Disclaimer: If you call yourself a Supernatural and/or music fan, then you will know instantly what I do and do not own. Oh, and one thing not everyone will pick up on: Sam's musings on the subject of evil later in this fic, when he has The Epiphany—yeah, borrowed the main idea of that from David Eddings. I thought it fitting, so I used it. But I'm admitting that it's not mine, so that must count for something!

Characters: Sam and Dean Winchester, with a flashback appearance of Jessica Moore

Setting: Everything up to and including All Hell Breaks Loose, Part I is fair game.

Warnings: Spoilers for "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part I"

Mine Eyes Have Seen

There's a long, black train comin' down the line,

Feedin' off the souls that are lost and cryin'.

Rails of sin, only evil remains.

Watch out, brother, for that long, black train.

Sam Winchester had grown up in the presence of evil. He'd been dragged into that horrid world before he could walk, the night his mother burned. He'd been surrounded by iniquity since that night—maybe even before, he wasn't sure.

For a decade—from around the time he was eight to around eighteen—Sam followed his father and his brother through the endless dark that made up their days. He killed, and he killed, and he killed, and all the time the darkness swirled around him, and sometimes—sometimes, when he was unlucky—within him.

But he never really felt any of it. Evil had affected him in numerous and profound ways, but he had never really felt a part of it—not really. In all those years, whenever Sam looked inside himself, he saw only good. It was all that kept him going—all that reassured him that though he killed daily, that did not mean he did wrong.

Sam Winchester was a good man—he was sure of it, right down to his roots.

Until the day the unthinkable happened, and it all came crashing down.

Look to the heavens, you can look to the sky.

You can find redemption staring back into your eyes.

There is protection and there's peace the same,

Burnin' your ticket for that long, black train.

+Flashback—Stanford, 2006+

Sam jerked awake with a startled cry on his lips, a cry that was hastily and automatically bitten back even as he tried to regain his bearings.

Beside him, Jessica shifted, curling in close, and her sleepy voice murmured, "Another nightmare?"

Sam slid his arm around her, unsurprised that she'd picked up on his fear so quickly. "Yeah," he murmured absently, holding her tight to assure himself that she really was there, as he'd done every night this week.

Jessica's fingers rubbed his arm gently. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, though she would already know the answer.

"Mm…no, it's okay. I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

She didn't push, though he could tell she wanted to. A moment later, he felt her kiss, feather-light on his lips, and then she laid back down and let her breathing begin to even out.

He thought of trying to sleep himself, but quickly passed the notion off as useless and simply lay wide-awake, his eyes open and staring blindly into the dark. Part of him feared that at any moment the room would come alight with fire and he'd see the love of his life in the center of the burning, roiling flames from his nightmare.

Each night this week he'd had the same exact dream, and each night it seemed to become more real than the one preceding it, until he honestly couldn't tell the times when he was awake from the times when he slumbered.

He never told Jessica about the dreams, though. She'd probably think him psychotic, anyway. Who could blame her? And besides, they were only nightmares, manifestations of his own insecurity. They meant nothing.

Sam was still telling himself this, very firmly, when he finally began to drift off.


Dean came for him later on that night, and Jessica died two days later.

+End Flashback+

'Cause there's victory in the Lord, I say.

Victory in the Lord.

Cling to the Father and His holy name,

And don't go ridin' on that long, black train.

It really was a good thing that Dean was with him that night, because Sam couldn't have answered a single question about where he was or what he did after Dean pulled him, literally kicking and screaming, out of the burning building and to the safety of the lawn.

He was vaguely aware of firefighters swarming the property, some spraying at the flames and others tried to figure out what had happened while a few fought to keep the crowd back. He also knew that at some point, the block failed enough that Becky, Zack and Sam's roommate Derek managed to get through. They gathered in a tight bunch around him, murmuring sad condolences in choked tones. Becky slid her arms around him and held on for a long time, and he hugged her back automatically, still hardly knowing what he was doing.

Dean was his lifeline. He fielded all the questions that everyone kept pushing on Sam, and the whole time his arm never lifted from its position across Sam's shoulders. Sam gladly allowed him to take control of the situation, preferring not to have to think.

He had no concept of time passing, but eventually Dean led him to the car and told him to stay there while he went and persuaded the firefighters to let them leave. Then the warm, comforting weight of Dean's arm dropped away, and for the first time Sam was alone and he had no idea what do with himself.

After leaning heavily against the driver's door of the Impala for a while, Sam had had enough of not moving. He walked around to the back of the car, and in seconds he had the trunk open and was rummaging through the weapons. He picked up a rifle and began to reload it, his fingers easily remembering the movements that his mind had long since shoved away.

As he worked, the numbness began to fade away, bit by bit, and something else began to take shape. Sam didn't try to pin the feeling down—he simply waited patiently for the answer to come, somehow feeling that he had all the time in the world.

It didn't take long, and in a minute or two Sam was able to put a name to the feeling: rage.

He was beginning to understand, now, why John had chosen this path in life after Mary was killed. He'd never gotten it before, but at this moment, it seemed clearer than it ever had before—clearer than it would ever be again.

It was a vast thing, this feeling they call hatred. It was big enough and dark enough to fill him completely and still leave some to spill over the edges, radiating strongly enough that someone perceptive—namely Dean—could sense it emanating from him.

Hmm…maybe that was why Dean looked startled when he came back…

But the truly fascinating thing—a fact that would have horrified Sam in any other venue—was that this darkness really had been there all along. It had been coiled inside him, hidden so deep that he hadn't seen it even when he looked for it. Now, though—now it was ready to emerge, a monster at full strength.

And Sam felt no desire to keep it back, and that scared him more than anything.

There's an engineer on that long, black train,

Makin' you wonder if the ride is worth the pain.

He's just a-waitin' on your heart to say,

"Let me ride on that long, black train."

The darkness stayed with Sam over the long months on the road. It had different levels, different intensities, and it struck intermittently with his good side at random moments, making him volatile and unpredictable even to himself. It didn't help that he had nightmares that caused him to wake in a panic every night without fail, and every one of them made his hatred grow.

Dean did his best to be there for him, to keep him grounded. He even went so far once as to tell Sam that if he needed to talk, he could come to his brother. But the older Winchester could only do so much, and every day the darkness got stronger.

But you know there's victory in the Lord, I say.

Victory in the Lord.

Cling to the Father and His holy name,

And don't go ridin' on that long, black train.

"I'd have to kill you…he said I'd have to kill you, Sammy."

As long as he lived, those words would stay burned in Sam's brain. He would never forget the look on Dean's face as he shared the secret—a look of wide-eyed, wild fear tinged with a desperate need for reassurance that no one could give him, because how do you reassure a person carrying a burden like this around?

Not that Sam felt any better. Admittedly, he probably couldn't feel worse about this than Dean, but he had no doubt that he was at least as scared as his brother right now.

Because he knew now—knew that the darkness he'd been feeling inside wasn't just his imagination being dramatic, as he'd tried to hope. If John said that Dean may have to kill his brother, then he had a damn good reason, and as much as Sam hated to think it, there really was no other explanation.

Well, okay, he couldn't think of one. He was fairly certain that Dean was working on it, though…

Sam went on what can only be described as a downward spiral upon at last learning the big secret that Dean and, before him, John had gone to no small amount of trouble to hide. For a while, his disposition was exactly the same as it had been on the night of The Fire: slight hysteria followed by a complete and rather pleasant numbness that was in turn followed by a flash of fury and then the numbness again.

But then came the determination that prompted him to sneak away from Dean in the dead of night to figure out exactly what was going on—an act that proved rather quickly to be a mistake, but whatever. That wasn't the point, anyway.

The point was that Sam hadn't been imagining the evil he'd been feeling inside him. It really was there, and it really was growing, and someday—maybe someday soon—if he didn't find a way to banish it, it would swallow him.

Well, I can hear the whistle from a mile away.

It sounds so good, but I must stay away.

That train is a beauty, makin' everybody stare,

But its only destination is the middle of nowhere.

The Epiphany came a couple of days after Ava disappeared.

Dean said later that he'd anticipated a lot more "staring out the rainy windows" from Sam after they found her missing, and in truth, Sam could understand why he'd expected that reaction. Actually, as well as he'd hidden it, there had been a bit of what Dean called "covert emo operation."

At least, for a day or two…until The Epiphany.

It was nearly two in the morning and Sam was lying in bed, wide-awake and staring at the ceiling with his arms crossed over his chest.

He was in a rather profound mood tonight, and had spent the last few hours thinking, mainly about Ava. He had narrowed down the possibilities to two: one, she'd simply been kidnapped, or two, she'd been turned, and was now evil.

Now, wasn't that a strange thought? That willful, eccentric, oh, so funny girl just suddenly being evil…was it even possible for someone so obviously good to turn completely bad?

No.

The answer came suddenly, unbidden, bringing with it an idea that was at once simple and yet so complex that it took Sam's breath away.

There was no such thing as darkness.

Well, not complete darkness, at least.

Sam had always thought that blackness and shadow were the center of all things. It certainly seemed that way, sometimes. And yet…and yet….

Slowly, deliberately, Sam reached over and flipped the switch on the lamp. Light flooded the room, and in the other bed Dean twitched and muttered and turned over on his side to escape it. Satisfied, Sam turned the light back off and lay back, having proven what he'd wanted.

When you turn on a light, the darkness is chased away. It hovers around the edges, but it can't wash out the light—only hide from it. It's a similar case with personality—light is always able to overcome darkness. All you have to do is find it, and though that is sometimes difficult, it can always be done.

Sam simply needed to find his light again.

But how to do that? It was buried so deep—he would most certainly need help digging it up. And probably not the kind of help Dean could give—though that certainly couldn't hurt. But he'd need so much more than any one person could give.

Okay, so what was said to be the strongest force of good in the world?

That question took longer to answer. Sam thought about all he'd worked with, all he'd gone through, everything he'd ever known, every theory he'd ever heard, everyone he'd ever talked to about good and evil.

It was that last that finally gave him the answer, in the form of the late Pastor Jim, the closest person in the world to him after Dean, Jess, and John, in that order. Jim had taught him many things, and continued to teach even in death.

Smiling slightly, Sam folded his hands and began to pray.

But you know there's victory in the Lord, I say.

Victory in the Lord.

Cling to the Father and His holy name,

And don't go ridin' on that long, black train.

Months later, in a truly ironic twist of fate, Sam found himself taken down by a man who would probably end up becoming a disciple of the devil himself, and he found out then that there were some things he truly couldn't be saved from.

He felt as if he were watching a movie—completely detached from the situation. He knew he was dying—all the blood made that amply clear. He could hear Dean talking, feel Dean's arms around him, knew Dean was setting aside all his own rules and hugging him like some big dumb girl. He wished that he could say something, anything, to make the choking catch of tears in Dean's voice go away, but he couldn't seem to make his brain reconnect to his mouth. He could only sit there and stare at his terrified brother like a complete idiot—and then even that sight began to gray out at the edges.

But…something was wrong. Even as his body continued to die, he felt it-felt that this was all wrong. And okay, so it's only natural to feel that way about one's own demise, but this was different—there was more to it than that…

It just…it wasn't time yet!

Sam knew the moment the thought crossed his mind that it was true. It wasn't time for him to go—not right now. He still had work, important work, to do here—things that no one else could take care of.

So then why was the life draining out of him so quickly? Why was he…dying?

It's all right.

That particular assurance didn't exactly come in words—it was more a feeling. A feeling of being warm, and safe, and content. A feeling of not being alone.

A wonderful, beautiful, temporary peace.

He only wished that Dean could know the truth, so he wouldn't worry so much. He tried to open his eyes, to tell Dean that it was okay, that he was okay…that this wasn't forever.

But his voice still wasn't working, and the last of his life was leaving him, and Dean was holding him tighter and crying and stroking his hair and yelling…something…and as Sam slipped away at last, he threw one more desperate prayer to his God that somehow, some way, Dean would understand.

I said cling to the Father and His holy name,

And don't go ridin' on that long, black train.

Yeah, watch out, brother, for that long, black train.

That devil's drivin' that long, black train.

Author's Note: Okay, I know it's short—probably the shortest thing I've ever written—but I wanted to post one last tear-jerker fanfic before what will undoubtedly be a tear-jerker season finale. (Not that the story is actually much of a tear-jerker. It's more the fact that Sammy's still dead—if only temporarily—at the end of it that makes it sad.)

Anyways, if you feel you have the time, please drop a review! I'd appreciate any feedback anyone can give me!