radiohead is good

metallica is good

but the title is taken from zeppelin go figure

Sam takes it like a champ, or maybe that's what his dad would say if he had graying hairs and a penchant for giving out free compliments.

Sam highly doubts this.

When they take him they don't want any sort of resistance so they drug him and lock him up, fast and quick. And so it goes, every night. They'll deliver his food, he'll fight through chains and raw nerves humming with animosity, and then he'll slowly fall apart. All just so he can lay a scratch on them, but it's ineffective and sloppy, so they just drug him again. Every night, just to get him to sleep.

Even when he's lucid he thinks he's high.

At first it's a cell with a low, long piece of thick styrofoam to lie on. Handcuffs loop through the bars and he's attached there for a good portion of the day. When they un-cuff him, Sam stands up and counts the 12 exact steps it takes, toe to toe, to get from one end of the cell to the other. Then when his wrists get infected from the cuffs and he breaks his thumb trying to get them off, they decide bars and cells and handcuffs aren't enough.

Through a drug induced haze and dubious methods, they manage to move him to another place. Now this one is cold. He hasn't seen light in however long he's been here and everything stops distinguishing itself through shapes and the dark. He prefers not seeing though, afraid of what he'll find. Sam thinks it's funny that he used to try and fight, but know he doesn't even remember human contact. All the shit they siphon through his veins spins his mind out of control, makes him think his feelings aren't real.

The new place is 4 concrete walls and a concrete ceiling and floor. It gets cold at night and Sam counts the 7 exact steps it takes, toe to toe, to get from one wall to the other. His new cell doesn't come with a place to lie down.

After weeks, months maybe, he can't be too sure, they stop giving him the drug for a few nights. It's a wild guess really, because fuck if his body even has the slightest remembrance of day and night. Sam throws up and writhes on the ground and his skull feels like it's being fucking cracked open. He doesn't sleep and he doesn't eat, he just shakes until his bones feel like they're coming apart.

Hell was better than this.

To distract himself he thinks of high school, and Radiohead songs, and college, and Walt Whitman poems, and Jess, and at some point his mind wanders over to Lucifer. It's Stockholm syndrome, if anything. He should be dead. He should be really, really dead. The whole situation makes him think of Metallica, if anything.

Death greets me warm. Ironic, considering every time he'd died, it'd come cold and unwelcoming.

Dean was the one who loved Metallica the most. Sam was fine with it, but he generally learned to tune the music out, creating a headspace around it like you do when a fan is going round and round in your room at night. He still knows the lyrics to every song though.

Dean.

God, he misses Dean. The first few days Sam remembers screaming his name over and over and over, until all he could do was stare with an open mouth and cracked lips at what he thought was the ceiling. Dean, who always had a shitty plan and always fucking failed only to get up again and fucking succeed. Dean, who was crazier than a shit-house rat. Dean, who was probably having heart attacks everyday just looking for Sam. Dean, who Sam hoped didn't care anymore. Dean who took care of him when-

Dean, who's never going to come find him because all he is now is a husk of man.

One day though, after being denied water for a day or two, just when he's delirious enough to start wishing he could die out loud, they come for him.

No handcuffs, no restraints, just bare hands that take him and throw him onto tiled ground. Freezing water turns on and pours above him and he wants to fucking cry he's so happy. Instead he settles for sitting under the spray for as long as they let him, practically inhaling the water until he almost throws up.

They take him out just in time and throw him back in his cell. When he thinks that maybe he was supposed to shower instead of drink his weight in water, he laughs, because his train of thought has no stops anymore. Sam thinks they've finally managed to crack him.

He wonders who they are.

The place is concrete, and it gets unbearably hot. They throw him under the spray twice more, but the water is boiling hot instead of deliciously cool. He doesn't want to, but this is his only source of water so he drinks anyway. Besides, he can't cry anymore if there's nothing to fuel the tears.

He lies on the too-cold ground in his cell and wonders why he hasn't tried clawing his eyeballs out yet. Somehow, it starts hurting less than all the memories locked in his head.

The drugs come faster and the water gets slower, and when's the last time he ate?

Dean.

Dean and his stupid Metallica. Dean filters through his dreams along with Jessica and Jody and Castiel and Claire and Alex and Garth and everyone else he once knew. At some point John makes it in there and Sam would like to scream if he could.

Except, Dean sounds too close for Sam to be dreaming because there's a litany of okay okay okay in his ears. Sam knows this must be a side-effect of the drugs because it's only ever okay when he's not awake.

Eventually, like most things, it ends.

Or it turns into a new beginning. Sam, who can't even stand up anymore, gets picked up and hauled out. Shipped away, like a box full of nothing. He sees light for the first time in god knows how long when they throw him out of the back of a pick up and onto pavement.

He thinks he might be going blind.

He knows he's lost his mind.

part 2 coming soon