"Wake up, kid."

Sam's head bobbed as he sat upright in a chair, responsive to his own name but the draw of unconsciousness pulling him back.

He tried to blink, the metallic smell of dried and wet blood – his own blood – making his nostrils flare. His left eye was glued shut, and he could feel the throbbing, swollen flesh around the whole side of his face.

Sam drew a sharp breath, his memory of this situation failing him. He pulled at his arms, jarring them over and over when he found them bound behind his back.

A man chortled in front of him, making him flinch. "That's right, back down to earth now."

Sam forced himself to look up, prying his right eye open through blood and sweat.

He tried to swallow, his dry tongue like sandpaper in his mouth. His lips were cracked and split, and when he tried to speak, his voice rattled like a broken-down car.

The guy in front of him approached, and Sam's heart started to race. He lifted an open bottle of water to Sam's lips. "Have a little."

The boy hesitated, looking between the short man in front of him, and the temptation of the cool water within reach…

As Sam leaned forward, the man crumpled the bottle in his fist, the water pouring across the floor. The man grabbed a fistful of the kid's sweat-soaked hair, forcing his head back. "Not until you tell us where your daddy is."

Sam screwed his one working eye shut, his head pounding in his skull.

A taller guy hovered in the background. He swung a rusted hammer in his right hand, staring unwaveringly at Sam. "Riley…" he said when Sam returned the gaze through a haze of fevered pain.

"What," the short guy – Riley – spat.

"I'm really starting to think… I'm starting to think that maybe this kid really doesn't know anything –"

Riley spun on his heel, making Sam jerk so violently the chair moved back an inch.

"You're not paid to think, Daniel. You're paid to do what you're told," the short guy, despite his stature, had his companion cornered and cowering. "And I'm telling you what to do."

Riley took a handful of Danny's shirtsleeve and threw him towards Sam. Danny looked the kid up and down, swallowing heavily.

Riley paced towards them and touched Sam's cheek with a gentle hand. "We're going to turn up the heat, Danny." He suddenly reached down to the floor, and Sam kicked his feet, tied tightly to the chair legs, defiantly. Riley tore off the filthy socks from his feet and threw them into the corner with a look of disgust.

"We're going to ask the kid a question," he said through gritted teeth, as he untied Sam's right leg, "And if we don't get a good answer, we're going to smash one of his toes with that hammer."

Sam's heart dropped and found himself shivering in fear. He stared with one eye at Danny, who held the hammer loosely in his hand. Daniel looked back at him, a glazed sheen over his face.

Riley held Sam's ankle and forced it flush to the floor, easily overpowering the kid's vain struggle. "Right. My first question – where the fuck is your father?"


Dean's heart was in his boots as they pounded along the asphalt, eyes locked onto the unmoving sprawl of his brother's body.

A car drove past the frightening figure on the road, the driver blasting the horn as it went by.

"Sammy," Dean breathed as he collapsed to his knees on the ground, searching for any sign of life in the corpse of his brother.

He placed a hand on the boy's chest, relieved to feel the rise and fall – short and shallow though it was – of life.

That quickly drained as he clocked the range of Sam's injuries, the soiled mess of his nightwear, and the smell of sickness still radiating from his body. "Oh God, Sammy," he muttered, placing a shaking hand on the less damaged half of his face –

And lunged back as Sam forced open his one good eye, glazed in the moonlight.

The kid let out a guttural cry and lashed out in front of him, miles from the target.

"Whoa, Sammy," Dean started, hands out like a rancher calming a stallion. "Sam, its me –"

He dodged another wide swing, falling back onto his elbow as Sam cried out through bleeding lips and stumbled to his feet.

Dean watched in horror as his kid brother hobbled into the road, balancing on rocking heels as he lurched beneath the streetlights. He shot to his own feet, distraught as Sam cried out his big brother's name, heart tearing in two.

"Hey, it's me, Sammy," he soothed desperately, keeping a wide berth around the kid.

Sam looked wildly around through salt-crusted bangs. A shudder of relief seemed to rattle through him, and Dean watched patiently, arms outstretched, palms up.

Dean broke the silence. "Please, let me help you," he said quietly, fighting the instinctual urge to grab Sam around the shoulders and never let him out of his sight again.

"Dean," the boy croaked, stumbling forward, arms collapsing to his sides, bare feet curled up.

Dean barely caught his kid before he crumbled into the asphalt, grunting as he tried to bear his weight. Sam grappled into his sleeves with tight fists, breathing heavily.

"You're okay, Sammy," Dean mumbled, allowing himself a minute to come to terms with the return of his brother. "Let's get you off the street. Can you walk?"

Sam gave no audible response.

Dean looked down at the kids' bare feet, seeing several of the toes crushed and missing nails. A shock of anger coursed his bloodstream, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut.

"Sammy, can I carry you?"

Sam gurgled in response and tried to pull away, forcing Dean to counteract the dead weight.

"Hurts," he said, moving an arm to cradle his torso.

Dean didn't hesitate to lift the ruined, stinking shirt, and swore as he found a collage of bruising and bleeding painting the skin.

"Come on," he said through gritted teeth, swinging Sam's arm over his shoulder. Sam teetered on his heels as they waddled back to the room, avoiding any weightbearing on his toes.

They surged together through the motel room door, and Dean deposited his brother on his own rumpled bed.

Slamming the door shut – apologising in a low voice as the noise made Sam flinch – he stepped quickly into the bathroom, running the hot water.

He continually poked his read around the door to check on Sam, who had sat, unmoving – other than the disturbing vibrating his body seemed to be doing – on the edge of the bed, staring with one eye at the floor.

Dean grabbed the first aid kit, cursing himself at forgetting to refill it after their last dalliance with death.

"I'm going to cut your shirt off," he warned, fishing out the scissors and started working around Sam's listless, quivering figure on the bed. The lack of… the lack of anything from his brother was distressing, and Dean found himself torn between trying to treat the wounds he could see and picking at the ones he couldn't.

Shirt deposited in rags on the floor, Dean paused as he surveyed in horror his damaged boy. Brusing, welts from a smack with a belt, the colorful egg on his eye, likely from a pistol whipping.

A pistol whipping.

Somone had pistol whipped Sam…

He sat opposite his brother on the second bed, his heart pounding like he was on a chase, searching for any eye contact.

"Sammy," he said gently.

Sam moved his bloodshot eye to stare back at his brother.

"What happened?"


Sam lay on his side, toppled over in the chair. His feet bled; his face burned; the open wounds on his body throbbed. Blood oozed from his mouth onto the concrete floor.

His head was pounding in his skull as Riley kneeled in front of him, screaming inches from his face, spittle flying from his mouth.

"Where is the cash, then? You gonna tell me it's tucked up safe in a bank somewhere?" He yelled, digging his thumb into a deep gash he'd carved into Sam's thigh.

"No… Cash," Sam rasped, so depleted he couldn't react to the new assault of pain on his body.

"Bullshit!" Riley screamed, punching Sam in the unprotected gut.

Sam wretched as Riley stood, bile stinging his mouth.

"You have wasted too much of my time, kid," he seethed, storming around the dark room, in search of some new torture device for use.

Daniel stood as far back as he could from the scene, watching Riley helplessly. "Maybe he really doesn't know," he suggested.

"Of course he knows!" Riley screeched as he tore through a duffel bag on the ground. "They spend their whole lives in the pockets of that jackass – they see everything, every single deal, every transaction. They'll know the name of every customer, every dealer their daddy has ever sold to, every hiding place that he has stuffed their money - " He pulled out a pair of what Sam could only describe as a bread knife from the duffel, "And she wants us to get those names and locations, so she can recoup the cash they stole."

Sam's heart sunk, the story sounding even more unfamiliar this time around.

He had tried to rack his brains to place these assholes, to understand how they fit in with John, with his family. In his exhaustion and pain, he was starting to believe they were telling the truth – that John was, in fact, an international drug baron, and Sam actually knew even less about his father than he thought he did.

But Riley and Daniel, for all their creativity in causing pain, were slow – or unwilling – to hear Sam's explanations and protestations, and simply believed that Sam was tolerating their methods too well.

Riley stormed back up to Sam, who didn't even have the energy left to turn his head to look.

"Your time is running out," he hissed, pressing the ridged blade into an unmarked portion of Sam's skin. "Tell me – where will the next drop be?"

Sam went to croak out a reply when the door to the room swung open, making Daniel jump a foot to his left.

Riley clambered to his feet as a figure walked into the single ceiling light. She was tall, hair tightly curled. A pair of red-bottomed heels came into focus in Sam's good eye. He scanned her up and down, trying his best to appear threatening like a cornered dog. She covered her mouth with her hand, eyes scrunched in distaste at the scene in front of her.

"Riley," she said darkly, staring at Sam's disfigured feet. "What is going on here?"

Riley, still puffing from his rant, looked blankly at the woman. "It's Calum O'Toole. The younger son, just like you said," he declared. Daniel looked frantically between the woman and the door.

The woman nodded, still covering her mouth and nose with her polished fingers. She walked around Sam, although he could only hear the clacking of her heels on the concrete floor behind him.

"Calum O'Toole," she repeated, and Sam felt her kneel beside his head. A hand ghosted over the injured side of his face, from chin to brow. "Tell me, Riley. What colour hair does Mr. O'Toole have?"

A pause. "Red," Riley replied flatly.

"And Eoin, the older son. What about him?" She continued, as she ran a hand through Sam's sweat ridden hair.

"R-Red," Riley responded, dropping the bread knife with a clatter onto the ground.

"So what colour hair," she clamped Sam's hair into her fist and wrenched his head up, "Do you think the youngest son, Calum O'Toole would have -" She slammed his head back into the ground, "Who I also told you, is 10 years old?"

She gestured to Sam's lean, long body, and stood to meet Riley's height. The man said nothing, gaping desperately at his boss.

"You have the wrong goddamned kid!"


"Wrong… Wrong room," Sam breathed. "Wrong kid."

Dean dug his nails into the bedsheets with his left hand, the right still holding the plastic handle of the scissors. He thought of the two redheaded kids in the Corolla, the look the smaller one gave him across the lot, the car racing away outwith his reach…

"God damn it," he said through gritted teeth.

The monsters who had taken Sam and chained Dean to the bedframe had come into the wrong room, taken the kid, beaten him senseless, realised their mistake, and dumped him back on the doorstep.

Dean ran through his recollections, blood pounding in his ears. He twitched his head as Sam wavered on the side of the bed, head bobbing. "Stay with me."

Sam shook his head, staring listlessly at his mangled feet. "Hospital. Please."

Dean could have ripped his own heart out to stop the pain he felt from hearing that. Winchesters didn't do emergency services. They barely did help. Sam asking to go get poked, prodded, stabbed and questioned?

"Yeah. I think we need the damn cops too."

Sam croaked a laugh, which turned into an exhausted, wheezing cough. He clawed onto Dean's forearm. Tight, dark bruising rotted his wrists.

"Jesus, Sammy –"

"Dean, it's better it was me, than a ten year old kid," Sam breathed harshly.

"That's what you think," Dean muttered, but knew the idiot was right. Because if it was anyone but Sam, they wouldn't have survived the ordeal his kid brother had.

Calum O'Toole sat slumped on the motel couch, a cherry Ring Pop stuffed in his left cheek, swinging his dangling feet.

He sighed as the TV flickered, cut out momentarily before the picture cleared again.

This was their third week in crappy rooms, with crappy TV's and crappy food. It was also three weeks since he had last seen his dad, when he'd heard him and Eoin arguing in hushed tones through the night, and he'd woken up to an empty bed beside him.

"He's off to work," Eoin kept saying, not quite looking Calum in the eye. "Don't worry, we'll meet him in Chicago."

Then it was meeting in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Fort Wayne…

But still, they were alone together, without Dad.

He huffed again as the TV cut out completely. "Stupid thing," he mumbled to himself, standing to slap the side of the box.

Eoin elbowed his way out the bathroom, familiar red hair sticking up all ways. "What did the damn thing do to you?"

"It keeps breaking."

"Probably cause ye' keep hitting it."

Calum launched his ring pop across the room at his brother. Eoin caught it deftly, grinning as he popped it into his mouth. "Ta."

Calum threw himself back into the couch, not wanting his brother to see the tears brimming. He composed himself before asking, "When are we meeting up with Dad?"

"Soon." Eoin didn't hesitate in his response, which only annoyed Calum further. "He's busy working, mind? He can't always drag us around with him."

"It wasn't a problem until three weeks ago."

"Well, three weeks ago things changed, Cal. He's got a few big new clients, a few big new products he's dealing with. He needs to sort all that rubbish out before we can all be together again."

Calum chewed his lip. He felt his brother hovering over him now, infuriated but comforted by his presence. He sniffed. "I just miss it being all us three."

"I know, pal. Me too." Eoin's voice softened, and the Galway twang that he'd inherited from their father strengthened with it. "But we just need to keep a low profile just now, keep things moving, and once things are… Established, we'll all be together again." Eoin ran a hand through his brother's hair, a gesture usually reserved to their father.

"Do you think we can go back home?"

"Maybe. Or maybe we'll have a new home by then…"

"Really?! Do you think we'll have our own rooms this time?" Calum's heart lifted, and he grinned up at his brother. "Maybe a pool?"

Eoin smiled down at him, and ruffled his hair before turning away. "Sure, maybe like a lazy river around the house?"

"Like when we went to Cancun?"

Eoin pulled on a pair of tracksuit pants. "Exactly… Or maybe we'll move to Mexico. Tacos all day long -"

There was a sharp knock at the door. Eoin paused.

Calum jumped up from the couch. "Is that pizza?" He ran towards the door, his evening improving significantly with every minute -

"Calum, wait –"

Calum tore open the door, his smile quickly dropping as, instead of a uniformed delivery guy, he was staring down the barrel of a pistol, clenched in the fist of one of the biggest men he had ever seen.

He was tall, with cold, glazed eyes and rage in his gaze. Calum backed up two steps.

"Hold it there," the guy said.

Calum looked quickly at Eoin, who stared back, pale and sweating.

"Your daddy there?" The guy asked.

Calum shook his head.

"Your brother?"

He didn't move.

He felt Eoin inching towards him on tiptoes, and tried his best not to look towards him.

The guy suddenly lunged into the room and pointed the gun instead at Eoin. Calum's heart dropped.

"We don't have much time," the guy said, and slammed the door behind him. Calum watched as he placed the safety back on the pistol, shoving it in his waistband.

Calum was suddenly shoved behind his brother; Eoin stood tall in front of him so Calum could barely see the stranger. "We've got nothing on us," Eoin spat.

The stranger raised his eyebrow. "Look. You're being followed."

Calum peeked around his brother's figure, mouth wide.

"They nearly caught you back in Columbus. You just got lucky." The guy was pissed, but he also seemed really… Sad.

"I don't know what –"

"You're being watched right now. Y'know that?" He carried on, shaking his head. "You're too obvious. You need to ditch the car. In fact, change car everytime you need stop for gas. You know how to hotwire, kid?"

Eoin didn't respond. Calum knew he did.

"Thought you might. Listen to me. There are some ass- There are some bad people coming after you. Whatever it is that your dad does, whatever… business, work that he's in – he's made himself some enemies. And they want to get to him. But to get to him, they're trying to get to you. And by you, I mean…" The guy looked down briefly at Calum.

Eoin tucked Calum a little further behind him. "You're mad. You're absolutely mental. My dad is a pharmaceutical –"

"Yeah, yeah," the guy continued, waving off the sentence. He tossed a folded piece of paper on the closest bed. "I don't have time for this. You need to get your brother to this address – he's a Pastor. Blue Earth in Minnesota. Travel light and travel smart." He looked between them, before asking Eoin – "You got a weapon?"

Calum felt his eyes widen with horror when Eoin slowly nodded yes.

"Good. Keep it close." The guy looked over his shoulder at the closed door. "You can't stay any longer. They're coming for you, for him - and they're close. Get to Blue Earth – in anything but that Corolla."

"But who-" Calum piped up, but was cut short as the guy threw open the door to leave.

"Whatever your Dad is doing, he's putting you both in danger."

They were both still, alone now in the room. Eoin breathed out heavily, almost like a stutter. He swallowed. "Get your stuff, Cal. We need to boost."

Calum looked up at the stranger of his brother. Eoin started to hurriedly throw their belongings into bags, while Calum ran to the window, perched on his toes as he looked out to the lot.

The huge stranger was hovering outside a black, old-fashioned car, bent over the open passenger door. Calum could just make out a dark figure in the seat. The stranger ran a hand through his black hair, and Calum ghosted his own hand through his red hair, feeling his brother's earlier touch.

The stranger slammed the door shut and paced around to the driver's side. He glanced over at the motel room window, and Calum shivered at the piercing glare.

"Cal, get your stuff," Eoin ordered behind him.

Calum rocked back on his heels as the black car reversed.

"Where are we going?" He asked.

Eoin was stuffing Calum's belongings into a paper bag.

"Blue Earth."

"In our car?"

"No."

"That was the guy who chased the car before, right? In Columbus?"

Eoin stopped and looked at his brother. There was fear in his eyes as he nodded.

Calum chewed his lip as he mulled over the thousand questions in his mind. "Can… Can I pick the car we take?"

Eoin grinned. "You sure can."

"And the music?"

"Nawh. That's the drivers' responsibility, kid."