Thanks for reading and for the great reviews. As with all Charlie stories, I should warn that things are gonna get a little dark. bambers;)

Chapter Eleven

I've always heard that an animal with it's leg caught in the jaws of a steel trap, will chew off its own limb to escape, not sure if that's true, but if it is, Sam's definitely not as smart as you're average stupid animal. Escape was not an option for him if it meant leaving Dean behind, and there in lies the sheer magnitude of his stupidity.

I'd always prided myself on the fact that I don't get mad about the little things, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that it really pissed me off having his elbow planted into my face. Like a squirmy little parasite, he'd wormed his way beneath my skin. Bothersome. And like all annoying little creatures, he needed to be crushed.

A slow smile slid across my face, twisting at my lips at the thought of the maze of tunnels that ran beneath my grandfather's property. The nit-gritty fun in his momentary escape was that in the dark he could very easily get lost for hours while searching for his brother. Hours that I could spend torturing Dean. With that thought in mind, I strode to the fuse box, and flipped off all the corridor lights, casting Sam into total darkness.

Confidently, I slipped through the open door, and sauntered the endless chasm of darkness. Unlike Sam, whom I could hear stumbling and muttering curse words as he traveled, I had intimate knowledge of every inch of the bunker and easily maneuvered around obstacles in my path. One hundred and five steps, give or take a few depending on my stride, turn right. Thirty-two more, hang a quick left. Fifty-seven more paces, sidestep deep pit once covered over by thick wooden plank, now left wide open. A hundred seventy-two more steps, turn left into the room where Dean's awaiting me expectantly.

Closing the heavy wooden door behind me, sealing in any traces of light as I wouldn't want to make things too easy for Sam, I slowly circled around Dean. Through glassy, watery eyes, he watched my every movement with a cagey expression plastered to his features. His sweat dampened hair, clung to his forehead, droplets of moisture trickling down the sides of his face and into his eyes. Perspiration stained, dirt smudges trailed his cheeks, similarly matching the blood stain trails soaking his t-shirt.

"Still hanging around, Dean?" I asked, lifting a brow in amusement. "And here you actually had me believing you would've been out of those locks by the time I walked out the door." Hesitating momentarily, I gripped hold of the chains and yanked hard on them. His feet swayed beneath him as the pulley system attached to the chains clattered to life, lifting him off the ground. His biceps bunched and strained, protesting the brunt of his full weight on them. The chains around his ankles pulled taut as he dug the tips of his heels into the ground in an attempt to alleviate some of the stress on his straining muscles. "Guess I gave you more credit than you deserve."

"Wasn't just hangin' around," Dean gritted out through clenched teeth, lips curling into a menacing scowl. "I was making plans on how to gut you the moment I was free."

"Careful, Dean, you're beginning to sound an awful lot like me," I chuckled, reveling in his unadulterated anger. "Next thing you know, you'll be sticking your blade into some guy's throat just so you can know what it feels like to be me for a split moment in time."

Through lowered lashes, I studied him as I continued to circle, appraising him from every possible angle. Those intense green eyes of his followed my every movement, sizing me up as well. Our purposeful thoughts were similar - his to kill me - mine, to determine in what ways to harm him the most, bringing him to the brink of his own sanity . . . to make him a shadowy ghost of what I am. It was only then that I would kill him.

"As intended, we are the faintly murmured whisper that goes unnoticed by most - slipping in and out of the shadows to accomplish our goals." My voice was soft and low as I leaned in and brushed my cheek against his, purposely invading his personal space. He flinched and shied away from me. "And as such, the unnoticed can be anything they want to be, and still go unseen by the unsuspecting fools who think themselves important until a knife slices through their intestines."

Pinning me with a hateful glare, he hissed, "I'm nothing like you," to which I threw back my head and laughed heartily.

"Our fathers - yours and mine - are much alike." Narrowing my sights on him, I frown disapprovingly as I watched the subtle movement of his eyes, flicking up and off to the left as he recalled some memory of John that I was not privy to. "We're both great disappointments to our fathers - but how could we be otherwise?" He opened his mouth to argue - to defend John, but I clamped my hand down hard against his mouth, squeezing my fingertips into his cheeks to muffle his words. "It's called a God complex, Dean . . . they're right, and we're always wrong. And so you make yourself small - smaller than the most insignificant whisper . . . Do what they say - Do what they say - Do what they say. But all the while thinking. Because in here," with my free hand, I jabbed at his temple and then my own, "you're the god . . . you're the one who controls what happens. Who lives - Who dies."

His eyes briefly shifted upward to the right. He was thinking now - maybe planning or perhaps preparing a lie for my benefit. For whatever reason, he felt the need to protect John, so I guessed it was the latter of the two. "What I'm wondering is what you did to earn his distrust?" Shoulders slumping slightly, he lowered his sights for a fraction of a second, then met and held my steady gaze. "Is it that you enjoy killing your fictitious creatures a little too much for his liking? It's always fun playing at being a killer until someone actually starts enjoying the game a little more than they're suppose to."

With a malicious grin, I shook my head. "No, that's not it. It had something to do with little Sammy, didn't it?" I peeled my fingers away from his lips, daring him to deny it, but he remained stonily silent. "From what I know of John, Sam means everything to him so I'm guessing you somehow left him unprotected. Daddy found out, and from that moment onward he never looked at you in quite the same light."

"You don't know me, you sonuvabitch, so don't pretend like you do." Lips quivering, Dean's tone was thick, choked with emotion, and I was certain I'd struck a very raw nerve.

"Of course you're right." I conceded with a nod. "But I bet I can make you tell me exactly what you did. What do you think, Dean? Do you think I can get you to spill your guts?"

Wrapping his hands around the chains above his shackles, Dean pulled himself upward, alleviating some of the strain on his shoulders, and also making himself tower over me by several inches. The effect would have been more intimidating if he hadn't been locked up, but I gave him credit for working with what he had. "Give it your best shot, asshole."

"Oh, I intend to, Dean, as I really wouldn't want to disappoint you." I spun on my heel, and headed toward the long wooden table at the far end of the room, calling back over my shoulder, "Bet you didn't know this about me, but I'm a huge medieval torture buff, and I kinda think of this as my own special little torture chamber." At the table, I shuffled through various weapons I'd acquired in my travels, and settled on a heavy wooden mallet and two long metal spikes. "The problem is, it's a real bitch finding authentic weapons from that time period, so sometimes I'm forced to improvise a bit." I bobbed my head toward the pulley system above his head, and further added, "Yet I'm certain you'll appreciate all the thought I've put into this."

Dean's head fell backward onto his shoulders as he glanced upward at the intricate workings of the pulleys and sinker weights. Then his head snapped back, and with eyes rounding in question, he fixed his sights on me. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"My version of the rack, Dean." With a gloating smile, I once again nudged my head toward the pulleys. "Actually I believe I've improved on the original design, but you'll be my first test subject, so I guess I'm gonna gage its effectiveness by your screams."

"You're out of your freakin' mind," he shouted hoarsely, toeing at the ground in an effort to move as far away from me as possible, but loosing his footing he ended up swinging back and forth like a clock pendulum.

"One man's definition of crazy is another man's idea of sheer brilliance," I uttered as I strode to him, and gripped hold of his shirt with my free hand, effectively stopping his swaying movement. "So what's it gonna be, Dean? Left foot first or the right one?"

Eyes riveted on the mallet in my hand, he swallowed convulsively. His lower jaw worked up and down, lips quivering as he tried to form the words on them to try and stop me from proceeding, but even if he did manage to utter them, they would fall on deaf ears. A threat is only as good as the follow through, and I couldn't have him believing me weak and ineffective.

"I - I left him alone," he murmured in a harsh raspy whisper, lowering his head so I couldn't see the utter humiliation contorting his features. "I left him alone, an' he almost died."

"Huh," I bit pensively at my lower lip as I thought of the just the right words to slice deeper into his already crumbling ego. "Guess it's no wonder John told me to kill you first as you must be the biggest damn disappointment to him."

Slipping around behind him, I once again invaded his personal space, placing my stomach against his back. His body shuddered in revulsion, shoulders hunching forward as I leaned in and murmured in his ear. "How does it feel to know you're useless in the eyes of your father? Does it twist in your gut like venom, paralyzing you to any other thought but finding the redemption that he'll never give?"

"You don't know what the hell you're talkin' about," he breathed, muscles tensing as I wrapped my arm around him, and raked the tip of the spike around the side of his neck, jabbing it into the hollow of throat. A guttural growl ripped from deep within his throat as crimson droplets seeped from the raised welt, and trickled down his neck to mingle with his sweat. "Go ahead, you sonuvabitch, cause no matter what the hell you do, I'm not gonna let you get inside my head, so you might as well get it over with."

"Is that so?" My hand fell away from his throat, and I circled around to face him, peering square into his eyes, daring him to hold my intent gaze. Tilting my head to the side, I appraised him, my facial expression giving nothing away of how grudgingly impressed I was that he'd somehow managed to rally himself even if I did intend to crush out the fierce determination I saw in his fiery green orbs.

"You think I can't break you, Dean?" I uttered in a menacingly low tone as I continued to hold his gaze. "Think I can't take everything from you?" As I spoke, I consciously willed him to break eye contact, and as if he read my thoughts, he obediently lowered his eyes, bowing his head to look at his boots. "You see, I am already inside your head," I jabbed at his temple, "knockin' around inside there, seein' what makes you tick - finding out what scares the hell out of you . . . all those little things you hide from everyone. You think you hide them so damn well - but not from me. I see them - I see you. You're like a house built on a weak foundation caught in a tornado, Dean. Roof torn away. Walls crumbling. Why rebuild - the house sucked to begin with."

"Really, a house?" He smirked, trying to hide how deeply my words had cut into his soul. "Cause I see myself more as one of those inflatable punching bag things . . . you know the ones where you can punch them until your arms fall off, an' they'll keep popping back up."

"Hmm . . . true enough." Pursing my lips, I gave a curt nod in agreement. "Of course, you'd deflate fast enough if someone stuck a knife through you."

Dean licked at his lips, eyes darting back and forth as he tried to come up with another witty comment, but I'd rattled him. His whole life, he'd been three parts witty comeback, two parts tough guy, and one part wounded soldier, and I successfully sliced open that festering wound.

"What's the matter, Dean? You run out of knee-slapping funny things to say?" Momentarily eying the mallet in my hand, I lifted a brow and grinned in amusement as his eyes were drawn to it as well. "If so, I guess we should get back to my previous question." I crouched beside him, and placing one of the spikes on the ground, I raised the mallet. "Right or left foot first?"