Sam starts to say something and has to clear his throat. “You,” it takes him a minute, his mouth is dry. “You have no leverage,” he finally manages to get out.
Lady what’s-her-name studies him. They’re in some kind of basement. Concrete and those high windows set in the foundation. Sam doesn’t know. She’s been working on him and it’s all gotten past him at this point; the fact that there is a British Men of Letters still around.
“What do you mean, Sam?” She asks.
She is dressed very well for torture. Trousers. Hair done. He doesn’t bother to explain. The whole point of torture is that he has to believe that he can do something to make it stop. That he has to care. He would like it to stop. Nobody hates needles more than an ex-junkie. Nobody hates pain more than a torture victim. He hates it. God he hates it. But he doesn’t think anything he could tell her would make it stop. She has her version of things and she wants him to fill in the specifics.
When she is torturing him he is thinking about her. She dumps all that cold water on him and he’s completely preoccupied with the chill of his t-shirt, the way he can feel his pulse beating in the gun shot wound in his leg and the way involuntarily tightening his muscles makes a lot of things hurt. But if his attention drifts he falls into grief.
He can’t wrap his head around the idea that Dean just doesn’t exist. How can there have been a Dean and now there isn’t one at all? Before, when Dean died, there was still a Dean. When Dean was in Hell, that was the horror of it, that Dean still existed and would always exist, in Hell. But Billie made it clear, things thrown in the Empty ceased to exist. Sam didn’t know if Dean was still there, becoming more tenuous, or if Dean was still aware, or if Dean had dissipated and there was nothing that could be thought of as Dean. Except Dean probably never got to the Empty because he was obliterated by a soul bomb.
She’s thrown water in his face and he blinks. “What?” He asks.
“What is leverage?” She asks, her voice crisp to the point of parody.
“Dean,” he says. “But he’s dead.”
“Anyone can be broken,” she says briskly.
He nods. “I am. Just not by you.”
She laughs. “I see,” she says. “I suppose Lucifer did a better job.” She doesn’t believe he went to the Cage so he doesn’t bother to reply. He’s discovered several things. It doesn’t matter if he tries to hang on to consciousness or not. He’s equally likely to pass out either way. That whole hanging on to consciousness by sheer willpower thing must be a myth because he’s pretty good on willpower and really–
–must have thrown up while he was out because he can taste it and his nose is burning.
Which is him. Dean is dead.
He wants him back. It’s overwhelming and irrational but there it is. He doesn’t care that it’s impossible, it hurts so much that Chuck should just feel the hurt of it.
He wants to get the restraints off his arms. He wants his head to stop hurting. He wants Dean. He’s sick of Lady What’s-her-name. His thigh hurts like a mother. It’s really hard to think so he is going to just drift here in the bleeah thank you very much even though someone is shouting and their hand is warm.
“SAM!” and he’s so conditioned to open his eyes to that voice and tone that he sort of lifts his head and squints up and it looks like Dean.
Makes no sense. Now what is going on. Dean and…Cas. He looks at Cas for some explanation.
“You’re gonna be okay,” says Dean.
And then, “Talk to me, Sammy.” He must have closed his eyes again.
About what? Then he wants to say ‘Where is Lady What’s-her-name, she’s armed, don’t let her shoot you,’ and ‘What’s going on?’ and 'A lot of things hurt, can we do something about that?’ and 'I thought when the sun came back that meant you were destroyed.’ But if the sun is back and Dean is here…
Mom is standing by the stairs in an army surplus jacket.
Sam is in a very bad way when they get to him. Cas finds him semi-conscious, hanging forward against the restraints that tie him in a chair. Father only knows why the chair hasn’t tipped. Cas tries to rouse him and then shouts for Dean. Sam smells sour and there blood and vomit and bile on the wet concrete. Cas checks him. He’s still vital but badly dehydrated and clammy to touch.
Dean gets there first, weapon out, but shoves the pistol away at the sight of his brother. He is intent, hands on Sam’s head and neck, appraising. “Sam,” he says. Then sharply, “SAM!” Sam stirs, eyes flickering open, trying to look at Dean.
Dean checks him, talking, telling him he’ll be all right, although Sam doesn’t seem to be tracking. Mary hovers at the foot of the stairway, gun at the ready although the British woman of letters isn’t going to interfere. Cas wants to tell her it’s the only thing to do. Let Dean sort Sam out, step in when needed. Wants to say, they’re always like this. Like 'two peas in a pod’. He’s pretty sure that’s an accurate use of that phrase.
At one point Sam asks if he is dead but Cas is pretty sure from the drop in his blood pressure as he says it that he doesn’t hear Dean’s answer.
Cas takes a moment to release Sam’s wrists and hands. Dean brings them to Sam’s lap and starts massaging circulation back into them.
His feet are a mess. Cas starts his healing with the gunshot wound.
“What’s he doing?” Mary asks.
Then the feet and some of the damage done by dehydration, blood loss, and hypothermia. He can feel Sam coming back. The cut on his cheekbone. The burns. Sam coughs.
“Yeah,” Sam says. He blinks at Dean, then at his mother, then at Dean. “The sun…”
Dean frowns at him. “Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It came back,” he says. “You’re supposed to be gone. But if mom’s here, we’re in some kind of special dead place?”
“No one’s dead, Sammy,” Dean says.
Sam does that thing where the lines in the middle of his forehead wrinkle in a swirl. He stands up. He’s healed but still could use water and he’s emotionally off so he ends up grabbing the back of the chair and Dean grabs his arm. Mary looks as if she doesn’t know if she should reach out or not. Cas wants to tell her that it will be okay.
Dean pulls his brother into a hug and Sam inhales audibly. It was only a few days ago that they stood like this in a cemetery and petals fell around them like rain. Cas thinks Sam might be whispering something into Dean’s shoulder again. He did in the cemetery but Cas didn’t try to hear it then.
He doesn’t bother to try to hear it now.
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