Becoming Human – Come to Ruin

Hello duckies! So, I have become enamored with a new fandom. As my Alex Rider story draws to a close with the final arc of Scorched Earth, I bring you my contribution to the Supernatural fandom: Becoming Human. This first chapter is named for the song by The Pierces, which provided the inspiration for this story as a whole.

Warnings for this story include graphic violence, minor (non-graphic) sexual themes, heartbreak, violence, and language. Oh, and like most of the stuff I write, it is dark as hellfire. This story is rated M for safety, so please use discretion in making your decision whether or no to read my work.

Much love to you all!

~InK

…

The incident.

That's what Sam had taken to calling it as he had run for his life across three states as though there was a demon right behind him every step of the way.

Sam knew that he needed to stop, needed to clean out the wounds and replace the hastily applied triage he'd done on the move.

Before… the incident… Sam would have had Dean to help. He would have had his father to protect him and his brother's arms to steady him as he went.

But that had been before.

He had slept only a handful of hours, grabbed on the train into Salmon, Idaho as he put as much distance between himself and his last known location. He traveled on foot mostly, trying to leave as little of a trail behind him as possible.

One day and ten hours after his escape, Sam picked the lock on the door of a shady motel that had rooms to spare, and crashed on the bed there. He woke up four hours later, before dawn. Knowing he had to take care of his wounds, but not looking forward to doing the job, Sam limped into the kitchen.

God, he looked like hell.

The fifteen-year-old was covered in bruises. He'd cleaned most of the blood in the train station, knowing that he couldn't buy a ticket looking like he'd been tortured.

Wearily, Sam pulled off the jacket he'd snagged in his escape. It was Deans and two sizes too big, but it had hidden the blood as it appeared on Sam's t-shirt, for which he was grateful.

The shirt itself was a bit more difficult, though Sam was very happy that he'd grabbed his duffle while escaping too. He'd changed shirts in the restroom of the nearest gas station - the one he'd been wearing was even more sliced up than his body.

The bandages – hurriedly cobbled together from bed sheets in the motel room – were stained bright red, and wet to the touch. Sam winced as he untied the bandages and went rummaging through the bag. Now that he had enough time to properly deal with his injuries, he needed to do this right.

He had hydrogen peroxide but no bandages. That was fine, because he still had three knives (all silver – damn, he'd need an iron blade if he wanted to be thoroughly protected in case of a supernatural attack), and could use them to tear up the sheets in this room. Da-John, Sam corrected himself quickly, lips thinning in anger and heartbreak – John had the generic anti-bacterial tablets, so he hoped the wounds weren't already infected. He'd cleaned them out with plain water in rest stops, too paranoid to try the soap (because who the hell knew what kind of bacteria he'd find in public restrooms anyway) and too afraid of being caught to stop long enough to see if he had something worthwhile to clean them with.

The peroxide stung, and Sam let lose a flow of curses that Dean – god, Dean – would have been proud of before.

The cheap sheets tore easily, and Sam wrapped his makeshift bandages around himself. He'd need real, sterilized bandages – and food, probably – soon.

Sam had found sixty dollars in a pocket of his duffel. It was Dean's 'emergency stash,' the cash he kept around to make sure that he and Sam would have food when John went off hunting on his own. Sam had blown half of it on his train ticket from somewhere in middle of nowhere Montana into Salmon. He'd blown ten more dollars on food, which meant he had exactly nineteen dollars and sixty cents to his name.

Sam swore again, and upended his bag onto the bed.

He had three pairs of shirts and two pairs of jeans. It was all the clothing he owned, along with the ratty sneakers he had on his feet. He had a handful of pairs of briefs, and some mismatched and worn socks too, which was good to know. He had the three knives, and – yes! Salt!

That was another expense he hadn't added into his mental calculation, a misstep that da-John and Dean would frown at.

Yeah well, they can suck it, because I'm not a hunter anymore, Sam told himself firmly. The salt was precautionary.

So, enough clothes to last if he stayed somewhere with warm weather, nineteen dollars (and sixty cents), three silver knives, about two thirds of a canister of salt, and a now mostly empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

That was it.

Oh, and he was injured, underage, and had two trained and vicious hunters out for his blood. His demon infected blood.

No big deal.

A wave of exhaustion hit Sam then, causing him to moan as he lay back on the suddenly incredibly inviting motel bed.

He had been pretending for nearly two days, had been fighting off the memories and the hurt, and the cause of his injuries, because fuck – the fact that Dean and John had purposefully cause him pain hurt more than the wounds themselves, and Sam had only barely walked out of that motel room alive.

He closed his eyes, letting himself process the memories in flashes.

He'd been asleep. He must have been, because he remembered Dean shaking him awake lightly. Sam remembered his confusion, because Dean and John had been hunting, and they were back much earlier than they had planned. Sam had felt a harsh grip on his arm, crying out for his brother's help, but Dean had laughed somewhere in the background. He'd laughed.

…

Sam's pulse jacks upwards at the unnatural sound.

"Christo," he calls, suddenly wide awake and trying to take a swing at the attacker that was holding his arms and pushing him towards a chair. Sam struggles and throws out a blow before he can stop himself, self-preservation warring with the fear of hurting his brother.

Without a word, Dean grins, and yanks the smaller boy around so that he can smash his skull into something painful. It shatters on impact, which makes Sam think it must be the television -

"None of that now, Sammy," John's deep voice rumbles from behind him, and Sam's brain is a fog of confusion. Why was his dad attacking him?

What was going on?

Someone had to have heard that, someone has to be coming to help-

His moment of uncertainty costs him, because the next thing he knows, Dean is behind him, tying his arms behind his back, and wrapping a rope around his middle to keep him in the chair.

"Dean, this isn't funny-"

A hand comes out of the semi-darkness, slamming into the side of Sam's face. It takes him a moment to register that his father has hit him.

John Winchester had struck his son.

The shock paralyzes him for a moment, and then panic sets in.

"CHRISTO!" he yells the word, hoping to see the demon in front of him flinch. But whatever is standing in front of him wearing his father's face doesn't so much as bat an eye.

It grins.

"Sammy, I'm no demon," it says, and Sam refuses to believe that, because his dad would never hit him. Dean wouldn't ever let him. His eyes cast around for his older brother, and he's standing against the wall, arms crossed, smiling.

It isn't Dean, Sam tells himself, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath and opening them again.

"Where the hell is my dad?" he demands. "Where's Dean? What did you do to them?" He strains against the ropes that hold him captive.

"I'm right here," John smiled cruelly.

"You aren't my dad!" Sam yells, earning himself another strike to the face. His neck snaps to the side with the force of the painful blow.

"My dad wouldn't ever hit me," Sam says, and he takes some comfort from the words, because saying them out loud is a reminder of their truth.

"Clearly you don't know dad very well," not-Dean says, and Sam struggles to ignore whatever this creature that isn't Dean is telling him.

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah," the non-Dean smirks. "You always were pretty useless."

And even though Sammy knows that this isn't Dean – damn it, it can't be – his heart plummets miserably.

"Heck, we have to leave you behind on an easy hunt because you can't even shoot straight," Dean continues ruthlessly with a sneer, twisting the emotional knife even deeper.

"He's right," John added, and Sam thinks he might just die right here. "You're more likely to kill Dean than whatever we're hunting, and we both know that I'd rather have Dean around than you."

Sam thinks his heart stops for a second.

They're the words that he's been secretly fearing all his life, the fear that he could never be as strong or as smart or good looking, or capable, as his godlike big brother. He knows, rationally, that his family loves him. But he's always been afraid that it's not true, that John loves Dean more.

It seems he was right.

Sam hangs his head.

"Besides Sammy, you're not even human."

The first cut of the knife makes him scream.

"There's demon blood in you. Hell, you're probably better off as something we'd be hunting than a hunter."

"What are you talking about?" Sam gasps, refusing to give these imposters the satisfaction of screaming again.

"My mom is dead because some demon wanted to feed you its blood," Dean whispers in Sam's ear, his voice like daggers.

"You're lying!"

"No Sam, he's not," John says, and this time, Sam is ready for the cut of a silver knife that tore through his shirt and brought blood flowing from a wound on his chest.

"You killed my wife."

Sam shakes his head, beyond words. Dean punches him, and Sam's pretty sure he can feel the crack of one of his ribs.

"I hate you Sammy, all of this is your fault!" Dean yells, hitting every inch of free skin that his fists can reach. "If you had never been born, we could have all been happy as a family! But no, you had to come along and ruin it all!"

John pulls Dean back a bit so that he can observe the blood dripping down the youngest Winchester's face.

"He's not family," he says coolly. "He's a demon."

"I'm not a demon," Sam whispers, his voice hoarse from the effort of holding back his tears. What was going on, what was happening? These things can't be his father and brother, but Dean is wearing that amulet he'd given Dean for Christmas, and that was Dean's favorite coat that he was folding over the side of the chair…

Sam's head drops in defeat. It's them, its his father and his brother, and this is real, it's happening right now.

Sam can't stop the tears as the overflow and begin cascading through the blood on his cheeks.

"Son, let's give this piece of demon scum what it deserves."

Hours.

Days?

Sam drifts in and out of awareness, sometimes asleep and sometimes awake. No matter what he did, he was always in pain. Why wouldn't Dean and John just kill him? He'd killed Mary, ruined their lives, was absolutely useless… why didn't they just slit his throat and let him die already?

They have him tied down to the bed, spread out so that they can do whatever they want, carving his body like a Christmas turkey. There must be bruises on his throat from where Dean had nearly chocked him to death, telling him that he'd wished that Sammy had never been born.

If Sam hadn't been born, Deans' mom would still be alive.

So why shouldn't he die?

Because I didn't do anything, Sam thinks, and it's like a sunrise in his mind, like energy traveling along two suddenly connected wires.

He was six months old when his mother died, and whatever he did, it wasn't on purpose. He might be some kind of demon freak, but Sam knows he's never done anything outright evil to anyone, not even the monsters they hunt. How many times had Dean or John gotten on his case for being 'too soft'?

Too many.

So fine. He wasn't John's son and he wasn't Dean's brother. He was just Sam.

He was just Sam, and he was going to survive this, because he was worth something, to himself if not to the people who'd pretended to be his family all these years.

He tugs at the ropes until his wrists are dripping with dark blood, and he can feel the pain burning through his abused wrists.

Crack.

That's all the warning he gets before the bedpost breaks in half, freeing Sam's left hand.

Hurrying, hoping that John and Dean aren't there, Sam unties the knot on the ropes holding his other wrist, fumbling ineptly with numb and bloody fingertips.
A minute later, he's freeing his ankles, and rushing towards the door.

He pauses, looking back. In a moment of foresight, he grabs his still packed duffle from the corner of the room, where it has been unceremoniously kicked, and the jacket hanging over the chair near the door.

He's gone an instant later, slamming the door closed. The 'Do Not Disturb' sign rattles against the handle – a sound lost in the steady pattern of rain on the pavement -, and Sam is halfway across the parking lot before it lays still. Sam's injuries are screaming at him to slow down, but the voice of self-preservation is louder than pain, and it drives the teenager forward.

Fuck John, and fuck Dean too.

Too late, he realizes that the jacket he's pulled over his bloody shirt is Dean's. It smells like his brother, and he wants it gone but it's raining and freaking cold, and given the choice between keeping the jacket and getting sick, Sam decides to keep the damn jacket. Dean loved it, and he gets a savage satisfaction out of denying it to him.

He stops only to slip on his sneakers on his feet (he'd need a new pair soon, Dean had been wearing John down on getting both of them new shoes, but it was an expense they couldn't budget, and the need wasn't dire just yet).

And then he's moving.

Sam doesn't know where he's going as he stomps through the rain. He needs to get out of town, somewhere far away. Muscles that have gone unused for days now strain to keep pace with Sam's fear.

…

Sam didn't realize he was crying until he had to wipe the wetness from his face.

He felt pathetic, but as the buzz of panic and adrenaline settled into his stomach, and the reality of the last few days hit him full force, Sam found himself unable to stay strong anymore.

Where was he going to go? He couldn't go to school, not without a parent. He didn't have a car, or any kind of papers. There was a false ID for a Brandon Williams, Park Service, in his jacket, but that had Dean's picture, not his, so it was useless.

Sam wanted to throw it away the second he found it, but he couldn't bring himself to actually toss the stupid thing. Dean's smiling face looked out at Sam from the picture, and it let Sam pretend, just for a moment, that it was the before, and that he didn't know everything he knew now.

But he did know everything. He knew that he was infected with the blood of the same demon that had killed his – Deans – mother. He knew that he was dangerous, and that if John Winchester had his say, every hunter worth their salt would be coming after him soon enough.

What did that mean, anyway, having demon blood? Would it attract demons, or make him safe from them? Would it give him demonic powers? Could he possess people?

Could he be exorcised?

Paranoia struck again, and Sam grit his teeth. He knew nothing that hurt demons could hurt him – he'd spilled holy water on himself, and handled salt, and recited exorcisms and had them recited in his presence. But that had all been before – maybe now, in the after, now that he knew the score, it might be different.

He rattled off three exorcisms by heart (going through each one twice to make sure he got them right). He pressed salt into his skin, followed by hastily blessed holy water that he'd created using a makeshift cross and water from the sink (though Sam wasn't all that sure that the last one counted because while he knew how to make holy water, he'd never done it for himself before).

Nothing.

Convinced for the time being, Sam repacked his bags. He was going to need to run some tests on himself when he got the chance, see if he could verify any kind of physical anomalies in his body. Because that's what scientists did when they needed answers, right? They asked questions and ran tests, and then found the answers.

He was gone long before the cleaning staff discovered the room with torn up sheets and blood on the bathroom towels.

Hiking along an empty road, Sam decided to try hitchhiking. Hell, it wasn't like any creeps on the road could do any worse to him than John or Dean had.

As for the future… Sam decided that he'd just head south, for now, and work everything else out as he went. Maybe he would find a way to get himself into a school, maybe he could just take his GED's and apply to college with those scores. Right now, however, he didn't know if he was ready to face the after yet; he was still trying to get used to the idea that when he woke up tomorrow, he wouldn't have a dad or a brother anymore.

He was on his own.

…

Two days after Sam hightailed it out of Salmon, Idaho, Dean Winchester unlocked the door to the motel room in Montana where he and his father had left Sammy. They'd been on the trail of a pair of shifters, both of which had gotten away clean, despite every trick John had pulled. The older hunter was in a foul mood.

Hell, Dean was in a foul mood. He hated letting the fuglies get their way.

On the bright side, Sammy was safe and out of the way of their hunt – Shifters were just a few notches above the kids hunting level, and no amount of pouting would get John to put his youngest son in danger. Not even the puppy dog eyes of doom could move either of the older Winchesters on that topic, ground that Dean and John shared pretty solidly.

Still, it was going to suck, telling Sammy that he'd lost his little brother's valuable Christmas present. He'd treasured that amulet, and Dean was pretty pissed when the Shifter had gotten it off of him. He'd have to find some way to make it up to Sammy.

Lost in his thoughts, it took Dean a moment to notice something was wrong.

"Dad."

The word chocked in his throat, and he couldn't look away from the scene in front of him. Dean cleared his throat, trying to bring any amount of strength back into his vocal chords.

"Dad!"

"Dean, stop shouting, it's three in the morning, you want to wake the – son of a bitch!"

Blood. It was everywhere. The lamp was knocked over sideways, and there was a hole in the TV. One of the bedposts was broken, the missing piece sitting on the floor between the beds, rough rope still wrapped around part of it.

Someone had been confined and tortured here.

God, where was Sammy?

"Son of a bitch," Dean echoed. John pushed past his son, taking stock of the room.

"His bag's gone," John said.

"So he escaped, and he's out there on his own two feet, with some resources," Dean suggested. "Blood's a few days old, at least, but he can't be too far. There's only sixty bucks in his bag, and how far could a beat up fifteen-year-old get?"

"That, or whoever took him or his body took his stuff too," John growled. "He could be on the other side of the country or six feet underground."

"Hey!"

John looked up at an enraged Dean.

"Sammy is not dead," Dean growled, and it was animalistic and protective as all hell. "He's not, okay? I'd know. I'd know."

He ran a hand through his hair, filled with agitation. His eyes catch on a bit of skin – a finger – left carelessly on the ground.

"Dad, I think the shifters got here before us," Dean murmured. The finger was too big to be Sammy's, and the texture is about right for the nasty bits of shifter that he had been finding all over in Jackson hole, three hours drive from here.

"You think our Shifters kidnapped Sammy."

"If it didn't, I think we should still find it and put three silver bullets into its heart, just in case."

"A shifter wouldn't take his bag."

"Then Sammy's on the run from the shifters, and we need to kill them to keep him safe," Dean reasoned, and there was a homicidal fire in his eyes.

"Alright then, let's go get your brother back."

Dean nodded, only barely able to tear his eyes away from the scene.

"This thing is dead," he vowed, his voice low and burning with vengeance.