Author Note: Just a little word therapy for the day. Hey, it's gotta be better than food therapy, right? :P
Season 6, post "Appointment in Samarra," but I wasn't honesty thinking much on placement or canon complacency, just getting some thoughts and words out.
In Pieces
Dean has dubbed it the wall of Sam, but it feels more like a Band-Aid than a wall. Flimsy and too easy to dislodge, and horribly ill-equipped for the task at hand. The task of keeping the bad parts of his subconscious from spilling over the dam and bleeding out to poison the rest of his thoughts and memories, and warp the pieces of himself he's still able to make some small bit of sense of. For days now his head has felt massive and unruly, edges of sanity and wholeness raising and peeling away more and more as the hours tick by. But he can't soothe the itch; won't dare lift a finger to scratch.
He feels off, like there's something in his head that doesn't belong, and try as he might, Sam can't make it fit the way it's meant to. The way it had before. There's a busy buzzing in his head, of things working themselves out in the background, trying hopelessly to buddy up with one another in a way that makes some shred of sense.
The fact that it feels like anything is a concern, a sign that this is merely a temporary fix. Because how the hell is he supposed to not pick at the wall when he constantly feels so twitchy and wrong inside?
He should tell Dean, but he can't. Can't do that to his brother.
He won't.
He wants his big brother to know what's really going on, what he's going through, but that's childish, and selfish. Sam can't reach out, can't clue him in on the constant struggle taking place in his head. Dean's had more than enough to deal with, and he refuses to pile on. This – all of this – is on Sam, and he needs to be strong, to handle this and let his brother know that he can. This, and whatever comes after.
Besides, the wall…it's working, he supposes. For now. In the way that he can't remember those things he'd missed while he was…not himself. Those things he'd done. Not the bigger things, anyway; the worst things, the things he's not supposed to be poking at. He doesn't even really remember anything Cas has told him happened, or what little additional information he's managed to wrangle from his stubborn, steel-lipped brother. And while he knows it's there, he certainly doesn't remember Hell, or whatever may have…he shakes his head, forces away the wondering.
Doesn't scratch.
He might not remember it all, but he feels it. An overwhelming flush of lost, forgotten emotions and a distinct, frightening undertone of absolute emptiness swirling like a cyclone in his head, a thunderously deafening mix that leaves him jittery and anxious, that beats at the wall and what little bits of Sam he's clinging to. Of Sammy.
It all leaves him with a frayed, fragile feeling in his head that he can't shake, and he's honestly not even sure he knows who Sam is anymore.
Distractions help keep his mind otherwise occupied, and Dean's doing his level best to make sure there are plenty, like he knows. Sam plays along. He smiles, and he laughs, and he bullshits around with his brother the way Dean needs him to, but it's always there. The raging cyclone, the frightening mental cacophony, and the persistent, nagging feeling of wrongness.
But some days, he feels almost normal. And some nights, he even sleeps. And on the nights he doesn't – the nights he can't – he comforts himself with the fact his brother is finally getting some solid rest.
He has to make this work, for Dean. He needs to find a way to be okay with the wall, and let it become a part of him, because Dean needs him to be okay.
That's more than enough motivation, even if Sam can't see this solution lasting long.