A/N: Thanks for the response, guys! As promised. One more chap to go! Language & violence warning comes into play here.
CHAPTER FOUR
The witch walked away from Dean to kneel on the floor, at the edge of the circle of blood that had originally trapped Sam. She dipped her finger in the cup of blood – my blood, Dean thought angrily – and began to trace a new set of blood markings. From where he was pinned, Dean could see that she was redrawing the gaps where Dean had destroyed the circle when he rescued Sam the first time. There were also new markings, this time both inside and outside the circle.
"You can't use my blood to trap Sam!" Dean yelled at her, knowing it wouldn't make any difference. "That's cheating!" As before, the witch ignored him, working steadily. But he could see her finger trembling where she spread the blood.
"Why do you want Sam?" he asked, trying a different tack.
"Home," she explained. "He will bring me to home. To euskal herria."
"Home … You mean to Basque? In Europe?"
The witch nodded vigorously. "Euskal herria," she said again, dreamily.
"What, plane tickets cost too much?" He stared at her. "Sam isn't telekinetic. He doesn't have that kind of power. Besides, can't you just send yourself there?"
"No," she shook her head. "Mine not … not good. I need Sam."
Dean lapsed into silence, thinking. It still didn't add up. That explained her kidnapping Sam. It did not explain why she had kept Sam trapped in that elaborate virtual reality for so long.
"Why did you make him think I was dead?" he asked.
She pointed at herself. "Ekaitz. I am Ekaitz. I am lost. I need to go home. I need Sam to help.
"So Sam must be lost too."
"I'm fucking lost," Sam groused to nobody in particular – least of all himself.
The tunnels wound on and on, but Sam had slowed down considerably. Trapped in the absolute blackness of the tunnels, he would be easy prey if something came after him.
Okay, so leaving the Deanthing might have been a mistake. At least there he knew he existed, or knew that the witch knew he existed, which was enough. What if this was just the first step toward disappearing completely inside the witch's mind?
…. Okay. Paranoia. Not helping, Winchester.
Sam stopped. The vibrations of the walls, which he could feel through the soles of his boots, were increasing. He stopped, knelt, put his good hand to the ground. Yes. Definitely increasing.
Then, without warning, his head blasted open and flooded him with images. Dean, a towheaded child, huge in Sam's eyes; Dean a teenager, his features sharpening into adulthood; Dean in a hundred different scrapes they'd gotten themselves into, toting a gun and a trickle of blood and a determined slant to his mouth; last – flickered by almost instantaneously – Dean spread-eagled against a wall, blood on outstretched arms.
Sam reeled, blindsided, smashed his left shoulder against the wall and cried out as the impact shuddered through his broken collarbone. Bright flowers of light exploded before his eyes, and the last limited perception of the tunnel walls around him dissolved.
He had time to recognize the sensation (yes, it had definitely happened to him before) before the world collected itself around him again. The sudden light, after the darkness of the tunnels, dilated his pupils.
And then the ground rushed up to meet him – he hadn't realized he had been in the air – and Sam landed on his side, hard. All the air went out of him in a gasp, leaving him no breath to express the searing, shattering pain of his collarbone meeting the unforgiving floor.
He rolled limply onto his back, stars swimming in his vision. Something big and dark loomed over him and embarrassingly, his first instinct was to flail at it using his one good hand. A bad idea, as it turned out.
Then someone caught his wrist and gripped it hard. Sam pulled back, but the grip was iron as it dragged him maybe a foot across the floor. His vision still spun crazily. Dirt, walls, weak light glinting off glass, and he was released. He struggled onto his stomach and up onto one elbow (which was insanely hard with only one good arm).
Movement at the corner of his eye had him turning.
It was Dean, pinned spread-eagled against the dirt wall, upside down. Shit. Not Dean.
"Sam! Sam, Jesus, there you are!"
Sam ignored him. Beside Dean was the witch, bent over a small fire on the ground.
He gaped. It was the first time he'd seen her since his first capture. Doubt flickered in the corners of his mind, but he pushed it away – if he was going to fall for another trick, it wouldn't be one as simple as this one.
Sam pushed himself to his knees. He was back in the same circle that the last Dean had rescued him from, only now more markings, drawn sloppily in fresh blood, radiated out from the perimeter of the circle.
"Aren't you done yet?" he called to the witch, who heaved herself to her feet and Sam saw she had been bent over a kettle set in the fire. She had a wooden cup in her hand, and as it tilted lazily in her grasp, he saw the inside was stained dark with blood.
Only Dean's furious voice answered. "She's already set up her spell. Sam! Sam, boy, you are gonna get it so bad when this is over if you don't react to what I'm sayin'. Hey, lady, you better keep that goddamn knife away from me, cause I got no more blood to donate to this fucked-up cause of yours. Hey! Hey! Didn't you –"
"Dean?" Sam said hoarsely.
"About fucking time! Listen, I know what she wants to do. She – ow!" Dean broke off as the witch sliced another brutal gash across his other arm. The blood welled thickly into the waiting cup.
Sam flinched and started to his feet at Dean's yelp of pain. "Hey! Don't –"
The youngest Winchester was stuck there, frozen, as he realized he had fallen for the witch's tricks yet again. He was so dumb! For all the good fucking Stanford had done him, for all that he had conditioned himself.
He was so stupid.
"Hey, can you get out of that circle?" the Dean-thing's voice came to him, stretched tight with pain.
"Why would I bother?" Sam snapped, hands fisting at his sides. "Just – just stop, don't make me hear it, okay? I don't want to hear it."
"Oh, this again? Christ, Sam, snap out of it. Just try for me, okay? See if you can stick your hand out that circle. If you just try out we can get out of here. I promise – you just gotta trust me."
And completely of their own accord, Sam's fingers reached out to encounter the edge of the blood circle. They smacked up against fiery pain and Sam snatched his hand back.
Dean looked as though he didn't know whether to be grateful or disappointed. "Okay, that didn't work. We'll figure something else out, okay?"
But instead of replying, Sam wrapped his arms around himself and turned his back on his brother and the witch against the wall.
"Fuck," Dean hissed.
The witch, beside him, raised her arm and the cup of blood traced a long splatter of Dean's blood, reaching from the two of them to Sam's circle.
"Careful with that!" Dean snapped. "That's my blood you're sloshing all over the damn floor!"
She didn't answer, just used the last of his blood in the cup to draw three short lines across each of her leathery arms – "Gross," Dean moaned – and picked up the knife again. She crossed the room in three quick strides and when she reached inside the circle to nick Sam's hand – his bad arm – Sam hardly reacted, just hugged himself tighter.
Sam's blood went into three more lines on each of her arms.
"Wake the fuck up, Sam," Dean commanded.
The witch's own blood crossed both of theirs on her arms, from a nick on her finger.
"You got to listen to me."
The witch stepped outside Sam's circle.
"I know what she wants to do."
She picked up the knife and came for Dean, her face completely blank, emotionless but for the intent written all over the knife.
"She needs you to make some spell to send her home. Her power isn't enough, she needs yours. She told me – ow!" Dean shook off the pain of the witch's knife in his arm yet again.
"She told me," he started again, his words tumbling out faster now, got to appeal to Sam's logic, that's the only way to get to him now: "She told me she is lost, so if she wants your power, she needs you to be lost too, and that's what she's doing now. Son of a bitch!" he gasped out loud as she sliced a line across his chest, clearly less to harvest blood and more to get Sam's attention.
Sam half turned, his arms still wrapped around his middle, his unruly hair falling across his eyes, which could not hide the tear tracks down his face. "Stop," he begged, and Dean's insides twisted. "Please don't make it worse than it already is."
"Sam," he said helplessly. "Goddamn, Sam, I don't want to put you through this! That's why you gotta do something!"
"No more talking," snapped the witch, and she slashed sideways with the knife, opening a long rip in Dean's black shirt, the tip coming to rest at Dean's sternum. Her low chanting filled the air and Dean knew she was starting the final spell, the one that would kill him, Sam, or all three of them.
"Sam!" he pleaded. "Sam, please!"
"No!" Sam cried. "Please, stop! Just – don't make me hear it again!" His long form doubled over, hands stuck over his ears.
Dean puffed out a breath, determined not to yell, but a poorly stifled scream split the air as the witch buried her knife in his side and twisted, oh sweet Jesus –
Sam cracked.
"NO!"
The sound of his younger brother finally shattering reached Dean only faintly through the blood that was pounding in his ears, and it was bittersweet – that sound could only mean Sam was both broken and was going to get them free.
The witch shrieked as her carefully laid bloodspell blew apart before their eyes. Dirt scattered and wind whipped the tiny cavern. Sam was turned towards them now, both hands out, his hair on end.
"I tried!" Sam sobbed. Tears streaked his face. Dean flinched at the sight. "God help me, I tried but I can not watch it again."
One by one the glass jars along the cavern walls shattered, sending a hail of glass shards to the floor. The walls shook. The witch took a step towards Sam and raised her hands – started her own counterspell – but Sam was too caught up now, and her spell was meaningless, a jumble of syllables caught up in the maelstrom that was Dean's younger brother, someone Dean had always known was too powerful to contain with words.
One by one the spells the witch had created were undone. The force pinning Dean to the wall vanished, and in a painful haze he slid to the floor in a heap and everything else faded.