Author's Note: This story is set during 07x17, "The Born-Again Identity." The idea came out of left field but this is an idea of how Sam might focus on one particular thing to try and combat Lucifer's antics. I took some liberties with the interactions that take place in the episode, mainly between Sam and Marin. One last thing: Sam's LSAT score is canon. The LSAT questions and references are from an actual past LSAT (the February 1999 test). I took them from "The Official LSAT SuperPrep" book produced by the Law School Admission Council. Happy reading!
Sam Winchester had secretly looked forward to standardized test days in school. Their rigid structure had been a welcome reprieve from the unpredictability that had characterized the rest of his childhood. It was a hard thing for a kid, to never have a stable home where he could put down roots. He never knew if it was safe to join the math club or make new friends – why bother when Dad was just going to finish working his case before blowing into the next bumfuck little town halfway across the country?
It got easier as time went on – or maybe Sam just got so good at lying he almost believed himself. "My dad's in the Marines, so we move around a lot," he would say, or "My grandmother is real sick and we'll probably be moving closer to be with her" – so don't get attached to me, and though he never said the last part out loud, he might as well have screamed it. People instinctively knew the Winchesters were smoke, vanishing from their lives as quickly as they had come.
But standardized test days were always the same, no matter what town or state the Winchesters found themselves. The straightforward instructions, the uniformity of the bubble scan sheets, and the concentrated breathing of his classmates around him as they scratched in their answers gave Sam a quiet comfort he would never, in a thousand years, be able to explain.
It was for this very reason that Lucifer pounced upon those memories and tried to use it against him.
"It's test day, Sammy!" Lucifer bellowed through his megaphone. Sam flinched, his eyes screwed shut. The yellowing walls of his room in the hospital melted away and were replaced by neat rows of desks in a gymnasium, filled by acne-faced high school students. Sam remembered this particular test – he had been a freshman? No, a sophomore. This was Fairfield, Iowa; he remembered Dean's litany of childish condom jokes about the Fairfield Trojans. They had stayed for almost three months – long enough for Dean to get hot and heavy with a senior girl named Rhonda Hurley.
"Five minutes left, Sam; you might want to hurry things along." Sam whipped around in his seat to find Lucifer lounging in the desk behind him, arms folded over his chest. Sam looked down at his test. It was written in Enochian. Sam gritted his teeth; of course it was. The bubble sheet beside it was pristine – not a single answer had been filled in.
"You're not going to take this away from me," he growled, turning the page of his test booklet.
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Sam concentrated on those five words, the twelve-point font that marred an otherwise white blank page.
"Not going to get rid of me that easily, Sammy," said Lucifer behind him, but his voice had faded somewhat. It had taken on the thin quality of a radio station with poor reception.
"This isn't real," he said, reading the words on the page again.
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Blank. Like Sam needed his mind to be.
"You can't escape me forever," Lucifer hissed, like steam escaping from an old radiator. Then he flickered once and was gone. Sam swiped a hand through the space he had been, hardly believing it had been that easy. Until he turned back around to find Lucifer standing in front of his desk, grinning triumphantly.
"Wanna see a magic trick?" he asked brightly, then propped up Sam's number two pencil on its eraser and slammed Sam's palm down upon it.
Sam woke up screaming, the pain in his hand white-hot and blinding. It took him nearly ten minutes to calm down even with a sedative injected into his neck. The sheets bunched around his knees as three orderlies held him down and Lucifer smirked from his perch across the room. Finally the drugs kicked in, and Sam drifted off –
– only to be wakened by a deafening explosion right by his ear. Lucifer turned his head round with an innocent look through yellow-tinted shooting glasses, then hefted a shotgun and threw another dinner plate into the air. It exploded into shards of white porcelain with a flash, a bang, and a puff of black smoke. Sam slammed the back of his head into his pillow in frustration, his eyes watering at the proximity of the gun shots. He found himself hoping he would go deaf from the noise, if only to get some peace and quiet, but with a pang realized that the sound was only in his head and therefore, untouchable.
Sam stared up at the ceiling, counting the specks in the ceiling tiles. He flinched every time the gun went off. Lucifer whistled the theme of the 1812 Overture while he switched out the shells on the side-by-side double-barrel, and Sam's eyes wandered over to fall on the gun. His stomach clenched. He'd been raised around guns. His father used to make a game out of identifying makes and models, quizzing the boys during long drives. Dean always won those games, so eager he was to please Dad, but Sam's memory still served him well. It was a Winchester 21. Lucifer smiled, like a little kid proud that his father had noticed when he did something well, but there was a shadow of something ugly and sinister behind it.
"You like it, Sammy? I picked it because it reminded me of you," he said. Sliding two shells in, Lucifer deftly tossed two plates into the air at once. Doubles. They shattered, one after the other. Bang bang, poof poof.
Sam screwed his face up and groaned, putting his hands over his ears. Not real, not real, not real . . .
"That's where you're wrong, Sammy boy," drawled Lucifer. His breath tickled Sam's ear, and he paused to wonder how that was possible. "I may be entirely inside your head, but don't think for a minute that I'm not real." He chuckled. "Now, what next? I don't know about you, but I think I'm due for some handicap practice."
The next thing Sam knew, Lucifer was flinging plates out the open window and firing from a distance, the threadbare curtains fluttering in the breeze as empty shotgun shells clattered over the tile floor.
The trouble was, when Sam woke up, he couldn't be sure he had even slept at all. He certainly didn't feel rested, and knowing Lucifer, it was just another scheme to drag Sam back to Hell.
Which is why Sam greeted the illusion he found himself in with a resigned sigh. It wasn't Fairfield High this time. No, this was an older memory; this was before Dean dropped out of school to hunt full-time. Sam must have been eleven or twelve. The details were sharper, more defined: Sam had spent more time in this school than any other. It was in Sioux Falls, and it was the school the Winchesters had attended when Bobby was taking care of them for months at a time. Except . . . Lucifer hadn't been there, and neither had Adam, but now they sat on either side of him.
"Come on, Sam," Lucifer said, "we just want to hang out some more. You, me, Adam, Michael . . . it'll be like a little brotherly love fest."
"You can't just leave me down there alone with those two," Adam said. "They'll rip me apart." It was startling to look into those muddy green eyes and realize it was not Dean looking back at him. Only for a moment, though – Adam's eyes were far too earnest; Dean kept his shuttered, betraying nothing. Sam idly wondered if Adam would have done the same had he grown up as a hunter – if he had been more of a Winchester than a Milligan. I guess we'll never know, he thought.
"Saaaaaaaam," whined Lucifer, rocking back on the rear legs of his desk chair.
"He's like this all the time; I swear, it's like having a puppy that breathes fire," said Adam.
Sam swallowed, looking back and forth between the two as they bantered and argued and vied for his attention. His poor tired brain felt like it was melting, oozing out his ears, and his eyeballs itched so badly Sam thought clawing them out might be the best thing he could do right now. Instead, he looked down at the desk. A test booklet swam in his blurred vision, and he concentrated all his efforts on it. Focus, Sam, focus, he thought, Adam and Lucifer still yammering away on either side of him.
Stop! Do not proceed to the next portion of the test until your proctor directs you to do so..
"Awww, Sammy," crooned Lucifer. "Guess who your proctor is?" Sam looked over, but Lucifer had vanished. Adam was still next to him, leaned back in his seat, gazing up at the ceiling with eyes unseeing and his throat ripped out. Sam jerked away, leaping out of his seat in horror, and he slipped and went down. Adam had been gutted from throat to pelvis, blood and bile pooling under his chair. Sam pivoted on the spot, looking around wildly for an escape when he spotted Lucifer by the front of the auditorium, with a hammer in one hand and a mouth full of nails. He was humming, "Deck the Halls" while hanging Adam's intestines like a fucking Christmas garland over the stage. Sam clutched his head with both hands. He felt a panic attack coming on, his breath coming in short gasps: like he was eleven years old again, and the girl he had a crush on found out he was a hunter, at Christmas-time, and told the whole school what a freak he was. Only this was a hundred thousand times worse.
Sam sank to his knees, his heart thundering so fast he wouldn't have been surprised to see it leap right out of his chest and skitter away across the floor. But it didn't. Instead, Lucifer turned, looked him right in the eye, and cried, "Time is up; pencils down!" Sam hissed. His hand burned, a sharp pain right through the middle of his palm. He brought it up to look at it, a number-two pencil stuck clean through the flesh, and for the life of him he couldn't remember how it got there. As he watched in horror Lucifer approached and smacked the eraser-end hard with the heel of his hand. Sam howled as it pierced his eye, and he knew no more.
This time, Sam went into tachycardia and a full medical team came flying down the hallway with the crash cart. Patients and staff watched from the open doorway, wondering what all the fuss was about.
"Wow," said a girl with long red hair. "Whatever demons he's got, they must be bad ones."
"Aren't they all," said the boy beside her grimly. He was tall, ginger-haired, with hooded eyes and a hand on her shoulder. "We better clear out, Marin." The two of them retreated further down the hall, visibly shaken. Some of the others, dressed in scrubs, turned reluctantly away. Lucifer watched them go and sniffed, buffing his fingernails with an emery board.
Sam woke with a pathetic moan. Lucifer hopped off the desk with his usual swagger, clapping his hands together and pouting.
"Ah, so this is how the great Sam Winchester ends? Not with a bang, but with a whimper?" Lucifer mocked. He made a show of thinking about it. "Well. I'm afraid you're not living up to your hype, Sammy boy. 'The one true vessel of Lucifer.'" He made finger marks in the air and shrugged. "Much less durable than advertised. I wonder if I can get a refund? You think Azazel does refunds? Oh, right. Your brother killed him. Hmmm, that definitely puts a wrinkle in things. Well, new management and all, although the new 'manager'" there were the finger marks again "doesn't care for me all that much. Store credit, maybe?" Lucifer wrinkled his nose. "It's so difficult to build a business relationship these days. Trust and mutual benefit seem to be things of the past."
Sam gave him a bleary glare and coughed into his pillow.
"Come on, Sam," coaxed Lucifer. "Don't be that way. Tell you what: I've got something that will pep you right up." Without warning, he produced an air horn. Sam started so violently he upset a glass of water on the nightstand. The plastic cup bounced across the floor, but not before it had dumped its contents over Lucifer's leather shoes. Sam couldn't help it. He smirked. Small victories. Lucifer gave him an offended look and crackled out of view.
"Hey," said a voice from the door. It was a teenage girl with long red hair.
"Hey," croaked Sam, suddenly wishing he still had the glass of water he had doused Lucifer with. He cleared his throat. "Uh, hi. I'm Sam."
"I know," she said, then blushed. "Sorry. I'm Marin."
They stared at each other awkwardly. Sam's eyes strayed to the gauze bandages taped to Marin's neck and wrists. She looked nervous.
"So," she said, in a would-be casual voice. "What's your brand of crazy?"
"What?"
"You know. The 'what are you in for' thing."
"Oh, right," Sam said, grimacing as he flexed his fingers in front of his face. His hand was unmarked. The pain had been entirely in his mind. "Can't sleep."
"The voices keep you up at night?" Marin said knowingly.
"Uh, just the one voice, actually," Sam said.
"Marilyn Manson? The Devil?" she laughed, and Sam swallowed uncomfortably.
"Something like that," he said. "So, what are you in for?"
Marin shrugged. "Suicidal ideation. I mean, that's what they say, anyway."
Sam's eyes flitted back to her bandaged wrists. "You tried to kill yourself?"
"No! He did. I mean, I don't know," she said. Her eyes darkened. "I don't have to explain myself to you."
"Marin, wait," Sam said, but she had already fled.
"Tsk, tsk," said Lucifer from the desk. "Smooth, Sammy. Real smooth. I can see why your brother gets all the ladies and you . . . don't."
Sam glared at him. "You're not real," he said. "You're in my head. I can shut you out if I want to."
Lucifer smirked. "Just keep telling yourself that, champ. Are you gonna throw another glass of water at me?"
Defeated, Sam sank back into the pillows. He pressed the palm of his hand between his thumb and forefinger, willing the pain to come back. Somehow, concentrating on the pain was like his own special ward against Lucifer, but it didn't come.
"Aww, Sam," said Lucifer. "I feel terrible I've kept you awake past your bedtime. You need to be well-rested for tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
But Lucifer only smiled and approached the bed, touching Sam's forehead with two fingers, and he was out like a light.
Sam didn't have to look around to know where he was this time. This was Stanford. He had lived, breathed, and walked these halls and classrooms for four years. It was more of a home to him than anywhere else.
He had been twenty-two that May, still young and normal enough that birthdays were cause for raucous celebration and copious amounts of alcohol, but Sam, ever the responsible one, had blown off birthday plans to study for finals . . . and this. The LSAT. At the time it had been the most important thing, the be-all-end-all of his future.
And here he was, on a gorgeous day in June, taking what was arguably the most brutal standardized test known to man, but all he could think about was how much easier this was than invading a vamp nest or killing werewolves. Old habits died hard.
"So, Sammy," Lucifer said casually. "This is it then." He looked around, bored. "Why did you even bother taking the LSAT, anyway? You do realize that like, a third of all 1Ls sell their soul to get into the law school of their choice, LSAT scores be damned?" He chuckled. "And you even had the jump on them. You had a demon right in your pocket the whole time! I bet Azazel could have worked something out. Stanford Law," Lucifer breathed. "Hell, I'm sure if you'd wanted Yale or Harvard he could have made that happen. Amazing the doors that get opened when you have friends in high places . . . or low places, as the case might be," he drawled.
"I got a 174," Sam spat, chin held high. "I would have gotten in anywhere."
"Oh, so you don't blame your brother for taking that away from you?"
"No, of course not," Sam said. He was tired of explaining this to everyone, to himself. "I was never really out of the life. It was just a dream."
"Careful, Sam," Lucifer said in a low voice as the proctor wrote 35 minutes: Section 1 on the board. "You might just make yourself believe that."
Sam gritted his teeth and turned to the test as the proctor started the timer. Section one was Analytical Reasoning, but most LSAT preppers called them Logic Games, and for good reason. Even during months of intense LSAT prep, Sam had always found these sections invigorating and even a little fun. Alright, Sam, concentrate.
A park contains five of seven kinds of trees –
firs, laurels, maples, oaks, pines spruces, and yews –
consistent with the following conditions:
If maples are in the park, yews are not.
If firs are in the park, pines are not.
If yews are not in the park, then either laurels or oaks, but not both, are in the park.
If it is not the case that the park contains both laurels and oaks, then it contains firs and spruces.
Sam read the game twice before skimming over the six questions associated with it. Even then he was vaguely aware of Lucifer chattering next to him.
If firs are not in the park, then which of the following must be true?
Lost in concentration, Sam scribbled out a quick diagram as he had done hundreds of times before in practice. If firs weren't in the park, the park had to contain both laurels and oaks. And if that was the case, then yews would have to be present as well, which meant that the first clue gave him his answer. Maples could not be in the park. That was what must be true. Sam filled in bubble "A" on his answer sheet.
". . . but you'll never be able to escape. You think you can, but you won't. No matter what you do, you'll always end up back at the Northern Indiana State Hospital. With me." Sam glanced over at Lucifer. He smiled. And Sam was gratified to see Lucifer's expression falter for a split second. His control was slipping. Sam's breath came in a rush. This was it. The LSAT was the key. He dove into the next question.
If pines are in the park, then which one of the following must be true?
Sam focused all his energy on solving the next question, and then the next puzzle, involving four married couples who wanted to dine together at a circular table. Then the next section: Reading Comprehension, where Sam learned about and analyzed invertebrate schooling behavior, the rationales of punishing criminals, Hispanic-American literature and the education of women during the Renaissance (during which Lucifer hovered over his shoulder and made snide comments about the minute inaccuracies of it all). And then came Logical Reasoning, which had historically been Sam's weakest section during practice. He hesitated when the proctor called out five minutes remaining.
"Aww, Sammy, don't stop now, you're on a roll," piped up Lucifer. Sam looked over, and Lucifer flickered. Sam smiled – the feral smile he used to get on a hunting trip, when everything had gone as planned and he was about to end some sonofabitch for good. Lucifer cocked his head to one side. He looked almost . . . afraid. Sam almost laughed. The devil was afraid of him.
The two mantras he had beaten into his head for months during Logical Reasoning prep came back.
Takes for granted. Fails to consider.
"Admit it, Sam. This is your life from now on. Life in the mental institution. Life in the Cage. You can't imagine a life without me, can you?"
And therein lied the heart of the matter. That was why Lucifer had been taking him back to his school days, the memories from before. This was what Lucifer had failed to consider: Sam had lived for twenty-six odd years before Lucifer had started meddling in his life. If Sam could find refuge in memories without him, then Lucifer would lose. But no matter how much Lucifer kicked and screamed and tried to ingrain himself in those memories, he would never belong there. And Sam would always see through it.
Not breaking eye contact, he raised one hand and snapped his fingers. Lucifer exploded in a burst of light, splattering Sam and his test booklet with gore. Instantly he was back in bed, in the hospital, a bit disoriented but flooded with relief.
"Hey."
Sam looked up to find Marin lingering uncertainly in the doorway. She had a foil-wrapped candy bar in one hand. "Hey," he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and padding over to her.
"I swiped this from the caf," she said, raising one shoulder in a shrug. "I thought we could share it."
Sam nodded. "Yeah, I'd like that."
Marin studied him, her blue-green eyes bright. "You look . . . better."
Sam nodded, and smiled for the first time since he had been admitted. A real smile. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."