Chapter Text
Sam slammed the lid of his laptop down and raced to the nearest bathroom, almost not making it to the toilet in time before he heaved the entire contents of his stomach into the bowl. The images he’d just seen, and the implications of the law that had just gone into effect, seemed more shocking than anything he’d ever seen before, and he’d seen a lot.
He kept vomiting until it was nothing but bile, trying to force the bloody pictures out of his mind. Finally, when he thought he was about to hork up his intestines, his stomach decided it’d had enough, and he weakly turned away, leaning against the side of the toilet and wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
After moments that could have been either minutes or days, he struggled to his feet, flushed the toilet, and went to the sink, washing his hands and rinsing out his mouth. He left the bathroom and checked the bedrooms in the bunker. The two he was most interested in were empty.
He found Dean in the room they’d set up as a TV/recreation room, laying on one of the two sofas and nursing a beer, the TV tuned to a football game with the volume barely registering. “Dean,” he said, his own voice sounding raspy. His brother didn’t seem to hear him, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Dean. Hey.”
Dean looked up, his expression a mixture of irritation and confusion. “What is it, Sammy? Can’t you tell the game’s on?”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Do you even know who’s playing?”
“Course I do.”
“Yeah? Who?”
Dean looked over at the TV and squinted.
“Dude, don’t even bother,” Sam said. “Where’s Cas?”
“He went for a walk. You know him. Likes to watch the birds and bees and all that nature crap.”
“Really, Dean? The birds and bees?”
Dean threw a bottle cap at Sam’s head, missing badly. “Shut up. You know what I mean.”
The memory of the news article and graphic photos forced its way to the front of Sam’s mind again, and he strode over to the TV in three paces and turned it off. He turned back to face his brother. “We gotta talk. It’s important, and it concerns Cas.”
Dean sat up, making room for Sam on the sofa. “He need to be here?”
“Not yet.”
Sam remained standing. He could almost see the gears turning in Dean’s head as his older brother scrutinized his face, his eyes.
“That all you in there, Sammy?” Dean asked. “’Cause I am not telling him he can’t stay here again.”
“Yeah, it’s all me. And no, I don’t want him to leave.” He sighed. They hadn’t talked about this much before, about the new laws, about how their part in saving the world from the latest apocalypse had somehow been twisted around and turned into national policy. It had always gone unspoken. This won’t last. It will never pass. They’d never bothered much with laws anyway. But this time…
“The new law went into effect today,” Sam finally said.
“Which new law?” Dean asked. “The one we won’t care about or the one we won’t follow?”
“The Visible Wing Act.”
Dean’s entire posture shifted as he seemed to shrink into himself. “Damn it.”
“That’s not all,” Sam said. “Punishment is now public execution without due process. And Dean…they’re not just killing them.”
“How the hell can they do worse?”
Sam swallowed down his nausea. “They cut off their wings first.”