Title: Who's afraid of the dark?
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: NC-17
Summary: It should have been just another birthday, but it wasn't. When Sam disappears mysteriously, John, Dean and Bobby team up to start a desperate search for him. Meanwhile, Sam wakes up in a strange, cold room, where no one talks to him, although he knows he's being watched. He's just a boy, and when things go terribly wrong, can Dean help him survive the darkness that creeps through his skin and nestles in his bones? This is a story of great darkness and pain, but also of great love and comfort.
Warnings and A/N: Top!Dean, bottom!Sam, not for the faint of heart, graphic violence/torture and maybe more. Read at your own risk. Wee!cest, pre-series.



Previous chapters



Chapter 4


Sam woke up in that strange, parallel-universe like room without the slightest idea of what time it was. He knew he had fallen asleep, but he didn’t know for how long. The moment he opened his eyes that annoyingly bright white light flooded his sight and made him frown.

Tired, he had fallen asleep in a weird position, and his right foot was numb. He sat up in bed and stomped his foot to fight the feeling, and when he did so he noticed something different in the room.

A tray with food was sitting just by the door. In it there was food – rice and vegetables and meat, and a toothbrush with toothpaste on it.

Sam stood up and walked towards it. It looked as if it had been slipped into the room from underneath the door. Sam hadn’t noticed before that there was a gap between the floor and the door, so now he pushed the tray aside and pressed his cheek to the white floor, wondering if he could see something from there.

Sam squeezed himself as best he could, but his hand would only slip halfway under the door, and his eyes couldn’t see farther than the same white floor outside the door.

Frustrated and angry, Sam rose to his feet and looked at the camera again.

“I’m not eating your fucking food!” Sam kicked the tray of food and made a mess on the shining floor. The sight of rice and vegetables all over that whiteness cheered him up a bit. “You hear me?! I’m not gonna eat your fucking food, so you might as well just let me go!” Sam challenged.

He stared at the camera as if it was the devil himself, but again nothing happened. No sound, no voice, nothing. It was like Sam was inside a bubble.

Angry and frustrated, he went closer to the dark glassed window and started hitting it with his palms. “Can you see me? Do you see me? I know you do! I’m not eating your fucking food! Let me go now! Let me fucking go!” Sam closed his hands into fists and hit the glass as hard as he could, but nothing happened. It was way too thick to be damaged.

Tired and hungry, Sam sat down on a corner of the room and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked at the food sprawled on the floor and his stomach growled. ‘Shut up,’ he chastised it mentally. ‘I’m not gonna eat in here. I can eat when I’m home,’ he thought. And right now Sam needed to hang on to that thought, as it was the only thing he had.


~ * ~

The demon watched the boy silently. He saw when Sam kicked the food and heard when he started to yell at the camera.

“You will eat the food, Sam. You just don’t know it yet,” he spoke softly, to no one except himself.

It was all about time and patience, and he had made sure to have both available. He was aware that John Winchester was a terrific hunter, but even he would have trouble following any lead to Sam. This plan had been carefully thought out since Sam was a baby, and executed – perhaps not as brilliantly since the shifter had let Sam realize he wasn’t his brother, but decently enough.

“I’m here.”

The demon turned around and looked at the man.

“Good. Have you read my instructions?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any questions?”

“No,” the man said, firmly.

“Fine. Take this,” he gave a pair of weird glasses to the man.

“What are those for?”

“You’ll need them. To see in the dark.”

The man took the glasses and nodded.

“Go get ready. You’ll go in soon.”


~ * ~


Dean watched as Bobby and John paced around the living room. Bobby had arrived in the night of the second day of Sam’s disappearance. Since then John and he had talked about plans, strategies, possibilities and doubts as Dean sat there and listened.

The truth was that knowing there was something supernatural involved in Sam’s abduction didn’t make it any easier to solve the problem. It just served to make everyone more tense and scared about what might have happened.

As each hour closed by without Sam being back home Dean thought he would lose his mind. There were moments when he thought he just couldn’t do it. Having Bobby there, however, did help him a little.

Dean knew that Bobby was a badass hunter, and together with his father they would have to figure out a way to find Sam. There was some solace – and Dean clang to it desperately, – in the thought that if someone could find Sam, that someone was his father and Bobby, working together.

“Let’s put the word out for other hunters. If they catch a shifter we’ll interrogate the bastard. I don’t care if we have to kill every last one of them, but we’ll find the one who took Sam,” Bobby was saying.

Suddenly his father sat heavily on the sofa beside him and buried his face in his hands.

“John?” Bobby frowned.

“Dad?”

Dean and Bobby exchanged a meaningful look when they saw John’s shoulders move up and down as he cried into his hands.

“Dad, we’ll find him,” Dean spoke, barely able to hold back his own tears. Dean thought he couldn’t cry. He couldn’t think, for one second, that Sam wasn’t okay or that he wouldn’t be found. Hope was what had been feeding him for the past couple of days, and Dean needed to hang on to it like it was a drug.

“We’ll find him, John. You know we will,” Bobby spoke too.

“I made him go to school,” John raised his head and wiped his tears, his lips quivered as he spoke. “He didn’t want to go. It was his damn birthday. I could’ve just let him stay.”

“Dad, you couldn’t know,” Dean squeezed his father’s shoulder.

“I made him go and now he’s gone,” John shook his head disapprovingly.

“John, shut up already. It’s not your fault,” Bobby said. “Keep acting like that and it’ll take us twice as long to figure this out. C’mon, keep your shit together. Isn’t that what you always say? Go sleep some. I’m here now, and we’ll get the boy back.”

Dean watched as John listened to Bobby and nodded. He straightened his face and wiped the last tears off his eyes. It seemed like his dad too needed some sort of reassurance.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll go get some sleep,” John stood up, nodded towards his son and his friend, and went upstairs to either find sleep or pretend he did.

“What about you?” Bobby sat down beside Dean when they were alone.

“What about me?” Dean asked, startled.

“How are you holding up?”

Bobby placed a warm, comforting hand on Dean’s thigh. His look was so knowing and so loving that suddenly Dean felt his resolution about tears crumble.

“I’m scared, Bobby,” Dean confessed, and his voice sounded hoarse with the ghost of tears. “I’m afraid they’ll hurt him.”

“Sam’s a strong boy, Dean. He’ll hang in there until we get to him.”

Dean nodded. “He is,” he agreed.

“Now go get some sleep too. Tomorrow we start again.”

“Thanks for being here, Bobby,” Dean swallowed back his tears and regained composure.

“Dean… there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you boys. It’s as personal to me as it is for you and John.”

Dean smiled. He loved Bobby for saying that, for meaning that.

“Now go ahead, you need to rest.”

Dean nodded and stood up to leave as well, following in the same way his father had gone a few minutes earlier.

Alone in the living room Bobby sighed and thought deeply.

“Where are you Sam?” The question danced in his mind and in his heart, and the hope of answering it was what gave him strength now.


~ * ~


Sam had used the toilet a couple of times already. He didn’t know if it was day or night outside, and he didn’t know why dad and Dean hadn’t found him yet. All he knew was that he was getting apprehensive that maybe his dad wouldn’t have any good leads to follow.

“He’ll find a way,” Sam spoke softly, toying with his toes. “Dad always does,” he tried to convince himself.

It was boring not having anything to do. Sam knew he had spent hours looking around, alternating from angry, scared, frustrated, hungry and angry again. The food was still exactly where he had kicked it, and the plastic tray too.

The room was so bright, so full of that white light that when darkness came Sam found himself completely blind.

‘What?’ Sam frowned and stayed still. ‘What happened?!’ His brain tried to understand the new environment. Suddenly all light had gone out of the room leaving him swimming in complete, total darkness.

His eyes had been so adjusted to the intense light that Sam found himself unable to see the palm of his hand a few inches of his face.

“Hello?” He got up from the bed slowly and called out. “Hey, is anyone out there? What happened?” Sam’s ears picked up a thud. At first he thought it was his own heartbeats drumming in his ears, but as the seconds passed by Sam realized those were footsteps. “Are you coming to let me out?” Sam asked, but no one answered. The footsteps, however, got louder and closer.

Sam was up, somewhere in the middle of the pitch black room, when he heard the noise of a door unlocking.

“I’m here! Help me! I’m right here! I just can’t see anything!” Sam spoke from the spot where he stood. He stepped forward tentatively. It was so dark in there his brain refused to walk with confident steps.

Sam heard the noise of the door closing, and suddenly there was another breathing pattern there in the dark with him, indicating he wasn’t alone.

“Who’s there?”

The footsteps got closer, but because it was so dark in there Sam couldn’t tell exactly how distant the other person was until Sam sensed someone standing right before him. He couldn’t see much, but it felt like someone tall and strong. “Dad?” Sam tried, hopelessly. If that was his father, why hadn’t he said anything?

Sam swallowed hard. “Who are you?” He asked again. This time all the hairs went up in the back of his neck and Sam took a step backwards.

“Tell me! Who are-“

The man’s first punch hit Sam in the chin and caused him to bite his tongue and stumble backwards. The next punch hit him in the stomach, and caused all air to escape his lungs.

Sam fell to the floor, unprepared for what had just happened. The taste of blood filled his mouth because of his bitten tongue, and his stomach seemed afire from the blow.

The man went closer when the boy fell.

Sam hadn’t had time to wrap his mind around what had just happened when he felt strong hands lifting him back up. ‘It’s a man’, he thought. ‘And he’s strong.’

Sam put his hands before his face instinctively for protection, both from the dark and from the man in front of him.

The next punch hit his cheekbone and caused Sam’s head to explode with pain. He stumbled backwards again, but a strong hand kept him from falling.

“Who are you?!” Sam screamed, his breathing was now a messy panting, and his heart beat desperately fast in his chest. “What do you want from me?”

A hard slap across his face elicited a painful moan from him, and at last Sam’s brain seemed to understand he was in serious danger. He didn’t know who or why, but someone was attacking him, and he had to fight back.

The man watched, from his obvious advantage in height and strength, as the boy tried to punch back, fighting blindly in the dark room. Dark to him, anyway. The man saw his struggles and attempts at fighting back, which were sad, if not simply pathetic. He punched him again, on the nose this time, and let him go when Sam fell.

Sam landed on all fours, his nose bleeding profusely. He couldn’t see, but he felt hot liquid pouring from it, and he had to start breathing through his mouth because his nostrils were filled with warm blood.

The pain was crazy. He blinked several times to try and pull back from the blow, but that was when he was kicked hard on the side and landed flat on his belly on the floor, which, Sam thought vaguely, was probably not very white right now.

“Who are you? There must be something wrong! I haven’t done anything!” Sam said, because he knew he was obviously too hurt and much smaller than his invisible opponent to overpower him physically.

The man didn’t say a word.

When Sam lay on his side to try and get up, he felt a looming body next to his, and then pain exploded in his body once again.

The man punched his ribcage a couple of times and Sam gasped, blood coming out of his mouth in a desperate attempt to let the air come in.

Sam curled in a ball on the floor and shut his eyes. He knew he had to get up and fight, like he was taught to do, like Dean would do, but the pain was like poison, and it was advancing quickly in his system. Soon he couldn’t think clearly, let alone rationally.

The man watched, from a standing position, as the boy groaned on the floor. There was a lot of blood pooling around his face, blood which looked pitch black from behind his night vision glasses.

He circled him and stopped behind his back.

Sam wondered what would happen to him. If the man kept this up he could easily kill him. Would he die just like that? Alone? Without the slightest idea of what was happening to him?

“Arrghh!!” Sam screamed

The man kicked him exactly where his kidney was, and the pain was so fierce that it caused Sam to black out instantly.

As he stopped moving, the man watched him curiously. He leaned down and took his wrist. There was a fast and steady pulse. There should be one, otherwise the demon would probably kill him.

Deciding he had done his job for the time being, the man turned around and sighed. ‘No regrets,’ he thought firmly in his mind as he walked out of the room.


~ * ~


“So how was that?” The demon met the man halfway down the corridor.

“It got done, didn’t it?”

“Yes, I saw it. You followed the instructions, indeed.”

“Can I go now?”

“Yes, for now you can,” he nodded.

The man made as if he would walk past him.

“It’ll get easier, you know. With time,” the demon offered.

“Not, it won’t,” the man said, staring intently into the demon’s eyes. “But it will get done,” he promised before he walked out of the place.

The demon watched as the man disappeared in the end of the hallway. He turned around and went back to the place where he had been before, watching the scene unfold inside the room.

He turned all lights back on and through the dark, thick glass of the window he could see inside. He studied the mess the man had left behind – an unconscious boy, lying flat on his stomach.

From where he stood it might even be said that Sam was simply asleep after some strenuous physical activity.

That, of course, if one failed to see the boy’s head resting in a red pillow of his own blood.


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tbc....