Disclaimer: I don't own or make a profit from Supernatural. Thanks again to Starliteyes for reading this over for me. Any mistakes are mine, since I did fiddle with it a bit after getting it back.
Warnings: Vague spoilers for Hunted and BUABS. Also there is some gore in the chapter.
Broken
Chapter Six
Dean had criss-crossed the U.S. three times, dealt with a death omen, another freaking shape-shifter, and a bitch of a crossroads demon that almost, almost convinced him to make a deal. It was only the thought that having Dad back would mean pulling Sam back into this life that stopped him.
One rainy night, six months to the day since Dean saw his brother's back as he walked out Bobby's door, Dean was holed up in a crappy hotel in west Texas. It was a small room, with only a doublewide bed, an empty nightstand that was missing its prerequisite Bible and a tiny black and white TV. It had taken Dean months to adjust to the fact that Sam wasn't there beside him, and that he didn't need to fight with the desk clerk over getting two queens instead of one king. He was truly alone, with only the rattle of rain on the window to keep him company.
He was perched on the end of the bed, facing the TV he didn't bother to switch on. In one hand he gripped a bottle of Jose, letting it dangle between his knees, while the other lay on his thigh, his fingers twitching sporadically. He took another belt of tequila, his bloodshot eyes were drawn away from some truly hideous hotel art on the wall above the TV to the silver glint of his .45 sitting conspicuously on the stand in front of him.
There was a chirp from his pocket, and he dug into his jeans without bothering to drag his eyes away from his gun. It was Bobby on the other line, calling to tell him that something was going after hunters. Dean's shrug of nonchalance was loud enough to be heard over the phone. From where he was sitting at the end of a single bed shrouded in pink and burgundy paisley, while staring at his pistol, being dead was looking pretty damn good.
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and the hairs on the back of Dean's neck stood on end.
"There was video of the last killing."
Dean didn't reply, but he could feel a chill slide down his spine.
"It was Sam."
Dean shot up off the bed like had been struck by lightning. His fingers clenched so tightly around his phone that his knuckles cramped. Distantly, Dean heard the thud of a bottle hitting the floor, but he barely comprehended that he had dropped the tequila.
"Sam's dead?" The words fell out of his mouth in a panicked rush, and for the first time in months Dean's dead heart began to thud with splinters of agony in his hollow chest.
"No!" Bobby's reply was sharp, but the pause behind it wasn't reassuring.
"What the fuck, Bobby?" Dean felt like throwing the phone against the wall, right through the awful painting that was level now with his sightless eyes.
"Dean. Sam's the one who did the killing."
Dean felt all the blood course down his body. He was sure that if he looked at his feet he would see a crimson pool of it spreading on the green shag carpet.
"What?" The word was whispered and dry. Dean couldn't believe it, but at the same time he knew that Bobby wouldn't lie.
"I saw it myself, Dean. It's true."
"I want to see the tape. I'll be there in a day."
Dean closed the phone with a snap, grabbed up his duffel, and walked out of the room without checking out.
It took him a day to reach the junk yard. He pulled up to the front porch with a skid, jumped out of the Impala and marched straight into the house without bothering to knock. Bobby was ready for him, his PC booted up and the video paused.
Dean watched in stunned disbelief as his brother stalked an older, grisly hunter. The man looked like a cowboy with his buckskin fringe jacket and the huge Bowie he was waving in Sam's direction. He was brawny, and had at least fifty pounds of pure muscle over Sam, but his little brother was faster. The fight was amazingly quick, and it ended with Sam drawing the knife across the man's throat, before casually cleaning the blade on his shirt.
Dean rewound the footage and watched it again, but there was no mistake. It definitely was Sam.
"Something's wrong. He's possessed or something."
Bobby was watching Dean with watery blue eyes, his lips drawn tight. His hands were wrapped around the back of a wooden chair and at Dean's words his knuckles bleached white with strain.
"That may be so, but that's not our worst problem."
Dean looked up from the captured image of his little brother slicing the man's neck.
"What do you mean?"
"That video was emailed to me and at least a dozen other hunters. It doesn't matter if Sam isn't himself. He's public enemy number one now."
Dean sucked in his hollow cheeks and his usually full lips thinned. Something shattered inside his green eyes, and Bobby watched in trepidation as a dark shadow shuttered over them. Over the months he had watched Dean transform from a happy scamp of a boy to a dull, lifeless man. Now before his very eyes he watched that man turn into a predator, his eyes darkening with hate, bitterness, and resolute determination.
"Is that what you think? That Sam's an enemy?"
Bobby felt icy fingertips slide down his spine and nestle in the deepest pit of his stomach. A cold sweat broke out under his arms and at the vee of his thighs. He relaxed his grip on the chair he was standing behind, taking a step back to ready himself for an attack. He locked onto Dean's eyes and held them tight with his own, knowing instinctively that this moment could potentially be his last.
"Don't be stupid, son. I want to help Sam as much as you do."
The atmosphere remained electric with primal awareness, but it didn't snap with the same ferocity that it had only moments before. Some of the tension relaxed in Dean's shoulders, and Bobby followed suit.
"I have to get to Sam, before anyone else does."
Dean looked away, his broken gaze caught helplessly on the screen where his brother was frozen in the callous act of murder. Bobby nodded in agreement, but his eyes were only for Dean, and the sorrow that he radiated.
8888
Three months of hardcore tracking turned up nothing but a trail of corpses. Dean continually called his brother's cell, but he was only greeted by voice mail. There were no taunting calls in the night, no ominous shadows lurking outside his hotel room---just total, deafening silence. If it wasn't for the bloody video emails being sent out anonymously to various hunters, Dean would have never known that his brother was still walking around. The task of finding his brother was made that much harder, when it became clear that most of the other hunters thought that Dean was in on Sam's little killing spree.
They hunted him with the same ferocity that they hunted Sam. They thought they could use him to get to his brother. They were wrong. Dead wrong.
The first couple he let off with severe beatings, and a few guttural words of warning. One ambushed Dean at Sam's latest victim's cabin in northern Michigan. Dean was the first one to arrive on the scene, having received an email of the killing before any of the other hunters. It hadn't taken long for he and Bobby to figure out that it was Sam who was sending the emails. He was leading the hunt, and he was making sure that his big brother was in the lead.
Dean was crouched over the freshly sliced corpse, looking for any clues as to which demon was inhabiting his brother. He was concentrating so intensely that he didn't hear the soft footsteps behind him. When something hard and heavy crashed down on the back of his skull, he didn't even have time to form a nasty expletive before he collapsed into darkness.
When he came to he was hogtied to a chair, his wrists firmly lashed to the straight arms and his feet tied to the legs. Blood was caked over his left eye, gluing his lashes to his cheek. He jerked his head down, briskly rubbing his bruised face against his shoulder until he could pry his eye open. He was still in the cabin, the smell of death rank in his clothes and hair.
He glanced to the side, finally catching sight of a large black man, who sat silently watching him. Dean's smile was cold and tight and did nothing to light up his dead eyes.
"Hey, Gordie. Didja miss me?"
Gordon's thick lips peeled back from his blindingly white teeth, his brown eyes dancing with merriment. Dean could practically smell the sick anticipation wafting off of him in waves.
"Your brother's making quite the mess. Course, you'd be picking up after him. Big brother, always watching out for the baby. Leastways, that's what they say."
Dean lolled his head back on his neck, working out his stiff muscles. By the tackiness of his drying blood and the smell of rot in the air, he figured that he had been out for some hours. Bobby would be getting fidgety soon and calling for an update.
"Oh, yeah. Whose they?"
"Everyone. Sam's whipped the whole damn lot of them into a frenzy. They all want a piece of him."
Dean rolled his head towards Gordon and locked his jaded eyes on him. Gordon hadn't moved from his spot near the window. His booted foot was planted on the window sill, absently flipping his hunting knife in one hand. His casual stance was enough to make the hackles on the back of Dean's neck stand on end.
Even after their last encounter, Gordon was stupid enough to think he had the upper hand---that he had Dean cornered, and was that much closer to capturing Sam. Dean wanted to snarl, but instead he curled his upper lip into a predatory smile. Methodically, he searched for his weapons, feeling for the weight of them against skin. They were all missing except for the tiny knife sheathed at his wrist. It was a rookie mistake that Dean wasn't above capitalizing on.
"That thing isn't Sam. He's possessed."
Gordon unbent himself from his seat at the window. The thick sole of his boot scraped loudly along the sill before he dropped it to the floor with a thud. He stood up, still flipping his knife as he circled behind Dean.
The muscles in Dean's back went rigid and the tiny spot between his shoulder blades tingled with awareness. Dean never liked it when people were behind him; he liked it even less when they were bastards with big ass knives.
"That's what you want everyone to believe. But I know the truth."
Dean made a show of struggling against his bonds, smiling inwardly when he heard Gordon chuckle. He used the movement to cover the fact that he was curling his fingers beneath the palm of his hand to wiggle his small knife out of its sheath.
"The truth? You mean, besides the fact that your mama was your daddy's sister?"
The blow came out of nowhere, but Dean was expecting it. It rocked his head forward, and it was the last bit of momentum that he needed to free his knife.
"Now, Dean. There's no reason to be nasty. I'm talking about your baby brother being evil. The real, down in the fiery pits of Hell, my master is the devil, kind of evil. He's the Antichrist."
That caught Dean off guard, and he genuinely had to pause what he was doing to get a handle on the conversation.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
Gordon chuckled again and circled around to Dean's front. Dean instantly pressed his hand flat against the chair rail, cupping his knife in his palm. Gordon was grinning down at him with a wide benevolent smile that made Dean want to kick his teeth in.
"Didn't you daddy ever tell you? Sam's been marked. He's not even human. He's something filthy and vile. He needs to destroyed---for the good of mankind. For his own good."
Dean saw red at the fringes of his vision. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a loud snarl that echoed through the lower floors of the cabin. He fought against his bonds, forgetting momentarily about his knife. It was only when it nicked his palm did he remember. He inhaled deeply through his nose, calming himself, biding his time.
"You don't know shit, so why don't you shut the fuck up?"
Gordon crossed his arms across his chest, his long-bladed knife flashing before his face in a vague threat.
"I guess Johnny never did tell you. Maybe that's why little Sammy shot him. To keep him quiet."
"You're just talking out your ass now, Gordie. You have no idea what you're saying. My dad was possessed and shooting him was the only way to kill the demon that had been hunting our family for twenty years. Sam did the only thing that he could to end that freaking nightmare. Now my little brother is possessed by some shitfuck of a demon and I'm not going to let some backwoods, chicken-livered hunter plant a half a dozen bullets in his chest for that."
"You don't have any choice in the matter, do you Dean? Looks like you're all tied up with nowhere to go. I'm going find Sam, and when I do, I'm going to slice him up and feed him to the coyotes."
Gordon turned his back on Dean and crossed over to a rickety wooden table that held a bottle of Wild Turkey, a couple of knives and some rope. He poured himself a drink, never hearing the soft hiss of Dean's ropes being cut.
Dean was out of his seat, before Gordon finished his drink. His glass slid from his fingers as he was rammed from behind, and it shattered on the floor with a loud, silvery crash. Dean wrapped his foot around Gordon's ankle, taking him down to the floor hard, rubbing his face into the sharp slivers.
The man screamed and Dean saw smears of blood on the floorboards beneath them.
"Christ! My eye!"
Gordon struggled, trying to use his weight against Dean. He was heavier, but his muscles weren't nearly as honed nor did he have the advantage of weeks of adrenaline pumping through his veins that Dean had. Dean had been hunting Sam for months, living off desperation and hate for all those who tried to murder his brother when he needed help. He was angry and bitter. He wasn't going to let his brother die, and he surely wasn't going to let some sick fuck like Gordon take him out either.
Dean planted his knee in the small of Gordon's back, pressing down hard on his spine and clutched a firm hand around the back of the man's neck. He reached up blindly with his other hand, searching for the coil of rope he had seen on the table. His hand settled on the coarse hemp and he wrapped his fingers around it, dragging it off the table until it fell heavily on the floor next to them.
Dean leaned in low over Gordon, breathing heavily in his ear.
"You think I would let you do that to my brother?"
Quickly and efficiently he twined the thick rope around Gordon's neck, crossing the ends and pulling back hard. Gordon choked on his own spit, and renewed his efforts to kick himself free. Dean shifted his weight, moving his knee upwards until it was between Gordon's shoulder blades.
He yanked back hard, and from the side he could see Gordon's thick tongue protrude grotesquely from his mouth. The large man shuddered beneath him, the last of his oxygen rattling around in his lung. The pathetic gurgling faded away, and gradually Gordon stilled beneath him. Undeterred, Dean kept up the pressure until he was satisfied that Gordon was well and truly dead.
He tied the rope around Gordon's neck and picked up the slack. Dean slung the end up over the bare rafter, grunting as he hauled dead weight into the air. He hung Gordon by the neck a full foot off the floor. He tied off the rope on the nearby banister, and staggered back to the table. He swept up the warm bottle of whiskey by the neck and chugged most of it, knowing that even cheap rotgut wouldn't burn away the taste of ashes in his mouth.
He kicked Gordon's legs, spinning his corpse around so he could see his face. His tongue was a thick blob of purple flesh between his lips and his eyes bulged like white marbles from their sockets. One orb had a sliver of glass imbedded deep in the pupil.
Dean tried to care that he murdered someone, but he couldn't. Sam's reputation was already destroyed, possessed or not. There was no way that Sam would ever be able to walk among society again. In the daylight the FBI hunted him for his part in a series of gruesome murders, and in the shadows the hunters waited for him to slip up. Even if Dean would be able to save him, he would never be free.
It seemed only fitting that Dean stood by his brother. Dean was the reason that Sam had been reduced to this. If he had just stayed with his brother, protected him like he was supposed to, then he could have prevented this. Instead he had sent Sam away to live his happy, apple pie life. At the time he thought it was best, but now regret took its place beside the bitterness that roosted inside him.
He rooted around in Gordon's bag, finding a pad of legal paper and a black felt pen. He wrote a sloppy message across the page and used one on Gordon's knives to pin the note to his corpse. Dean stepped back and read the message to himself as Gordon's body swayed back and forth.
"If anyone touches my brother, I'll kill them."
Dean was a murderer now, just like his brother. The hunters would come for him, and he would greet them with a shotgun and a grin. Besides, every day that passed meant a day that Sam needed him. He didn't have time to waste over the sentimentality of human life. Sam didn't have the time.
His phone chirped and he answered the call without looking at the ID.
"Sam."
"Welcome to the family, Dean."
Dean took another swig of whiskey and walked out the front door.
