Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Dean can’t remember a time in which he has not been vigilant. Always sleeping with one eye open, looking out for any creature that could appear in even the quietest of nights. Looking for some signs that something is wrong so that he can fix the problem before it can even begin to be one. 

Looking for him. 

To be fair, even before Sam went missing Dean had been vigilant. Look out for Sam, both an order from his dad and a mantra that has repeated within Dean’s mind ever since its first utterance. 

Look out for Sam. 

It means something different now. Before, Dean’s job was to watch over his little brother, take care of him, make sure nothing could hurt him and that he could grow up to be happy and healthy. That was the purpose of Dean’s life, after all. 

Before, he took care of Sammy. Now, he searches for him. 

It was Dean’s fault. He has just left for 10 minutes. Sam had been so sick, had been for a long time. He hadn’t been getting better and he wasn’t going to, not stuck in a moldy hotel room that couldn’t quite get warm in the middle of January, with no access to any medication. Dean didn’t have a choice, he couldn’t let Sammy get sicker, and who knew when Dad was going to be back. He had been gone for weeks at that point, and Dean had no idea when the man would be back. Dean was fourteen at the time, and should have been completely able to take care of his ten-year-old brother. He knew what he had to do to make Sammy better, so Dean had left the motel room and ran to the Walmart down the street to pocket as many medications that he could before slipping out and returning back to his brother.

Only his brother hadn’t been there. He was gone by the time Dean had arrived, the door to the motel still closed and locked, no trace or sign of anything apart from a distinct smell of sulfur in the air.

Dad never forgave Dean for that. Not really. He started spending weeks away without any contact, then months away, and then he stopped coming back at all. Dean didn't blame him; he has never forgiven himself for it. However, Dean had wanted to help, was eager to do anything he could to help and get Sammy back, but his dad did not want him. Dean had done nothing but let him down, again and again, and this time Dean’s actions had been unforgivable. Dean was told to stay away and let John figure out the boy’s mistake.

After a while, Dad had given up hope. Any person he consulted with informed him that whatever took Sam would not have required him alive and well for very long, if at all, so if the Winchesters should wish for anything, they should wish the boy is actually dead.

Dean was left where ever, with whoever would take him, usually John’s old hunting buddies. He didn’t stay in one place for long. He didn’t have a reason for staying – nothing was keeping him there anymore. It didn’t take long before Dean completely dropped out of school. At first, he didn’t do much of anything. He would spend hours staring at walls in whichever position he had been left in, pushing away any thought of his brother. He didn’t think he would survive the initial first weeks, first months, first years. But he had to – because Sam was still out there. Dad may have given up hope, but it remains strong within Dean. He knows that Sam is still alive. He has to be.

“Dean.”

When John had realized Dean was flunking out of school, with no plans of returning, Dean had been carted away to an old military buddy of Dad’s, Lenny Craines. People called him Rooster. Dean didn’t bother to ask why. Rooster’s job was to apply the discipline that Dean required to get back to himself, now that the boy wasn’t worth John’s time any more. The boy had been getting soft, John had explained to Rooster, spending his days in bed like every other teenager, moping in his own self-pity. Rooster was all too eager to remind Dean of his place in this world, to snap him out of the numbing haze he had been living in for years.

Dean didn’t mind. For almost two years, Dean lived in that house, sleeping on a prison bed, following a strict routine and rigorous training, facing severe punishments for breaking almost contrasting rules. Sometimes, Dean couldn’t follow a rule no matter how hard he tried, unrealistic expectations causing him to be unable to complete whatever task he had that day. Other times, Dean would break those rules on purpose. For a while, the pain would be the only thing strong enough to break through the cold numbness that surrounded and made up what is was Dean Winchester, and had been consuming whatever had been there before Sam was taken. Some days, Dean preferred the pain over the alternative. On his worst days, Dean liked it. He deserved it.

It was by some unfortunate coincidence that John had made one of his rare visits after a particularly bad punishment to see Dean’s body aligned with enough cuts and bruises to decide that it was time for Dean to go somewhere else.

“Dean.”

He went to Bobby’s after that. That itself was a change that Dean had been unsure what to make of. It didn’t take long for Dean to realize that Bobby did not expect the same things as Rooster did, and he never laid a hand on Dean. He isn’t sure why he was ever surprised. Dean had been to Bobby’s before, a bunch of times, but never since Sam was taken. Maybe a part of Dean had thought that with Sam gone, some other side of Bobby would appear, one that saw Dean for who he was and gave him what he deserved.

But that didn’t happen. No matter what Dean did, Bobby didn’t hit him. Not when Dean messed up when following an order, not even when he ignored the order all together. He didn’t try to swing at the younger man when Dean would lose his temper and tried to pick a fight, throwing the first punch himself. Not even when Dean spent two whole days in bed, only getting up to use the bathroom, when his body betrayed him, weighing him down until he felt like a pile of bricks.

Later, when he could breathe a little easier, and his body didn’t feel as if it were fighting through a tank of molasses, Dean, eagerly awaiting whatever punishment the older man deemed fit, had found Bobby outside fixing up a Honda Civic. He had apologized and looked Bobby in the eye, something he was never quite able to do with Rooster, apologizing for both his laziness and his aggression, calmly suggesting what he believed to be an appropriate punishment.

‘I ain’t gonna do that,” Bobby had said. ‘Pass me that wrench.’

It took a while before Dean had begun to find his place at Bobby’s, not walking eggshells around the man and avoiding as much contact with him as possible. He began to help around in the shop, fixing up cars the way he used to, when Sam would complain about the work and beg to go away to read whatever book he had fixated on that week. It was a lot different, without Sam there, and Dean would often look in areas he knew Sam to have preferred, like the left side of Bobby’s couch, or the middle right of the kitchen table, or the second step from the top of the staircase out front. At least Bobby didn’t put him in the same bedroom that used to home the two brothers.

Bobby told him about his wife, about how she had been possessed by a demon and without knowing anything of the supernatural world at them time, Bobby’s hand had been forced to kill her to expel the demon. How he understands what it is like to lose the person to love to those sick creatures.

Dean hadn’t been sure why the story was relevant. Sam wasn’t dead. He was just gone.

Nonetheless, something changed with Bobby that day. He began to teach Dean more of what he knew, regardless of the topic. He taught Dean all about fixing cars – the younger man had already been quite decent at the work beforehand, and under Bobby’s guidance Dean had begun to excel in ways he never imagined. Dean had missed tinkering around the junkyard, fixing up cars. It helped slow his mind down, allowed him to focus on something that wasn’t his brother.

Bobby had also helped Dean take his first true steps into the hunting business. Dean had been on several hunts before, had started at a young age. However, with John being gone for months at a time and only visiting for the occasional meal together before he would disperse again, Dean did not have any idea of how to begin the search himself. Bobby had tried to make Dean wait until he was 18, but Dean didn’t pay much mind to his threats of not letting Dean come back if he went hunting before that. He would figure it out. He had to find Sammy.

“Dean.”

They didn’t have any leads, but Dean has always known it was the work of the yellow eyed demon, the monster that had killed his mother in Sam’s nursery all those years ago. It had to be.

Ever since that night in the motel room, John Winchester’s obsession with finding the yellow eyed demon that grown ever stronger. He became much more dangerous for the creatures he hunted, and learned things quicker than he had before. He was ruthless. He had worked with a colleague of his to discover a way to summon demons and trap them long enough to extract information from them.

According to Bobby, who remained in closer contact with John than Dean did, John was taking this information and then exorcize the demons once they had no more use to him. John would pass all of his information to Bobby, who kept documentation of each one of these methods for future use. Now, not only can they exorcise demons, but they could also kill them.

It had been hard tracking down the Colt, one of the only weapons on earth that is capable of killing a demon. It had taken him months, years to track down, but John Winchester had gotten possession of the Colt. It had been in the possession of another hunter, someone who had not known the extreme power of the revolver. Dean isn’t sure how John had convinced the man to part with it, and it’s not like he had the ability to ask, which how the older man had made a cogent decision to pretend like Dean didn’t exist.

While John had been able to collect much more information than he had before, he also had very little on the yellow eyed demon. The other demons seemed afraid of him, and almost… filial. As much as they feared him, they respected him tremendously, seemingly eager to be a part of his plans.

However, there is only so much someone can take. Even a demon. John had been able to break through one particular demon, who had given John just enough ammunition – a name.

Azazel.

At that point, John Winchester had a name, and a weapon strong enough to kill the demon belonging to said name.

But John Winchester had not been the same since his youngest son had been taken. He was too ruthless, and not patient enough. The second he had the opportunity; John Winchester had built a Devil’s Trap and summoned the demon Azazel.

He had called Dean that morning. The young man's body had frozen when he saw the name flash upon his phone, a name he had never thought would be calling him. After a moment in which a multitude of emotions filled him – panic, worry, anger, fear – Dean had answered.

The call had been short. ‘Don’t worry, Son,’ John had said into the phone. ‘It’ll be over soon.’

He had sounded insane. Perhaps his hunt for Azazel had finally driven him mad, filled with a lust for revenge that no rational person could get through to.

‘What do you mean, sir?’ Dean had stupidly replied.

John had scoffed into the phone. ‘Always slow on the intake,’ he said. ‘I have him, Dean.’

Him. There isn’t anyone else it could have been. If it were Sammy, Dean knows this conversation would be different. John wouldn’t have called to deliver the news, perhaps he wouldn’t have told Dean at all. No, he was talking about the yellow eyed demon.

‘Where are you?’ Dean had asked. ‘I’ll come to you.’

‘This isn’t your fight, Dean.’

‘Like hell it’s not,’ Dean had shouted into the phone. ‘Does he have Sam?’

‘When will you finally get it, Dean?’ John had sighed into the receiver. ‘Sam was never going to come out of this. One way or another.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Dean had raised his voice even more, enough that Bobby had walked into the room to see what Dean was on about. ‘What haven’t you told me about him?’

‘It was all because of him, Dean,’ John said. ‘You better hope he’s dead, son.’ There was a beat of silence, where Dean was scrambling to find the right words. Before he could figure them out, however, John continued. ‘The least we can do is take out the bastard who did this to her.’

To her. To his mom, like Sam hadn’t been involved at all, hadn’t been taken and endured who knows what at the hands of this yellow eyed demon. It was as if Dad had never truly been looking for Sammy, to bring him back. Then what? What did Dad know?

Before Dean could ask, John had hung up. Dean, angrily blinking away at the tears that are filling his eyes, turns away from Bobby.

‘Dean’- Dean had interrupted, quickly updating Bobby on what he knew.

Bobby did the rest. He knew much more than Dean did about this situation. As it turned out, John had been confiding too much trust and information in a certain hacker named Ash, who lived in a hunter’s bar with Ellen Harvelle. Dean liked Ellen, and had even spent a few weeks at her bar when the boy was 15, after Dean had been turned away from yet another hunter unable to deal with Dean’s grief, while John was finding somewhere for him to go.

Ellen had been kind, but hadn’t been much too patient with Dean’s comatose act. She would give him eyes that told him she understood - eyes that filled him with more anger than any sense of peace or unity – and handed him a rag, ordering him to clean up tables. ‘You’ll get nowhere staring at the wall, thinking of a past you can’t change. Get.’

Dean had resented her, back then. Had wanted to take every glass she had just placed on the bar counter, freshly cleaned and dried, and smash them into a thousand pieces at her feet. Looking back, though, Dean appreciates her for doing what she could. He knows that he was not in any kind of healthy state of mind, angry and always looking for a fight. She could have shied away and given him his space, not wanting to trigger any outburst that was sure to come. Dean quickly learned that Ellen Harvelle is not that kind of woman.

Everyone liked Ellen. That is why John should have realized that Ellen knew what Ash knew.

Ellen knew that Dean and Bobby had been on a similar search because they had also utilized Ash’s help a few times. In Dean and Bobby’s favour, Ellen seemed to like them more than John. So when they called her and asked for any intel, Ash was able to give them a location on where the Devil’s Trap was to be used by Dean’s father.

By the time they got there, it was too late.

Dean is an observant man. Many do not think that of him, but it remains true all the same. He could recognize his dad’s car out of a lineup of one hundred of the same make, could remember the eye colour of the checkout girl who had merely glanced in his direction. He would be able to identify someone’s body if it were only left with a left arm.

Which is why, when Bobby and Dean stumble into the room containing the Devil’s Trap, Dean immediately knows that the body sprawled across the floor belongs to his father. The body otherwise should have been unrecognizable. It is as if Dad’s head had spontaneously combusted, it’s remains splattering the entire room. Both his arms and his legs were facing a completely wrong angle, as if they had been snapped like twigs. Half of what remained of his body – laying in a position Dean could not tell was facing upwards or downwards – rested on a Devil’s Trap.

A Devil’s Trap that was completely intact.

There was nothing else.

Nobody could explain it. It should have worked. John had summoned the demon Azazel into a Devil’s Trap, crafted to perfection and able to hold even the strongest of demons. There is no way that if trapped within, any demon would have been able to conjure the power strong enough to do what it had done to John Winchester.

Maybe Azazel had somehow been summoned outside of the trap? Unlikely, as it took up the majority of the room.

Perhaps he had been followed? The sigils should have prevented it. They ward of anything supernatural, any creature other than human.

More importantly?

The Colt was gone.

Any hope they had at killing Azazel were gone. Though they had the power to, there was no point in summoning him again. Without the Colt, their only means of killing the demon had disappeared within their grasp.

That had been one year ago. Since then, there had been no more leads, and any potential one ends up at a dead end before it begins. Tracking Azazel down had become just as difficult as it had been before Sam was taken.

So Dean does what he can. He hunts. He gets stronger. He helps people the way that he couldn’t help Sammy and the way he couldn’t help his Dad because he was weak and stupid and couldn’t-

“Winchester!”

Dean snaps his head to look at Bobby. He had forgotten the man was there. He glances at the clock. He has been driving for almost seven hours now, and they still have 8 more to go, heading towards some town in the middle of nowhere, following another lead that will eventually come out useless.

Dean lets out a sign, watching as the window fogs up beside him. The weather is expected to get warmer as they get closer to their destination, but for a January evening it is getting quite cold outside.

Dean will be twenty-seven in fourteen days. He doesn’t give that another thought. His birthday has never mattered to him, and he doesn’t often acknowledge the day any more. No, what matters to Dean is that in three days, it will officially have been twelve years since he lost Sammy.

Twelve years. That’s two years longer than Dean even had Sam. Dean has spent more time searching for his little brother than he had with him. He wonders what Sam looks like now, if he would recognize Dean. He knows that he would be able to recognize Sammy. He probably still has that goofy hair.

“Sorry,” Dean says, after he watches Bobby begins to open his mouth, Dean’s silence just too long for the older man to think Dean faded away again. Dean doesn’t want to talk. His mouth feels like it is filled with sand, and he can’t get his mind to formulate the right words. “Tell me again.”

“Pull over,” Bobby says. “Let me drive while you get some sleep.”

“No way,” Dean says. “I’m not letting anyone drive this car ever again.” He runs his hands along the side of the wheel of the Impala. Now that Dad was gone, Bobby had told Dean to keep it.

“Pull over, Dean.” Bobby’s voice suggests that he is not suggesting anymore. A mild suspicion arises in Dean, alongside a hint of panic at the man’s tone, which he quickly pushes aside. He obeys the order and pulls onto the shoulder of the road.

Dean looks at Bobby expectantly, only to see the man already observing him. Nervous, Dean looks back out to the road. “You gunna say something or are we wasting more time staring into each other’s eyes?”

“We’re getting closer, Dean,” Bobby says quietly. “Something big is heading our way.”

“I know, Bobby,” Dean says. He was listening when Bobby explained what was going on, if only a little. “A lot of demonic activity.”

“All surrounding the same area, which remains untouched,” Bobby says.

“Then why aren’t we going towards that instead of this town?”

“Ash said it’s important,” Bobby says. “Besides, we still don’t have any means of killing any demon we get our hands on.”

“We could be doing what Dad did,” Dean says. “Bringing them here, getting information.”

“We know they aren’t going to give anything up, Dean!” Bobby says. “It took eleven years for your daddy to get a damn name.”

Eleven years. It will be twelve soon. Twelve years since he last saw Sammy. He can’t even remember the last thing he said to Sam. Maybe he didn’t even say anything at all before he left him on his own. He had been asleep, Dean remembered. He was asleep, he was shivering, and nothing Dean had done would made him stop. What did Sam think, when he woke up and Dean was gone, only to be replaced with the demon Azazel, the yellow eyed monster from all of Dad’s bedtime stories, the monster who hunted him in his sleep –

“Dean,” a hand lifts his chin, causing him to flinch backwards slightly. Upon Dean’s movement, the hand retreats. “I know it’s that time of the year, Dean.”

Dean sniffs. “I don’t know what you’re taking about.”

“Don’t give me that shit, boy,” Bobby points a finger at Dean. “We both know clear what’s coming up in a few days. You’re never really here during those days.”

“I’m right here,” Dean snaps.

“I ain’t trying to argue here,” Bobby says. “I’m just trying to say… We’re getting closer to that demon, Dean, and I need you to be ready for what happens.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “I don’t know what you think of me, Bobby, but I’m not some damsel in distress”-

“You need to be prepared to find out that Sammy is gone.”

Dean freezes. “He’s not gone.”

“Dean”-

“No!” Dean shouts, jerking back from Bobby. “You don’t understand Bobby, he’s not dead. He’s not, I… I can still feel him.”

Bobby gives him the look of pity he has always resented seeing on people’s faces when they learn about his life. “You think I still don’t feel Karen?”

Dean shakes his head. “No, no, not like that,” he tries. “I can’t explain it.”

“Dean,” Bobby says again.

“Enough with the broken record, man,” Dean says irritable. “Look, if the bastard tells me Sam’s gone, I still won’t believe it. Demons lie. Until I see a body, I’m not believing it.”

“And what if he had proof?”

Dean pauses. “Then my job is over.”

Before Bobby can say anything, Dean starts the car back up. “Enough of this, we’re just wasting time. Tell me again what we’re looking at.”

“What we’re looking at is a town that went radio silent overnight,” Bobby explains, huffing slightly, but accepting the change in subject. Dean knows this kind of talk makes him just as uncomfortable. That’s half the reason Dean likes him so much. “No communication in or out for weeks.”

“Why are we only going now?” Dean asks.

“There ain’t much outgoing mail coming out of this town. No contact to the outside world, these people. Small town, small minded people. They wanted to be left alone. ‘Wasn’t till some lady’s daughter finally came sniffing around when she realized her mama hadn’t called in a while.”

“And everyone was gone?” he assumes.

“It’s a goddamn bloodbath over there,” Bobby exclaims. “Bodies littering the streets in various states. It’s very quiet, Police ain’t looking to release the information very soon. Don’t want to cause mass panic.”

“Demons?”

“You’re guess is as good as mine,” Bobby says. “Ash says it’s gotta be linked to our search, so we’re going.”

Dean doesn’t answer, and Bobby allows the conversation to cease, leaving Dean’s mind to drift back to his thoughts. He thinks over that night, and the nights following. He thinks of what he could have done differently. Had Sam even been that sick? It was just down the road; Dean could have brought Sam with him. He was only ten, Dean could have carried him. He shouldn’t have left him alone. He was only going down the street.

Hours pass like this, and soon enough Dean is driving past a sign that reads Welcome to BrankBury. Spray painted in bold, neon green letters directly above the greeting sign reads YOU’RE NOT.

“No wonder it took them so long to find these people,” Dean says. “They clearly didn’t want visitors.”

“Perfect town to get away with something under the radar,” Bobby says. “Who knows how long this took before it was over.”

Dean drives slowly into town, observing the disaster before him. The town isn’t very large, but not a single inch of it had been reserved from the horrors that lay before them. There are blood traces on every building, every road. A dozen or so bodies litter the streets, all covered in sheets, surrounded by just as many cop cars and police tape. Officers litter the scene, and there are forensic scientists examining the bodies. Dried puddles of blood riddle the street, like these bodies had been completely drained of it. And throughout the air, the smell that has been haunting Dean his entire life. The smell that was in the hotel room that night Sam went missing, the smell surrounding his dad’s body. Sulfur.

Dean parks the car away from the worst of it and him and Bobby walk over to the nearest police officer, stationed just outside of the police tape blocking their path. They quickly flash the man their FBI badges and it doesn’t take too much convincing to let them pass.

“Thank god the FBI is here,” an officer says. “Usually they’re peeking their heads all willy nilly when we have it completely under control. Not this time.”

“Do we know what we’re looking at?” Bobby asks.

“Bodies are everywhere, in houses, outside. None of them look as if they were running away from something. They look like they had been fighting.”

“Small town argument?” Dean says sarcastically. “Town hall meeting gone wrong?”

“We can’t find the town,” the officer says. “BrankBury had a population of two hundred and thirty-three, but only twenty-nine bodies are here, and we don’t think they were members of this town.”

“You don’t think?” Bobby asks.

“Well, some of them don’t have enough of them left to ever be identified. Like they spontaneously combusted or something.”

Dean and Bobby share a glance. They know someone else who had looked like that.

“Others,” the officer continues. “We can determine certain traits. Gender, age range, things like that. Far as we can tell, all of these people were twenty at the most. Some look as young as sixteen.”

“Teen affiliated gangs?” Bobby suggests.

“BrankBury didn’t have any teenagers,” the officer said. “Youngest resident was twenty-five, and living with this elderly parents. Most of the residents were older than fifty. This isn’t a town that young people want to stay in.”

“What about the daughter?” Dean asks. “The one who found it like this.”

“She’s doesn’t know anything,” the officer says. “Hysterical, she is, not that I can blame her. Her parents still haven’t been found. None of them have. These kids didn’t live here.”

“Have you identified any of them?” asks Bobby.

“None,” the officer says. “Forensics are taking blood samples, going to run them through the system, see if they get a match. But none of these people match any missing persons reports within a one-hundred-mile radius.”

Bobby asks if they can examine the bodies for themselves, and the officers make room to let them see. As soon as Dean lays his eyes on the first body, he knows that the thing responsible for this is the same thing that killed his father. The bodies are killed with the same fury, the same horror that John Winchester endured.

They wrap things up after examining the bodies, with Bobby telling the officers to call him as soon as the blood tests and DNA reports come back, as well as setting up a time to talk to the woman who discovered the town the following morning. They return to the Impala and drive away.

The second they pass that stupid sign once more, leaving town. They do not talk until they are twenty minutes out of town, checked into the motel room for the night.

Dean turns to Bobby, his body almost trembling in barely contained anticipation.

“You smelt it, didn’t you?” Dean says. “This screams demonic activity, and we’ve seen this before. It’s him. We need to track down who these people are so we can”-

“So we can what, Dean?”

“So we can get closer to finding,”-

“You have to understand that Sam might be gone,” Bobby interrupts again. “I don’t know how many more times I can tell you this. I ain’t saying that this ain’t your fight. After what happened to Mary, to Sam,”-

“Stop,” Dean warns, lifting a finger in Bobby’s direction. He feels betrayed that his hand shakes as he does so. “Just shut up, okay?”

Before Bobby can reply, Dean storms out the front door of the motel room and heads past the Impala, going towards the side of the building. Looking at the brick wall before him, his hands clench into fists and he hurls one against it, again and again. His hand bursts into pain and he hits the wall, but it grounds him back to reality. He’s so angry.

When he finally thinks he can breathe again, his punches cease. He clenches his fist, feeling the burn and pull of the broken skin. Not broken, he observes. That’s good.

He should apologize to Bobby. Dean knows that he is just trying to make it so Dean can be prepared for the inevitable – that Sam has been gone for over a decade and he likely will never come back. He doesn’t have to worry about that, though. Dead isn’t as stupid as they all think he is. He just can’t afford to think like that. Sam is alive. He has to be. Not until Dean sees a body and maybe not even after that. Until Dean’s dying breath, he will try and take care of Sammy. He made that promise when he was four years old, and he doesn’t plan on breaking it.

He just has to find him.

Dean didn’t return to the motel room until early the next morning, when he knew Bobby would be asleep. He had been drinking away his sorrows in the nearest bar, hustling some pool so they wouldn’t have to worry about money for the next few weeks.

Once he laid down in bed, he spent the rest of the night staring up at the ceiling, clenching his fist and focusing on the pain that radiated from it. When it was late enough to appear as if he had woken up, Dean slipped out of the room once more, returning with coffee and donuts that he intended to use as a peace offering. When he returned to the room, Bobby had been sitting at the table, notes and papers scattered around him. He did not bring up Dean’s outburst from the day before, so neither did Dean.

While Dean had been out, Bobby had gotten to work. He had contacted Ash to confirm that his suspicions were correct, telling him to try and access the DNA tests as soon as they could. Ash had said that based on the urgency of the case, the police should have the reports by mid-afternoon, and he would call them as soon as he had them.

Until then, they went over what they knew. It had to be Azazel. John had been killed in the exact same way as those people in BrankBury – when Azazel had been summoned. This screams his work, but they don’t know why? What was going on there? Were those bodies possessed by demons? If so, why had they all been destroyed like that? The officer had said the bodies had been scattered around like they had been fighting in a free-for-all death-match. What had they been fighting for?

They are no closer to a concise hypothesis when Ash calls them late that afternoon with the results.

“Well?” Dean says, not looking for any formalities.

“Those people were not from BrankBury, that’s for sure,” Ash says. “They were from all over the place.”

“How all over the place?” Dean demands.

“They haven’t been able to find identities of a lot of them, but a few have had their DNA in the system already from past hospital visits. A lot more are identified through their parents DNA.”

“What’s so important about their parents DNA?” Dean asks. “Why do they have those records?”

Ash pauses. “Are you sitting down?”

“Ash,” Dean warns.

“Most of the bodies are being linked to missing persons cases,” Ash says lightly. “Taken when they were anywhere from eight to twelve, snatched up from their homes without a trace. No sightings, no sign of forced entry. A lot of the parents submitted DNA in order to help identify anything.”

Dean feels his heart begin to pound in his chest. He knows what that means. “Missing kids?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but he’s not there,” Ash says. “I crossed all of the unknown DNA strains to yours, and there’s no match indicating that any of them would be your brother.”

“Why do you have my DNA?”

“Aren’t you glad I had it?” Ash says. “I checked before I called, obviously, so that we could avoid any fright.”

Dean pauses. “You sure there can’t be any fluke?”

“The DNA of the identified bodies all come back one hundred percent matches to the parents who submitted theirs,” Ash explains. “I have the results for every single body there. There was no Winchester there. I checked with your dads, too, just to be safe.

“There was something else, though,” Ash says.

“Don’t leave us hanging,” Bobby says into the speaker.

“The blood tests, man,” Ash continues. “I don’t know how to explain it. The police ran a full panel, tested for everything. There’s nothing normal about any one of these people. The DNA aligns with their kin’s, but each one of them has a weird abnormality in their blood.”

“What kind of abnormality?” Dean asks.

“The kind you see when the person is an extremely heavy heroin addict, only it doesn’t match any kind of drug, disease, nothing.”

“What’s that mean, dude?” Dean says. “What’s wrong with them?”

“I don’t know,” Ash says. “According to the police reports, they suspect experimental drugs, possible biological gang warfare shit, you know how they are.”

“But?” Bobby prompts.

“But,” says Ash. “We know better than that,” Ash says. “Two of these kids were brothers, it looks like. Looks like they were both adopted by different families. After they both went missing within the same year, the biological mother was primary suspect number one. That’s why they have her DNA on file. One of ‘em, Andrew Gallagher, his adoptive mother died the exact same way yours did, Dean.”

Azazel.

Of course it had to be him, but to have it almost confirmed like this was a shot to Dean’s heart. “So, what? What’s in their blood?”

“Nothing good, man,” Ash says. “Not if they’re all tied to him.

“Look,” he continues. “You guys need to stop by the Roadhouse. Things I gotta say, big news, shouldn’t say over the phone.”

“Oh, and this was an okay conversation?” Dean says.

“Were you going to let me wait until you got here for that information?” Ash says. “You get crazy about your brother, man. No offense or anything.”

Dean doesn’t reply to that. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

The next few days went by within a blink of an eye. Dean and Bobby had not gotten to the Roadhouse soon enough. By the time they arrived, the bar had been burnt to the ground, nothing remains but the charred remains of its residents, Ash included. Ellen was unable to be found amongst the wreckage, and it wasn’t until a day after Dean and Bobby arrived at the older man’s house did she reappear, heartbroken but alive.

She had explained what happened, how she had just been out to collect more pretzels for the bar, when she had received a phone call from Ash telling her that there was an emergency and that she should check the safe. By the time she arrived, the place was up in flames.

After she had ransacked the safe, Ellen had figured the best place to retreat to was Bobby’s house. She knew that the two of them had been working with Ash.

Once Dean and Bobby had confirmed that she was in fact Ellen, making her drink a glass of Holy Water. so she easily handed over the contents from the safe.

It was a map.

The map was one the of the most elaborate and complex things Dean has ever laid his eyes on. It took a few hours for the three of them to decipher the map and the message that Ash had been trying to portray. Bobby had done some research earlier in the month that perfectly fit the description present. Demonic activity surrounding all areas around this location, nothing on the inside.

Ash had figured it out. The churches that line the map all connected by railway lines, and when drawn on displays a perfect Devil’s Trap. In the very center of the map laid an old cowboy cemetery, perfectly marking their point of interest.  

“What could be so important in there that Sam Colt had to build this around it to keep demons out?” Ellen questions. “This is in the middle of nowhere. What’s so special about this cemetery that demons want in so bad?  

“Maybe he was trying to keep something in,” Dean suggests. “Would it be possible for a demon get inside this?”

“A trap like this, no shot,” Bobby scoffs. “This is some fancy work here. No full blood demon is stepping one foot into that trap.”

“Full blood?” Ellen asks.

“You heard Ash on the phone,” Bobby says. “All those bodies that were found in BrankBury, they all had the same inconsistency in their blood, all tied to the yellow-eyed demon.”

“You think they were trying to get to the trap?” Dean asks. “BrankBury is pretty close to there.”

“But why would they have taken over some nowhere town?” Ellen asks. “To fight each other?”

Bobby frowns but does not reply. He looks back down at the map in front of him and sighs, remaining quiet.

“Bobby?” Dean prompts. “You know something you want to share?”

“It’s just a thought,” Bobby says. “Think about the main question we’ve always had about Sammy, about all those kids now. What use would a demon have for a ten-year-old? Ash said it himself; all those kids all went missing ‘round the same time, in the same way.”

“Taken by Azazel,” Dean nods. “We’ve always known that’s who took Sam.”

“But why?” Bobby says. “Demons ain’t too fond of humans, let alone children. All of those kids were the same age, taken at the same time. Did he raise them all these years by himself? For what purpose?”

“To get into the Devil’s Trap,” Dean says, understanding where Bobby is going. “What, is this the demonic version of Battle Royale?”

“Exactly,” Bobby says. “Train ‘em for long enough that they can fight to see who’ll be the strongest of the lot, use the winner to do the bidding no demon can.”

“Then we have to stop them,” Ellen says. “Colt wouldn’t have made a trap that elaborate just to keep in your average demon.”  

“We have to be careful,” Bobby says. “You saw those bodies, Dean. Some of them had been blown to bits with no damn weapon. Whoever’s there, they’re dangerous.”

Over the course of the next few hours, they make a plan. In the end, what they have is not much of a plan - they will go in together and cover all edges of the tracks, in order to try and stop the individual before they can do whatever it is that Azazel wants them to do.

Dean isn’t stupid. He saw the state of those bodies in BrankBury, and if they had all been raised by Azazel, then they all would have had similar abilities to whoever was able to destroy a body the way the last one standing had. Dean, Bobby, and Ellen wouldn’t have much on an individual who has demonic powers, but maybe with three of them combined they can stall the person long enough to stop the release of whatever horrifying thing is locked in the Devil’s Trap.

Bobby pulls Dean aside as Ellen prepares the Impala with anything they could possibly have thought of to stop a human being with demonic powers.

“Do you want to address the elephant in the room?” Bobby asks.

“What’s that?” Dean says.

“Sam wasn’t one of those bodies,” Bobby says. “But he might not be the one we’re hunting. Not all of those missing kids have been accounted for. There were dozens of them, and only twenty-nine were found in BrankBury. We don’t know what Azazel did to ‘em all these years, but one can assume not all of them survived up until this point.”

“Of course,” Dean nods. “The weak ones wouldn’t have survived long.”

But Sam isn’t weak, goes unsaid. Sam was never weak, was raised to be a fighter just like Dean and just like John. He would have survived.

“Maybe Sam didn’t make it until now,” Bobby says gently. “He was real sick when he was taken, Dean. It’s possible he never got better.”

That thought has crossed Dean’s mind many times over the years. He knows rationally how sick Sammy had been, how desperate he had been to do something to bring Sam’s fever down. He wouldn’t have left if it hadn’t been so bad. How could he have survived being with a demon when he was that sick? Dean can’t see the demon feeding Sam cough medicine, not if he was looking for the strongest of the lot.

“I know, Bobby,” Dean sighs. “Whoever is there, we have to stop them. It’s not going to be him.”

He ignores the small voice in the back of his mind, the voice that sounds so young, frozen at the age Dean was when Sam was taken, that whispers you’re lying.

He thinks back to last conversation he ever had with his dad. The phone call John had made before he walked straight towards his own death. You better hope he’s dead. Dean finally understands what had driven the man to saying those words. To think Sam had been living in those conditions, being bred by demons to commit who knows what kind of acts… any rational person would hope for death as an alternative. His dad must have known what Azazel was doing to these children, what he was doing to Sammy.

Dean remembers the tone in his dad’s voice that day. You better hope he’s dead. John Winchester didn’t believe that Sam was dead. He had found out about Azazel’s plans, and he had known right away.

John had raised his boys to be strong, resilient, and to never back down. He had raised the perfect soldiers. To take orders and to never question the person in charge. John Winchester had raised a child in conditions none of the others would have had.  Sick or not, Sam would have entered this sick contest with the mindset of a soldier, making him extremely likely to succeed.

John Winchester had known then what Dean knows now:

Sam Winchester is alive, and he was always the perfect candiate to be Azazel’s winner. 

The drive to the outskirts of the Devil’s Trap was spent in mostly silence, apart from Bobby going over the plan with them once again. The area surrounding the trap was covered in trees, which they were to use as cover to remain undetected. There have been no signs of any demonic activity within the Trap, meaning that whatever was trapped inside was still there and they had a decent shot of finding Azazel’s lacky before they were able to complete their task.

Dean followed one of the railroad tracks until they reached the cemetery. He parked near the center of the area where a giant crypt was located. After a quick examination of the crypt, Bobby notes that it looks as if the hole on the crypt must act as a key.

“A key to what?” Dean whispers, hoping there isn’t anything close by.

“My guess?” Bobby says back in a similar tone to Dean’s. “A Hellgate.”

“A… a gate to Hell?” Ellen stutters out.

“It would explain why Samuel Colt spent so much energy and brains to keep out any demon looking to open the thing.”

“If that thing’s a gate to Hell, we can’t let this guy open it,” Dean says. “What kind of key even fits in here?”

“Who built this place, Dean?” Bobby says.

“Samuel Colt,” Dean answers before his eyes widen slightly. “The Colt.”

The Colt is their only shot of killing Azazel once and for all. If it’s here, in the graveyard, then they can reclaim what they lost the day that John Winchester had died. When he had been blown up the same way those kids had been in BrankBury, by the same person who will soon walk into the graveyard with the intention of opening a gate to Hell.

“We better get ready,” Dean says. “It’s getting dark.”

They waited near the crypt, far enough away that if a fight breaks out it can be away from the gate but close enough that they will be able to see somebody approaching from any side. A few hours go by while the three of them wait, long enough that Dean begins to wonder if they will have to wait days before somebody arrives at the crypt.  

Why isn’t anyone coming? The massacre in BrankBury had happened a couple of days ago. There isn’t any reason there should be a delay. Dean considers that maybe the winner of Azazel’s Battle Royale had been injured in their victory, perhaps waiting until they were recuperated to open the gate.

Another few hours go by, and Dean’s worry is just starting to increase, when he hears a soft, almost inaudible rustling in the woods before him. The rustling does not get any louder, as if the individual walking has been trained in stealth and keeping quiet. However, just as Dean begins to see the outline of a figure in the trees, he hears a soft voice ring through the air. At first, the voice is too quiet to hear, only that if he listens close enough, the voice is distinctively male. It is only until the figure is perhaps 20 feet away that Dean begins to make out words, but the figure is not forming complete sentences. It is as if he begins to form sentences, saying a word or two before drifting off and beginning another string of nonsense.  

“Ava first… he wants… Father says… six, six, six, it’s the sign… kill her, Sammy”-

Dean is moving out from his spot in the trees before he can gather his next thought. He hears Bobby whisper a shrill warning, but it is too late, the boy already has his sights on Dean, and his brown doe shaped eyes widen as he looks upon the intruder. A boy, because this does not look like a twenty-two-year-old young man. He isn’t short, perhaps an inch or two shorter than Dean himself. However, the kid in front of Dean is extremely thin, his face slightly gaunt as he peers up at Dean. With brown, matted hair that falls just above his shoulders and grime covering his whole body, any normal person would have to assume this is a sixteen-year-old who had escaped from the nearby psych ward.

It's Sam.

Dean knows it’s Sam, because he has spent every waking minute of the past twelve years with the image of Sammy in his mind, desperate not to forget the image of his little brother. He would imagine what Sam would look like as he aged, so that he might recognize him when he finally found him. The figure standing in front of Dean looks much like Dean’s idea of what a teenage Sam Winchester would look like, from his shaggy brown hair to his brown eyes, eyes that the boy would use on Dean in order to get the last cookie.

“Sammy,” Dean whispers. 

From the second Sam had laid his eyes upon Dean, his muttering had stopped and he had remained completely still, no sound escaping his mouth and seeming as if to be frozen in place as he stared wide eyed at Dean. It wasn’t until Dean had said his name that he reacted, flinching away slightly, eyes darting from side to side.

As quickly as if a switch had been flipped in his head, Sam’s head snapped back to Dean and he raised his left hand, and Dean just began to feel an extreme tightening in his throat when Bobby shoots Sam in the arm that is raised. Sam’s body whips around to face Bobby, and with a motion of his hand Bobby has been thrown into a tree a few feet away from him. Ellen quickly takes a shot at their attacker, and Sam is quick to turn to her as well.

However, right as Sam sends Ellen to the ground in a similar move to what he had done to Bobby, Dean has already taken out a tranquilizer gun from his jacket and shooting it directly into Sam’s neck. Sam’s body gives a jerk as a dart clips into his neck, and his hand shoots up to eject the needle from his skin. His head gives a short jerk to the left, a twitch as if to show Dean that he had simply pissed him off by pulling that move, before fully facing Dean once more and resuming what he had begun.

Dean soon begins to feel a constricting agony in his throat, and he feels his lungs pulsate and beg for air, as his head begins to feel extremely heavy. He begins to realize that this is what those other demon children felt in BrankBury felt, and what his dad had felt.

For the second time that day, Dean thought back to that last conversation with his dad, to something else that John had said. Sam was never going to come out of this. One way or another.

Another way, Dean silently begs. He opens his mouth, and his lips just begin to form the word Sammy when the feeling in his head ceases, and soon after all the breath in his body returns. His chest heaves as he gasps for air, never taking his eyes off of Sam. He watches as the hand that is in the air sway from left to right, before it begins to fall as if in slow motion. Sam’s eyes begin to glaze over as he stares into the distance, his body rocking from side to side as he tries desperately not to fall over now that the effects of the tranquilizer have finally taken over.

As Sam continues to sway as he fights off unconsciousness, Dean hears a clattering sound from Sam’s left hand, where he finally notices that the kid is holding the Colt in his right hand. He hadn’t even bothered to raise his right arm at all during the tussle, and Dean had been so focused on Sam that he had almost forgotten about the main reason they had come here.

Dean glances over to see that both Bobby and Ellen have gotten up from their landing spots, glad that Sam didn’t hurt them too much.

“Sam didn’t hurt them too much,” Sam whispers. His nose had begun to bleed sometime after he had thrown Ellen, and it was mixing with his saliva as he fought to get words out of his mouth.

Dean starts. “You heard that?”

“Heard that?” Sam whispers, his voice becoming very faint. He still remains standing, and it is looking like he will win this fight. Dean is alright with this providing the demonic powers stop working. At least, the ones that involve killing people, as it seems that Azazel’s children can also read minds.

What am I thinking right now? Dean thinks in his head. Sam doesn’t respond.

“Sam,” he says aloud. “Do you know who I am?”

Again, Dean is not given an answer. Sam’s eyes have remained glazed over and in a thousand-yard stare during this entire interaction, but Dean now knows that he is present.

Sam, Dean thinks. I’m Dean. I’m your big brother Dean.

Sam frowns. “No,” he whispers.

“Sammy,” Dean says aloud, starting to think I know you can hear me, but before he can Sam’s eyes suddenly regain a slight amount of clarity and widen.

“No!” Sam gasps. He blearily looks around the graveyard, eyes skimming past both Bobby and Ellen as if they weren’t there. Once his eyes land on the crypt, Sam attempts to take a shaky step forward. The second his foot lands, Sam’s legs collapse under him as he falls to the ground.

“Six, six, six, it’s the sign,” Sam gasps out as attempts to get back up. “No, no.”

“Sam, it’s okay,” Dean says. He walks over very slowly, raising his hands in peace as he crouches before his brother. “You don’t have to open it,” he says as calmly as he can, though his voice shakes as it comes out.

“Open it,” Sam tries to nod his head. He begins to look over at the crypt, but Dean quickly gathers the kid’s face in his hands. He cradles it gently, holding it in place so that Sam’s head is in Dean’s direction, even though his eyes are rolled so far to the left it is as if he were trying to turn his eyeballs in a ninety-degree angle in order to see the crypt. His body jerks as if he were trying to fight Dean off, but it has grown so weak from the tranquilizer that it seems the kid no longer has control of his arms. The Colt has slipped out of his grasp, and Dean had quickly kicks it over in Bobby’s direction.

Sam lets out a small noise similar to a whimper. “’Gotta.”

“You don’t have to,” Dean whispers. He hadn’t noticed his eyes filling with tears, not even when he blinks, and one begins to trail down his face. It’s only when he tastes the bitter salt of it in his mouth does he realize he has been crying. Sam seems fascinated by the appearance of the tears, his own completely dry and wide, almost inhumanely so. Alongside the continuous stream of blood that is escaping his nose and the drool that leaks out of his mouth with every word, Sam doesn't... he doesn't look human. 

“Father says,” Sam mumbles. His eyes have begun to close, fluttering against his eyelids as his fight for consciousness continues.

“Sammy”-

Sam’s body deflates as if all the fight he had left disappeared, and Dean is just opening his mouth to ask Bobby what they do next when Sam’s eyes open just long enough to release a bloodcurdling scream that causes Dean’s head to momentarily feel more pressure. It ends within about five seconds, but was sure to have been heard miles away. Once his voice had faded back to silence, Sam’s body gave out once more and he collapsed halfway onto the floor and Dean’s arms.  

His eyes do not open again, but his body twitches every two seconds or so. After a glance at Bobby and Ellen, Dean takes the tranquilizer gun back in his hand and shoots another dart into Sam’s neck.

After a few minutes of silence, the three Hunters not daring to even breathe too loudly, Dean thinks Sam is fully unconscious.

“That tranquilizer should have been enough to knock out someone triple his body weight for a whole day,” Bobby says, Colt still in his hand.

“We have to get out of here,” Dean says. “I don’t want that thing anywhere near a Hellgate.”

Bobby and Ellen glance at each other.

“I’m not leaving him here,” Dean says. “We’ll be back at square one.”

“Dean,” Bobby begins, but stops before he continues his sentence.

“I can’t, Bobby,” Dean says, his voice breaking as it comes out. “Please.”

“Dammit, Dean,” Bobby curses. “We’ll put him in the Panic Room. Nobody gets in, nobody gets out.”

“Deal,” Dean says immediately.

John had extracted enough information for Bobby to feel the need to build what he calls a Panic Room, safe from any spirit or demon that tries to enter. Dean had been speechless when he had seen the amount of sigils surrounding and inside the room. Stepping inside, he always felt safe within the Panic Room in way a way he hadn’t since the last time him and Sammy had been inside the Impala together. Cold and unwelcoming as the room was, it was as if Dean was underwater when he entered the room, his mind fully knowing it was safe from danger in there.

“Let’s go,” Ellen says, and the three of them move towards the car, Sam cradled in Dean’s arms.

Bobby takes the wheel of the car as Dean places Sam in the back and gets in beside him, placing the boy’s head on his leg and keeping the dart gun on the ready in case the kid starts to wake up. Bobby begins to drive down the railway once more, in the opposite direction that Sam had come in. As he drives, Dean quickly grabs a rag from the back of the car and uses it as a makeshift bandage over the wound Bobby inflicted on Sam's left arm. It will be good enough until they can return to Bobby's house and stitch it up, providing Sam's demon powers won't do that for him. 

The ride is quiet for a few minutes, Dean staring down at his little brother and hovering his hand right over Sam’s matted brown hair, nearly close enough to touch. He watches as the kid’s chest rises and falls in quick, stuttering movements, as if he were still trying to fight off the sedation despite being injected with enough tranquilizer to knock down a bear.

Dean can’t tear his eyes away from Sam. All these years, while Dean had been twiddling his thumbs and messing around in Bobby’s junkyard, had been hunting mediocre spirits and ghouls, Sammy had been at the beck and call of the same demon that had killed their mom. Who knows what Sam has endured.

He should be twenty-two by now. Dean knows Sam’s age better than he knows his own, counts the years in terms of how many have gone by since Sam went away, by what age he would be now. He’s twenty-two, but he looks like a teenager. It would be generous to even consider the kid to be eighteen. Dean considers that perhaps Sammy just hadn’t been properly fed, that starvation has caused what is clearly a stunted growth. He makes a mental note to ask Bobby what he knows on malnutrition and the effects it has on the body.

“What do we do if we run into any of that demonic activity on the outskirts of the Trap?” Ellen asks. Ellen and Bobby haven’t addressed the tears that have since stopped leaking out of Dean’s eyes, even though the evidence is clear as day over his cheeks and through his red rimmed eyes.  

Dean reaches out and takes the Colt from where Bobby had placed it beside him, but does not respond apart from that.

They continue driving in silence before Dean lifts a hand to his own throat, where a phantom pain resides from Sam’s earlier attack, and whispers, “He can use the force.”

Bobby huffs grumpily. “He could have killed all of us.”

“He can read minds,” Dean says. “When he said he didn’t hurt you, I was thinking it.”

“Dean,” Ellen tries to argue. “It’s possible he could have just thought”-

“He said the exact same thing I was thinking,” Dean says. “Word for word. All he’s said is broken sentences and slurred words and he said the exact sentence I had thought. He even matched the tone I said it in… thought it in?” He isn't sure how to phrase it. It barely makes sense to him, but Dean knows what he witnessed. Sam had been inside of Dean's mind. 

“We need to figure out how he can do it,” Bobby says. “If they did something to him, if we can get it to stop.”

"What if it's in his blood?" Dean says. "You heard Ash, the blood tests came back like there was a drug running through all those kid's veins." 

"Supposing that's true, what would be in his blood?" Ellen asks. "What could give a human being those kind of powers?" 

Nothing good, Dean thinks. Before anyone can give a response, however, when Bobby suddenly mutters “balls,” while the car lurches forward before coming to a complete halt in the middle of the road.

They have made it past the borders of the Devil’s Trap. With Trap residing on the roof of the Impala, as well as the other wards Bobby and Dean have set within the car, the four of them are safe from anyone getting in to them. There is nothing, though, stopping Azazel from destroying the car to get them out.

The demon stands in the middle of the road in front of them, smiling wide and waving as if he were greeting an old friend.

“Where do you think you’re going with my champion?” He yells. Dean glances down to see that Sam’s eyes are still closed, body jerking but looking unresponsive to the demon in front of the car.

“Drive,” Dean says to Bobby, and the man slams on the gas as the Impala speeds down the road, directly towards Azazel.

Azazel easily steps to the side, and with a wave of his hand the road ahead of them is barricaded with a row on fire. When Bobby attempts to reverse the car, another line appears directly behind the car, and Dean feels his body heat up the flames before them.

“Nice little project you’ve got on your car there,” Azazel says, approaching the car. “Almost untouchable. Too bad you haven’t made it fire proof.”

Windows of the Impala rolled down, Dean points the Colt right at the demon. Azazel barely glances at the gun, instead peering into the car to see Sam’s body across the backseat.

Azazel tuts in disapproval. “Sammy, Sammy. You’ve come all this way just to let me down now?”

“You don’t talk to him,” Dean barks.

“I’m surprised you got the jump on him,” Azazel sneers. “What did you do? Tell him that dear darling Dean had come back for him? Sorry kid, Sammy don’t care about you anymore. You should have seen what he did to your Daddy.”

When Dean doesn’t respond, his mind reeling in what the truth behind that admittance means; that Sam had been the one to kill dad, to destroy his body just like he destroyed those people in BrankBury, Azazel laughs.

“What a good family reunion that was,” Azazel says. “Big, brave John Winchester looking at his son with nothing but hate in his eyes. You should have seen Sammy’s face when John told him that he should have killed him the night your mommy died.”

Azazel hums for a second, and then lets out a noise of appreciation as if he had just taken a bite out of the world’s best pie. “The anger became him; I was so proud. He looked your Daddy in the face, and he became my boy on that day, the best of them, my child.”

“What did you do to him?” Dean demands.

Azazel cackles. “I’m getting impatient. Get out of the car now, Dean-o.”

“I’ll get out of the car when you tell me what the hell you did to my brother,” Dean shouts, the Colt still pointed at Azazel.

“Well, that’s just it,” Azazel croons. “Hell. How would we determine who our best child is without giving them a taste of the real Hell.”

“That’s impossible,” Dean says. “You can’t kill someone and send em to Hell just to bring them back from the dead.”

“I’ll let you think on that,” Azazel says. “Come out, come out, Dean. You have two things that belong to me. Be a big boy and face me like a real man.

Bobby turns to Dean from the front seat and shakes his head. Dean hesitates.

“Come on, Dean,” Azazel shouts. “Wake up and face the music that Sammy’s mine, now. You’ve lost.”

“You seem awful confident for a guy who’s got a gun in his face,” Dean says. “One that can destroy him.”

Azazel smiles. “We have our King of Hell. You shoot me now, I go out knowing that I am the father of the Boy King who will set forth the undoing of man, the one who cradled him and raised him to see his full poten,”-

Dean shoots the demon directly in his chest, straight out the window of the Impala. Azazel’s body lights up as if electricity has shot through his body rather than a bullet, and he crumples to the ground, dead. I raised him, he thinks. 

“Drive,” Dean says aloud instead, the fire disappearing alongside its creator. 

So Bobby drives.

Sam thankfully doesn’t wake up in the time it takes them to drive to Bobby’s house. After spending the drive in complete silence, other than an attempt by Ellen to provide some words of comfort that Dean shot away, it is a relief when they they pull up to the car up the lot.

Dean lifts Sam out of car and not for the first-time notes how light the kid is. Though he looks too skinny and frail, Dean would expect somebody capable of what he has seen Sam do to be packing some hidden weight. With Sam in his arms, Dean follows Bobby down into the Panic Room where it seems Bobby had already prepared for something like this.

A cot had been set up in the center of the room, with all kinds of medical supplies on the tables surrounding it. The cot noticeably had heavy duty shackles attached both in the middle of the bed and at the foot, intended to hold something strong down indefinitely.

“Bobby,” Dean begins, but Bobby cuts him off with a raised hand.

“It ain’t what I want to do, Dean,” the man says. “It’s what we have to do. You don’t know what state of mind he’ll be in when he wakes up, or what he’ll think.”

Dean doesn’t answer and keeps his grip tight on his brother.

“Dean,” Bobby says. “We may have to face the very high possibility that this ain’t going to end well. You heard that demon.”

“I’m not stupid, Bobby,” Dean says. “You didn’t see the way he looked at me. It was like he was reading my soul or something. You said it yourself; he should have killed us. He didn’t. He didn’t want to be there.”

Before Bobby can respond, Dean crosses the barrier into the room and places Sam on the cot. He reaches down and, as gently as he can, connects the shackles through Sam’s bony wrists. He knows he has to be careful. As much as he wants to believe that this is his Sammy, he knows the reality that is staring him in the eyes. Sam spent more time alive with Azazel than he did with Dean.

Could it be possible, what Azazel had said? Had Sammy been to Hell? How could he be standing in front of them, alive and human. How else could he have crossed the barrier into the Devil’s Trap?

A soft knock at the doorway catches both of the men’s attention. Ellen is standing there with a bucket full of soapy water, and a few rags in her hand.

“Figured you might want to wash him off a bit, before he wakes up,” she explains. “Might not get the chance for a while.”

“Right,” Dean says, silently agreeing that it would be best to get the grime off of Sam’s skin, and perhaps do something about the foul smell that is radiating off of him.

"We gotta do something 'bout that wound, too," Bobby adds. He removes the rag from Sam's arm to inspect the damage as much as he can around the layers of dirt surrounding it. 

Between the three of them, it takes two hours to clean Sam off enough that he no longer smells of blood, dirt, and whatever other bodily fluids are covering him. Ellen had to change out the water several times. 

Sam’s hair was another issue. Long and matted as it was, it was also caked down in what looked like at least a year’s worth of grime. He clearly was not taking any care into maintaining it, and likely did not bother to have a second thought about it. Dean wonders if any human hygiene needs were being met. He doubts it.

Ellen had tried her best to wash through the hair, and it took another hour on top of that to be able to run a brush through it. Thankfully, the hair was free of any bugs or unwelcome pests, and any debris or twigs that had made its way in there was easily freed. In the end, Sam’s hair wasn’t going to be winning any competitions, but at least it was unmatted and nearly clean. Bobby had used that time to stitch up Sam's wound and clean around it. 

The clothes were another issue. Sam was dressed in all black, a long sleeve shirt and pants that looked much too long that he had cuffed up past his ankle in order to keep them from being around his feet. Half of the smell itself was coming directly from the clothes themselves, so Dean quickly had discarded of them.

Bobby had retrieved an old but clean pair of Dean’s boxers from when he was a teenager, and they dressed Sam in those while they had cleaned him off. More of Dean’s old clothes would also have to work as a stand in, despite being too big on the boy.

Clean and unclothed, Sam looked even more gaunt than he had in the woods outside the cemetery. Dean wondered how often Sam was being fed, and any rationale answer made his stomach turn. He suddenly feels sick to his stomach, thinking of all those nights he had spent getting wasted and eating cheeseburgers, all while Sam had been probably been wondering when his next meal would come from, if it would come. 

After dressing Sam in Dean’s old clothes, Dean watches the boy as his eyelids twitch and his eyes dart around from underneath them. He thinks of what Sam must be dreaming about, and supposes it can’t be anything good. Dean thinks that Sam must not have had much good happen to him at all these past twelve years.

Bobby clasps Dean on the shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do for him until he wakes up and we can try and figure out more.”

Dean nods. “I’ll stay here with him.”

“Dean,”-

“I won’t do anything stupid,” Dean says. “The cuffs stay on. I’ll holler if I need help.”

Bobby doesn’t look so happy with that answer, but he sighs in defeat as him and Ellen leave the room to get washed up themselves. Dean barely glances at them as they leave and drags a chair over to sit next to Sam.

Dean doesn’t know how to feel, staring down at his baby brother in front of him. He thinks to what Azazel had said, the things he had claimed. Are they true? Was Sam really the one who had killed their dad?

It would make sense; the scene of John’s death had looked very similar to the scene in BrankBury. They had known they were hunting same person.

But this is Sammy. Sweet, little Sammy, who would try and stay up late to catch sight of their dad coming home, who, at the age of ten, still had hope that John would be home for Christmas.

Was Azazel right? Was there nothing left of the boy that Dean had lost all those years ago? Would it be a kindness, to just kill him now? After all the years Dean has spent searching, begging anyone who would listen to give him a chance to have his brother back, could he let go now?

Of course not. Dean knows that no matter what, he won’t have it in him to kill Sam. Not when Sam deserves a chance to get better. Dean just has to help him remember. Deep down, Dean thinks that Sam had pulled back. Azazel may not have said it directly himself, but it was implied heavily in his genuine disappointment in the boy; Sam should have been able to kill the three of them without a moment’s hesitation. So did he hesitate? Why else would Azazel would have said that? You’ve come all this way just to let me down now? It was possible he had meant that Sam disappointed him in getting captured, getting the jump on, but Dean suspects otherwise. No, Azazel had seemed almost angry, behind his amusement. In his adamancy in telling Dean that Sam no longer cared about him, didn't know him, he gave Dean exactly what he wanted to know; Sam remembers Dean.  

The look on Sam’s face when Dean had thought I’m your big brother Dean. Recognition had flashed upon the kids face, mixed in with the unbelievably large eyes and the underlying psychosis. He may not have believed that this was Dean in front of him, but he knew who Dean was; he had only tried to deny that his brother was present.

Dean has no idea what has been done to Sam all these years, or where he has been kept. He had mentioned a name, too. Ava. Dean wonders if she was another demon, one who had worked with Azazel in raising an army of demonic children. Perhaps she was one of the children herself.

Kill her, Sammy.

Sam is a murderer. He has committed acts in cold blood, had most likely killed their own father in obedience towards the one who had ruined the Winchester family. He had been bred in captivity to be a killing machine, to open a gate to hell, had almost succeeded in the task. He certainly would have if Dean, Bobby and Ellen hadn’t had Ash’s information.

He knows this. There is no denying it, and yet when he looks down on the sleeping boy in front of him, Dean sees none of that. He sees his Sammy, his little brother with the goofy, untameable hair. Dean always knew Sam would never have outgrown that stupid hair. 

He thinks back to the past twelve years. Dean has been living in a state of complete and utter numbness, thinking about Sammy or trying not to think about Sammy. Frankly, most of Dean’s entire life had been spent thinking about Sam. His life was split in two; before Sam was taken and after. Before Sam was taken, it was all about keeping Sam safe, making sure he was fed and happy, that monsters or CPS or who knows what other danger wouldn’t come to take his brother away.

After Sam went missing, his thoughts and responsibilities regarding his brother had shifted. Dean hadn’t done his job, and Sam had been taken. He thought about Sam just as much, every single day for the past twelve years, and as the years went by his thoughts became desolated, no ounce of hope.

There was before Sam was taken, and after he was taken. Now, Dean has a new, third part of his life to add; the aftermath of Sam coming back to him. Despite knowing the conditions of Sam’s disappearance, his captivity, as well as the knowledge of what Sam is capable of, the things he has done, Dean feels lighter in a way he hasn’t felt in twelve years. He feels hopeful again. It’s small, rising in this chest from a deep pit where he had buried it away all those years ago. Unfamiliar, as well, but not unwelcome.

Sam may be all kinds of messed up, but Dean can work with that. There is nothing that Dean wouldn’t do for the kid on the cot in front of him. He would get force choked every day if it meant Sam being back, away from whatever horrors he has seen. Where Dean can keep him safe. 

Whatever gets thrown their way, Dean can handle it. He can take care of his little brother.

He isn’t going to fuck it up again.