Ex Crucio
Remember that comment-fic meme we're hosting at ohsam? Yes? This is a response to one of the prompts there.
Title: Ex Crucio
Prompt: From a prompt by the lovely and talented mimblexwimble: Crucifixion. *cough* Original prompt can be found here.
Spoilers: General for Season 5.
Word Count: 3,795
Warnings: Violence, torture, bad language.
Disclaimer: Kripke's sandbox. I'm just playing with it while no one is looking.
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer: Someone told me the other day that it's okay to get a kick out of kicking the puppy, but apparently I get a kick out of crucifying the puppy, too. I think that might make me a bad person.
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer #2: So, uh, there's not much plot here. It's just me being really, really mean to Sam. I'm not 100% happy with how it turned out, but still.
Sam hasn't screamed in days. He wants to, desperately. He's never felt anything close to this before. Of course, that's the point. He's had this explained to him in painstaking detail by the man everyone here calls “Father Jonah,” who doesn't look anything like his name. He's a young man, younger even than Sam, with liquid brown eyes that burn with the intensity that only the truly mad can achieve. He's clean-shaven, dressed conservatively in a white shirt and dark pants, the sleeves carefully rolled up to his elbows to avoid getting them dirty.
He waits until Sam has stopped screaming to explain why he's doing this. “The whole point of crucifixion,” he says softly, running a finger lightly over the head of the nail that's pinning Sam's right wrist to the wood, “was to provide the biggest disincentive to sin as was humanly conceivable. That's where the word 'excruciating' comes from, did you know that?”
Sam can't answer. He thinks he's bitten through his tongue, maybe. A strangled whimper escapes from him.
“It literally means 'out of crucifying.' I researched the topic quite thoroughly. I can't stand ignorance.” Jonah is pacing in slow circles around the crude wooden frame from which Sam is hanging. He does this every day at the same hour, and says the same things every time. Sam has lost count of how many times he's heard this speech.
“Did you know that there's a considerable amount of debate about whether to drive the nails through the palms of the hands or the wrists? The best compromise I was able to come up with was to angle the nails right through the carpal tunnel. Although it turns out that if you drive nails through the sides of the heels and pin the feet to the post this way,” he crouches down to tap at Sam's ankle, provoking another moan, “that it is in fact possible to crucify someone through the palms. Before, people thought that the human hand wouldn't be able to withstand that much weight, but this method allows the legs to bear most of the weight. In fact, sometimes it was so successful that they broke the criminal's legs with an iron club in order to hasten death.”
Sam tries to raise his head, but the movement sends fire through his neck and shoulders, and he has to drop it again until his chin is resting against his chest. His lungs are burning with the effort to breathe, and he's long since lost all feeling in his hands. Blood has crusted over his eyes, sealing them almost shut. His mouth is filled with the bitter taste of copper and bile.
“I'm surprised you've lasted this long. I suppose it's all that wholesome Kansas grain-fed childhood coming out in you. Wasn't Clark Kent from Kansas too? Somewhere like that. Dorothy was a pretty healthy-looking girl, too, as I recall. Good farming stock.” Jonah' tone is light, conversational, as though he's making small talk at a garden party. Sam halfway expects to see a platter of sandwiches and a punch bowl materialize somewhere.
“Or maybe,” and now the tone is low, threatening, “it's Lucifer's unholy power keeping you alive.”
Sam chokes and coughs. Out of reflex rather than surprise. He allows himself the luxury of thinking about Dean, just for a moment, then shoves the thought to the back of his mind. Dean doesn't belong here, in this filthy warehouse filled with unwashed religious fanatics who are simply waiting for the archangel Michael to come and cleanse the world with holy fire. He wants Dean as far away from all this as possible.
“I think it's about time we made sure that Lucifer can never occupy his chosen vessel, don't you?”
The snap of Jonah's fingers echoes in the cavernous space, and Sam hears the scrape of booted feet on the cement floor. He catches a glimpse of metal reflecting light, and his mind registers crowbar just as a man with thick, gnarled forearms swings the implement at him with all the strength he can muster.
He screams.
*
“I can make this stop, you know.”
At least inside his head he's able to talk. So he takes advantage of it and spits, as disdainfully as he can. “No.”
Lucifer tilts his head, twisting Nick's ravaged face into a mockery of compassion. “I truly don't understand why you're being so stubborn.”
“And that's why you're failing.”
Lucifer begins to pace in slow circles around him, and Sam feels a chill run up his spine as his movements echo those of of Jonah. He's still trapped, still can't move. Everything is the same, except that Lucifer has allowed him the use of his tongue. It's impossible to say “yes” if he can't speak, after all. He tracks the fallen angel with his eyes as far as he can, until Lucifer removes himself from his line of sight. He reminds Sam of the panthers at the zoo, pacing in their ill-fitting cages, waiting for the moment they can burst out of their prisons and ravage the first warm-blooded mammal that presents itself. Sam imagines he can see light leaking through the seams of Lucifer's disintegrating vessel, and shuts his eyes against it.
“They think they're doing God's work, you know.”
“I know.”
“Of course, they don't know that I'm keeping you alive. They think you're going to die. I won't let that happen, needless to say.”
“But you're going to let them keep doing this.”
“Yes.”
Sam shifts on his cross in spite of himself, and the shock-waves of pain make his vision grey out for a moment. “They've crippled me.” He wants Dean with every fibre of his being, wants to sob his brother's name over and over until it conjures him out of thin air. He doesn't say it, though.
Lucifer puts his lips to Sam's ear, breath cool against his skin. “I don't need your body whole in order to possess it. Healing it is well within my abilities. I just need your consent.”
It's getting harder to breathe. His legs are useless now, they made sure of that. All his weight is pulling on his arms, the tendons tearing, millimeter by terrible millimeter. He should be dead. Wishes he were dead. A sob wells up in his throat, although his eyes have been dry of tears for days now.
The face before him now is Dean's, but the eyes are Lucifer's. Always so sorrowful. Sam thinks the only real sorrow Lucifer feels is for himself. “Aren't you tired of suffering, Sammy?” The voice sounds so much like Dean's, and for a desperate moment he lets his eyes slip shut, lets himself pretend that it really is Dean, lets himself bask in the comfort of his voice. A choked sob forces its way to the surface.
“God... Dean...”
A calloused hand reaches out and traces the contour of his jaw, and he shudders and moans as pain jolts through him. He's long since stopped hoping to lose consciousness. The closest he gets to oblivion are these conversations with Lucifer, and he's always awake. Lucifer wants him to feel every moment, he realized this a long time ago.
“I know it's hard to believe, but I don't want you to suffer, Sammy,” Dean's voice croons into his ear. “I want nothing but good for you. To protect you, keep you safe. I can do that, if you'll let me. I can make it all go away.”
He forces his eyes open, tries to find the part of him that hurts the most, focuses on that, and lets all the pain leech into his voice. “No.”
“Your brother won't come,” Dean is gone, and Nick's voice reaches past his defenses to stroke at the tender spots that have formed in his mind. “He doesn't know where you are, even if he wanted to come, and you know he doesn't want to, deep down. Oh, he'll go through the motions, of course, but you and I both know that he's worn out, exhausted from having to carry both your burdens. It's just you and me, now, Sam. It's inevitable.”
Sam manages to shake his head, just enough to make his meaning clear.
“All right. You don't have to say yes now. I have all the time in the world. We can pick up later.”
*
There's a burning pain in his side, a new pain, and when Sam jerks and tries to scream, only a hoarse whisper gets past his lips. His vision fades in and out, and he can only guess at what they've done to him. It feels like a knife, or some sort of blade. More blood fills his mouth, dribbles over his bottom lip and onto the floor, pooling at the foot of the cross.
“Do you know that humiliation is as much of a disincentive as anything to committing crimes?” Jonah is circling again, looking like a pious shark. “All those paintings and sculptures provide tasteful loin cloths, but that's not how it was really done. The whole point is to make it as horrific as possible. Exposing the genitalia, forcing the condemned to soil themselves in public, all so that mothers could point to the criminals and say to their children 'You see? That's what happens if you aren't good.' And you are the epitome of everything that's wrong in this world, aren't you? You reek of filth, of corruption and decay. I'm amazed people don't gag at your approach. Don't think we haven't seen the signs. The revelations are clear: kill you, and we restore the world to its rightful order.”
If he could, he'd laugh. He wants to tell Jonah just how wrong he is, how he's playing right into Lucifer's hands, but he hasn't been able to talk outside of his head in longer than he can remember. His shattered legs are screaming in agony, the pain awoken anew by the latest onslaught of blade against skin. He can't breathe through it, each breath sends stabbing pains shooting through his chest and arms. He's past praying for death: no one has ever answered his prayers before, and he doesn't expect them to start now.
He's drifting away -back toward Lucifer, he thinks with something that might be resignation- when his world explodes in a flurry of sound: screaming and explosions and a pungent smell that would make him choke if there was any breath left in his body. He recognizes the rattling of automatic gunfire, the barking report of hand guns, more screaming and voices shouting orders. He can hear Jonah's voice, rising above the fray in a desperate shriek.
“No! No! We're doing God's work! You can't stop us, it's God's work!”
Jonah's voice is lost in the fray a moment later. The chaos seems to go on forever, but lasts only a few minutes before it dies down again. Everything goes terribly, terribly still, except for the sound of his breathing, ragged and tearing in his ears. Then there's the scrape of booted feet on cement, and someone is there, but he can't raise his head to see what fresh form of torture is in store now. He finds he can't bring himself to care.
There's a sharp inhalation. “Jesus,” a male voice breathes. He doesn't recognize it. The voice is raised a moment later. “Over here! Got a body! Christ, these people are sick. Fucking psychos.”
There's a hand at his neck a moment later, and he can't help the strangled whine that forces its way to the surface as even that touch sends pain spiraling through him.
“Jesus Christ!” the hand pulls back. “Get the EMTs in here, he's alive! Holy shit. Hey,” the voice goes quiet again, reassuring. “Can you hear me buddy? It's okay, we're going to get you out of here. Just hang in there. Christ, I didn't mean like... Just hold on, okay? We're getting you help.”
Where's Dean? He wants to ask. His tongue won't move, though, and he thinks he probably can't make a sound anyway. There's a flurry of activity, voices surrounding him.
“What've we got? Oh, God.”
“You can say that again.”
“How the hell are we supposed to get him down?”
“See if we can get him flat. Is that fire truck still here? We can't pull those out, not without a surgeon. He'll bleed out. See if they've got something to cut the wood.”
He wants to tell them that he's not going to die, no matter what they do. Just get me down. Please. They can't hear him, no matter how loudly he yells in his head. He loses track of how many minutes go by, and then there's a jolt, the sound of some kind of machinery, and he realizes that he was wrong when he thought the pain couldn't get worse.
“God, how is he still even conscious?”
He won't let me go.
He's grateful, at least, that he can't tell what they're doing. There's just pain, and in a way that's easier. He doesn't care anymore. He's on his back, feels the pressure on his lacerated back ease, and it's easier to breathe now. He flinches away when something presses against his face.
“Easy, buddy. It's just to help you breathe. Come on, now, easy does it.”
There's movement, and he feels the ground fall away again. Lights flicker and flash before his closed eyelids, and he guesses he's being moved, can't make much sense of what's happening. Nothing makes sense, hasn't made sense in so long that he wonders if it was an illusion, the order and logic that was there before.
“Sam? Sammy?”
The voices erupt into chaos again. “Who the hell is this guy? Get him back! Get him out of my face!”
“God dammit, that's my brother! Get the fuck out of my way!”
Dean?
He tries to shake his head against the impossibility of it all, but he can't move. Dean isn't here. He can't be here, there's no way. But he can hear his voice, still yelling in the background, and the sound is so very Dean, so unmistakeably him, that he can't quite make himself stop hoping, stop believing.
“Sammy! Sammy I'm right here!”
“Sir, you need to back up and let us work. You can follow us to the hospital, all right?”
“Okay, okay, fine! Sammy, I'll be right behind you, you hear me?”
Dean.
It's too good to be true. He doesn't believe it for a minute, but the corners of his mouth tug into a smile, and for the first time since he can remember, he slips into complete darkness.
*
It's dark for a long time. It feels kind of like floating far under the surface of a very deep, dark lake, and he can't bring himself to be scared, because there's no pain at all here. Slowly, though, he feels himself coming to the surface, and he considers fighting it, can't face the thought of going back to all the pain, but Dean is on the surface, and he owes it to him to try, at least. He hears the quiet whirr of a machine, the beeping of what sounds like a heart monitor. He's been in enough hospitals to recognize the sounds. His eyes won't open.
“Mr. Page?” A woman's voice.
“Dean, please. Mr. Page is my dad,” The words are right, but Dean's voice is flat, as though he's just going through the motions.
“Dean, then. I'm sorry to disturb you, but I still have some questions.”
“Can it wait?”
“I'd rather not. The sooner we have all our information, the sooner we can proceed with pressing charges.”
Sam feels the feather-light touch of fingers on his arm, is almost surprised that it doesn't hurt. The woman speaks again when Dean stays silent.
“How is he doing?”
He can imagine Dean shrugging. “He's alive. Breathing on his own, mostly. No way of telling how bad it is until he wakes up. There's... there's a lot of nerve damage,” Dean's voice falters.
“And you have no idea why the group would have fixated on your brother?”
“No. I just... I came back one day and he was just gone. I don't know what they wanted.” Dean's lying, but she doesn't know that.
“They seem to have been convinced that he was their enemy, somehow.”
“I heard. Lucifer's vessel, or whatever. Crazy shit.”
“It's hard to believe, I know. You've never crossed paths with any of them?”
“Not that I know of. Sam either.”
Dean's finger is tracing a careful pattern on Sam's arm, anchoring him in place. The lake is all but gone now, the waters receding, and this time he manages to open his eyes to slits, twitches a hand toward Dean, and is rewarded with a stabbing pain through his arm. Dean is out of his chair in a flash, bending over him.
“Sammy? Hey, hey, Sammy, it's okay. I gotcha,” Dean is visibly being careful not to touch him, and even while he's grateful he wishes with all his being that Dean would just forget about it and hold him down before he floats away again. He opens his mouth, but he can't produce much more than a strangled croak, and Dean shushes him. “Don't try to talk, okay? You kind of screwed up your throat.”
Something cold presses against his lips, and when he parts them he feels ice melting against his tongue. He swallows gingerly, and Dean feeds him more ice chips until he twists away.
“Attaboy, Sammy. You just take it easy, okay?”
He forces his voice to work. “No.”
“Shh. Don't talk, okay? Just wait a while. You can talk as much as you want when you're better.”
He can't shake his head, but he tries anyway. “L'c'fer. I said no. You b'lieve me, right?” It's important than Dean know that he didn't say yes. He doesn't want to see that look on Dean's face ever again.
“'Course I do, Sammy. I know you. It's okay.”
Everything goes dark again, but the next time he surfaces, he feels a little lighter, too. Dean is still there, slumped in his chair, sleeping propped up on his hand. He stirs almost immediately as he registers the change in the frequency of the heart monitor, though, and is back leaning over the bed in a flash.
“You back among the living?”
He nods. “How long?” There's something wrong with his throat, he remembers Dean saying something about it. His voice is all wrong, the words scraping along his vocal cords.
“Almost two weeks. You've kind of been in and out. How you feeling?”
“Hurts.” It's not exactly a lie, although it hurts a lot less than he remembers. “Jonah?”
“He's long gone. They think he's a fucking raving psychotic loon, and they locked him up for his own good. I mean, he is a fucking raving psychotic loon, but not for the reasons they think. If they hadn't put him somewhere safe, I'd go in there and burn a clip in him, just on principle.”
“Human.”
“Fuck that,” Dean says grimly, and Sam is a little worried at how good it makes him feel to hear it. “The fucker crucified you, Sammy. Literally. He better stay locked up if he wants to keep breathing air. Fuck!”
“Lucifer.” God, it hurts to talk. “Manipulated him. Not his fault.”
“Fuck that,” Dean says again, and Sam realizes that his brother looks like he's about to come apart. He lifts his hand off the bed, noticing the heavy bandages around both hands for the first time, and pats Dean clumsily on the arm.
“'s okay, Dean. Not your fault, either.”
“Shit.” Dean pulls away, rubbing a hand over his face in an effort not to cry. “I'm so sorry, Sammy. I should've been paying better attention.”
“Not your fault.”
“Feels like it. That fucking maniac crippled you, and I wasn't even there,” he says softly, and the words send a chill down his spine. He hasn't had time to think about the implications until now, but he remembers the size of the nails when Jonah showed them to him.
“How bad?”
Dean shrugs, scrubs at his face, losing the battle with his tears. “They don't know, exactly. But it's bad. Shit, I'm sorry. I'm trying, here, Sammy, I really am.”
“Know you are. It's okay.”
“It's not fucking okay!” Dean snaps. “God, stop saying that! Jesus, you're killing me, here. Fuck!”
“Dean...” he wishes he could make his voice work the way he wants. He can't move his hand properly, snags the tips of his fingers in the fabric of Dean's shirt. “C'mere.”
That stops Dean short. “What?”
“Come. Here.”
Dean snorts, managing to look panicked, incredulous, and a little derisive all at the same time. “No. No way.”
Carefully, ignoring the pain lancing through him, Sam shifts on the bed, making room. “Please?”
“Don't be a girl. Just go back to sleep. You need something for the pain?”
“Don't want to.” He struggles to sit up, only to have Dean push him back down. “I keep dreaming about him. Lucifer.”
It has the desired effect of getting his brother to stop crying, at least. Dean bites his lip. “You gotta sleep sometime, Sam.”
“Then come.”
Dean snorts again, but this time the smile is softer, and it's the sound of Dean settling back into a role he'd forgotten. “Put myself between you and the nightmares, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“You get me into trouble with the doctors, it's all on you, you hear me?”
Sam can't quite bite back a gasp and moan of pain as Dean slides next to him on the bed, careful to avoid the wires, and toes off his boots, but he wedges himself against the warm, solid breadth of Dean's back before his brother can change his mind, and places a bandaged hand on his arm. Feels safer now than he has in years.
“It's gonna be fine,” he whispers. “You'll see.”
For a while, he even manages to believe it.
Title: Ex Crucio
Prompt: From a prompt by the lovely and talented mimblexwimble: Crucifixion. *cough* Original prompt can be found here.
Spoilers: General for Season 5.
Word Count: 3,795
Warnings: Violence, torture, bad language.
Disclaimer: Kripke's sandbox. I'm just playing with it while no one is looking.
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer: Someone told me the other day that it's okay to get a kick out of kicking the puppy, but apparently I get a kick out of crucifying the puppy, too. I think that might make me a bad person.
Neurotic Authorial Disclaimer #2: So, uh, there's not much plot here. It's just me being really, really mean to Sam. I'm not 100% happy with how it turned out, but still.
Sam hasn't screamed in days. He wants to, desperately. He's never felt anything close to this before. Of course, that's the point. He's had this explained to him in painstaking detail by the man everyone here calls “Father Jonah,” who doesn't look anything like his name. He's a young man, younger even than Sam, with liquid brown eyes that burn with the intensity that only the truly mad can achieve. He's clean-shaven, dressed conservatively in a white shirt and dark pants, the sleeves carefully rolled up to his elbows to avoid getting them dirty.
He waits until Sam has stopped screaming to explain why he's doing this. “The whole point of crucifixion,” he says softly, running a finger lightly over the head of the nail that's pinning Sam's right wrist to the wood, “was to provide the biggest disincentive to sin as was humanly conceivable. That's where the word 'excruciating' comes from, did you know that?”
Sam can't answer. He thinks he's bitten through his tongue, maybe. A strangled whimper escapes from him.
“It literally means 'out of crucifying.' I researched the topic quite thoroughly. I can't stand ignorance.” Jonah is pacing in slow circles around the crude wooden frame from which Sam is hanging. He does this every day at the same hour, and says the same things every time. Sam has lost count of how many times he's heard this speech.
“Did you know that there's a considerable amount of debate about whether to drive the nails through the palms of the hands or the wrists? The best compromise I was able to come up with was to angle the nails right through the carpal tunnel. Although it turns out that if you drive nails through the sides of the heels and pin the feet to the post this way,” he crouches down to tap at Sam's ankle, provoking another moan, “that it is in fact possible to crucify someone through the palms. Before, people thought that the human hand wouldn't be able to withstand that much weight, but this method allows the legs to bear most of the weight. In fact, sometimes it was so successful that they broke the criminal's legs with an iron club in order to hasten death.”
Sam tries to raise his head, but the movement sends fire through his neck and shoulders, and he has to drop it again until his chin is resting against his chest. His lungs are burning with the effort to breathe, and he's long since lost all feeling in his hands. Blood has crusted over his eyes, sealing them almost shut. His mouth is filled with the bitter taste of copper and bile.
“I'm surprised you've lasted this long. I suppose it's all that wholesome Kansas grain-fed childhood coming out in you. Wasn't Clark Kent from Kansas too? Somewhere like that. Dorothy was a pretty healthy-looking girl, too, as I recall. Good farming stock.” Jonah' tone is light, conversational, as though he's making small talk at a garden party. Sam halfway expects to see a platter of sandwiches and a punch bowl materialize somewhere.
“Or maybe,” and now the tone is low, threatening, “it's Lucifer's unholy power keeping you alive.”
Sam chokes and coughs. Out of reflex rather than surprise. He allows himself the luxury of thinking about Dean, just for a moment, then shoves the thought to the back of his mind. Dean doesn't belong here, in this filthy warehouse filled with unwashed religious fanatics who are simply waiting for the archangel Michael to come and cleanse the world with holy fire. He wants Dean as far away from all this as possible.
“I think it's about time we made sure that Lucifer can never occupy his chosen vessel, don't you?”
The snap of Jonah's fingers echoes in the cavernous space, and Sam hears the scrape of booted feet on the cement floor. He catches a glimpse of metal reflecting light, and his mind registers crowbar just as a man with thick, gnarled forearms swings the implement at him with all the strength he can muster.
He screams.
*
“I can make this stop, you know.”
At least inside his head he's able to talk. So he takes advantage of it and spits, as disdainfully as he can. “No.”
Lucifer tilts his head, twisting Nick's ravaged face into a mockery of compassion. “I truly don't understand why you're being so stubborn.”
“And that's why you're failing.”
Lucifer begins to pace in slow circles around him, and Sam feels a chill run up his spine as his movements echo those of of Jonah. He's still trapped, still can't move. Everything is the same, except that Lucifer has allowed him the use of his tongue. It's impossible to say “yes” if he can't speak, after all. He tracks the fallen angel with his eyes as far as he can, until Lucifer removes himself from his line of sight. He reminds Sam of the panthers at the zoo, pacing in their ill-fitting cages, waiting for the moment they can burst out of their prisons and ravage the first warm-blooded mammal that presents itself. Sam imagines he can see light leaking through the seams of Lucifer's disintegrating vessel, and shuts his eyes against it.
“They think they're doing God's work, you know.”
“I know.”
“Of course, they don't know that I'm keeping you alive. They think you're going to die. I won't let that happen, needless to say.”
“But you're going to let them keep doing this.”
“Yes.”
Sam shifts on his cross in spite of himself, and the shock-waves of pain make his vision grey out for a moment. “They've crippled me.” He wants Dean with every fibre of his being, wants to sob his brother's name over and over until it conjures him out of thin air. He doesn't say it, though.
Lucifer puts his lips to Sam's ear, breath cool against his skin. “I don't need your body whole in order to possess it. Healing it is well within my abilities. I just need your consent.”
It's getting harder to breathe. His legs are useless now, they made sure of that. All his weight is pulling on his arms, the tendons tearing, millimeter by terrible millimeter. He should be dead. Wishes he were dead. A sob wells up in his throat, although his eyes have been dry of tears for days now.
The face before him now is Dean's, but the eyes are Lucifer's. Always so sorrowful. Sam thinks the only real sorrow Lucifer feels is for himself. “Aren't you tired of suffering, Sammy?” The voice sounds so much like Dean's, and for a desperate moment he lets his eyes slip shut, lets himself pretend that it really is Dean, lets himself bask in the comfort of his voice. A choked sob forces its way to the surface.
“God... Dean...”
A calloused hand reaches out and traces the contour of his jaw, and he shudders and moans as pain jolts through him. He's long since stopped hoping to lose consciousness. The closest he gets to oblivion are these conversations with Lucifer, and he's always awake. Lucifer wants him to feel every moment, he realized this a long time ago.
“I know it's hard to believe, but I don't want you to suffer, Sammy,” Dean's voice croons into his ear. “I want nothing but good for you. To protect you, keep you safe. I can do that, if you'll let me. I can make it all go away.”
He forces his eyes open, tries to find the part of him that hurts the most, focuses on that, and lets all the pain leech into his voice. “No.”
“Your brother won't come,” Dean is gone, and Nick's voice reaches past his defenses to stroke at the tender spots that have formed in his mind. “He doesn't know where you are, even if he wanted to come, and you know he doesn't want to, deep down. Oh, he'll go through the motions, of course, but you and I both know that he's worn out, exhausted from having to carry both your burdens. It's just you and me, now, Sam. It's inevitable.”
Sam manages to shake his head, just enough to make his meaning clear.
“All right. You don't have to say yes now. I have all the time in the world. We can pick up later.”
*
There's a burning pain in his side, a new pain, and when Sam jerks and tries to scream, only a hoarse whisper gets past his lips. His vision fades in and out, and he can only guess at what they've done to him. It feels like a knife, or some sort of blade. More blood fills his mouth, dribbles over his bottom lip and onto the floor, pooling at the foot of the cross.
“Do you know that humiliation is as much of a disincentive as anything to committing crimes?” Jonah is circling again, looking like a pious shark. “All those paintings and sculptures provide tasteful loin cloths, but that's not how it was really done. The whole point is to make it as horrific as possible. Exposing the genitalia, forcing the condemned to soil themselves in public, all so that mothers could point to the criminals and say to their children 'You see? That's what happens if you aren't good.' And you are the epitome of everything that's wrong in this world, aren't you? You reek of filth, of corruption and decay. I'm amazed people don't gag at your approach. Don't think we haven't seen the signs. The revelations are clear: kill you, and we restore the world to its rightful order.”
If he could, he'd laugh. He wants to tell Jonah just how wrong he is, how he's playing right into Lucifer's hands, but he hasn't been able to talk outside of his head in longer than he can remember. His shattered legs are screaming in agony, the pain awoken anew by the latest onslaught of blade against skin. He can't breathe through it, each breath sends stabbing pains shooting through his chest and arms. He's past praying for death: no one has ever answered his prayers before, and he doesn't expect them to start now.
He's drifting away -back toward Lucifer, he thinks with something that might be resignation- when his world explodes in a flurry of sound: screaming and explosions and a pungent smell that would make him choke if there was any breath left in his body. He recognizes the rattling of automatic gunfire, the barking report of hand guns, more screaming and voices shouting orders. He can hear Jonah's voice, rising above the fray in a desperate shriek.
“No! No! We're doing God's work! You can't stop us, it's God's work!”
Jonah's voice is lost in the fray a moment later. The chaos seems to go on forever, but lasts only a few minutes before it dies down again. Everything goes terribly, terribly still, except for the sound of his breathing, ragged and tearing in his ears. Then there's the scrape of booted feet on cement, and someone is there, but he can't raise his head to see what fresh form of torture is in store now. He finds he can't bring himself to care.
There's a sharp inhalation. “Jesus,” a male voice breathes. He doesn't recognize it. The voice is raised a moment later. “Over here! Got a body! Christ, these people are sick. Fucking psychos.”
There's a hand at his neck a moment later, and he can't help the strangled whine that forces its way to the surface as even that touch sends pain spiraling through him.
“Jesus Christ!” the hand pulls back. “Get the EMTs in here, he's alive! Holy shit. Hey,” the voice goes quiet again, reassuring. “Can you hear me buddy? It's okay, we're going to get you out of here. Just hang in there. Christ, I didn't mean like... Just hold on, okay? We're getting you help.”
Where's Dean? He wants to ask. His tongue won't move, though, and he thinks he probably can't make a sound anyway. There's a flurry of activity, voices surrounding him.
“What've we got? Oh, God.”
“You can say that again.”
“How the hell are we supposed to get him down?”
“See if we can get him flat. Is that fire truck still here? We can't pull those out, not without a surgeon. He'll bleed out. See if they've got something to cut the wood.”
He wants to tell them that he's not going to die, no matter what they do. Just get me down. Please. They can't hear him, no matter how loudly he yells in his head. He loses track of how many minutes go by, and then there's a jolt, the sound of some kind of machinery, and he realizes that he was wrong when he thought the pain couldn't get worse.
“God, how is he still even conscious?”
He won't let me go.
He's grateful, at least, that he can't tell what they're doing. There's just pain, and in a way that's easier. He doesn't care anymore. He's on his back, feels the pressure on his lacerated back ease, and it's easier to breathe now. He flinches away when something presses against his face.
“Easy, buddy. It's just to help you breathe. Come on, now, easy does it.”
There's movement, and he feels the ground fall away again. Lights flicker and flash before his closed eyelids, and he guesses he's being moved, can't make much sense of what's happening. Nothing makes sense, hasn't made sense in so long that he wonders if it was an illusion, the order and logic that was there before.
“Sam? Sammy?”
The voices erupt into chaos again. “Who the hell is this guy? Get him back! Get him out of my face!”
“God dammit, that's my brother! Get the fuck out of my way!”
Dean?
He tries to shake his head against the impossibility of it all, but he can't move. Dean isn't here. He can't be here, there's no way. But he can hear his voice, still yelling in the background, and the sound is so very Dean, so unmistakeably him, that he can't quite make himself stop hoping, stop believing.
“Sammy! Sammy I'm right here!”
“Sir, you need to back up and let us work. You can follow us to the hospital, all right?”
“Okay, okay, fine! Sammy, I'll be right behind you, you hear me?”
Dean.
It's too good to be true. He doesn't believe it for a minute, but the corners of his mouth tug into a smile, and for the first time since he can remember, he slips into complete darkness.
*
It's dark for a long time. It feels kind of like floating far under the surface of a very deep, dark lake, and he can't bring himself to be scared, because there's no pain at all here. Slowly, though, he feels himself coming to the surface, and he considers fighting it, can't face the thought of going back to all the pain, but Dean is on the surface, and he owes it to him to try, at least. He hears the quiet whirr of a machine, the beeping of what sounds like a heart monitor. He's been in enough hospitals to recognize the sounds. His eyes won't open.
“Mr. Page?” A woman's voice.
“Dean, please. Mr. Page is my dad,” The words are right, but Dean's voice is flat, as though he's just going through the motions.
“Dean, then. I'm sorry to disturb you, but I still have some questions.”
“Can it wait?”
“I'd rather not. The sooner we have all our information, the sooner we can proceed with pressing charges.”
Sam feels the feather-light touch of fingers on his arm, is almost surprised that it doesn't hurt. The woman speaks again when Dean stays silent.
“How is he doing?”
He can imagine Dean shrugging. “He's alive. Breathing on his own, mostly. No way of telling how bad it is until he wakes up. There's... there's a lot of nerve damage,” Dean's voice falters.
“And you have no idea why the group would have fixated on your brother?”
“No. I just... I came back one day and he was just gone. I don't know what they wanted.” Dean's lying, but she doesn't know that.
“They seem to have been convinced that he was their enemy, somehow.”
“I heard. Lucifer's vessel, or whatever. Crazy shit.”
“It's hard to believe, I know. You've never crossed paths with any of them?”
“Not that I know of. Sam either.”
Dean's finger is tracing a careful pattern on Sam's arm, anchoring him in place. The lake is all but gone now, the waters receding, and this time he manages to open his eyes to slits, twitches a hand toward Dean, and is rewarded with a stabbing pain through his arm. Dean is out of his chair in a flash, bending over him.
“Sammy? Hey, hey, Sammy, it's okay. I gotcha,” Dean is visibly being careful not to touch him, and even while he's grateful he wishes with all his being that Dean would just forget about it and hold him down before he floats away again. He opens his mouth, but he can't produce much more than a strangled croak, and Dean shushes him. “Don't try to talk, okay? You kind of screwed up your throat.”
Something cold presses against his lips, and when he parts them he feels ice melting against his tongue. He swallows gingerly, and Dean feeds him more ice chips until he twists away.
“Attaboy, Sammy. You just take it easy, okay?”
He forces his voice to work. “No.”
“Shh. Don't talk, okay? Just wait a while. You can talk as much as you want when you're better.”
He can't shake his head, but he tries anyway. “L'c'fer. I said no. You b'lieve me, right?” It's important than Dean know that he didn't say yes. He doesn't want to see that look on Dean's face ever again.
“'Course I do, Sammy. I know you. It's okay.”
Everything goes dark again, but the next time he surfaces, he feels a little lighter, too. Dean is still there, slumped in his chair, sleeping propped up on his hand. He stirs almost immediately as he registers the change in the frequency of the heart monitor, though, and is back leaning over the bed in a flash.
“You back among the living?”
He nods. “How long?” There's something wrong with his throat, he remembers Dean saying something about it. His voice is all wrong, the words scraping along his vocal cords.
“Almost two weeks. You've kind of been in and out. How you feeling?”
“Hurts.” It's not exactly a lie, although it hurts a lot less than he remembers. “Jonah?”
“He's long gone. They think he's a fucking raving psychotic loon, and they locked him up for his own good. I mean, he is a fucking raving psychotic loon, but not for the reasons they think. If they hadn't put him somewhere safe, I'd go in there and burn a clip in him, just on principle.”
“Human.”
“Fuck that,” Dean says grimly, and Sam is a little worried at how good it makes him feel to hear it. “The fucker crucified you, Sammy. Literally. He better stay locked up if he wants to keep breathing air. Fuck!”
“Lucifer.” God, it hurts to talk. “Manipulated him. Not his fault.”
“Fuck that,” Dean says again, and Sam realizes that his brother looks like he's about to come apart. He lifts his hand off the bed, noticing the heavy bandages around both hands for the first time, and pats Dean clumsily on the arm.
“'s okay, Dean. Not your fault, either.”
“Shit.” Dean pulls away, rubbing a hand over his face in an effort not to cry. “I'm so sorry, Sammy. I should've been paying better attention.”
“Not your fault.”
“Feels like it. That fucking maniac crippled you, and I wasn't even there,” he says softly, and the words send a chill down his spine. He hasn't had time to think about the implications until now, but he remembers the size of the nails when Jonah showed them to him.
“How bad?”
Dean shrugs, scrubs at his face, losing the battle with his tears. “They don't know, exactly. But it's bad. Shit, I'm sorry. I'm trying, here, Sammy, I really am.”
“Know you are. It's okay.”
“It's not fucking okay!” Dean snaps. “God, stop saying that! Jesus, you're killing me, here. Fuck!”
“Dean...” he wishes he could make his voice work the way he wants. He can't move his hand properly, snags the tips of his fingers in the fabric of Dean's shirt. “C'mere.”
That stops Dean short. “What?”
“Come. Here.”
Dean snorts, managing to look panicked, incredulous, and a little derisive all at the same time. “No. No way.”
Carefully, ignoring the pain lancing through him, Sam shifts on the bed, making room. “Please?”
“Don't be a girl. Just go back to sleep. You need something for the pain?”
“Don't want to.” He struggles to sit up, only to have Dean push him back down. “I keep dreaming about him. Lucifer.”
It has the desired effect of getting his brother to stop crying, at least. Dean bites his lip. “You gotta sleep sometime, Sam.”
“Then come.”
Dean snorts again, but this time the smile is softer, and it's the sound of Dean settling back into a role he'd forgotten. “Put myself between you and the nightmares, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“You get me into trouble with the doctors, it's all on you, you hear me?”
Sam can't quite bite back a gasp and moan of pain as Dean slides next to him on the bed, careful to avoid the wires, and toes off his boots, but he wedges himself against the warm, solid breadth of Dean's back before his brother can change his mind, and places a bandaged hand on his arm. Feels safer now than he has in years.
“It's gonna be fine,” he whispers. “You'll see.”
For a while, he even manages to believe it.