Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

Warnings: Extremely mild language. Hurt Sam. Depressed Dean.

Sam felt the rope burn on his wrists from his struggles in the back of the van, his skin cracked and bleeding periodically while the ropes never slackened. The soles of his feet burned with microscopic cuts from running over gravel. The jostling of the van as it cruised over unkempt back roads left him nauseated, but there was nothing in his stomach for him to throw up.

Jerry and Rich had yet to give him food since his escape attempt the previous night. He wouldn't starve to death, not unless this treatment went on for awhile. They only needed him alive. They didn't need him to be well besides.

The other boy in the back of the van with him never spoke. He mostly tried to sleep, but it was easier on him. His wrists were bound in front of him with a zip tie, that hadn't changed. He could shift himself into more comfortable positions. He had a black collar around his neck that Sam suspected was a shock collar, just like his, only his never went off. On its own or from the remote. The other kid never disobeyed, so there was no reason to shock him.

Sam's situation was much different, with his hands tied behind him with rope in the same manner as his ankles. The shock collar that went off every time he tried to make a noise and the gag didn't help.

Jerry and Rich talked in the front seat now and again, usually about nothing. Some times about the upcoming auctions, but never enough for Sam to really understand what he was headed into. Most times the van was silent except for the monotonous lull of talk radio.

It gave Sam too much time to think about his future and the possibility that he wouldn't be rescued from this. Maybe he was already too far gone. A lost cause.

It was bad enough that when Dean called his name over the phone, Sam realized that he hadn't heard in his first name in a long time. They never used it. Never asked. He was always just 'boy' or 'kid'.

He didn't need to question why. It was another way to show that he held no value beyond a price tag.

He tried to hold onto Dean's voice from the night before. He tried to hold onto Dean's promise that, of course, he's coming. Like there could be any other option. Maybe it wasn't much, but it was all he really had now. Promises and hopes.

"Gotta feed the kid sometime if we want him to fetch a decent price," said Rich from the front seat. "If he looks too scrawny, no one will bid."

"We'll pick up protein shakes in the next town," Jerry said. "Shouldn't take much more than that to keep them going. Cheaper, too, than buying actual meals."

"That gonna be enough?" Rich asked.

"It'll be enough to keep them alive," Jerry said. "You've seen the kids at the auctions. Most of them are scrawny, and it's not that much farther. We'll stop once more tonight and be there by mid-morning tomorrow. Protein shakes will be just fine."

It wasn't choice. It was survival dictated by strangers. Sam couldn't remember the last time he had a meal of his own choosing, one that he enjoyed instead of ate out of necessity.

At this point, being in a car accident would be a blessing. Hard to hide kids when the vehicle is smashed and the police are involved.

Were he less bound, Sam would have his next plan for escape. Causing an accident wouldn't have been hard at all. A little driver distraction and back roads had plenty of ditches for them to roll the van into.

His regret was not thinking of it earlier, before they started using extra precautions with him.

When Rich stopped the van, it lurched forward. Sam's head hit against the back of the front seats. He couldn't bite back the gasp from surprise, and it set his shock collar off.

No one spared him so much as a glance, and Jerry left the van.

Rich tapped his fingers against the steering wheel to a rhythm that only he heard.

If it was Dean at the steering wheel, he'd be tapping the beat to a Led Zeppelin song. He always did. Music was Dean's way to keep calm in their hectic lives, a measure of comfort. Sam never said it aloud, but it was a comfort to him as well to hear his brother tapping a familiar song.

Jerry returned with a box covered in the words 'protein shake' and 'best nutrition for low prices'. He pulled out one bottle and opened it, handing it to the other kid. He took it without complaint and drank like he hadn't had water in days, but maybe he didn't.

Sam didn't realize how thirsty he was until he saw the kid drinking the shake—a classic vanilla protein shake. He wanted water though, protein shakes tasted chalky and left him thirstier than before he drank it.

Rich slipped his hands under Sam's arms and sat him up against the seats. Rich turned Sam's head so that he faced Jerry and removed the gag.

Jerry unscrewed the bottle's top and held it to Sam's lips, but Sam kept his mouth firmly closed. He didn't want any of it, and he definitely didn't want to be fed like a child.

"Open your mouth," he said.

Sam turned his head as far away as he could with it grasped in Rich's hand, so Rich gripped tighter and forced him to face Jerry.

Then there were fingers prying open his jaw and warm, vanilla protein shake being poured into his mouth. He gagged at first and tried spitting it out, but his head was tilted and a stranger's hands were in more control of his mouth than his own muscles.

Rich held his jaw back shut when his mouth was full. Try as he might, Sam could not twist away or spit it out.

It became a process of gagging and choking down mouthfuls of the shake against his will. By the end, he felt nauseated and his jaw hurt like it had been the victim of Dean's left and right hook. With the gag back on, he prayed that he wouldn't throw up. Something told him that Jerry and Rich would let him choke on his own vomit and write it off as just a small loss before they ever helped him. No big deal. They'd probably bury him with a price on his headstone.

Actually, they probably wouldn't bury him at all. Leave him on the side of the road and sell what they still had. Let some random passer-by find his sun-baked corpse.

His thoughts made him feel sicker the more he followed them down into the crevices of his mind. If he never saw a protein shake again, he could die happy. He still wasn't sure the one just forced down his throat wasn't about to make a reappearance, and he had no idea how long it would be before they stopped so the rocking of the van would stop as well and give his churning stomach a break.

The nine hour ride was torture (more than nine hours, but only just). Dean used all of his willpower to not bash his brains in by repeatedly hitting his head against the window.

If he was in Baby, it wouldn't be so bad. He'd push the gas pedal down as far as he could and trusted her to get him to Sam safely and swiftly, she knew the stakes. Caleb promised that the Impala was safe in his friend's lot until they could go back and get it.

His dad's truck didn't understand the importance of keeping their family together, it was always too willing to drag John away to hunts while Sam and Dean stayed in another no-tell motel with thin walls that spelled sleepless nights.

He was starting to understand how Sam had so much difficulty sleeping. The kid ran on caffeine most days, and complained when Dean told him to try getting real rest instead of relying on coffee. Maybe he wasn't complaining to be a pain in the ass, but he complained because he really couldn't sleep in the conditions in which they had to live.

Once they had Sam back, Dean promised he would insist that they stayed at places a little nicer from now on. Help Sam get the rest he needed and would need from dealing with everything.

Sam always looked at peace when he watched signs pass by telling them how far each city was. Dean didn't understand that, especially now when each sign added to his anxiousness.

Pittsburgh was close, but they would have to circle around it since Sam said he was outside of Pittsburgh when he called.

Dean had every word Sam said over the phone memorized. He replayed it over and over in his head on an endless loop until the words didn't even sound English. He remembered every hitch in Sam's breath and the pure panic that he would be caught again. Then the terror from when he was caught again.

"I'm guessing that wherever they had Sam was close enough to Pittsburgh for their police department to be dispatched," Caleb said, breaking a long silence. "That's probably where we want to start. Hopefully, they have a report about the call."

"So, feds," John said.

"Feds," Caleb confirmed.

Dean sank lower into his seat. John and Caleb being feds meant that he would be left behind in the car again while they talked to the police. On another day, John might let him tag along as a trainee, but Dean felt that those days were over.

John parked in front of the police station, and Dean sat watching pedestrians walk past the truck and wondering how many of them were involved in the sick, underground world of human trafficking. How many of them knew what was going on in the city around them? Were they as blind to it as Dean had been?

His legs were cramping, they had been for about the last seven hours, but he couldn't get out and stretch them. He was expected to sit patiently in the car, but he was minutes away from hot wiring his father's truck and searching out Sam on his own.

Too long passed since Sam called, and he could be anywhere again.

John and Caleb returned hours later (or about fifteen minutes later, if he were to believe his watch).

Dean sat up straighter and hovered over the edge of the front seats. "So?" he prompted.

"There was a police reported filed about the situation. They talked to the man working the motel's desk, who said that a kid—matching Sam's description—told him that some men were trying to sell him. The worker gave the kid some coins to use the payphone down the road, called the police, and that was it. He saw a car drive down the road from the parking lot. When the police arrived, there was nothing for them to find," Caleb said.

"So, a dead end?" Dean asked. They couldn't have come this far just for a dead end. Dean would tear the city apart if he had to, just to find something, anything, to keep the trail going.

"No," John said. "We'll talk to the motel worker. Find out which direction they drove in. If they were driving all night, then they probably only went far enough to keep the police off of their backs and found another place to spend the night."

Dean sat back into his seat, and they took off towards the motel. Dean spent the entire ride tracing the little, golden charm hanging from his neck, wishing that it could act as a conduit to convey his comfort to Sam. To let Sam know that he was still there for him, whether or not he was physically present.

Supper went much the same way as lunch, only Sam did throw up from being forced to choke down another protein shake. He threw up mostly on Jerry, but a little bit on Rich's hands from him trying to keep his mouth open.

Rich left while Jerry got cleaned up, but not before he got a couple of kicks in at Sam, which almost led to another round of throwing up.

Once Rich returned, with a plain, white t-shirt in his hands, and Jerry was cleaned up, they cut away Sam's sleeveless shirt, stained from his sickness.

Rich untied the ropes binding Sam's wrists and tried to hold his arms down, but Sam jerked free. He threw a punch at Jerry, catching him in the jaw. He hoped it hurt as much as his own jaw did after their force-feedings.

They cursed and Sam thrashed until his shock collar was turned on and only turned off when he was on the brink of unconsciousness.

His more pliant, but mostly limp, limbs were maneuvered into the arms of the shirt and it was pulled over his head before the rope was retied around his wrists.

"Woulda been easier to leave him in the other shirt," Rich said.

Jerry shook his head. "It'd discourage bidders to have vomit stains his shirt. You're still new, but you'll learn quickly that appearance is everything in this line of work."

Aftershocks caused minute, painful spasms to course through his body. Sam researched the effects of electrical shocks once after Dean had a run-in with the police that ended in him being tased, and none of them were things he wanted. Some of them would affect his ability to hunt, and he would become a burden on his dad and Dean if it came to that.

The lights in the motel room were turned off and Sam laid staring up at the ceiling. The other boy snoozed with soft, even breaths, but they became difficult to hear when Rich fell asleep because he snored. Jerry slept soundlessly, unless he shifted positions.

Sam didn't sleep at all.

Every nerve and muscle in his body begged for rest after over a week of brutal treatment, but rest refused to come. The little twitches of his muscles and lingering pain from the shocks weren't doing him any favors, but when he closed his eyes, his mind raced to figure out what would happen next. Unless Dean magically appeared to get him out, he was running out of options. He had run out of options.

By mid-morning tomorrow, he'd be at the place of the auction (whether or not the auction took place tomorrow, he didn't know). The word 'processing' came up a few times during the car ride, but never enough was said for Sam to grasp what it meant in terms of human auctions. Sure, he'd heard the word used when it came to police processing criminals, but how were human slaves processed?

He wasn't sure he wanted that answer.

All he really wanted was to sleep on a real mattress without deep, lingering pain keeping him awake.

More than that, he wanted to see his family again.

Dean was left outside of the motel when his dad and Caleb went in to ask about the worker from the night before. Being an outsider from his own family was new to him. Being exiled from a hunt where there was no reason for him to not help (besides lost trust) was new. Dean spent his entire life confident in his identity as a hunter, as a big brother, and as a son. But now with those identities stripped from him, he didn't know who he was anymore.

Worthless? No, he could still be of some use. He could help if they'd let him.

A failure? Definitely.

He walked along the highway. They said the police report had something about a payphone, so he walked until he caught sight of it. Each step crunched gravel underfoot, the usual swagger in his steps vanished over a week ago with Sam.

The phone was still out of its cradle and dangling down, connected only by a thin wire.

Sam was here a matter of hours ago. Sam was here, and he called Dean out of everyone else. He called Dean, even though Dean was the one who messed up and got him in this situation in the first place. Despite all of that, when he had one chance to call for help, Sam still called Dean. He held onto that fact and hoped it meant that Sam could forgive him after all of this was said and done.

Dean placed the phone back in its base. He looked around at the gravel for signs of a struggle that he knew took place there, but found nothing. Gravel was too easily displaced. It didn't look any different around the payphone than it did anywhere else.

He's not sure what expected, but the last time he came across the place where Sam was taken, there were bloodstains and signs of a struggle. Here, none of that existed, like Sam's path never led here when Dean knew for a fact that it had.

Torturing himself over it wouldn't help, so he walked back to the truck and climbed in to wait for John and Caleb.

He didn't have to wait long; they were out in a matter of minutes. John hid it well, but years of practice taught Dean how to spot his father's veiled frustration. They hadn't gotten the information he wanted in the motel. They were losing Sam's trail again. He could be anywhere, literally anywhere on Earth, and Dean had to hope that they could grasp onto some thread and follow it to Sam.

John started the truck. "The worker who called the police will be there tonight," he said. "We'll come back then."

"You couldn't get his address or something? A phone number?"

John shook his head, and the lines of his face grew more pronounced in subtle anger. "They refuse to give out employee information like that, and we left our badges in the glove compartment so we had to go in as concerned family members."

They returned at night, and Dean was pleasantly surprised when he was invited to talk to the motel worker with them. If they were going in as concerned family members, Dean fit the description.

The front office smelled like old coffee and rotted wood, signs fitting the type of motel Sam and Dean usually stayed at.

He wasn't sure what he expected the worker to be like, but it wasn't a man who looked like the stereotypical, kindly grandfather on cheesy TV movies.

"You're that boy's family?" he asked when he caught sight of them. "My boss said you'd be by to talk with me. I'm so sorry that I couldn't help him."

John showed the man a picture of Sam. "This was the boy you talked with, right?"

The man nodded. "That's him. He looked a lot worse for wear though. Some strange, collar-like necklace. Plain clothes that were kind of dirty and disheveled. He didn't even have shoes, which probably made his trek to the payphone quite painful."

John and Caleb exchanged a glance while Dean wondered about the strange necklace. Usually those words were used to describe the amulet Sam gave him for Christmas as a child.

"What can you tell us about the men who checked in?" John asked.

The man shrugged. "They just looked like average men. I didn't suspect a thing. If I had…"

"Please, give us anything to work with," Dean asked. "You tried to help, but you still can if you set us on the trail after them."

"They drove a white, windowless van, but I couldn't catch the license plate. The van tore out of the parking lot and went West."

And picked up Sam from the payphone on the way, Dean added in his thoughts.

"Thank you," John said. He wrote down his phone number on one of the little pads of paper scattered across the front desk. "Please call me if you remember anything else or find out anything else."

"It's not my business, but shouldn't you let the police handle something like this?" the man asked. "Human traffickers. God, I never imagined that would be going on in an area like this."

"Wouldn't you do anything you could to get your son back if he went missing?" John asked.

This was the father that Dean didn't realize he missed until now. The protective, family man who would kill anything to ensure the safety of his sons. The man who would storm through Hell if he had to. If it meant getting Sam back. He was angry and determined, not broken in the way that Dean felt.

"I guess I would," the man said. "I hope you find your boy alright, and if you do, be sure to put a bullet between the eyes of the men who took him. No child should be in his position."

The murderous request sounded strange coming from a man who looked like he was doing his best Mr. Rogers impression, but he didn't have to ask such a thing of them. When they found Sam, Dean knew that no one involved in his kidnapping would be walking away unscathed.

Winchester justice was a thing to be feared under normal circumstances, even when Sam's safety wasn't involved.

"Believe me," John said. "None of the bastards responsible will see the light of day again once I get my hands on them. And I will get my hands on them."

The van was parked and the doors to the back opened. The other boy was let out first with an order to follow behind them, but he never fussed or disobeyed so they had no reason to worry.

Sam knew that he was the source of a lot of frustration for Jerry and Rich, but they had to cut the ropes around his ankles and have him walk into whatever sort of place conducted processing for human slaves. It would lower his price if he looked like such a pain in the ass that he had to be carried in (paraphrasing Jerry's words from during the ride).

Rich and Jerry each had a hand wrapped around his upper arms and pulled him in; their grip hard enough that Sam wouldn't be surprised to see hand-shaped bruises form later. He was dragged into what looked like nothing more than an abandoned, large warehouse, but when he passed through the doors, he found that the inside was far from abandoned.

They joined the end of a line of grown men and women shepherding in young boys and girls (mostly boys, but 'labor auctions' had been mentioned multiple times on the ride over and Sam imagined most girls were sold into a different market), all in plain clothing and looking worse for wear with their shiny, black collars. Some of them were crying, others sniffled and choked back sobs.

Sam wondered if the line ended with a tattoo chair and a number permanently scrawled onto his arm like in the 1940s.

The line moved slowly, and Sam assumed this was whatever processing was and not the actual auction. The auction probably involved a lot more activity, not a line-up.

Waiting allowed his thoughts to wonder and each train of thought became darker than the last. What if processing meant killing off the kids that they didn't think they could sell for enough? That they didn't think would sell at all? The idea of being a slave wasn't one he liked, but Sam would take it over being dead. At least he still had hope of escape if he was alive.

About halfway through the line, his thoughts turned to the ceiling and he wondered if it would crumble down on top of them before they made it to the end with its dilapidated state. It looked ready to collapse from the force of a mere breeze. Maybe even a simple raindrop would be enough to topple it.

Then they started getting close to the end of the line, and Sam was pretty sure his skin lost a few more shades of color. He would have preferred the tattoos.

They were restraining kids in a twisted barber's chair and shaving their heads. He wanted to run, but Rich and Jerry kept their grip on him and he didn't have anywhere to go.

His turn came too quickly. The rope was removed from his wrists and he was strapped into the chair, bound by his wrists, ankles, and across his shoulders. The only parts of his body that he could still move were his fingers, toes, and head, but he didn't want to move his head with the dull buzz of an electric razor humming about his ears. His hair was just starting to finally grow longer again, too.

He sat and stared at the wall ahead, feeling the barber's progress as patches of his scalp grew cold as hair was removed. He felt something that he couldn't remember ever feeling before, a feeling he almost couldn't place: resignation.

This was it. This was really it. His forced entry into a life he would never want, a life worse than hunting. Hell, he'd be glad to go back to hunting instead of this.

But he was being sold. Like an animal. Like an object. Was it possible to strip someone of their humanity so thoroughly that they stopped being human?

Everything around him faded and he stayed still through the duration of his haircut (which took only a matter of minutes, but felt like years). He didn't realize it was over until the chair was spun around to face a mirror and the restraints were released.

Sam stared into his reflection in the mirror, but he didn't recognize the boy who stared back.

Author's Note: None of our beloved characters are having a good time, and even worse, Sam is losing his fight. Who wants to see Sam shipped out of the country, or would you rather see him stay in the States?

Thank you everyone who reviews, follows, favorites, and simply reads. If you want me to grin like an idiot, leave a review on your way out and let me know what you think!