Sticks and Stones

Disclaimer: I don't own or profit from anything Supernatural.

a/n: Sorry for the delay – RL can be a bitch sometimes. Well this was meant to be the final chapter but I think I got all caught up in the angst of the moment and...now it's the second last chapter. So much for "my attempt at more of an episode-like story"…ha! There are a few plot holes so tread warily cause it's too late to fix them so save yourselves!

There is one timeline for this chapter but it is not told in order and jumps back and forth - I have no explanation why...it just is.

Thanx for your reviews and encouragement – and a special thanx to dimensions-in-space for being an awesome "stalker"!!

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Chapter 5

He had stopped trying to fight it after about the tenth hit – it took everything he had to just gasp in enough oxygen before it was punched out of him again and his starved lungs were screaming, pulling at his insides.

The blood was running down his face but strangely he couldn't determine what damage had been done. There was just pain and a slow realisation that the assault had finally stopped.

Dean bit back on the pain, letting out an involuntary grunt each time he sucked air into his lungs as the burn of now damaged ribs made breathing a new torment. He could taste the blood in his mouth but was too dazed to determine whether it was from a hit or whether he had bitten his own lip.

He did remember something though. The words preceding each punch were his words, spoken more in frustration at the time than threat. However as testament to his current condition, Adam's faithful shadow puppet had obviously perceived them as a danger.

At least if it was here with him that meant that Sam was safe. God Sam. His brother was walking on the edge as it was, this was probably gonna push him over. Dean knew Sam would get them out of this, push aside his own fears until this was over and they were safe but he worried how high the cost would be for his younger sibling.

"Adam I know you're here somewhere letting it do your dirty work." Dean ground the words out, his voice ragged. "So you're gonna let this…this thing kill me cause I yelled at you? Well aren't you just the fragile one? Why don't you come out and play, it's not like I can get you now."

"I don't want to play." Adam came out of the shadows to Dean's right but didn't approach any closer.

"C'mon Adam it's gone far enough. You need to call this thing off." Dean glanced up at the shadowy form that now waited poised in front of him. He squinted through the blood and sweat obscuring his already blurry vision, trying to determine what it now held against its dark form.

Adam laughed, it almost sounded normal. "Call it off? Can't you see it IS me. It's a part of who I am and it protects me." The voice dropped a notch, sounded almost regretful. "I…I can't call it off now. Too late for that, it won't…I'm stronger now because of it."

"It won't what Adam? Listen to you anymore, do what you say?" Dean slowly began to realise exactly was Adam meant, this was his own shadow, his inner darkness somehow manifested. "Stronger? Hiding behind some kind of shadow monster isn't stronger, it just means you're a freak as well as being a coward."

Dean realised too late his normal tactic was just going to earn him more pain when he heard an anguished cry as the creature moved quickly placing a rough rope around his neck and looped it over a metal fixture in the ceiling. It then cut the ties around his ankles and midriff that bound him to the chair. The tension on the rope was pulled tighter and tighter until he was forced to his feet. He could barely breathe, every part of him was aching but he needed to stand still to avoid choking.

"This is not gonna solve your problems Adam. We can help you stop it, help you get control." Dean ignored the rope biting into his skin as he spoke but he was then silenced by a gag, surprised to find it was Adam putting it on him. The boy look scared but wouldn't meet his gaze and Dean realised then that Adam had lost control.

Literally afraid of his own shadow.

As Adam quickly walked away taking the chair with him, Dean was dismayed to find the shadow Adam was brandishing a baseball bat. The first strike hit his shoulder and white fire spread from his collarbone and down one arm as he tried to maintain his feet.

"Beat. It. Out. Of. You." The voice held nothing but hatred and madness and Dean understood it only existed to serve one purpose. No logic, no mercy. Just pain and death. Revenge and survival.

His knees buckled when the bat hit the same mark and he struggled in blind panic to gain his feet as the rope closed off his airways for several seconds. His brain somehow catalogued the fact that his arm was well and truly broken.

Hit number three gutted him but was thankfully below his ribcage, glancing off his left hip and into the muscles of his abdomen. The backward momentum from the strike forced his shoulders back when all he wanted to do was curl over into the agony. He barely braced himself with a foot slightly behind his body, trying to keep his stance as wide as he could for balance.

The bat was poised for a fourth strike and Dean knew it wasn't going to take much more before he overbalanced or passed out and hung himself.

C'mon Sammy he thought as he winced in anticipation.

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The door opened easily when he grabbed the handle, the sound of the door closing behind him echoed across the waxed floorboards of the basketball court. Sam drew his gun and walked across the floor, checking behind and under the raised seating structures.

As he approached one of the inner doors he heard a sound, a muffled voice coming from the change rooms and approached cautiously. The door had been blocked by something solid on the other side and Sam had to brace his bodyweight against it before he felt any give. With a reverberating crash, something toppled over and he was able to open the door half way. Edging through the gap slowly and stepping over the fallen locker he found Mikey tied and gagged across a seat with blood dripping from various gashes to his arms and chest. The boy was whimpering and became almost frantic when he saw Sam.

Sam quickly cut the rope using his knife and Mikey pulled the gag from his mouth. "It was cutting me up, it's gonna kill me. Oh God I don't know what it is."

"Calm down. Did you see Dean, my…partner? Was he here?"

"No just that thing with the knife. We've gotta get out of here before it comes back."

"Why did it leave?"

"I don't know. It seemed…happy about something. More lessons, it said something like that. More lessons."

"Where's your car out front? Can you drive?" The boy's wounds didn't seem to deep, maybe in need of a few stitches.

"Yeah. Yeah I think so."

"I need to get you out of here but I've gotta find Dean he could be hurt. I want you to take this and follow me – I'll get you to your car." Sam handed the boy a flare and held the lighter out. "You okay to do this?"

The boy nodded and Sam ushered him out of the room and back across the basketball court. "Okay, I'm gonna light this and you need to stay with me and out of any shadowed areas. We keep to the sunlight as much as we can. I don't think it can take form in full light." Sam saw a look of fear cross the boy's face. "Don't ask, believe me you really don't want to know."

The flare sizzled and they took off at a slow jog with Sam slightly behind the boy and armed with a salt loaded sawn off which Mikey eyed nervously. Sam didn't know how effective the salt shot would be and breathed in relief as they reached the halfway mark alongside the main building.

Sam halted their progress as he realised either way they traveled around the building they would pass through shade from the structure itself or from the surrounding trees as the sun moved along its mid afternoon descent. He tried to focus on the task at hand, what Dean would expect him to do.

Dean was probably hurt. He shouldn't have left his brother alone. Should have stopped this from happening. He had failed his brother again.

It took all his training not to think about what may have happened to Dean. What might be happening now. It didn't stop the mantra in the back of his mind that repeated endlessly, "Not Tuesday, not Tuesday, please not Tuesday." It didn't stop his hands shaking.

He lit two more flares from his backpack, giving another to Mikey and holding one himself in tandem with the shotgun. "Whatever happens Mikey, if I say run, you run. You get into the sun, get to your car and go okay?"

"Okay but…what if it gets you? What if…"

"I'll be fine. My brother and I, this is what we do."

"You're partners with your brother?"

"Yeah." Sam shouldered the pack and repositioned his weapon. "C'mon."

Sam ran beside the boy this time, constantly checking behind them for any movement. He was looking straight at it when it came for them but still he found it difficult to discern the darkness within the darkness.

A blur of shape and a subtle shift of movement had his full attention and he fired off two rounds into the black. Something dropped to the ground only to recover seconds later and Sam found himself looking at the outline of a boy shrouded in shadow.

"Go now, run as fast as you can and don't stop!" He yelled at Mikey without taking his eyes off the shape. Keeping his body between the shadow boy and Mikey, Sam angled in the direction that Mikey had gone while also advancing further into the shade, flare outstretched. He saw it move back a little as the sizzling light ate away at its cover and he fired another round to make sure it wouldn't go after the boy.

As he heard an engine roar to life and the triumphant beep of a horn, all his thoughts returned to finding his brother. Unfortunately, holding the flare in front of him to restrict the movement of the demon also had a second effect as Sam found his vision could no longer penetrate the darkness as the light flare had burned a temporary imprint on his retinas. Relying more on his peripheral vision now, he froze when he heard a noise behind him. From out of the sunlight.

"I'm sorry, I really am. There was no problem with you but its angry now cause you stopped the lessons. My Dad taught me how to shoot but if you just go away, I won't have to do this. Please."

Sam turned slowly and saw Adam standing in the light, blood dripping from his face and his jumper peppered with red tinged holes. He was swaying slightly and he held Dean's gun. Sam was pretty sure it was loaded with salt but that didn't make him any less nervous.

"Adam, put the gun down. Let me help you. Where's my brother?"

"It's funny cause your…brother said the same thing. Y'know I 'm surprised you're brothers cause you don't act like it. Shouldn't you have tried to save your own brother first? Anyway he's not very nice, said mean things."

"Yeah? Then why's he trying to help you?" Sam felt uneasy not knowing where the shadow demon was but not wanting to take his focus off Adam. Tying not to let the words cut through him like the awful truth.

He should have saved Dean first but he didn't – what kind of brother was he? Dean had already sacrificed too much.

"He's just saying that stuff so he won't die. Like the others. They're all nice in the end when they're hurting, when they think it will save them. But it doesn't, it's too late then."

The words "when they're hurting" screamed inside Sam's head and he felt the sweat trickle down his face and back as his hands clenched around the gun and dying flare. He forced himself to breathe.

"My brother risks his life all the time to save people he doesn't know, sometimes doesn't even like – he just does the right thing. Doesn't mean he always says the right thing. Dean's a good person Adam, he doesn't deserve to die. Put the gun down and take me to him, we can make this stop."

Adam tilted his head to the side in an almost unnatural gesture. "I think it will stop soon. We have this link and I can tell when it's nearly over. When it gets hurt…," Adam paused to look down at his blood flecked clothes and it dawned on Sam that he must have caused this damage when he shot at the shadow. "…I hurt. When its happy I feel good."

Sam's eyes widened in horror as he realised Adam was talking about Dean which meant the shadow had slunk off while he was being distracted here. He raised his gun and fired at the boy, not caring anymore. He just needed to get to his brother now.

Sam blinked for a few seconds trying to comprehend the second shot as he heard Adam cry out in pain. He found he couldn't draw a breath about the same time he realised he was lying on his back. The pain from the impact suddenly drove through his body as his senses caught up with the fact he had been shot at close range and his vision faded to black.

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Dean braced himself as best he could, willing himself to stay upright. He held his breath hoping to God the hit would be anywhere but his damaged arm to give him a chance to stay conscious.

It was taking longer than he thought it would and he tried to focus his eyes in the dim light without much success. With a groan he managed to turn his head a little but still saw no discernable shape or movement.

"I tried to make it ignore you y'know." Dean jumped a little when he heard Adam's voice in the stillness. He had forgotten the boy was still there. "I didn't mean for this to happen but you brought it on yourself. You shouldn't have said what you did, you're just like them."

He tried to look at Adam but raising his head too much made everything swim and he could feel himself leaning into the rope around his neck for balance. He couldn't help but hold his breath and tense when he saw the dim shape of the boy approach from the side but only to cut through the gag and pull it from his mouth.

"You…you gonna finish me off or what?'

"I guess technically it will be me." He laughed a little at the conundrum, but the laugh was off. "I think Mikey might be trying the great escape so that has to be dealt with first. He would have already been dead but we got two for the price of one instead when you showed up."

"Your life…this is all it is now. You know that right?" Dean felt his right knee give a little under the strain and the rope bit further into his skin. The ache in his arm and shoulder was creeping around to his back as well as the muscles spasmed and twitched in protest.

"No, no it'll be better now. Everything will be fine."

"No Adam you're a freak now and this…this is something you can't control. This is all you are now. You don't control anything."

Dean heard Adam's breathing increase and knew he was pushing the right buttons. He just hadn't reckoned on the boy suddenly growing a pair and stepping up to him.

"I can control whether you die right now."

It was hilarious really, all it took was a vicious push with one finger on his battered arm and Dean's whole body crumpled in on itself as the pain fired up again and he lost his balance. Both legs gave out and he fell forward, the only thing stopping his descent was the rope around his neck.

As he scrambled to regain his footing, his arms automatically tensed behind his back sending another shockwave through broken bones. The gurgled choking noises, Dean recognised as his own but the sounds dimmed as black spots invaded his vision. He was just thankful that the pain began to recede along with his senses.

Arms suddenly gripped him painfully around his middle and jerked him to his feet. Too weary to do anything but gasp lungfuls of oxygen, Dean wasn't sure if he could do this much longer. He knew Sam would come and he knew he should hold on but he was just so tired and everything hurt so much his thoughts were nothing but jumbled and half formed emotions in his head.

He glanced up at Adam, squinting to focus and thought he saw a look of almost remorse cross the boys face right before he was thrown off his feet. There was no one else in the room Dean could make out but Adam was clutching his chest as he slowly got to his feet and his shirt looked like it had been hit with shrapnel. Adam had barely got to his knees when an unseen force flattened him again. Slower to rise this time but making it all the way to standing, Dean could see blood on the boy's face.

"Something's wrong." He mumbled to himself as he staggered from the room and closed the door behind him.

"Sam." The word trickled out of Dean's mouth along with the bright red blood that dripped from his chin and stained his shirt. He knew he was swaying, felt the movement of air brush against his now clammy skin. The pain throughout his body kept time with the steady thrum of his heartbeat, even his focus seemed to wane in and out with the beat.

The silence seemed to stretch on forever and Dean slowly realised he was struggling more and more to breathe as his body sagged into the noose. A spark of hope came alive in his consciousness when he thought he heard a sound nearby and he fought to straighten up.

"Beat. It. Out. Of. You."

Hope turned to fear.

tbc…

a/n: No you're not reading chapter 4 again, I don't know but it just seemed to end the same way. I'm not quite sure how this happened and the plot is shot so I guess I'm just trying to distract you now with angst and whumpage…is it working?

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