Work Text:
"You know. . ." Dean lazily shouted, his voice seeming amplified by the silence of the room. He didn't give a care in the world as his legs kicked up and his back relaxed back. "This isn't our usual style Sammy. What if this is some sick-o with a knife? Maybe we should call it off."
Sam's head snapped from the self-made fort of books of lore, to simply stare his brother for making such a stupid remark.
"Dude, this guy fits the profile! And we didn't just drive for five hours for you to suddenly change your mind. What's up with you?"
In a blink of an eye, the relax pose of Dean stretched into one of strict rules, like he owned every single muscle with an iron grip.
"What's up? Well, it's just that you need to wake up, little brother."
Sam almost gasps as the sweat in his neck and cramped back made sure he wouldn't move. He remembers where he is, the cold concrete walls and the one-way mirror is far too familiar for someone like himself.
After all John Winchester's bequeath demanded he knew how to avoid this sort of thing. Dean certainty wouldn't make such stupid mistake.
He simple drank too much, fell asleep far too long, in the wrong place. It was typical Winchester luck. Dean would be all over his ass for this.
Too bad he's gone.
The officers weren't gentle either, and Dean would raise hell of he didn't put up a fight, but even with that all he could manage was a black eye and a sore knee. The cold mirror only showed his tire eyes and it only assuage his fear of what he saw.
The Hunter's life wasn't lucrative, he didn't have a luxury to pick a normal life without a guilty conscience. So, without a few days have passed since Dean's disappearance and he's sitting with cold chains and a silent room.
Two agents entered, both male and walking with a purpose. With even that, he only gave a cursory glance at the figures.
One, the broader and commanding, stood with a hawkish stance, full of authority.
He reminded him of Dean.
"Sam Winchester is dead. Dead on all accounts and reports where he and his older brother were dead, twice." The voice on speaker almost shook her desk from the violently grip she had.
"I don't understand, I thought Sam always travel with his brother?" JJ gripped her hands wrapped around herself as the other team members stood shell shock.
"Well that the interesting part. When the police found Sam, half-drunk and alone in the motel, it was because he over stayed. Literally got caught because the owner didn't like him!" She couldn't find another way this couldn't be funnier.
"So, no Dean Winchester. Then what happened to him?" Rossi and his team shifted to the broken man in cuffs, surrounded by cold concrete and silence.
". . . So, reading your file it seems the brainwashing didn't work on you when you were younger, huh?" The man didn't care much, as he discarded the file in front of him instead he turned his attention towards him.
"Sam, all I need is your corporation. We can get you help--"
"I don't need your help." Sam couldn't stop the rush, harsh, hot words that bubble over his thoughts. He should concentrate on his palms and try not to think of the fires licking at his back.
"Sam, where is your brother?" The smaller man, another agent who doesn't look too hard to kill if he wasn't tied up.
Sam, where is your brother?
His father asked, his breathing made of Jack and his brother's blood dripping from his hands. Where is Dean? Lost, probably half-dead, because Dean is too stubborn to roll over and die. He is lost and he needs help, but now he can't because he is useless here all tied up and offered up like some prize trophy.
"Sam?" The voice fished him out of the black hole his mind was gravitating towards. He moves slowly, he could hear all the groaning and shifting of his very bones to see the eyes of the man who dared to ask.
". . . My brother?"
His brother who is made of gunpowder and steel, with Apple pie eyes and a confident smirk that kept the bullies away. He remembered lucky charms and warm milk, with a honey laced voice singing a lulling him to sleep.
"My brother. . . I don't know. He is-- I don't know, but-- He is okay. Yeah, yes." Who are you trying to convince? Me or the fancy police officers?
The agents didn't seem to buy that either, by how they all shift their eyes thinking they are all so slick.
But he thinks there is a shadow behind the smaller officer and Sam rushes to push his eyeballs into his skull until he sees red and blue dots swarming the darkness. He counts to ten and lets the oxygen get into his system.
When he opens his eyes the world is a little lighter, but there is no shadow.
"Sam what are you seeing?" Sam is so surprised he raises his head and stares directly into the man's soul. The other gazes right back.
There is laughter bubbling behind his throat, and he can't keep it in for too long before there is tears and snot and his body is too hot and red. He is pretty sure he's freaking out the officers and himself a little too, if he's honest.
The officers leave.
"Samuel Winchester, younger brother duo, born on May 2, 1983 to John Winchester and Mary Campbell of Lawrence, Kansas," Garcia rattled off, but suddenly cut off with sadness. "Oh, He really didn't stand a chance, Mom died in a freaky house fire, his dad became obsessed, like freaky fan obsessed."
"Claimed that a demon murder her, and one day he simply packed up and left. They been in and out of school, but somehow Sam manged to escape his delusional father and get himself full ride to Standford."
Reid frowned at the thought, "So he managed to get out. Then what brought back to the one thing he tries to escape from?"
"Tell me about your brother Sam," Sam's head appeared from within his broad arms. He cut the officers off with an exasperated sigh, "Just leave me alone."
Morgan quirk his eyebrow, "C'mon, just something."
Sam paused in his half-interest hearing long enough to poke his head out once more. "Just one thing?"
Okay he could do that.
"Dean likes pudding. And he loves pie, and likes to listen to Black Sabbath, Motorhead, and Metallica." Dean starves so I could eat, what kind of brother am I? Where is the loyalty when Dean is lost and the trail goes cold and dark. Is that what Dean is feeling? Where is--
". . . Sam, Sam, Sam!" The officers are yelling. He studied Law, in the very system, to make a difference, but he couldn't even do this?
"I'm sorry, sorry. Can we do this later?" The Federal Agents looked at each other and he knew he's condemned.
"It's clear that Sam is having a full psychic break," JJ added, shifting in her seat, "Maybe he finally gave up?"
"Yeah but what's the stressors? And how does Dean fit in all of this?" Aaron sat down, looking down on the paper flow of documents and reports.
"Guys, I think we have to consider the possibility that Dean is dead. Maybe this is what brought him over the edge?" But before Derek could confirm the next visit to Sam, the screen loaded up.
"Okay my beauties, I digged deep into Sam Winchester's life, went over friends and contacts and everything in between. And-- Oh. Oh, that's okay. Wow."
"Garcia? What's wrong?" The team, who is absolutely already in their edge, toward themselves to almost see what was wrong.
"He was going to propose."
Sam didn't care as the door opened again. But then again Dean would be angry if he didn't even try to get out of this place.
This time there is a woman there. She looks like a mother, soft and blond. Like mom.
"Hello Sam, my name is Jennifer Jarreau. Can I ask you some questions?" She also reminded him of Jess. But he made his peace with that a long time ago.
She titled her head, if she was a mother patiently waiting for her children, and blinked her eyes. He wonders of Dean's response. He would have flirted.
"Sam, do you know these women?" She spread pictures of smiling women around the table, each spilling out some story of themselves.
Sam shook his head mutely.
The agent tries to act more motherly again, to see if she could rise something out of him. He isn't dumb, he knows they want him to confess to these murders.
"Sam, could you please just get a closer--"
"I didn't murder those women. Neither did Dean." He just wants to go to sleep, anywhere. He doesn't mind, and when that little thought crosses his mind he wonders what is happening to the Impala.
Dean is going to be--
"When did Dean die?" All actions ceased to exist. What did she say? Dean, dead? What made no sense.
That didn't make the room less crowed or less stuffy.
"My brother isn't dead." Sam snapped, hot and his body brimming with tension. How dare she?
"Sam, we know that you were going to propose," Her soft voice and all-Mary attitude didn't soften the harsh words slapping him with the reality of the truth.
"She's dead." Jess. With soft blonde hair that would waterfall down through his fingers. And her smile, when she threw her head back and her hair would make the very surroundings shine.
And she has been dead for years.
The agent didn't believe his flat tone voice or the stillness of his hands. Jess, oh God forgive me.
"I understand if--"
He had enough.
"You don't! I understand how this goes, you are saying that I had my shot of happiness, that I escape the crazy illusions my dad and brother have. That I am a good person. You don't understand what the fuck I'm going through." The agent looks so shock he almost laughs.
She leaves.
"So much for that department," JJ says, she's too tired for all of this leaning back on the chair. The others, scattered around the small room provided by the station, all looking for something for the interrogation.
"In a few hours we have to ship him off to some maximum prison." Emily sighed in defeat, she hated knowing that another serial killer-- there's always one-- but seeing Sam? Something just doesn't add.
Rossi, already in edge, decides maybe it's his turn to try to get the infamous Winchester to talk.
Sam is still forming a thesis on how to explain this to his dead brother when the metal doors click heavy once again.
There is a older man this time around, he wonders when they will stop sending so many agents already.
"Hello Sam, my name is Agent David Rossi. I'm here to make your transition easier for the both of us," The man spills trouble for him but he's too tired and the nagging possibilities of doubt is too heavy.
Maybe Dean is dead.
The agents is still talking, telling some story about his grandmother, when he says the magic words: "I speak not of men's creeds—they rest between Man and his Maker."
Pastor Jim is at the forefront of his mind as he is in the wooden chair that keeps freaking creaking whenever he moves in the too silent church. Dean and Dad are in a hunt and his hands are covered with Holy Water.
That ringing in his ears is getting to Sam but he doesn't care, because he can only stare at his hands and wonder how the Holy Water could bare to touch such blood staint hands.
"Sam?"
"My friend used to say that. Pastor Jim, he was a good man." Those are the only spoken words he speaks in the interrogation.
The team is there ready to deliver the man into the government to be tucked away into some facility that doesn't officially exist, never to be seen again.
And even then, when Sam is being handed away like a doll, never once does he protest nor does he fight.
Because he lost all the will to fight a long time ago.