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Chapter 3
The treasured sanctity of their bunker has been violated by every demon, archangel and witch in a 100-mile radius, so Dean doesn't even know where to start. Whomever or whatever it was, they're hip to Enochian blood sigils. His blood runs cold at the thought of Lucifer returning to exact some sick revenge on his favorite vessel, though he thinks that the walls would be festooned with Sam's innards of that were true. And they're both still warded against that.
Dean tries to block out his emotions and work it like a case. There was no forced entry, so whomever broke in had a key. And the key had been protected to the death for centuries. Dean isn't as familiar with the Men of Letters archives as Sam is, but he wades through the files exhaustively, inching deeper and deeper into the bowels of the bunker until he's reading by flashlight and fending off spiders so large they should be paying rent. Finally he finds a moth-eaten, hand-written document that looks older than the constitution marking the inception of the Egyptian, Italian and British chapters of the Men Of Letters, and later notices of keys being struck and shared with all chapters. "You sons of a bitches."
Dean calls Crowley and Rowena, and orders them to haul ass because "I took the soul bomb for the team, and you owe me."
For who someone who was understandably shaken by her resurrection after 30 years, the death of her husband, and now the abduction of an adult son she's never met, Mary is more composed than Dean could've hoped. She held together with seething anger, and he finally feels the kinship.
He finds her in Sam's room standing near the doorway. Dean raps a fist against the door just so he won't startle her. "Sam's not much of a decorator." It's a lame attempt at humor, and she humors him with a crooked smile.
She kicks one of the three trunks of books at the foot of the bed. "Is this storage or..."
"Nah, Sammy goes through books like crap through a goose. Half of those aren't even in English." All Dean wants to do is to be a son again, to have someone older and wiser tell him that it'll be okay, but not for the first time, he remembers that chronologically, that's still him. "I called in a few favors. We're gonna get him back. We just have to wait 'til they get here."
"Sammy can't afford to wait!" Mary wails with clenched fists. Her neck flushes with patchy crimson blotches belying her otherwise placid demeanor.. "We don't know what they're doing to him or if..." she trails off with a literal bite of her tongue.
"Hey, look at me, I get it." Dean grips Mary by her shoulders, and gives her a minute to ride out the cresting waves of panic. "When you...left, he was this tiny little baby, and that's how you still see him. But he's a man now. Bigger than me, and freakin' strong. He was trained by a half-crazy Marine named John Winchester and a paranoid widower alcoholic. Believe me, I'm climbing out of my skin to get too, but if anyone can survive, it's Sam. We just gotta hang in there a little longer."
"Jeez, Dean, I'm supposed to be your mother, and yet you're the one talking me down."
"First splinter I get I'll come running, promise." Dean promises with a forced smile.
"How long have you used humor to hide emotion?" Mary asks, squinting.
Dean blinks, unsure of what to say. "Only on Tuesdays."
Mary rolls her eyes. "The apple didn't fall too far from the tree, I see. Do you hug, though? Because I really need one."
Dean's been aching for it for days, and doesn't hesitate. "I've been wanting to do this for thirty years. You never have to ask."
"Good to know," Mary mumbles into his shirt before pulling away.
Sniffling, Mary surveys the room, and Dean hopes she's not seeing the impersonality of their home. Up until recently, Dean loved the bunker, and he thought of it as his own personal Batcave. He will again again once he scrubs the devil's fingerprints off every surface and installs a kick-ass supernatural security system. Seeing it through the eyes of the woman who lovingly decorated their home with sunny yellow paint and handmade curtains and painstakingly chosen knick-knacks, it looks like a prison or army barracks.
Mary grabs Sam's pillow, hugging it, and Dean can see the nineteen year old girl he met before, full of frustration, hope and spitfire, when she lifts an eyebrow at the loaded gun stowed beneath it. She settles a little, but grows wistful. "I didn't ask about him before because I'd convinced myself that the fire got him too. I couldn't bear to hear you say that...that you grew up without him," Mary begins.
Her confession triples the emotional heft of Mary's death, because she died thinking her son and husband had too. Dean swallows around the lump in his throat and bites his cheek to avoid breaking down himself. He's been splayed open and raw since Mary's return, and the vulnerability is both foreign and exhausting.
"Tell me about Sammy," Mary asks breathlessly.
Dean props himself on the edge of the bed and can't fathom how to begin. He starts with a soft smile. "Even though he has no reason to be with all the shit that's been thrown at him, Sammy has the biggest heart in the entire world. He's the best person I know..."
Since their reunion, Dean has only skimmed the surface of their lives and tries to cushion the truth as much as possible in order to lessen the impact. But if there's anything that Dean loves more than beer and classic rock and the Impala, it's bragging about his little brother. Mary listens intently, and it distracts them from spinning out imagining the horrors what Sam's possibly going through, and the agony of waiting.
Some time later, Dean hears an echo of dainty Scottish brogue from the distance. "Calvary's arrived."
He bolts down the hall to find Rowena in an emerald green ball gown and golden cape draped seductively on the library table like an old-timey lounge singer at a Diagon Alley piano bar. "Damn if you're not a sight for sore eyes, Deano. Guess ya didn't go splat after all. Pity."
"I'm alive. I look fantastic. It's a miracle, whatever," Dean says flatly. "Make with the mojo already! I need-"
"To locate the giant, I know. I'm just savoring the moment, dear. Wasn't that long ago that your ogre of a brother locked me up in chains. I have it on good authority that the shackles have turned. Karma is in fact a bigger bitch than me." Rowena says, delighted.
"You've got three seconds to..."
Dean hears the shrill hiss of a blade whiz dangerously close to his ear and snick through Rowena's luxurious hair in a streak of silver and a puff of red. A sizeable clump of auburn flutters to the table. Rowena jerks so badly, she tumbles off the table, skirt flying over her head.
Dean's mother stalks into view, Sam's gun in her hand.
Rowena scowls first at a shorn hair and then at Mary. "Don' know who you are, lassie, but you've made a grave error drawing the ire of an all and powerful witch."
"I heard you talkin' about big bitches, and here I am: Mary Winchester. If you value the rest of your cheaply dyed hair or your teeth, you'll stop wasting time and find. my. son."
Dean crosses his arms over his chest. "And you thought I was scary."
Rowena squeaks, and hurriedly sweeps up the clumps of hair and stuffs it in one of the pockets hidden in the folds of her billowing skirt. "I can reattach those later. I'll need a sandlewood candles and a bit of Winchester blood. I can take care of the rest."
Ten minutes later, the Impala speeds out of the bunker to rescue their own.
-SPN-
They're digging a grave.
Any half-decent hunter would immediately recognize the stab-and-scrape of spaded shovel meeting dirt. His eyes stray to the left, and through the slats, he sees slices the field surrounding the compound, sunshine and the rhythmic shock of black dirt against blue sky.
Sam hopes they salt and burn him first. He doesn't want to come back.
Sam's nothing more than a study of misery, his body an evidence log of depravity. There's an anvilous weight on his chest, and he spends most of his dwindling energy coughing brokenly and wheezing around it.
Toni arrives as Sam's trying to summon the courage to examine his singed leg.
She's been at this as long as he has, and though she has a far better position, she never seems to tire. She has the audacity to offer him a smile as she sets up. Sam lets his head fall, shutting her out. Water glides off his hair and splatters into his damp lap. He's not sure if that's from the sprinkler above his head or if sweat from his fever.
"Mark of Cain. Let's delve into that, Samuel," Toni says pleasantly, like she's beginning a college lecture. She looks the part in a blazer with gold buttons, though pretty sure his Stanford professors brandished laser-pointers instead of ice-picks.
Sam fights a coughing fit as she circles him, and he tries not to show the ingrained fear. He knows what's coming. Everything with Toni is a ritual, so she'll feed him, drug him and interrogate him. The upside is he's pretty confident he won't survive another round of drugs.
There's a rattle of chains and a release of pressure. Sam groans in relief as his hands are uncuffed and unchained. The pain of being restrained for hours on end had been reduced to an unpleasant and muted ache in the wake of other thunderous pains. His hands are bloated and numb and dangle deadly at his sides. Sensation returns in a symphony of prickles and stings, and he rides it out with gritted teeth and clenched eyes.
His throat is raw and inflamed from screaming and overuse. Just whispering feels like tearing at an already weeping wound, but he knows what'll happen if he doesn't. "Was a necessary evil," Sam rasps. The sounds that emerge are rusted like the brittle crunch of desiccated leaves.
When he can somewhat feel his arms, he props his hands upright to help re-circulate the blood that's pooled in his swollen fingers. His wrists are sliced deeply from the too-small cuffs and are crusted in dried blood, but oddly clear of infection. He says nothing when Toni loosely cuffs his right wrist to the arm of the chair.
Once Sam can grip, he's given a black banana that's verging on rotten. It's a feast compared to the foul-tasting gel they forced down his throat when he refused to eat. The weight of the too-sweet fruit in his long barren belly makes him nauseous, but the nutrients broadens his awareness and clears his blurred vision. But the strangest fruit of them all is that his torturer wants Sam to live more than he does.
This is a reward, but Sam isn't fooled.
A syringe jabbed into his neck with a vicious pinch.
Outside, they continue to dig.
The deep dive into the Abaddon's death and the Mark of Cain is more brutal than the other sessions. Toni's interpretation of events once again paints Dean as a depraved psychopath. "So Deeean blindly agreed to take on this demonic without knowing what its history, that it was a great lock from the darkness?"
His brother's name in her mouth chafes like acid on tender skin.
Sam's heart hammers so intensely, it's pounding grooves into the backside of his breast bone. The stimulants are so volatile in Sam's weakening body that he's shakes with it, overwhelmed by the manufactured energy and freeing outrage. "Is it a British custom to see everything backward? You have all the information and yet you're miles from the truth."
Toni glares a warning. "Enlighten me."
"Abaddon strutted right into the Men of Letters headquarters in 1958, and then time-warped to the future, because might study the supernatural, you couldn't even protect yourselves. My grandfather died trying. My brother took on The Mark to stop the demon that slaughtered the entire American chapter of your organization." Once Sam starts, he can't stop. And it's taken the continued besmirching of his dead brother's name to ignite anything within him that's stronger than the grief and the shame. "You've known and observed everything for centuries. You yourself tracked us from when? The devil's gate? The 66 seals? You have priceless intel and an international reach and what have you actually done to help anyone?!" Sam's panting now, so angry, the interior of this godforsaken barn is nothing but a bright, throbbing red.
Toni's is stone-faced during his speech. "Are you quite finished?" At Sam's silence, she rises from the leather ottoman she sits primly on when she's not flogging him. "You can plead your case a million times over, and it won't change what you are or what you've done. It won't change the outcome here. I cannot have you, a demon blood addict, a man who lies with monsters, a 'hunter' who has been at ground zero for every supernatural disaster in the last dozen years, continue to pervert the good name of the Men of Letters and the very concept of justice. I don't care what you think or how you feel," Toni explains. "Samuel, your job here is to answer questions with facts, not emotions. My superiors have authorized far more treacherous information-gathering tactics, and I've refrained. If you'd like me to oblige them, I'm happy to do so. You really only need a functioning mouth to talk."
Without warning, Toni snatches him by the throat so fiercely his head cracks audibly on the back of the chair. She uses two fingers to spread open his right eye. The cool tip of the ice-pick settles beneath the bottom lid primed to shuck the eyeball out like an oyster. Sam nearly wets himself. He attempts holds ravaged body as still as he can in order to save his eye.
"You. Don't. Need. This." She seethes, punctuating each word with a treacherous increase in pressure.
The tip pierces his lower lid, propping against his eyeball. It's a peculiar and petrifying sensation that penetrates the din of half-dying pleas, revolting terror and drug-addled haze to allow the birth of one definitive thought: I'm not dying here.
His clumsy hands open and close fruitlessly at his sides as he bites his quivering cheek so hard he tastes blood.
His left arm is free.
"Are we quite clear, Samuel?" Toni asks.
If he moves, the ice-pick will break into his eyeball like a butterknife through a soft-boiled egg. Sweating, Sam manages a whimper between clenched teeth. Satisfied, Toni eases the blade out of his face. Blood squirts down his cheek like cartoonish tears, and the eye burns from the inside out, the lid immediately swelling. She squeezes his throat, nearly cutting off his oxygen completely, just because she can. Sam parts his lips, laboring for breath, eyes locked with the cruel blue of his abductor's, and it only bolsters Sam's resolve. He doesn't care if he dies one inch over the property line, it's not happening by these hands in squalor without dignity.
Strung out and on God-knows-what and terror so potent he can barely formulate a coherent thought, Sam knows he doesn't have the luxury of planning an attack beyond gulping in as much air as he can. Then he allows two decades of instinct and training take over. He rockets forward to headbutt Toni with the all of his stowed rage. Even as his forehead collides with hers, she capitalizes on her honed rapid reflexes and stabs him in the chest with the ice-pick still gripped in her hand. Sam barely feels it. He uses his free arm to fend her off with a wild punch while throwing his weight backwards, propelling himself and the chair backwards and taking the ice-pick with him to prevent her from reclaiming it.
Toni collapses to the ground, dazed, but begrudgingly conscious enough to call for help. Sam tries to stand but his ankles are still bound to the chair.
Awareness isn't a luxury they've afforded him, but Sam knows there are other people there. He's just not sure how many. There's a bald, black guy who doesn't speak much. He's Toni's muscle and despite his intimidating size, he doesn't seem to have the stomach for the torture, slipping out of his periphery when Toni gets violent. There might be others, but Sam only knows them as echoes of voices with theatrical cockney accents. He hears them when he's delirious from the hypothermia or sleep deprivation, and he's not entirely convinced they're real. The impending footsteps are a great indicator that they are.
He changes tactics and rocks side-to-side, using his own momentum and gravity to tip the chair. On the fourth thrust, he topples over, his considerable weight lands on his cuffed right arm, and the bones break with a distinct crack and shoves the ice-pick into his chest to the hilt. Without the pressure on planted feet, the bindings slacken enough that Sam can tug his legs free. With an agonized scream, Sam pulls out the ice-pick and wields it like a weapon.
The door rattles with muffled shouting and the rattle of keys as they try to unlock the door, but Sam's still chained to that damn chair by his right arm. With a flicker to Toni, who's still flat on her back, Sam uses bloody ice-pick to attack the wedge open one of the chain links to the handcuffs. Sweat obscures his vision and haste adds an extra tremor to his hands as Sam works. Sam's head whips to the door when he hears the distinct sound of a key being inserted into a lock. He opts for brute strength over finesse, and breaks off the arm with a well-leveraged twist just as the door opens, and Toni's muscle enters the room.
Sam kicks the chair with his good leg, and it careens against the door, and smashes into the shoulder of the intruder. He staggers to his feet, standing for the first time in days, and lopes over to the door to heave his diminished weight against it. Even doped, Sam, who's been extensively tortured and starved, isn't strong enough to win a battle of brawn against multiple, healthy guards. They push him back a foot in a matter of seconds. If they make it inside, Sam knows death will be the most favorable and least likely outcome.
Featureless faces loom in the opening, and Sam stabs at them, first with the ice-pick and then with the jagged wooden edge of the chair arm dangling from his wrist. He aims for the vulnerable locations, like necks and bellies with no remorse. There's a misting of blood, a few bitten off screams and a thump of a dropping body before the door falls shut. Sam snags the chair with his foot and wedges it beneath the knob, barricading them inside.
Behind him he can hear the shift-and-slide of Toni moving, the creaking of wood as she uses the worktable to pull herself upright, and he whirls around just as she swings the wrong end of the cattle prod at his head. The wooden handle connects with enough power knock him back against the door and shoot stars throughout his vision, which was newly compromised by cascading blood. Those stars morph into lightning bolts as Toni finds the business end of the cattle prod and puts it to gruesome work. It's electrical misery that paralyzes him and sends him collapsing to the wet floor like a felled redwood.
Sam can do miraculous things—be possessed by multiple supernatural entities or recite exorcism backwards on the fly—but he can't overpower or outsmart electricity. The current fries him, body spasming like an epileptic, and he hopes this shock isn't the one that stops his heart.
When it ends, Sam can only lie there, barely conscious, racked by tremors of overcooked muscles and choking on the foamy gunk that floods his mouth and throat. Cold fingers dig into his neck in a search for life. Toni mutters something nasty Sam can't discern over the high-pitched wail echoing in his ears, but rises and heads to the worktable. His twitching fingertips brush against the smooth knob of the ice-pick. He squeezes his eyes shut in concentration as he tries to regain any semblance of motor control. His fingers scuttle forward by the millimeter, like the legs of a spider, until he's palming it. Toni looms above him sooner than he expected, and kicks him hard once, twice. Sam rocks limply from the rib-bending blows. She opts to stomp on him at the next time, the stiletto heel of her classic heels gouging a bloody hole low in his belly. Though agonizing, the beating gives him another few seconds to recover coordination.
He has no choice but to react when he sees the the watery visage of a gleaming silver syringe above.
His second mounted attack is drunken and sloppier than the first but more devastating when he jams the ice-pick into the complicated collection of bones and ligaments of Toni's ankle and wrenches it sideways. Even if he dies here, she will always have a crippling reminder of Sam Winchester.
Toni screams are blood-curdling. Torturers can almost never take even a fraction of the punishment they dole out. Sam snags the discarded cattle prod and thrusts it into her chest. She shakes like a paint can in a mixer and is unconscious before she hits the floor.
Behind him, the tip of an axe pierces the heavy wooden door. Sam's running out of time. He tries to stand again, but even his good leg buckles immediately. Crying out, he slumps back to the ground in a hopeless heap. Electrocution has fritzed away the empowering drugs and endorphins, leaving him vulnerable to the rigors of the fight and the trauma of sustained abuse.
And just like that, the hunter, bowed by days of torture and a lifetime of tragedy, breaks. Sam wills everything including his heart to just stop. He wishes he could join Dean wherever he is. He wishes he was never born.
Dean, however, will always be a part of him. He's always heard his voice in his head just as much his own. Keep goin', Sammy. Kick it in the ass. Despite some extra demon blood, they're forged from the same iron stock. If Dean can ingest millions of souls and die for the sake of the world, for Sam, maybe Sam can hang on for just a little longer.
He can't stand, so he army crawls on a broken arm, dragging the cuff, the piece of the chair, and his uncooperative legs with him until he reaches the far wall of the barn. He places a hand futilely against the slats. They're sun-baked and eroded and all but crumble when he taps them. Behind him the door rumbles and the whole head of the axe makes it through. He has a matter of seconds.
Sam's size is often misleading. Though he towers above most men and is impressively strong, he is also a deceptively fast runner and weirdly flexible. He wedges himself in the slip of the space between the wall and the worktable. Once there, he breaks the weakened wood with his elbow until he makes a hole just wide enough for him to ferret through. He hopes the table will disguise his retreat and at least buy him a few minutes headstart.
There's little moonlight for Sam to navigate as he slithers through the tall grasses and thorned weeds, and away from the barn. The air is abundant and sweet, and Sam swallows down as much as he can, though it's becoming harder and harder to fill his burning lungs. Shards of sharp rock and branches gouge into his forearms as he moves, but Sam's encouraged by the concealing height of the overgrowth and obscuring darkness. If he can't run, he'll hide until he can. He keeps moving until he hits open air and falls head-first into a hole.
He lands in an awkward jumble, coughing and wheezing on puffs of disturbed dirt. He tries to right his body, and find his way out, but everything is spinning and sloping to one side or another. Earth and sky are the same mottled planes of dirty-black. There's grit in his eyes and dirt in his mouth. He traces the edges with his left hand. The hole is not even three feet deep, but he can't lift his head or get enough air to clear the ever-brightening haze. Sam's fading, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. He blindly lifts his arm out of the hole, pulling the discarded tangles of grass over him in a last ditch effort to conceal himself just so he knows he fought to the bitter end.
He waits in what was supposed to be his grave, soaked in blood, heaving tears, for whatever comes next.
