Work Text:
Sam didn’t know what game was being played anymore. There weren’t any buttons this time, but still, he’d been led to a room through the now too-familiar opening and closing of doors that he had to follow.
He had walked to this room with bare feet scraped raw from how they’d beat at the concrete floor the last time he’d been electrocuted. And he was cold, so cold. It reminded him too much of Lucifer, but it wasn’t Lucifer doing this. He still didn’t have any clue as to who had captured him and his family.
Worse yet, he still had no idea how to get out.
There was a single metal foldable chair in the room, no table this time. Grinding his teeth, clenching his already-aching jaw, he took a seat.
His stomach grumbled from hunger, but he ignored. Or at least, he tried to. He thought maybe over the past few days he’d been getting better at that.
Chest tight, struggling to take normal, steady breaths, Sam dug his thumb into the palm of his left hand. His hand ached from the repeated action, and he even had a scab from when he’d torn his scar open, trying desperately to prove to himself that this wasn’t real.
It was.
That’s when the screams started. Heart-achingly familiar screams. They came through the door, which had promptly closed and locked behind him as soon as he had entered.
“Dean!” Sam cried.
He got to his feet, and raced to the door.
The screams didn’t stop.
Oh god, what was being done to Dean?
Were his nails being ripped out? Were his bones being broken? Was he being cut into? Were his teeth being pulled out, one by one? Was he being skinned? Was…?
Sam turned to the camera in the corner of the room, high up on the wall.
“Hey! Hey, stop this! Please, stop!”
There was no answer through the speakers from their mysterious captor.
“Heeey! Hey, stop!”
Sam started beating his fist against the door, the bang of it against the metal barely registering to him.
The door didn’t budge.
“DEAN!
Sam wished he could break through the door and out into the hall, break into the room he knew was across from him, the room Dean was in. The one where he was being tortured.
Soon, Sam was screaming, maybe as loudly as Dean. He called out to him, again and again. His vision was coming in and out like someone flicking a light on and off. His blood pumped through his body in a rough beat, pounding, pounding. It rushed in his ears, and almost seemed to fill his mouth. He tried the knob, even while knowing it was futile. It broke off.
Before long Sam was slamming his body against the door. He was slowly making dents in it, and he barely felt the pain against his shoulder, his elbow, his hip. Everything was just numb from the repeated pressure.
The door wouldn’t budge, even if he was getting it to rattle a bit.
Still, Dean screamed.
For a crazed second Sam thought of breaking the camera in this room to show his desperation, the breaking of his heart, but surely that’d get Dean punished. He’d hurt even more.
God, how did Dean have any voice left?
Sam begged and pleaded in every way he knew, in the many ways he’d been trained by the Devil. But nothing worked.
And he couldn’t break through the door, couldn’t get out of this room and help his brother.
He beat his fists against the door till blood was flying. For a second it took him a moment to realize that that blood was his. Sam looked at his knuckles, saw that they were crooked and swollen, red and bleeding. He knew purple, black, and blue would creep in, maybe even was near the pointer finger of his right hand. Had he heard or felt a snap earlier down the outer sides of his hands, where they’d taken the brunt of his fight with the door?
And when he opened his palms he saw that somehow his blunt nails had dug into them, leaving bleeding crescents. The scab over where he’d had his scar was torn, and was oozing blood and what might have even been a bit of an infection that he hadn’t noticed earlier.
Sam gave one last half-hearted punch, and then slid to the floor. He was sweating, breaths coming hard, sawing in and out of his chest and his dry mouth. He tried to wet his cracked lips, but there wasn’t much moisture to go around.
He leaned his head against the door, kneeling. Tears trailed down his face and fell off of his chin onto his thighs, or onto the concrete floor.
Dean’s suffering seemed unending.
Sam’s vision clouded in around him, and he lost focus of his reality.
He realized now he was sitting with his back against the door, his swollen and bloody hands over his ears that he was surprised weren’t bleeding themselves.
There was a tap on his shoulder. He started, twisting to the side, almost falling back, but he caught himself on his aching hands. That ache turned into sharp spikes of pain that shot all the way up to his elbows after wrapping around his wrists.
Next to him was none other than Dean. But he wasn’t in the drab gray sweats they’d been forced to wear. He was in jeans that were ripped from a knife fight he’d gotten into once (had it been with a demon?), a black T-shirt, and a red and black plaid flannel. He was even wearing boots, his feet protected from this harsh floor.
“Hiya, Sammy.”
“Dean?” Sam reached out tentatively, and began to pat at his brother, and pull at his clothes, looking for wounds. “You’re okay?”
He certainly looked it. His hair wasn’t the mess he thought it might’ve been, there was no sign of there having been a struggle, his face wasn’t flushed, or too pale, he wasn’t sweaty, there were no tears on his cheeks.
Most importantly, there was no blood.
As Sam tried to lift up his shirt to look for bruises, Dean gave a laugh and moved his hand aside, pulling his shirt back down.
“What are you doing, Sammy? I’m fine.”
Sam frowned, eyeing the door, imagining the screams that had plagued him in this room.
“But—but…”
Dean took Sam’s hands in his, and tsk ed, cutting him off. “Look what you’ve done to yourself.”
“I… I was trying to get to you.” Swallowing roughly, heart still feeling like it was in his throat, even if its beat was calmer, less demanding. “I guess I didn’t realize I was hurting myself.”
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
Dean smiled. “‘Course I am. I’m Dean friggin’ Winchester.”
“You were screaming. You were screaming, and—and…. Oh god, it was awful.”
“Hey, hey, I’m okay. I’m right here. We’re gonna be okay.”
He turned over Sam’s left hand, examining the damage to his palm.
“You just have to remember something.”
“And what’s that?” Sam asked, voice rough.
Dean pressed down on his palm till blood welled anew. Sam tried to pull his hand back, but Dean held firm.
“This isn’t real.”
Then, Dean was gone, and Sam was alone, pressing into his own palm, crying, snot running from his nose that he could barely breathe through.
Dean—the real Dean— was still screaming.
Sam covered his ears again, rocking back and forth, crying, and then, suddenly, he thought there was silence.
Was it over?
Shaking, he took his ruined hands from his ears.
Silence.
That was strange, foreign.
“Dean?” he called.
No answer.
There was a click, and he shuffled away from the door, clambering to his feet. When the door swung open he saw that the room across from him had an open door as well.
Sam wanted to rush into it, find Dean, hold him, and tell him it was going to be okay. But he was so terrified this was another trick, that all he could manage were slow steps.
The room was empty. No Dean. But the floor was awash in blood, and bile burned at the back of Sam’s throat at the heavy metallic scent of it, at the knowledge of whose blood it was.
Before long he was bending over, heaving up mucus, and a little bit of acid. His empty stomach had nothing else to give.
Sam spat the remnants of it from his mouth, and before he could collapse a siren went off in the room, a light turning on. It was time to leave.
Numb, emptied out, both physically and within his scarred soul, Sam trudged from the room, and he followed the locked doors in the hall to his own room.
He didn’t go for the bed, or the chair. Just sat down on the floor, and stared at the ceiling, wondering when the emptiness inside of him would stop growing, wondering if it would expand and swallow him up until he no longer existed.
And somewhere in this compound, Dean was hurt, and hurt badly.
There was nothing Sam could do.