Title: Celtic Stars and Crooked Scars
Characters: Harry Potter, Dean, Sam
Rating: M (for language only)
Warnings: Language, non-descriptive torture, and blood.
Spoilers: None, though this happens in Season 3, so knowing up until then might be helpful.
Word Count: 2,780 (~11,000 total)
Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series or Supernatural
Summary: Dean finds himself captured by a real psychopath, and meets Harry, a boy who has been chained up for years. It's a desperate attempt at survival and time is ticking away. Tick tock, Dean, tick tock.
Author's Note: This is part three of five. I'll warn you now, this series concludes rather quickly because I actually wanted to finish something, but it's still quite good(in my opinion). Well, read and make my day.
When Dean wakes up the next morning, Harry isn't in his corner anymore. Instead, the boy is asleep, curled up in a little ball against the wall, as close to Dean as physical possible without actually touching him.
Dean doesn't mind much; at least he's providing comfort for the kid, even if he can't do anything else.
He closes his eyes again, but he doesn't sleep—he can't sleep. Not anymore. His body's just isn't used to having so much time to recuperate and it's protesting at the worst possible time. He winces in pain and draws himself in, closing himself off from the physical world, for awhile at least. It's no permanent solution, but it gets rid of the aches for a little while.
Dean's so focused that he never hears the door open—he doesn't hear the footsteps come closer or feel the breeze flow by him as someone walks swiftly passed. He only notices that he and Harry aren't alone anymore when the the boy cries out in obvious distress, the sound of feet shuffling coming soon afterward. Dean's eyes shoot open, quickly eating up the scene in front of him. It's Calem once more and he's dragging Harry back to his corner physically, locking the cuff around the boys ankle aggressively. Once the deed is done, Calem lets go of Harry and the child shrinks away, shuddering.
"What do you have against the kid?" No use letting the psycho know Harry spoke to him. "I get me, Winchester being my last name, but the kid can't be anything to you."
Calem chuckles softly; something in his face told Dean that there's something he's not aware of yet—something big...important. "Oh, that kid is special. He's really going to be something one day."
"Yeah?" Dean manages to get out before his throat swallows the words. "Bull. It's a damn kid."
"Shut up, Dean." Even with all the malice and hatred behind the words, Calem's face never shifts from it's pleasant mask. "You aren't aware of the situation and you have no vote in the matter." He shifts from his right foot to his left, rubbing his hands together. "Now, it's your turn."
Dean laughs weakly. "Sure. I have something you want. So what? Buy your own."
"But you don't even know what I want." The knife is back in Calem's hand again, still encased in a thin layer of dry blood. Some of it's Dean's now. "I assure you, if it was as simple as going to the nearest retail store and picking it up off a shelf, you would be dead right now, rather than mucking up my room."
Calem hums under his breath, using the edge of the knife to gingerly make a small incision down the length of Deans' arm, from elbow to just above his wrist. It's a thin cut, but blood wells up anyway. Dean grits his teeth, not making a sound, "It's a ring actually."
Dean snorts, "You would be the jewelry-obsessed murder."
Calem grabs Dean's jaw forcefully, his eyes burning as he cuts deep into Dean's cheek—deeper than necessary. "It's a very important ring, once belonging to my family before it was taken off our hands by a melodramatic thief who said it was for our own good. Hardly."
The murderer releases Dean's jaw, carefully sifting through his pocket while still keeping on eye one Dean. After a few seconds, he pulls out a worn piece of yellowed parchment, wrinkled from age. Dean looks at the picture quietly, fighting to keep any spark of recognition from entering his eyes.
He knows the ring. Of course he does. Most murderers at least get the minimal details right. Calem is no different. The ring, Dean knows, is currently at Bobby's place, locked up with all the other potentially dangerous weapons and odd artifacts somewhere in the panic room.
He's not sure what the ring is for; not even Bobby seemed to know the answer and Sam wasn't around when they came into possession of the ring. By the time Sam came back, the ring was long forgotten. It just wasn't important enough to care about and bring up again.
It just had to be the one thing the come back and bite him in the ass.
"You know it." The glee in Calem's voice is so tangible, Dean almost swears he can feel it crawl beneath his skin.
"I don't."
"You do." Another swipe at his skin with the knife, this time on his other cheek and just as deep as the last one. "Don't lie, Dean. I can tell."
Calem leans in close, his forehead nearly touching Dean's and his eyes almost impossibly wide. Dean attempts to jerk his head away, but Calem just chuckles. "Dude, personal space would be—"
"Tell me." Calem holds up the knife, which somehow still gleams in the sparse lighting of the basement even with the blood. Suddenly, something flickers through the psycho's eyes and he settles back flat on his feet, his smile still in place. "I'm going to give you two days," He held up two fingers, "Two days to decide whether or not you're going to tell me of your own violation. You will tell me, because after those two days I will start cutting. I'm not afraid to hack off a few of your limbs if you resist, keep that in mind."
Calem makes a quick motion with his hand over his shoulder as he walks out of sight. A few seconds later, Dean hears the locks around his wrists click open and feels himself being lowered to the ground. Before he can so much as even think of struggling, a cuff similar to Harry's is attached to both of his legs, but his arms are left free. Dean tests the strength—settling on the fact that they're some of the best available—as he watches the two practically identical grunts make their exit without a word edgewise.
This time when the door closes, he sees it and a bit of that hope that maybe he could get himself out of this situation fades. The door clearly has a vault-lock—definitely not something he has the know-how nor the prowess to unlock. Damnit, they need Sam.
(~) (~) (~) (~) (~)
He's never going to tease Sam again for reading ever again. Ever.
...Okay, so that might be a little lie.
If a book was presented to Dean now, he would snatch it up in an instant. The waiting, the sitting on his ass twiddling his thumbs thing is wrecking havoc on his nerves. He's not the frickin' damsel in distress in these situations, he's the knight in shining armor—well, not so much the whole armor part. More like the hero...he saves people. He doesn't sit down and wait to be saved by his girl of a brother.
Except, of course, when he does.
It's not like he has a choice.
Harry is out of his chains again(the grunts released him when Calem was safely out of the room), but he's still in the same corner, unmoving. His eyes stare blankly ahead. If not for the telltale rise and fall of the little boy's chest, Dean might have feared that he died. It seems like he's just more accustomed to extreme boredom than Dean is.
"Hey, kid...Harry." His voice is continuously getting worse. If the psychos don't come down soon with water, he's probably going to die of dehydration. For now, he can still talk, so he's going to use it while he can.
Harry finally blinks, lowering his chin as he tilts his head slightly towards Dean, his eyes on the floor in submission. The freaks upstairs have broken the boy—Dean can tell. There's something beneath the surface, though, that continues to baffle him. It's almost like hope, crushed, but not yet gone.
"Harry, I need you to come over here. Can you do that?" His voice cracks and he's barely able to finish his sentence. Damn.
Harry averts his eyes even more, shaking his head in both denial and blatant refusal.
The kid isn't going to trust him. No matter what Dean does, the only thing Harry can see is how adults have treated him hear so far. Fear over well-being. Nothing is going to override that primal fear installed deep within his insticts—it just isn't going to happen. Dean may be able to lure out a bit of obedience and even respect, but never trust. Not here.
Nothing else is going to happen tonight, so Dean leans his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. He doesn't sleep. Instead, he tries to think of a plan, any plan, to get out of this hole in the ground—to get Harry out of here. Civilians before himself—that's the rule.
The rule has never seemed so personal before.
A few minutes after he goes into his semi-conscious state, Dean's feels the air shift and a warm body curl into his side. He opens his eyes a hair and smiles a little when he notices it's Harry, eyes already closed and half-asleep within seconds.
For now, it's okay. He'll think of a solid plan tomorrow.
Tomorrow. Right.
(~) (~) (~) (~) (~)
Dean is a Hunter. Hunters don't sleep like regular humans. Having an excessive amount of sleep when accustomed to much, much less only serves to make his body lapse into a shaky tenseness—a state of having to much energy and not having any way to get rid of it.
He shifts, forgetting about Harry, still asleep. Sometimes during the night, the little boy must have had a craving for human contact because he's now half in Dean's lap, face peaceful and body showing none of pain Dean knows he feels while awake.
At least the kid has a means of finding peace, because Dean sure as hell doesn't.
Dean takes inventory of the room, looking for any weaknesses. Four identical slabs of grey concrete pushed together, another slab of concrete eight feet or so above their heads. In all four corners, there are cuffs meant to hold anyone down and in the very center of the room, there is the wooden structure he spent quite a bit of time on. On one of the walls, there's a large door, made of concrete, that's constructed in a way that makes only a faint outline visible. No doubt it's well-disguised on the outside.
The kid opens his eyes slowly, blinking a few times as he stares up at Dean, a little surprise lighting up his features. Other than that, the kid doesn't seem overall annoyed with the contact.
"You feel good." Harry starts retreating as he says those words, but he stays within a few feet. Its an accomplishment, Dean decides.
Dean is initially confused, "I do?"
"Yeah," Harry nods slowly, uncertainty in his small, pixie-like features, "Not like Calem. Calem feels bad...evil." The kid shudders, "You feel nice...white...pure. Clean."
Dean knows he's, of all things, clean, but he isn't about to tell Harry that. "What about all the other men?"
Harry draws into himself, crossing his arms protectively. "Bad. Nasty. Like Calem, but not as evil. Bad. Very bad."
Halfway through the short spiel, Dean realizes that Harry has something extremely traumatic altering his perception...his words. Sam would know, being the bookworm he is, but Dean knows next to nothing about PTSD.
"How old are you, Harry?"
Maybe he doesn't want to know the answer—maybe it's a mistake to ask and face the risk of feeling guilty for not getting out sooner. Some part of him didn't care and wants to know.
"Thirteen." Harry's face twists as if he's rethinking his words. Then, he carefully adds, "I think."
Harry doesn't look thirteen. He has the body structure of a eleven year old, if that, and the speech patterns of someone much younger. Yet, both those problems can be the result from years of lacking sunlight and social-deprivation. Dean rubs his face in trepidation "Okay, Harry, I'm assuming you've been here longer than I have. Is there anything important about this place—anything I should know."
The boy tilts his head a little, holding his fist up to his lips in thought and biting his thumb, "I don't know."
Dean doesn't react; he didn't expect anything. Some kids are just too young to deal with traumatic experiences and remember any external details. He can't expect any different from Harry. Despite the thoughts, he can't help but to feel a bit of that frustration seep in."Where did Calem take you yesterday?"
Harry's face crumbles in on itself and he backs away quickly, practically tripping over his feet as he retreats. "I don't want to talk about it."
Dean winces. Oops. "Don't worry, kid. I'm gonna get both of us out of this."
Harry doesn't appear to hear him, but Dean has no intention of breaking the promise.
(~) (~) (~) (~) (~)
The two days pass at an agonizingly slow rate. Times seems to loop, over and over again, as he sits in that one spot, the chains not allowing an adult to stand up. His legs are cramped, but the pain in his upper arms is just starting to fade. As it turns out, being dangled by only the wrists causes some serious strain on the arms. Nothing he can't ignore until later.
It doesn't take him long to gain Harry's...respect? The kid is emitting desperation and a craving for attention from other humans that don't openly seek to harm him. Dean has no qualms about letting himself be the one giving Harry what he seeks. For now. Eventually, the kid settles in, gets comfortable. After awhile, they can have long conversations without Harry backing away from Dean in fear—a small accomplishment, but an accomplishment nonetheless.
Halfway through the first day, Dean sees something his eyes skimmed right over before—a small ventilation shaft in the ceiling, covered by a piece of thin cement suspended just below it in a way that makes it nearly impossible to see it. A possible escape route if he's ever seen one. Heck, the wooden structure was directly beneath the shaft. From here, he can't do a damn thing because of the restricting cuffs, but if he can just get out of them...
He settles back to wait. Dean has a plan. Not a foolproof plan, but its better than nothing.
Calem shows up early, or what Dean assumes is early, looking exactly the same as he had two days before right down to the too-tight jeans and navy blue polo shirt. That small detail both surprises and disgusts Dean a little; can't the psycho take a few seconds out of his day to change?
Dean laughs, because this is what he thinks about when he's seconds from possible death? His killers attire?
Then the resentment sets in. Of all the things he's faced as a hunter—all the creatures he's thought he could be killed by, he never expected a human to even come close to delivering the blow. Irony. Poetic justice or some crap like that. Just his luck.
The reality of the situation comes to him in that moment. Sam hasn't found them, Dean has no way out, and Calem looks desperate enough to actually kill him, whether Dean gives him what he wants or not.
"So, Dean, what do you say?" The knife appears out of nowhere and Dean finds himself getting tired of it. When he gets out of this situation, he's going to melt that thing into a stupid little puddle. "Have you been thinking about my...proposition?"
Of course he has been thinking about the ring. It's not like there's anything else to do in the little prison chamber.
"No."
"No, what?" When Dean sees the agitation on Calem's face, he figures it's a small victory.
"No, I'm not telling you where the stupid ring is." He spits at Calem's face, but both dehydration and slight delirium makes him miss his target.
"You will soon feel very differently, Dean. Very, very differently." The knife trails over his skin in a loose pattern, but never actually touches him, "Fortunate for you, I have a previous engagement I must attend, but I will be back soon and, rest assured, you will tell me the location of what I seek."
Dean stares at Calem defiantly until the I-take-my-evil-phrases-right-out-of-the-comic-books villain is out of sight and the door secured. Dean smirks and pulls a small wire from behind his back. Bingo.
Review, my peeps, or cute little Harry and Dean won't make it out alive...
I'm lying.
Maybe.
So let's review and be safe, shall we?