When you need information from a monster, especially when time is running out and that information could save lives, your natural instinct is going to be to torture them. Smash up their fingers, yank their fangs out, cut them open. I know. I've been there. And torture's great for putting some very literal pressure on things, but I'm sure that a lot of us know from experience that it doesn't always work like it's supposed to. Nothing likes pain, and a lot of your informants will tell you whatever they think you want to hear just to get you to stop hurting them. In order to avoid that, you need to have more tactics up your sleeve than hooking a vampire's nipples up to a car battery.
I'm sure you've all heard the expression "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." It's true in about a million different situations, and this is one of them. Treat your informant with respect, no matter what they are, or what they've done. Don't hit them, don't tie them up with barbed wire. Try to coax the information you want out of them instead of beating it out. And if you've got a long-term interrogation going on, then feed the monster, let it keep itself clean, give it somewhere to sleep, if it needs sleep. It's still your prisoner, but you can treat it with common decency. Nine times out of ten, you'll get better results than with torture - I promise.
Of course, every once in a while, you're gonna run into something that common decency just doesn't work on. Every demon I've ever come across has fallen into this category. When you have something that is truly, fundamentally evil, something that doesn't appreciate any breed of kindness, then torture is really your only option.
- "Interrogation: Article One," posted on website of Sam Winchester
Sam dropped his clipboard and pencil with a groan, raising his hands and mashing the heels of them into his aching eye sockets. His legs were folded, but he slowly straightened them out, stretching the twisted, partial muscle of his left one. He leaned back against the pillows of his bed, grimacing and arching his back before dropping his hands. He blinked blearily up at the ceiling as the multicolored static of pressure on his eyes faded away. He spread his arms and let his hands dangle off the edges of the mattress. His right one ached.
He was no natural artist, so the process of sketching out monsters was even more painstaking for him than it would have been if he'd actually been good at drawing. Add a couple hours of that to a couple hours of furiously scribbling down notes and organizing all of his ideas on paper, and you got a pretty sore wrist. And a sore back, and a sore everything else, because he was doing all of his work sitting on his bed instead of in his more familiar desk chair. His bare feet brushed against his laptop, and he forced himself to sit up, close it, and put it safely on the floor before laying back down to rest. Bone-deep weariness was beginning to set in, despite the fact that it was just barely past noon, but at least he'd made some real progress on his book. He'd decided that it was definitely going to be a book; a pamphlet couldn't do banshees the justice they deserved.
Sam closed his eyes and blew out a deep breath, feeling blood start to pool in the tips of his fingers as his hands hung off the bed. He let them swell for a few minutes, as he just focused on breathing and letting himself decompress, then pulled them up and laced them together behind his head. He opened his eyes, looked around, and chewed lightly on his lower lip.
His exhaustion didn't have everything to do with his writing. He'd reorganized his bookcase. Pulled up the rugs that covered his worn wooden floor and mopped it clean. Rubbed down and field-stripped every weapon in his room that he could. Hell, he'd even shaved and (sort of) taken care of his hair. It wasn't about doing things that he'd been putting off for a while - it was about keeping busy, killing time. Cleaning and grooming and working instead of doing what he was probably supposed to be doing.
Sam turned his head to the side, and caught sight of the two plates, stacked neatly, on his nightstand. Breakfast (scrambled egg whites and a piece of toast) and lunch (a very simple turkey sandwich). He hadn't spent much time out in the kitchen making either, and they hadn't taken long to eat. He should probably take the dishes back out. Wash them and put them away.
It took him about fifteen minutes to work up the energy and then the will to do that. Rubbing a hand over his face and up into his hair, he slowly sat up, swayed slightly as blood rushed out of his head, then grabbed the plates. He nudged the door open and shuffled out into his main room. At the sink, as he scrubbed the plates clean with what might have been too much force, his back was to his desk. And the cell behind it, the one that held Gordon's Knight. Eyes bored into the area directly between his shoulder blades. He tried to ignore them.
The sensation of being stared at grew heavier and heavier, and Sam could hardly stand it as he put the plates, part of a chipped and mismatched set, back in the cabinet. His hands clenched themselves into fists as soon as there was nothing in them, and he put them on the faded laminate of his counter and leaned on them. He bowed his head so that his hair fell forward and hunched his shoulders, like a turtle trying to draw into itself and hide from the steady, unblinking gaze of a predator.
He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked down a deep breath, then opened them and made an effort to release all of his tension when he exhaled. He straightened up and turned around, steeling himself as he crossed the room with a painful limp that he couldn't hope to hide - the result of what he'd forced his leg into yesterday. If he'd had any doubt about being stared at, it was gone as soon as he looked at the demon, and found his eyes fixed again. They had gone back to being green, and the swelling around the one looked worse than yesterday.
"Guess I can't put it off forever, can I?" he muttered, not specifically talking to the demon as he reached the gate and put a hand on one of the bars. He didn't get an answer, but he hadn't wanted or expected on. His hand dipped into his pocket, pulling out a well-used keyring, and he shook loose a shiny new key to unlock the iron door. As it swung open, he stepped in, and pushed it closed behind him.
He was tempted to stay by the door, but he knew that that wouldn't work for this. He reluctantly left it behind, stepping over the salt that he'd laid down and feeling the grooves of the Circle of Solomon on his bare feet, as he walked across it towards the demon. The cement of the floor was cold enough to make him wish that he'd put shoes on before coming in here. He threw a long shadow onto the demon and the wall behind it, because the only light in the tiny cell came through the door from the main room; there weren't any windows or light bulbs in here.
He stopped a couple of feet from the demon and folded his arms over his chest, looking down at him. The demon had raised his head slightly in order to keep staring at him. His expression was still placid and emotionless, which struck about a seven on Sam's creep scale.
"I'm Sam," Sam said. He unfolded his arms and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Shaking was kind of outta the question, with the demon in handcuffs. "Sam Winchester. This is...my house. I've lived here for five years." And he hadn't left the property in all that time.
The demon didn't reply, besides blinking very, very slowly.
"D'you have a name?" Sam asked, blinking rapidly despite himself. He forcibly put a stop to it. "Something that you want me to call you? 'Cause I'm gonna end up calling you something, and it might be better if you pick it yourself."
Still no response. Sam was slowly becoming aware that the demon didn't exactly smell good: blood and sulfur and something that had to be whiskey, or some other kind of hard liquor. He'd probably picked up that last one from Gordon and those other men.
"I'm sorry about the chains," Sam tried. "And the handcuffs, and stuff. It's just until I know that I can trust you not to kill me when I come in here."
Nothing. He probably could have had a more productive conversation with one of his guns. Sam shook his head, feeling just a little bit of irritation well up in him.
"Refusing to talk to me isn't gonna do anything for you," he told the demon bluntly. "Whatever you're trying to do right now isn't gonna work for you. I can guarantee it. You won't lose a thing by answering my questions."
He got a reaction this time - maybe it had been the hint of anger in his voice that had done it. The demon cocked his head, by a couple of degrees, to the side, and the gesture, along with sending his collar slipping to the side on his clavicle, revealed a lot more of his bruised throat. Sam's sense of triumph over getting a reaction out of him quickly turned to shock as he saw it, and he pulled his hands out of his pockets.
The flesh was black. Not necrotic - no, Sam was pretty sure that he would have smelled that, given how close he was standing. It was just so badly bruised that it had gone past purple. It was swollen in the shape of a man's large, strong fingers, where somebody had grabbed him by the throat and squeezed as hard as they could. So hard, in fact, that the straight, rounded column of his windpipe had been crushed into a pattern that made Sam's stomach lurch. The damage was so severe that he couldn't even pick out the shape of the demon's Adam's apple. There were tears, cuts from fingernails and just from pressure.
Sam realized that he had been lifting a hand in order to gently touch the hideous wound in front of him, and quickly snatched it back before he could get within biting distance. He'd been bitten before, and it wasn't fun. He swallowed, his own throat aching in what had to be a shadow of the pain that the demon and his vessel were going through right now, and realized.
"You can't talk," he said softly, shaking his head. And there was another reaction: the demon arched one dirty blond eyebrow. "Uh…" He turned, looking at the door, then glanced back at the Knight. He was about to tell him to stay where he was, then realized that he couldn't go anywhere right now and felt an embarrassed blush run across his cheekbones. Maybe it was too dark in here for the demon to see this weakness. "I'll be right back," he settled on, before hurrying out of the room. He didn't bother to lock the gate for this short trip. The demon wasn't going anywhere.
He grabbed his first-aid kit out of the bathroom, from underneath the sink. Carrying that in one hand and a washcloth that he'd dunked in warm water in the other, he returned to the cell. The door opened soundlessly with a bump of his hip, and he walked back to the spot that he'd been standing in before, setting down the bulky white kit. He kept the washcloth. Realizing that the demon was now actually eyeing him, sizing him up, he spread his hands in the universal "I mean you no harm" gesture.
"I'm not gonna hurt you," Sam promised, taking another step forward and closing almost all of the distance that remained between the two of them. "Not like...not like those other guys did. I wanna try and see if I can help you out here. Make you feel better." If his vessel was still alive, then his wounds would heal, with time and the proper care. Sam really hoped that that was the case. A Knight of Hell who couldn't talk wasn't worth all that much to him.
The demon's lips, so full they almost looked feminine, twitched. But he made no objection, verbal or otherwise, then Sam leaned towards him and placed a hesitant hand on the unbruised side of his head. The skin was warm underneath Sam's touch, the kind of warmth that only came from pumping blood. The man he was wearing was undoubtedly still alive. He filed that realization away for future use as he gently tipped the demon's head back and began to dab blood and dirt off of his throat with the washcloth.
He was clad he'd decided to clean the wound like that instead of just with one of the antiseptic wipes in the first-aid kit, because the cloth came away filthy when he was done. Sam grimaced down at what looked like blood and ash and dust on the cloth.
"How is this not infected?" he muttered to the demon, who might as well not have heard him.
Sam pulled gauze, medical tape, and several different kinds of ointment out of the kit, kneeling in order to dig through it. It was hell on his leg, but he bit back a groan of pain, pouring his attention into finding the medical supplies that he needed. The demon watched him with what he decided to believe was a shred of interest in his eyes. He stood back up and adjusted the collar, a loose ring of metal around the demon's neck, where it rested on his collarbones, in order to smear ointment on and press thick gauze pads to the bruises and the swelling and the cuts. He frowned down at it as he wrapped more gauze and medical tape around the demon's neck to hold the pads in place. He should really take that off. Despite all the unfamiliar runes that covered it and the rings that the chains clipped to, he wasn't sure what purpose it served.
"It should start feeling better pretty soon," he said. "If, y'know, it was hurting you before." He knew that he hadn't been able to talk because of what had happened to his throat, but he had no way to know if it'd actually caused the demon any pain. Maybe not, since he hadn't flinched or anything when Sam touched the wounds. "There's some numbing stuff in the antibiotic cream, I think."
He finished up with the bandages, large knuckles brushing against the stubble that lined the demon's jaw. He'd learned, through observation, that hair didn't grow during demonic possession. This stubble had been here since the Knight had taken this man as a vessel. Sam wondered if he'd been grabbed before he had a chance to shave, or if he'd just thought that the scruffy look was one that he could pull off. Which he could. Sam doubted there were any look that this guy, whoever he was, couldn't pull off.
Thinking about the vessel this much should really get Sam pissed at the demon, but he just couldn't summon up any anger. Maybe he was tired from everything that he'd done today. His leg had decided that it was just about done with the position that he was in, aching and weakening, but he kept leaning in. This close, he could study the puffy bruises on the demon's face in detail, his broken fingers, his swollen knee. The fear that had kept him out of his cell for the better part of the day slowly dissolved, and he recognized what replaced it: sympathy.
"I'm sorry," Sam murmured, making eye contact. "For what they did to you."
The demon's mouth moved. For a second, Sam thought that he was going to try to speak. But then he lunged forward, so quick that Sam almost didn't have time to react, and his jaws were open. Sam jerked back, violently enough to very nearly overbalance, and the demon's teeth snapped together right where his cheek had been. There was more than enough force there to shear through flesh.
Sam was still close to him. Close enough to lose something if he didn't move it. So, in other words, too close, and he knew that he'd fall flat on his ass if he tried to move any further right now. He was awash in adrenalin, which his leg didn't like. It wouldn't take his weight. So he reacted, to keep his face in one piece, and grabbed the demon's head with both hands. He forced it back, the heel of one hand digging into his bruises. He felt him flinch against it. He hadn't held him there for even a second when something warm and wet hit his forehead and spattered over his face.
Sam immediately clamped his eyes shut to protect them. He had to let go, and when he straightened up, he staggered, and just as he'd known would happen, his leg gave like a wet strip of paper. On the floor, he wiped his eyes clean, and looked at his hand when he opened them. His shadow fell on his fingers, but he could still tell that they were covered with glossy scarlet. Disgust crawled down his spine as he realized what he had all over his face.
Damn thing spit on me, Gordon had said. Sam wondered if he'd spit blood at him, too.
He lifted his gaze to the demon, whose eyes had gone black while he was freak out. Sam's chest heaved with deep breaths, and as he watched, the demon's mouth slowly curved up into a smile. There was blood on his lips, and a drop rolled out of the corner of his mouth and hung, trembling, from the edge of his chin.
Sam wiped at his face with his clean hand. Then he scrambled to his feet, snatched for the first-aid kit, limped to the door, and locked it with slippery fingers as he left.