![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fic: Winchester Synchronicity (NC17, Chapters 7&8)
Title: Winchester
Author: Rivestra
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, non-con, wincest
Chapter Seven
In the end, Ketill was surprisingly helpful. Or, at least, Dean thought he was being helpful. It seemed like it, anyway, and he really hoped that was because Sam had already done all the hard work, not because he was getting totally screwed.
Honestly, though, it felt a lot more like the latter.
He’d spent his last day in Ketill’s territory up on the surface in the intake pens, surrounded by confused, broken survivors who’d been rounded up from the local area and were being processed – whatever the fuck that meant – for sale. The guards talked about them like they were just another profit stream, and Dean supposed they were.
That morning, several large, refrigerated trucks had arrived outside the gates and begun to offload cattle corpses. They hadn’t even bothered to hose out the boxes before they started loading people into them. At a guess, Dean was one of maybe 200 souls heading off to auction and it looked like they’d be traveling in style.
Just before it was his turn to be loaded, the guards separated off Dean and eight others, all human. They directed their charges into black karate pajamas and cheap canvas shoes and arranged them side-by-side in a long line. No one resisted, or even spoke – which was hardly surprising since all nine moved like fighters. None of them was good enough to be any kind of threat though, so Dean dismissed them even as he recognized two of the men from the corridors around the ring.
Ketill arrived and inspected them all carefully as the guards chained them together hand-and-foot. He ranted at the caravan guards about getting a good price for this lot of fighters, and about the importance of them arriving in the same condition they left, promising retribution if they came to any harm. From the guards’ expressions, this was not business as usual, and they took his warnings seriously.
A short man emerged from the underground compound then, wearing thick teal-colored velvet robes that must have outweighed him by 20 pounds. He wheezed when he addressed Ketill. “These are the ones you want sealed?”
Dean watched Ketill nod, hoping vainly to get some clue about what was going on from the man. Wheezer began to chant in an unfamiliar language, his words ringing almost like church bells, hanging heavy and crystalline in the still air, clotting the air in his lungs. Breathing felt suddenly very wrong and Dean held his breath for long seconds until the chanting stopped. The quiet that followed left him feeling muffled, as if swaddled in thick cotton, and he could feel ripples of the words vibrating back up into him through the very earth he stood on.
Dean didn’t doubt for a second that there was real power in this man. Oh, this can’t be good. It’s never fun times when magic’s involved, unless you counted that one Wiccan Priestess in
The mage began moving down the line, stopping and muttering over each of them, one hand on a fighter’s chest, his other gesturing sinuously through the air. Each man sprang up as if electrified when he finished with them, then slumped over as his hand left their chest. It was all Dean could do to not flinch away when his turn came up, but Ketill’s eyes landed on his and the message in them was clear: this was all about Dean, and he would stand for it.
Over the course of his busy life he’d spent enough time listening to unintelligible ceremonial words to be pretty quick with them, and he recognized right away that the nonsense syllables the mage began to spout over him were not the same as they’d been for the others. Ketill’s eyes were still locked on his though, so Dean stood his ground and didn’t move as the mage’s hand connected with his chest, not even as his world exploded, as his consciousness was strewn out across the sky, every inch, every cell of him stretched and wide and open, the sensation slippery and fluid, impossible to pin down. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. He was only sure he still had a body because he could feel it everywhere as the sky and earth pressed on him, the very air thick and alive in his veins as they were stretched and exposed to it all.
Everything snapped back into place as the mage removed his hand, coiled up way tighter than Dean remembered, shutting down so far his heart stuttered in his chest like it barely had room to beat. He sucked in great gasps of air that were nowhere near enough for his starving lungs, his whole body shaking violently. His mind struggled to process the world again, but everything was muted and shimmery, fuzzy, like he was perceiving it through deep water that pressed mercilessly down on him. Too much, too full, too bright and dim and wet and dry all at the same time. I wonder if this is how tomatoes feel as they’re ground up for canning?
Eventually, he found himself kneeling on the dry earth, covered in sweat, his head pressed to the ground between his knees. Ketill had called the mage away after the last of the men were bound, and Dean was pathetically grateful for the reprieve. He had no idea how long it took him to stand again, the world still pressing too close and strong, but the moment he did, Ketill dismissed the mage and motioned to the guards. Dean didn’t even look back as they were frog-marched to the truck: it took all of his attention to navigate the chains and the ramp.
He passed out before the door finished rattling closed, pressed in tight against the others in the overcrowded truck.
Chapter Eight
Five torturous days later, the truck finally reached the auction yard. The spell settled into his bones during the endless drive, and he felt heavy, his heartbeat too loud, too close and the air still too thick. He could function again though, at least as soon as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness of the door opening. Dean had never been so glad to see the sky in his life, and he would never take claustrophobia lightly again.
They had new demons for guards here and this bunch was all pinkish and wrinkled and pissed-off looking – kind of like overgrown newborn babies, if newborns were five-feet-tall with lots of bulky muscles, violet cat-eyes and inch-long horns jutting out of their foreheads. He’d faced – killed – a lot of different demons over the last six months, but he still wondered where all these colorful freaks had been hiding for most of his life.
The Pinkies hauled them out of the truck in short order, showing off their strength by tossing humans out of the truck like cordwood: easy since most of them couldn’t even stand after five days packed in like sardines. Dean’s own little chain gang – the only fighters in the group – managed to scramble out under their own power. They were gruffly directed off to the side of the truck, the Pinkies shoving them clearly disappointed by their agility.
The yard was huge and Dean eventually recognized it through the hundreds of trucks as a fairly large airport. The sea of bound humans everywhere he looked changed the topography and made it difficult to focus on anything else. He watched, a familiar frustration rekindling in him, as the lines of men, women and children he’d spent the last five days with were brutally herded away, the Pinkie guards quick to use their cattle prods on the weakened survivors. One chained group after another disappeared until his group was alone in the pen. Then they got to wait some more.
More than anything right then, Dean hated the fucking unidirectional light. He missed the sun. He hadn’t exactly been an expert, but he missed knowing if it was six hours passing him by or just one stretched in slow motion. He never caught the guards’ cue, but there must have been one because suddenly they turned their cattle prods on them and it was time to move right now.
They shuffled into a low-ceilinged room, temporarily blinded again by the dimness inside. The guards weren’t patient, shoving them hard up against the wall. One barked out, “Be still, or get cut!” and Dean didn’t understand what that meant until he felt a blade against his skin, sawing through his clothes. He tried to not even breathe until they’ve finished the job, not trusting their skill with the wicked looking four-foot-long-handled scissors. The guy next to him jumped sharply a couple of times, and cries from several of the men to his left further validated his caution.
As they tightened the rough black hood over his head and adjusted its odd assortment of straps against his neck, Dean considered worrying that after five days he still hadn’t bothered to learn the name of a single fellow captive, but he couldn’t quite manage it.
Blinded by the hood, Dean’s survival instinct kicked into high gear, every sense but sight on high-alert. Their guards jockeyed like they were waiting to pass another checkpoint, but he couldn’t be sure. He kept hearing things like, “Move along” from the other side of the far door, followed by the zapping of more cattle prods. Fucking waiting’s gonna kill me before these freaks even get to it.
Finally, they were marched forward into a cold, humid space. Dean’s bare feet struggled for purchase on the slick, icy tile. The man two behind him went down hard, the echoing sound of his chains hitting the floor telling Dean they were in a large, almost empty room. The guards secured their line in several places to a long, metal bar and stepped away. One of them yelled, “Start the pipes!” and Dean was drenched in a frigid, sulfurous liquid. In that same instant a loud cracking noise boomed out from behind him and he felt a familiar whoosh as bits of something flew past him at high speed.
The Pinkies erupted into cries of, “Stop!” and, “You can’t be in here!” as the sounds of fighting took over his instincts. Authority rang out from a voice in the middle of the room, “This is a sealed lot, not for the likes of…” cut off by a squelching snick that only ever came from a neck breaking. Dean pulled at his chains, trying to work them off the bar, knowing they wouldn’t budge but needing to try anyway. Ketill had gone to a lot of trouble to get him “sealed” and while he didn’t know exactly what the fuck that meant, he was pretty damn sure this wasn’t how things were supposed to go.
Panic crept deeper into his veins as he heard bodies smacking into the walls around him at high speed, cutting off shout after shout abruptly until the scrabbling of his fellow prisoners was all that was left to hear. They jostled around him in their chains, frantically bashing into him and each other, milling like cows on the killing floor. Desperate to see, Dean stopped pulling at his chains and began working at his hood with his mouth and chin, stopping only when he felt its odd straps bite into his jugular. Fuckers!
Booted footfalls approached and the scuffling around him fell silent. The chain to Dean’s right went suddenly slack and he was splashed with sticky warmth for a moment before the sulfurous spray washed it away. The collapse of the bodies next to him pulled him down and he caught himself awkwardly against the low wall behind him. He stood steadily, half-unchained and still hooded, but aware of everything as that familiar cold strength gripped him. Training had its uses.
Dean stood his ground, absolutely certain that whatever was responsible for the chaos surrounding him was inches away from his face, its focus entirely on him.
He stayed stock still as it leaned into him, reaching over him, behind him. His ears told him that it was turning a heavy faucet a fraction of a second before the spray stopped. As it drew back, it hesitated, pausing at Dean’s neck and breathing in deeply.
Dean blamed his shudder on the cold.
The damn thing stayed there, nose at his neck until one of the guys to Dean’s left shifted slightly. It growled low in its throat and wrenched its head away. More bodies hit hard tile and his left arm was suddenly dangling at his side instead of pulled taught by the chain. The lightening crash of pain didn’t catch up with him until he was yanked around by that arm to face the wall. Great – dislocated.
Wrenching his left arm mercilessly behind him, it pulled Dean into its chest. All coiled strength, it slid one hand up Dean’s chest, palm coming up to rest up against his heart. It pinned him firmly there, the hand large and hard against his skin, warm after the sulfur spray. There was no tactical reason for it, but Dean found himself relaxing into the hold, leaning into the chest behind him.
Then, fingers biting into the skin over his heart, it made a fist and pulled.
Dean felt his feet go out from under him, kept upright only by the long line of torso he was leaning into, anchored only by the fist that felt like it was part of his chest, holding some core of him in place as his insides turned into a slithering mush and something – something not him – began to crawl out any way it could, sliding slick and hard against every pore and opening he had.
He would have been much more disgusted if the sky hadn’t been rushing him at the same time, every cell opening to it as the crap was pulled from him, inch by inch. The pulling got harder the longer it went on until, just as suddenly as it began to move, the last of it popped free and twisted him around inside-out. He felt more than heard a distant, “Mine,” as he drew in one desperate breath, feeling air bombard him in places air should never touch. Then that fist in his chest pulled again and the water he’d been under for a week broke and washed explosively away, leaving him right-side-out and whole, but feeling too much, feeling everything, and it stunned him far past stupid.
He had no idea how long he just hung there, pinned between the wall and the mage above him, moving with him, lost in sensations that made no sense. Empty? Full? Hot? Cold? Fear? Longing? Pain? He couldn’t tell. Couldn’t make sense of any of it, just moved with it and through it, distantly aware that parts of his brain were actually still online, that he might be able to make sense of this all later, once the wash of sensation was past and he could think again, but not at all sure he’d want to.
A sharp voice cut through the air, “Samuel!” and Dean stilled. That voice was like a bucket of ice water, cutting through the worst of his confusion and leaving him bare to the world, but still uncomprehending. He felt fingers tighten in his hair as he began to catalogue sensations, that most basic, basic step to figuring out what was going on. He was feeling quite a bit of pain: shoulder, neck, ass, both wrists... His thoughts were cut off when the icy bitch continued, “I will be most displeased if you finish claiming that slave.”
The fingers in his hair convulsed at her words, further loosening the hood. Otherwise, the body behind him was frozen, held absolutely stock-still. At least now he could see a little, which was reassuring, even if it was just a view of the tile, even if breathing was tougher now.
The hand over his heart twitched, just a little, but it still felt embedded in his chest and that was more than enough to make Dean look down. To see the ring. His ring. On that incredibly familiar hand.
Dean’s breath caught in his lungs as clarity flooded him, things clicking into place even though they still made very little sense at all.
He felt Sam’s – Sam’s! – hands clutching at him, one on his chest, the other in his hair. Felt his back pressed into his brother’s chest, strong and connected.
Smelled Sam’s scent all around him, like he was bathing in it, and couldn’t get enough.
Felt Sam’s teeth pull out of his neck, tongue swabbing goodbye, and couldn’t stand it, pressing back against his brother, taking him deeper still, feeling him start to tremble.
Felt his own panic rise as he felt the cock – a fucking cock? Sam’s fucking cock?!? – buried deep within him, still as stone. Took a deep breath and let the panic go.
Felt the bitch’s icy stare down his exposed frame. Felt her eyes dismiss him and burn instead into his brother’s back.
He tried to look back toward her then, to glare his defiance, but all he could see through the hood was the floor, covered in blood from the prisoners of his line, trickling wetly toward the shower drain. His narrow view reduced the scene to scarlet against white tile, running along the arm of the man from his right. It was almost artistic and he didn’t give a fuck.
Sammy was still fighting himself, trying desperately to pull away from him, but Dean was beginning to understand at least this much: Sam wasn’t going anywhere without him. Fiercely, he whispered, “Yours” and, not letting himself even think about what he was about to do, he pushed back against Sam, and clamped down with the muscles in his ass.
Sammy bucked behind him, yelling, “Mine!” as he flooded Dean with heat. The circuit between them flared to life and electricity shot through Dean, the wave of it so intense that it rushed through his every vein, every pore, spreading out until it just hovered, waiting. Sam’s head fell then, for just a brief second, onto Dean’s left shoulder, and the circuit sang its victory through them both.
Dean barely registered the bitch’s barked, “Take him!” before the guards, much greater in number now, closed in on them. Whatever had been propelling Sam before seemed to have left him by that point, and they tore him out of Dean ruthlessly.
The intensity flared again as the connection was lost, taking Dean down to his knees on the cold tile. Sam stood between him and the guards, grinding out, “You don’t get to fucking touch him!” Bodies hit hard all around him, punctuated by Sam’s voice growling, “Mine!” over and over. Dean struggled to right himself, finally getting free of the damn hood and flinging it away. Now he could see Sam tearing the guards apart, but something was off. Sam’s motions were mechanical and he looked distant, like he was fighting on auto-pilot, trance-like blows hitting everything, everyone but Dean, whole bodies and chunks of guards piling all around them.
Dean had almost managed to get past Sam and into the fray when, “Enough, Samuel!” echoed through the room. He swiveled his head and locked his eyes on the bitch. She was watching from the middle of the chaos, clothed in a flowing white dress, looking unscathed and bored. She gestured at him and pain filled his head, dragging him down toward unconsciousness. A few feet away, Sam didn’t make a sound as he collapsed bonelessly to the floor.
~ Go to Section 2: Fall ~
no subject
It seems a bit unclear what is happening at first but that just lends to the confusion Dean is feeling at the time, and then when we finally get bits and pieces of whats going on, it starts to make sense and it's just...well, like I said FANTASTIC.
I am definitely bookmarking this so I catch any and all updates. Wonderful job!
no subject
Thank you so much for reading! And for the wonderful comment! That seems to be all I need to turn into a bowlful of squee right now; I had to go make a new icon, because none of mine were bouncy enough!
I'm really glad that you hung in there through Dean's confusion at the start - I was more than a little afraid I'd ended up being incomprehensibly vague in some places. It's all so clear in my head, you understand, and my only readers so far also got to pick my brain about whatever confused them ::g::
The next chapter's in beta right now, so I should be posting at least that much pretty soon.
::Bounces like Tigger::
no subject
YAY! I eagerly await it's arrival.
no subject
no subject
I love the story so far. At first I tried to figure out how Dean knew it was Sam's protection, but that didn't keep me from reading and reading! I liked Nazim. :(
The end was so powerful. It really left me wanting more. Great Job! I can't wait for more.
Nora
no subject
Honestly, I didn't expect Dean to decide that it was Sam so quickly, but there was no arguing with him once he'd figured out he had a new face and wasn't in hell where he should be. No way was that a coincidence, and if it was helping him, then it had to be Sam.
I, er... don't really push the characters through a story, more like let them lead me, so if I can't convince 'em to follow my plan, I gotta get a new plan.
I also didn't know Nazim was going to die until Ketill told me. I miss him.
no subject
I think your characters are leading beautifully. Just don't do everything Ketill tells you too! :D
Great story! I am really looking forward to more.
no subject
Thanks again for reading!
no subject
Can't wait to read more!
no subject
Thank you so much for reading!
no subject
no subject
I just put chapter 9 up and am working on 10.
no subject
no subject
Besides, I think Varkelton would kill me if I abandoned the boys here.
I'm so glad to hear you're enjoying it. Thanks for reading!
no subject
I love this muchly! Can't wait to read the rest...but real life calls, so I'll be back tomorrow!
no subject
no subject
no subject
I actually gave myself nightmares with that parade scene (Dean too, but that's a different thing ::g::), and I don't do that very often when I'm writing.
It's so great to get comments again on this early stuff; it's really very encouraging and I'm so glad to hear you're enjoying it. It makes me wanna shake off my beta's chapter break position concerns ad jsut post chapt 15 already.
no subject
Because then I can, you know, READ IT!
no subject
I can't right now (I'm supposed to be doing web page mockups today), but I'll probably put it up tonight or tomorrow am. It's not a long chapter but... it packs a bit of a punch.
no subject
no subject
I haven't exactly been publicizing the story much while it's still very much a work in progress... but that doesn't mean I don't cherish every new reader. THANK YOU!
no subject