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4. He Knew Their Suffering

"You are Dean Winchester."

Dean jolts at the gravelly, grating voice by his side, eyes momentarily leaving his sleeping brother. Sam had curled up as soon as he'd gotten into the cage and by the time they'd let Dean in, too, he was sleeping. Ever since, Dean had taken to a corner of the cage and had just watched over his brother, occasionally casting glances for signs of distress, and otherwise, just staring into nothing and waiting for Sam to indicate that he's awake.

Presently, he turns to the source of the voice, and sees that Castiel has drawn his chair closer to the cage. He's the guard, Dean realises, Sam's guard, really, and he works to keep Sam away from everyone else. Each cage has someone like this, watching over the occupant.

Castiel tilts his head as he narrows his eyes at Dean. "Aren't you?"

Dean shrugs. "Guess I'm famous."

"Sam used to ask for you," Castiel tells him. "I remember the first year."

"So you've been here the whole time?"

"Yes."

Dean swallows, and glances again at Sam, who shifts positions and mumbles something. He wants to get Sam out of here, smooth those lines of pain off his brother's face and take him someplace better, where Sam won't be treated like this. Where Sam can remember again. To a world where Azazel and the other demons are dead and no one will ever come after Sam.

"He only remembered me for a year, huh?"

"They brainwashed him," Castiel tells Dean. "You shouldn't blame him."

"Never said I'm blaming him for anything."

"I sense that you want to."

"Yeah, well," Dean says to Castiel, turning fully towards the guard, "it's my thoughts and my family and you've got nothing to do with it."

"If you understand what he's been through, you will not put Sam at fault. For forgetting."

"Won't I?"

Dean knows he's wrong to do this; fuck, he knows he's wrong, but right now, blaming Sam seems to be the only thing he can do to feel better. He can't take much of anything, looking at how Sammy is and if he blames him, maybe, maybe he won't feel like he's failed his brother and his father; the two people he's cared about in ways that scare even him sometimes.

"He's been through more than you can imagine," Castiel says in a low, gentle voice, and when Dean looks at him again, his blue eyes are resting on Sam. "Your brother is very brave."

Dean lets his lips slip in a half-smile. "I always knew that."

Castiel looks back up at Dean, and Dean finds himself uncomfortable again by the soul-searching gaze. He winds his arms around himself and rests his head on the cold, uncomfortable steel bar behind him, when Castiel speaks. "I don't think you get just how hard it's been for him."

"Yeah? And you think it was easy for me?"

"That's a very selfish thing to say." The guard sounds harsh, and his eyes are sparkling with the beginnings of anger. Dean wonders how one person can have so many things hidden right there, in their eyes. "I don't doubt that you grieved, Dean," Castiel continues, "but your brother here has been tortured. He's been brainwashed and beaten and cut into, and if you were here and you had seen him struggle, you probably wouldn't say something quite so selfish."

Dean is taken aback at the anger in Castiel's voice, but he looks away and shuts his eyes momentarily. "Screw you," he says. "Don't act like you care."

"I care. About your brother. I have watched him for four years."

Dean chokes on a rush of laughter. "Yeah? Seriously? Is that why you're here as a guard? Is that why you chain him up and drag him around?"

"I have always treated your brother with respect," Castiel tells Dean, and Dean looks at him again, watching him shift from the shadows into a small slat of sunlight. It illuminates his face and neck, and Dean starts at what he sees there. A scar.

Almost like…

No.

"You-You—" Dean swallows. "You're not a demon."

Castiel bows his head slightly and nods. "I am an angel."

"No." Dean's gripping at the cold bar of the cage. "You guys—you were dead."

"No."

"They were sure."

Castiel steps forward, hands curled around the bars, towering over Dean, who is crouched on the floor. "Some of us were kept alive. This camp is special, and Azazel wanted guards who weren't just demons. He tried to strike a deal with my oldest brothers, Michael and Nick. They were the leaders of our army."

"And they agreed?" Dean asks him. "Your douchebag leaders sold us humans to these assholes?"

"Nick didn't care about human beings," Castiel replies. "You must understand, that even though we were made to not have emotions, each of us still harbours traces of it. Nick had his hatred, and it was stronger than everything else. He killed Michael and took the deal with Azazel."

Dean glances back at Sam, and then at Castiel. Maybe if he gets this dude to talk enough and gets to whatever emotional traces are left from Castiel's human side, he can take Sam and escape.

"We are all named after the Biblical angels," Castiel tells Dean. "Nick is particularly fierce, and his name was well thought-out."

"What, there's an angel called Nick out there?" Dean asks him.

One side of Castiel's chapped mouth quirks up in a smile. "No. His real name is Lucifer. Human beings referred to the real Lucifer as Satan. Or the Devil."

Dean's heart drops to his stomach. Satan. The name in itself is terrifying, daunting in a way, and he looks at Castiel, who stands there, sunlight falling on his sharp, stubbled jaw, eyes bluer than anything Dean has ever seen. His gaze falls to the scar on Castiel's neck as his mind processes the different ways to get Sammy out of this hellhole.

He crosses his arms. "Where's your Nick right now?"

He wonders if he imagines Castiel shuddering when he turns back to a door, hidden coyly behind one of the cages. Dean follows the direction in which Castiel is pointing and holds his eyes there, studying the wooden finish of it, and imagining the asshole sitting behind it.

"That's his office," says Castiel. "Nick likes to spend time with Azazel's special children."

"And-and what does he…?"

Castiel blinks, and Dean is sure that he isn't imagining the sympathy in his eyes right now. "On the best of the days, they get, as everyone says 'tamed'. On the worst… let's just say that Nick loves his meat hooks." He swallows. "It's actually your brother's turn next. With Nick. It's why his demeanour has suddenly changed. He knows what is coming and he's trying to conserve energy to fight back."

His eyes turn to Sam again and Dean follows, nausea tingling somewhere deep in his belly and his whole body trembling as his thoughts go in circles. Oh God. Oh God. No. He needs to get out of here. He needs to get Sam out of here. He cannot have his little brother take another day of this crap. He can't allow this. Can't let them do this to Sam.

He turns again to Castiel, holding the angel's gaze in his. "Do you really care about my brother?"

"Yes," Castiel replies, without hesitation.

Dean nods. "Then I need your help, Cas. I need you to help me get him out of here."

He feels something jolt inside him when Castiel's lips widen in a smile, eyes narrowing, crinkles appearing at their corners, and Dean has to take a step back at the genuineness of it all. "What?" he asks the angel guard, slightly irritated at the way he's behaving.

"No one's ever called me Cas before," Castiel tells him. "You are so odd, Dean Winchester. And I will be happy to help you."

Dean just snorts at the nerdy freak before him and goes back to wait for Sam to get up. "Okay, time to make a fucking plan, then." Castiel smiles again and Dean looks away, wondering how odd it is that he's thinking about some dude's eye crinkles. Then he puts a gentle hand on Sam's shoulder and shuts his eyes, hoping he can think up a plan that will work in his and Sam's favour.

~o~

Turns out that the occupant of cage number eight is a girl. She's blonde and leggy and Dean would have hit on her if there weren't other pressing matters. She emerges from Nick's room, eyes rolling in their sockets while her body sways, dragged and kicked by two angels: one bald and black and the other tall and blond, younger, in a prissy suit. The black guard shoves her into the cage and Blondie, who seems to be the guard in charge of her, gets inside to chain her up.

She looks distressed and bloody, eyes half-mast as she lets out a pained cry at being dropped to the harsh stone floor. Blondie lets out a tutting sound at that, making Dean want to tear his throat out. He cuffs her neck and her ankles and she snarls weakly when she sees him, quickly silenced when he aims a kick at her stomach. Dean clenches his fists, and the asshole angel turns to him.

"What are you staring at?" he asks. "When Nick is ready again, it's going to be your precious little brother's turn so you don't need to look here for the drama, you know."

Sam stirs, eyes blinking open when the girl tries to sit up, chains clinking against each other.

"You don't need to assault her more than what she has to endure, Bartholomew," Castiel says, his voice cold. Dean watches as Sam starts to rise, head turned to the girl.

Bartholomew chuckles. "Always siding with the vermin aren't you, Castiel? I can understand if you sympathise with the slaves who are actually human, but these? These are monsters," he hisses.

"They're children," Castiel corrects him.

"Oh please, don't say you don't know what the boss does to them. They're tamed in there by Nick for a reason. What do you think goes on when Azazel takes them for 'training'? Why do you think they come out all restless and angry?"

Dean averts his gaze from his struggling brother to look at the angel guards. Castiel's brows are furrowed in confusion, hands fiddling with the material of his trenchcoat. "Do you know what Azazel does to them?"

"Everybody does. Grow up. Get yourself outside of that hole you live in and stop caring for that monster."

"Sam is not a monster."

"He is the same as Jessica. They're both monsters."

Jessica, Dean now notices as he looks at her again, has managed to crawl up to the edge of her cage, as has Sam. While Bartholomew and Castiel argue endlessly behind them about monsters, a bloody, manacled hand extends from Jessica's cage into Sam's.

For the first time that day, Dean sees his brother smile. He watches the dimples as they appear on Sam's sallow cheeks, as he interlinks his long fingers with hers. When he does, Jessica smiles too.

It's such a tender moment, so intimate on its own, that Dean's heart leaps and he turns away, feeling like he's invading something private. He thinks of all those years that Sam was stuck in here, and then of how he only had Jessica and the dude in that other cell to interact with, apart from Castiel. He notices that Jessica doesn't talk either, and wonders what their breaking point was, what made them all like this. He wonders if Sam ever thought that Dean would come and get him away from here. Wonders when Sam was forced to give up on those hopes.

Dean feels sick. He couldn't have known about this, but he should have. He couldn't have protected Sam, but he should have. Four years. Four years is just so, so long. It's been like an eternity, waiting on Sam, hoping he'll be back, and Dean was sitting in a goddamned bunker in a goddamned ghetto all these years, thinking he had it worse.

Castiel is right. Dean is fucking selfish.

Sam has changed. Dean knows he's never going to get his little brother back again—not the way he used to be. Not that whining, grumbling, bitchy little brother who geeked out over stupid, old books and fought hand-to-hand all too gracefully for his size. Not that idiot who came red-faced after losing his virginity to Madison, and spent days worrying he'd gotten her pregnant because he hadn't been thoughtful enough to take some condoms with him.

Sam isn't Sam anymore. He is a broken shell of a person. A dude who goes from a rabid, growling killing machine one second to a scared kid the next.

"Hey!" Bartholomew's voice is harsh and Sam scrambles away from Jessica as soon as he hears him, both of them looking terrified. Thankfully, before the asshole can take any further action, he has to stop because the door to Nick's office flies open.

The black angel walks out, looking harried. "Castiel, bring out Winchester," he says, and Castiel presses his lips together, glancing at Sam, whose eyes have widened at the black guy.

"Uriel," Castiel replies, "Sam has just been to the arena. There's no need—"

"Nick's orders." Uriel looks all too happy to follow them.

Dean immediately moves to kneel in front of Sam, shielding him from all of them. "Don't touch him," he growls, his whole body clenching in, his muscles fluttering with the need to fight; to beat all these people's faces into a pulp.

"If you don't get him out, Castiel, I will," Uriel warns, ignoring Dean entirely. "We can't go through this nonsense every day. You know what needs to be done and you know it ends up happening, no matter what you say. So get this over with, or Nick gets the meat hooks out."

Castiel's eyes rove to meet Dean's, apology written on them as he sighs. "I have to take him in, Dean."

"Cas—"

"And here we have nicknames!" Uriel points out delightedly, his face breaking into a grin. "Did you get yourself some ass, Cas?"

"Shut up," Dean snaps at him. "My brother ain't going anywhere."

"Your brother," Uriel says, coming forward, "will do what he does every day. Just because he has a special guest, he is not excused. And if you don't move, I'll take him away by force."

"Oh, you can try me."

"You won't last a moment there. I'm an angel. Just move over."

Dean stands up and shakes his head. "No. Fight for it."

Uriel looks slightly bored. "Cas, will you explain the situation to your boyfriend?"

"Dean."

"Shut up," Dean hisses at the guard. "I don't want to fucking listen about how important it is to fucking send Sam in there because you care in some weird way, and—"

"Nick isn't a patient man," Castiel says calmly, interrupting Dean. "He is not sympathetic. Let Sam go for now, and chances are, he'll get off easier."

Dean's throat is clogging, and he feels like he's going to suffocate from all this. How the fuck does Castiel expect him to just let his brother go? Just like that? And 'Nick will go easier'? Sam will only get beat up scared, as opposed to being strung by meat hooks and full-blown tortured? That's Dean's consolation for this?

Dean casts a glance at Jessica again, who's trying to lie down on her stomach, and for some reason, isn't rolling over to her back, agony written all over her face, and…

"That's it." Uriel gets into the cage, his shoulder nudging Dean harshly aside, and Dean watches as Sam starts crawling backwards in the cage.

Uriel, unperturbed, crouches over and undoes the chains. Sam snarls at him once, but Uriel glares, and Sam's silenced again. Dean is reaching towards the bastard, all ready to attack, when someone grabs his jacket and holds him back.

"Get off me!" he growls, trying to reach his brother while Uriel drags him out.

"It's for your own good," Castiel says, breath blowing in Dean's neck and ear as he keeps him back, hands fisted in Dean's jacket. "He will be all right. He's endured this for years, and he is stronger than you think."

"No." Sam is out of the cage now, stumbling to the doorway, and there's a lump in Dean's throat. "No."

"He'll be okay."

"No…"

Castiel gently pushes Dean back into the cage and works on locking it as Dean swears to himself to kill all of these bastards and make a messy job of it.

~o~

Dean is antsy and jumpy by the time Sam comes back. It's gotten dark outside and, like Jessica, Sam is swaying too. Castiel rushes up to Uriel to support him, his hands on Sam's biceps and waist much gentler than Uriel's. Dean is still mad at Cas, but these small things relieve him, make him think of the occasional reprieves Sam might have received over the years.

Uriel's face reads pure disgust as he lets go of Sam. Castiel supports Sam with one arm, starts to open the cage while Dean stands up. When Sam stumbles in, Dean puts his own arm around him immediately, leading him to his place alongside Castiel. His brother's skin and clothes are damp with sweat and blood and Sam's trembling underneath Dean's touch. There are welts on his skin, bruises on his face, cuts on his forearm with more dried blood staining them. Dean feels like he might puke.

"What does that asshole do to them in there?" Dean whispers to Castiel, his voice coming out choked and thick.

"I think you know," Castiel replies. "Dean, please don't ask me when you know." Dean turns around to look at him, and Castiel's eyes look pained.

They sit Sam down, who slumps forward while Dean crouches in front of him. Sam's face lands on Dean's shoulder and his first instinct is to push Sam away to see where he's hurt, but then he feels his brother trembling, shaking everywhere. Dean takes a shuddering breath before placing a hand on the base of Sam's skull.

"You're gonna be okay," Dean whispers to him as Castiel works the chains on. "I'll get you out of here."

Sam doesn't respond, seemingly a little comfortable in the world that is the crook of Dean's neck, and Dean adjusts himself to sit down on his haunches as he lets Sam stay there. He hears Sam sigh as he burrows his face into Dean's shoulder, and the gesture is so familiar that Dean looks up at Castiel hopefully. "I think he recognises me."

"He is just not used to kindness," Castiel replies, returning to his place outside the cage before starting to lock the doors. "He's in pain. He's a lot like a child, Dean. All these people—they're children. They're afraid. They mean no harm unless forced."

"I know that."

"He's latching on to you because you're kind," Castiel clarifies. "Not because he knows who you are. They made him forget—forced him to forget. They've put him through endless psychological pain."

Dean nods, feeling a terrible prickling at the back of his eyes. "They'll have hell to pay for this, Cas." He falls quiet when he hears Sam's breath hitch, and Dean's hand moves down to his brother's back. The moment his palm touches Sam, though, he flinches horribly. He would have actually jumped if he had the dexterity right now.

"Sammy?"

It's too late. Sam scrambles away from Dean, chains hitting the floor as he starts to move back. His eyes are wide in terror, and Dean wonders what set him off. He raises his hands in supplication. "I'm not here to hurt you, buddy."

Sam doesn't bite. He just casts another look at Castiel and curls in on himself, trying to put himself in the corner of the cage without actually touching the bars with his back. And that's when Dean puts two and two together. Jessica had been sleeping on her stomach a few hours ago. Does this mean…?

Dean gets down from his haunches to all fours, crawling tentatively towards Sam. Sam flinches again, even before Dean is near, and bares his teeth at him. Dean shakes his head. "Not doing anything to you, man. I just want to see where that douchebag has hurt you."

Sam shakes his head, and Dean stops where he is. "I can help you," he says, "I can help you, Sammy. Please?"

Sam blinks a few times at him, face miserable and pitiful with all the bruises and welts, and after a moment, nods. Dean gets over to his brother's side and fingers the hem of his shirt, showing Sam what he's about to do, before lifting it up entirely.

Sam hisses, and Dean apologises silently, words dying in his mouth when he sees Sam's back for himself. It's scattered with wounds and scars, old and new, bruises and more cuts, criss-crossing grotesquely. However, those bother Dean less than the biggest wound of them all.

Branded vertically over Sam's back, in blistered block letters, red and inflamed, is the word Azazel.

Dean opens his mouth and shuts it. He freezes there, staring at the fucking brand on his brother, and he doesn't know what to do. He wants to reverse it all—take it away from Sammy so he doesn't have this fucking agonising burn on him, but…

"When did he get this?" he manages to whisper to Castiel.

"In the beginning. Azazel likes to keep it fresh."

"You didn't tell me?"

"I didn't think it was something to be spoken about."

Dean turns to the angel, letting Sam sit back again. "Do they give him any antibiotics? Pain killers?"

"The infirmary is only used when someone is very sick, Dean."

"He's been branded," Dean spits. "That asshole's name has been burned into his skin and the wound's not allowed to heal. He could die of an infection and I'm fucking surprised he hasn't already!"

Castiel looks down guiltily, as though he blames himself for Sam's trauma. Dean takes a deep breath and scrubs a hand down his face. "I'm getting him out of here. Now."

"That is not possible."

"Don't you dare tell me what's possible and what's not!" Dean snaps at him. "You told me you tried to help my brother. That you cared. And you couldn't sneak in a couple of pills for him?"

"He was in pain, Dean. He was barely eating, let alone—"

"Then give him a fucking shot! Is this how much you douche angels care?"

"Dean, you don't understand," Castiel says, lowering his voice when a slumbering Bartholomew staggers from his position. "We would all have been killed if I did that. Your brother included."

It would have been better that Sammy died than live like this four years. Dean's mind stops whirring as soon as he processes that thought, guilt assaulting his senses that he could even consider this. But it's true, a small voice says in his head. Sam's in a terrible condition. And if this is what it's all come to…

No. No. Dean will get Sam out of this dump alive.

The elevator opens and a man enters, carrying a couple of boxes. They contain packets of food, Dean notices when the man opens the boxes and starts putting stuff onto plates. The guards rise from their places, one-by-one, and in a couple of minutes, Castiel is sliding in two plates from the gap underneath the cage before going over to get some for himself. It's chicken legs slathered in terrible-looking gravy.

Dean takes the plates and sits next to Sam, who reluctantly takes his food from Dean. There is silence between them. Dean is ravenous and his stomach gurgles even as he begins to eat, demanding more. He notices, though, that Sam's hands are trembling too much, and that Sam's having trouble eating. His hands don't seem to correctly coordinate with his mouth and Dean can see that he's hungry, too.

He gestures to Sam's plate. "You want help?"

Sam shakes his head and valiantly lifts the chicken leg to his mouth, thick gravy smearing on his lips as he tries to catch the meat with his teeth. Dean sighs and draws Sam's plate closer, working on the other chicken leg on it, starting to pull the meat from the bone.

It's undercooked and the flesh is difficult to pull off but he manages, and Sam, who's struggling with the other leg, stops to watch.

Dean pushes the plate back. "Go ahead."

Sam puts his chicken down and reaches to the pieces that Dean just made, fingers grasping on to a morsel with much difficulty before finally making their way to his mouth. He chews, slowly and unsurely and then looks back at Dean, eyes going down to the other leg on the plate before settling back on Dean.

"Atta boy." Dean grabs the meat by the bone and starts separating the pieces like the first one. He settles back to eat his own meal, cleaning the meat right down to the bone and remembering how a seven-year old Sammy would ask him and Dad for their leftover bones so he could crunch on the cartilage. He stopped when he grew up, even though he still loved the cartilage.

This time, Sam doesn't touch anything but the meat. He just washes down his food with some water, turns away without a sound, and after half an hour he's curled up and asleep.

~o~

Dean would have slept through the night had Sam not thrashed around with what seemed like the most horrid nightmares. He sits near Sam's corner, trying to rouse him without aggravating him, and all night Dean feels Castiel watch him, having abandoned his own slumber as he wonders how he's going to find an opening to sneak Sam out of this place.

The next morning, Castiel takes Sam for training, which is apparently on the first floor.

"And what is this?" Dean asks him when the angel guard comes back, his eyes shadowed from the lack of sleep.

"Azazel trains them to fight," Castiel replies. "The techniques he uses riles all of them up. They're brought back to their cages to gain full strength and then sent to various tasks around the camp, usually to do with killing of slaves, after which they're returned to be tamed."

Dean winces. "So between now and the slave thing, the only time Sammy's out of the cage is when he comes back?"

"Yes."

"And you'll open it for him?"

"Of course."

Dean clenches his fists. "Then I'm outta here with him."

Castiel's eyes widen. "What?"

"When you bring him back, I'll take him and leave. You can say I kicked you, threatened you—whatever."

Castiel smiles. "They will kill me."

"You wanna help Sammy, right? This is your chance."

"I do not want to die, Dean," Castiel replies earnestly.

"Then come with us."

The words are out of Dean's mouth before he can think, and he watches, as Castiel's eyes widen some more. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, Cas," Dean replies. Because—why not? He can take Castiel back to the bunker and they can train him to fight. It would be great to have an angel on their side. So much more protection for everyone…

Dean looks into Castiel's eyes. "What do you say? Are you in? You help us out, Cas, and I swear we'll come back to take the demons down. That's what you want, isn't it? Safety for the humans?"

Castiel looks back at him for a long moment, blue eyes shifting colours like sea waves. He seems to be contemplating, but at the end of it he nods. "All right. I will accompany you."

"Great." Dean claps his hands. "Now we only need to figure out how to get my brother out of here when he's all hulked up and shit."

Castiel looks towards Nick's office, and then a room beyond, and smiles again, those fucking eye-crinkles and all, and Jesus, this must be a miracle that he's smiling so much. "I know how we can take him out, Dean."

~o~

An hour later when Castiel brings a struggling, restless Sam back to the cage, Dean uncaps the syringe that he's got in his pocket and moves forward, and the moment Sam is at the threshold, plunges it into Sam's bicep.

Sam growls, snarls and sways, staggers as his eyes slide shut and Castiel throws him over his shoulder like he's nothing, while Dean stumbles out of the cage, the two of them running as quickly as they can.

Behind them, the noises of commotion only indicate two things to Dean: his freedom and his little brother.

A/N: Please review! We worked extremely hard for this one.