AN: I had this idea in my head for ages and I needed to get it written down - I originally posted this on Tumblr, but it just occurred to me that people on here might want to see it, too. Feel free to let me know what you think!
So they left. One by one.
He was left holding his head, trying to stay upright. He looked down at three graves; each one of them a nail in his own coffin.
His mother. His father. His-
"Stop it. It's not working," He grinds out.
". . . You sure?" The voice whispers back. He feels a light touch on the back of his head, pushing him, with a softness that made him feel queasy. He looks down again, and falls to his knees; he can feel the mud seeping into his jeans; he can smell the scent of freshly mowed grass. The smell is too cheery: doesn't it know that his life is over? That his world is collapsing, and he can't go back, or make it right, or try and pick up the pieces and start again?
Because all the pieces are here. They're dead.
His family is dead. He watched it happen. He made it happen.
He is peerless.
"You can't – you won't win," He insists.
"Watch me," The voice whispers back once more.
He is still peerless. His brother is alive, but he can't be trusted. He can't stand him.
Sam steps tentatively across the threshold to the ER. He gradually halts his progress, his brow furrowing and his eyes watering slightly. It is painful to see this, again.
"They picked him up at the side of the road, Sam," The voice whispers, "He was drunk, passed out, and he stank of vomit and-"
"Enough," He replies softly. But he isn't speaking to her. He forgets that she is the one who put him there.
"Enough, Dean. Why do you do this to yourself? To me?" He asks hoarsely, after he's strode over to where his brother is slumped on his side on a gurney.
"Jeez, Sammy. Didn't know you cared," His brother mocked, his eyes slowly crawling up to Sam's. He winces at the light; it is then that Sam notices how they are rendered completely pink by how bloodshot they are. He spots a tinge of yellow in them. He thinks not of demons, but of jaundice. He thinks about how his brother is drinking himself into an early grave, and how he wished he cared more.
"Of course I care, Dean. I'm your-"
"You're my brother . . . Right," Dean hisses. "That's what you said when you kicked me out. Most guys wouldn't make their brothers pay rent, Sam,"
"I – no, this isn't – I wouldn't-" The younger bothered stuttered, clutching at his head. Something is . . . Wrong here.
"You would," The voice persuaded. "You hate him. He's a burden,"
"N – no . . . Not real," He assured himself, stepping backwards away from where Dean lies in the hospital bed glaring up at him accusatorily.
He trips backwards on something, and plummets backwards to the ground. But when he lands, it isn't on a shiny hospital floor.
He lands on the hard dirt of Cold Oak.
"You killed that girl Ava?" Dean asked, standing over him with a suspicious and horrified look on his face. Sam sees half-light, half-shadow, as he stares up at his brother in the moonlight. He thinks idly that it is after midnight now; it is his 24th birthday.
"No – I – I'm older now," Sam mumbles to himself. His breath catches in his throat and struggles away as he sees Dean pull a gun on him. He is hyper-aware of the squelching of the mud bearing his weight; of his jacket stained with blood and dirt and puddle-water; of his face stained with uncontrollable tears, shaken down his face as he shakes his head.
"She was innocent, Sam. You killed an innocent human," Dean states coldly, with a look of betrayal that is utterly nauseating to Sam.
"N-no, I would never, she was – I had to," He tries to justify her death. Why did he kill her?
"Sorry, Sammy. I think Dad was right," Dean cocks the gun, and sets his features into a hard mask of impassivity. "You'll go darkside. It's only a matter of time,"
"And he was right, wasn't he?" The voice intrudes, highlighting how the betrayal came good in the end.
"Please – Dean, don't-"
-
"You're a monster, Sam! A monster,"
"Don't say that to me! Don't you say that to me!"
For the first time, she appears before him, so he can see her, hear her laughter; watch as she kneels down beside the cot. He struggles, but he can't escape.
"What do we have here?" She asks. "Sammy's worst memory. I gotta say . . . Your brother was right. You are a monster. Such a waste of blood,"
"Th-this – it's all you, isn't it?" Sam asks, gesturing around the panic room with his frantic eyes, only half-knowing it isn't real. He sucks in a shaky breath, and tries to clear his head. He even clenches his fists in an attempt to press his nails into his hand-scar, but to no avail: when he opens his eyes, she's still there, smiling down at him. He realises that in this memory he didn't even have a hand scar; he despairs.
"Actually, this is all you," She replies with a perverse pleasure, "You see, my father – he could make illusions and tricks out of nothing – but me?" She reached out, and stroked his hair, made sweaty from cold-turkey and panic, out of his face. Her touch is burning. "I can only work with what's there already. Your nightmares . . . I gotta say, they're impressive, Sammy. But then with all the times you've done wrong, and all the times you've let your brother down . . . There's fodder enough for them. Wouldn't you agree?"
Sam struggles some more, trying to ignore her and escape. But what comes next can't be ignored.
". . . Maybe he'll never come and get you. Maybe he'll just leave you here, with me. And we can do this forever – now, wouldn't that be fun?" She asked excitedly.
He gritted his teeth, his eyes wild with how strung-out he was. He knew that, obviously, the pain and the yearning for the demon blood wasn't real, it was just a nightmare, but trying to tell his body that was like – it was like –
"He'll – he'll come," Sam replied eventually, and her smile was contorted with maliciousness intent.
"We'll see, Sammy. I mean, he usually comes, right? – Well, there was that one time when he didn't even try-"
Then he was there. He leapt into that pit, the haunted look his blood-covered brother had given him just before seared onto the back of his eyelids, and the devil screaming and clawing at the inside of his brain. He was jello, and it had only been under two seconds. He was still falling, and already he had a taste of what it was going to be like when he hit the bottom.
His body was burning away. The red flames, the orange flames, the yellow, the blue, the scorching hot and white and no relief; the way the red was actually her hair, and her lips pulling back to reveal her teeth as he burned and burned and burned. Skin was shorn and muscle ripped agonisingly slowly from bones and teeth and hands and fingernails and screaming and –
Abaddon chuckled when Sam Winchester eventually passed out. For the past half an hour he'd been lying there on the sofa, stock-still and staring up at the ceiling with this delicious look of terror on his face, his breath stuttering and mechanical, like he was going to stall at any second. A simple hand on his head, and he'd fallen apart.
She was a Knight of Hell for a reason.
She smiled at his slumped form one more time, certain that he wouldn't try and escape when he woke through the sheer force of fear. Some rope would be enough to hold him, with the promise of a touch to the head if he stepped out of line.
Satisfied, she set about ringing the boy's brother and arranging the trade for the key and Henry. It was a shame, really: there was still so much untapped tragedy in the younger Winchester's life that she could have played with for hours, days, weeks . . . But she had a task to do. She couldn't allow herself to be side-tracked by leisure activities.
Putting her boots up on the table, she dialled Dean Winchester's number.
p.s. if you have any other ideas for dark-ish oneshots you'd like me to write, I'm all ears - PM me opr leave me a message on tumblr, my url is itshellfiredean :)