Unseen, unheard

Chapter 5

'Yes, I killed them,' he replied, tonelessly, his voice flatly devoid of remorse.

Dean blinked, and opened his mouth, searching for a reply. None came to him, and he settled for silence, leaning back against his pillar. He twisted his hands experimentally, stoically ignoring the pain as the tight bonds scythed up his wrists. He stretched his fingers back, fumbling for the end of the wire so he could begin working on loosening it. His face remained as stony as he could make it, coldly glaring at the kid's feet, and purposely avoiding his eyes.

After a few minutes, the kid wriggled uncomfortably in the silence. Clearly he had been expecting Dean to demand more answers, and was disappointed with the anticlimactic state of affairs which he was faced with. Dean held out, waiting for the other guy to start talking.

'I'm Michael,' the kid offered eventually, in an idiotic tone which suggested he could think of nothing else to say. The platitude sounded so strange in the bizarre situation, Dean almost laughed.

Dean made no answer to the empty statement, and the silence again stretched out between them. Dean reproached himself bitterly for getting caught by such an obviously incompetent villain.

'Don't you want to know how I did it?' Michael asked at last, desperately. 'Or, why I attacked you? Or even, what I'm going to do with you?' So starved of attention all his life, he was deeply unsatisfied by what he had imagined to be a dramatic confrontation.

Dean raised his eyes slowly to meet Michael's ice-blue gaze, and shrugged, exaggerating his indifference. Of course I want to know, he thought, but you're going to tell me anyway, and I feel better about this whole situation if I can piss you off a bit in the process…

Michael was only silent for a few seconds before he caved, and, to his satisfaction, his very first comment provoked too strong a reaction for Dean to effectively hide.

'They told me they wanted Sam, and that his brother needed to be removed first,' he half-muttered it, as if his longing for dramatics had dissolved, and he was now talking to himself.

Dean looked up sharply, Michael's words tightening in his throat as he tried to swallow them. 'What?' he rasped, forgetting to irritate Michael and to keep pulling at the wire on his wrists when he heard Sam's name on his captor's lips.

'My… family,' Michael explained, relishing the word. 'They want Sam to join them. He won't do that while he's still with you…'

Dean inhaled shakily, remembering Sam's psychic tendencies, and his recent dreams. Unmindful of his own predicament for the moment, he interrogated Michael in a harsh voice.

'Did you make him dream? Have you got some freaky ESP thing, too?'

Michael smiled, and answered simply, 'Yes.'

Dean glared at him.

'I made him dream. And I made him write on the walls. And I killed those people… I always wanted to kill them anyway, and it was the perfect way to draw you in…'

Michael stood up, pushing away from the wall, and when his hand escaped from its hiding place behind his back, it was holding a glistening narrow blade that somehow managed to pick up and reflect the minimal light. Dean's eyes followed it warily.

'Killing me won't make him join you…' Dean warned softly, without taking his eyes off the flashing silver knife in Michael's hand.

'No, not if he knows I did it,' Michael agreed silkily, enjoying every minute of the confrontation. 'I just need to find a scapegoat…'

'Yeah, who do you have in mind?' Dean spat, reflexively leaning back a little as the spark of silver advanced uncomfortably close to his face.

'Sam'

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Silence reigned in the little room, hanging like an invisible mantle over the narrow twin beds and the single inert occupant. It was a cold night, violent outside with rain lashed against the window with fierce winds. The distant roar of raindrops detonating endlessly on the roof was somehow muted by the mundane walls, so that it was no more than a buzzing which seemed almost to enhance the stillness, instead of diminishing it.

Sam Winchester's slumber was fitful, uneven, unreliable, and frequently plagued by dreams. Curled on his side, blankets twisted around his feet, Sam was sleeping deeply, but his eyes moved constantly, flickering under his eyelids, immersed in some illusion from which the rest of the world was excluded.

The stillness was broken when Sam began to wriggle in his sleep, but he remained quiet.

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'Sam,' Dean repeated flatly.

Michael's slow smile didn't reach his eyes, and it made him look less than human: a face made of glass and plastic, with a curved mouth.

Dean glared at him, confused and desperate for an explanation. 'How the hell do you expect to convince Sam that he killed me?' His own words turned his stomach. I'm talking about me as if I'm already dead…he thought, appreciating the irony.

Michael just kept smiling hideously, bringing the blade tremulously toward Dean's chest.

The pain swelling from the point where the point penetrated his skin made his eyes sting, and he blinked hard, willing himself not to let a tear escape. Michael pushed the blade in to a depth of a few inches, making Dean squirm and hiss in agony. Michael's face, so close that his breath was hot on Dean's face, was rapt in concentration. He made the first cut and moved on to a second with surgical precision, carving up his prisoner's helpless chest with such deliberate movements that Dean, squinting down through a blurry haze at the damage being inflicted, was sure there must be some order to it.

The pain occupied his mind to such an extent that he didn't work it out until Michael had finished and rocked back on his heels to admire his handiwork. When he realised what the kid was planning, he gasped in horror, and momentarily lost the power of speech. After his voice had returned to him, the only thing he could think of to say was:

'What does it say?'

Michael grinned at him, now wearing the expression of a delighted child rather than that of a monster.

'I think it's very appropriate,' he taunted.

Dean drew breath with difficulty as the inflation of his ribcage stretched his tortured skin. Each breath was shallow, and more painful than the last. Blood streamed down his shirt, merging the glistening words until they disappeared, camouflaged red on a red background.

'What… does it say?' he tried again, desperate to know without really knowing why he wanted such knowledge.

Michael leaned forward and whispered in his ear – presumably for effect as there was nobody else within earshot.

'Forgive me.'

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Sorry, I know it was really short. I'll try to update quicker to make up for it, but I just thought that was the right place to stop, and I didn't want to add in a load of rambling just to make it longer!