and Sam did nothing to stop it.
The grief hurts more than any wound Toni can inflict.
Sam doesn't even know why he's fighting anymore.
He cries with ragged, silent sobs until he's so brittle from the cold and so depleted from interrogation that he passes out.
But the water blasts on and off again randomly throughout the night.
Torture. Rinse. Repeat.
-SPN-
Fifteen minutes out from the bunker, and neither Sam nor Castiel is answering their phone. Dean's not sure how his little brother will handle their long dead mother's return, and he'd love to avoid him attacking with her a demon blade or the soggiest chick flick moment of the millennium.
He's also unshakably paranoid. Winchester Law usually means that with every divine miracle comes a tragedy, with Sam's life footing the bill.
He listens to Mary's nervous chatter how much she hates modern cars, and tamps down the dread that leaving him sweating in his jacket.
When he arrives at the bunker, he slips in front of his mother as they proceed down the stairs, so she won't see him brandishing his weapon. He doesn't even reach the landing before he sees the upended furniture and smells blood. He hopes Sam, thinking Dean had died, had just gotten drunk and sloppy, but Sam has never been that lucky. "Mom, get upstairs," he growls.
"Wait, why?"
"Got a bad feelin' is all."
Mary grips him by the nape of his neck, nails digging in, and shoves him down the last four steps. "Where's Sammy?"
"This bunker's massive. And he's probably upset or somethin'. Let me clear this place and I'll come get you."
Mary leans over his shoulder, seeing the gun and Dean's expression, and her entire demeanor hardens. Once they're on the landing, she swipes one of Dean's throwing knives fluidly from the table. "You're forgetting who I am, Dean. We'll clear it together. Lead the way."
It's a bizarre turn of fate that Mary covers Dean's six as they sweep the bunker. It's sadly typical that they only find a sickening pool of a blood and a trail that leads up the stairs and unfamiliar footprints.
Sam was taken.
Dean falls to his knees, head in his hands.
Mary explodes with rage, hurling the knife into the mahogany across the room and flinging a lamp off the table with a blood-curdling scream and a shattering of glass.
-SPN-
Sam's only means of marking the passage of time is by the cyclic actions of his captors: interrogation or haunted solitude, freezing and drenched or damp and delirious, doped up or coming down.
He fairly certain they're experimenting on him too, swapping out truth serums for man-made uppers that make his heart beat so fast he vibrates with false energy and supernatural elixirs manifest horrific pain or violent hallucinations. Or maybe that's just because demonic sprinkler system won't let him sleep.
Sam's high again, twitched and searching for the inky taloned things that lurk in his periphery as he answers questions about Lucifer. Toni is unhappy with his answers, and Sam's fairly certain it's because he's speaking Enochian just to piss her off.
He's not broken yet, but he's careening towards that cliff with depressing speed. He thinks he should be stronger than this. Though, if Dean were alive, maybe he'd be able to hold himself together or fight harder. But it was always going to end this way: bloody and gruesome. Sam's had enough reigns at being the last Winchester standing. At least he knows the light at the end of the tunnel is a train and not another deal or malicious twist in the road. And despite his good intentions, he's wrought more death and destruction onto this world than good. He let his brother stroll into his own demise for the second time.
The sulfurous creature descends from the darkness and curls up at his side, all black eyes and stitched-over mouth. Sam finally realizes that it's his shadow, a true reflection of his scarred, monstrous soul. Wreaking and scarred from years of his inadvertent deceit and treachery.
"You deserve this, Sam," Toni declares. The thing nods.
Sam obediently leans into the penance of the cattle prod's shock.
