The Long Way Down

by Mary Jane Parker

When Sam Oliver is killed on the job, his journey through hell introduces him to several interesting characters as he tries to figure out whether or not he really belongs. A series of vignettes that connect towards a common end. Spoilers through SPN S4!RR

If Sam hadn't seen his body laying on the ground five feet in front of him, he wouldn't have actually realised that he was dead. As it was, he was having a hard time believing this was the newest development in a long line of odd circumstances life (unlife?) enjoyed thrusting upon him. It seemed like the kind of thing that the Devil would just find… droll. (Sam found that he'd been picking up 'SAT words' left and right spending as much time with his boss as he did.) He waited, he really did, for the Devil to appear, laughing at the horrified look that had quickly appeared on his face, and telling him that his sense for the morbid and macabre was once again growing imaginative and out of control. He wouldn't have minded a not-so-reassuring smirk and a teasing: "Wow, Sammy, you really do go to the bad place fast, don't you?"

He got, "Wow, Sammy, this is quite the pickle, isn't it?" instead.

That familiar shit-eating grin was not the reassuring smirk he'd been looking for, and it was right where it was supposed to be, crawling across his lips in and almost sinister fashion. Perfectly white, gleaming teeth set right in the center of tanned skin lined with creases around the lips and mouth producing said shit-eating grin. Sam couldn't say he'd ever seen the man look this pleased.

"You screwed this one up. Big time."

To be fair, Sam had figured that one out without help from his boss. The soul walking down the street unscathed and the way Sock and Ben were crouched over his body were two fairly large clues in that regard. He found himself more worried about the latter than the former.

"What's going on?" he asked, finally ripping his eyes away from the lifeless him.

The devil simply shrugged, still grinning. "You tell me, Sammy."

"Am I…?"

When he trailed off, unable to actually say the word, an eyebrow bounced up the devil's forehead. His new smirk wasn't convincing Sam that he wasn't enjoying this. "There's a word you're looking for there, kiddo. Starts with a D, is usually the result of getting stabbed through the heart" He paused there to pass a look over towards Sam's body and gave a slow clap. "Twice! Congrats. That's something, isn't it? Now that word…"

"Dead?"

"Bingo."

---

A month on Earth felt like ten years in Hell and it was exactly thirty Earth days before Sam saw the devil again. It was longer than he'd ever left him alone before, which was only funny (or would have been, hypothetically) because when he'd been on earth it'd been impossible to shake the guy. Sown here, on his home turf, he left Sam alone, strung up by hooks ripping through his skin and in the care of his own babysitter-cum-torturer named Alistair for ten years before he appeared again.

Sam's flesh had only just finished growing back and Alistair was already laying out the tools of his trade on the table next to his prone body. He knew them by heart now. Scalpel, razor, screw driver, blow torch, butcher knives, spoon and acid (because sometimes he would remove Sam's eyes first, something that Sam was hard pressed to consider being the 'mercy' that Alistair called it). There was a rotating list of substitutes –tools he would circulate in and out depending on his mood—by Sam never bothered trying to anticipate what was coming. Chainsaw or thumbscrews or sharp pieces of wood inserted between his fingernails, it didn't matter; he knew he wasn't going to like it, whatever it was.

He'd never been the guy with the stick up his ass when he'd been alive, no matter what Sock liked people to believe. Sam liked to think he'd been a laid back kind of guy. Being laid back about ten years of constant torture was, however, far beyond him. He didn't feel bad about that (nor did he spend too much time thinking about it) figuring that most people won't. Instead he developed ways to cope.

It helped not to look at Alistair, even when he still had use of his eyes. Helped not to talk to him either. Sam learned sometime during the first month that fighting back with snark and his usual Dane Cook inspired wit did nothing but spur the demon on. It wasn't until his third year that he learned Alistair was not the kind demon who needed encouragement. The man too much enjoyed his job. That was what made him so good at it, he was fond of telling Sam, even if Sam wouldn't respond.

"Always having a fresh canvas to work with is one of the perks. I hate to lose one." Alistair ran the flat of the blade across Sam's nearly healed skin. Sam had also learned that while cringing never helped a thing –the demon could smell fear, he swore—it was an impossible reflex to control. The blade hurt more sinking into tense muscles, Alistair knew that. Sam still felt himself go stiff as the knife dragged through his sternum. As if the hooks that held him in suspension weren't enough.

He didn't realize that it was a month to the day since his death; that Sock, Ben, Andi, and Josie were all taking the day off from work and going down to his grave to lay flowers and rehash every possible memory of him that they could amongst themselves, much like they'd done after the funeral Sam was ignorant too as well. He wasn't wondering whether or not they would meet with his mother on their way out, because she would be showing up at the cemetery with her own flowers to lay on two separate graves for the men she'd lost (or so he would have assumed, had he been considering it) in such a short span of time. He certainly couldn't imagine that he'd been dead only a month. No one had bothered to explain the time flux to him in between the stringing up to hooks and daily torture sessions, and it was too late now. Ten years felt like ten years and some paltry explanation about space and time wasn't going to change that.

Pain was pain. Ten years of constant pain, and pain became a fact of life.

The knife moved from his chest to his thighs, and Sam recognized the particulars of the method—after ten years, there were bound to be some repeats.

"Flaying." He croaked out, breaking his own rule for the first time in almost a year. "Special occasion?"

"Like I said." Alistair didn't look up from the careful cuts he was making in the flesh. They had to be exact in order for the skin to pull off in that nice smooth pattern he liked. "I hate to lose a canvas. I want this to be memorable."

The words didn't resonate with Sam in perhaps the way the demon would have liked. There was no jolt of excitement that ran through Sam's body that would have made this last session that much more excruciating. The last session before release was always the best. That person, knowing that they were about to be unhooked and let free, was the best sort of victim. Knowing they had to go through it all one more time… and Alistair always tried to make it special. And long.

But he'd done a good job with Sam. Let go? Come down from the hooks? They weren't possibilities in his mind and with that, there was no getting excited. This? Was just another flaying.

"Almost done here?"

"Almost."

"How long to heal?"

"How fast do you want him?"

"The deal was one month, Alistair."

The demon grunted, muttering something underneath his breath, but when the other voice in the room cleared his throat in a very pointed manner, Sam felt the knife ease up slowly from beneath his skin, painfully pulling away at muscle and sinew as it did and probably causing more damage that way than it would have if he'd kept making the careful incisions. There was a clank to his side and Sam turned his head, just slightly, only to see Alistair wiping empty but bloody hands on a towel. The knife laid back with his other instruments on their metal tray.

"I remember the Crusades. When you were fun."

"Have him in my office within the hour."

"Yes, sir."

---

Given that Hell on Earth was set up in the local DMV, Sam probably should have expected that somewhere down in the Pit, there were pencil pushing demons , paperwork, [perpetually broken] copy and fax machines, cubicles, and corner offices. It almost looked normal, to be honest, and wasn't that a sign of the times? Hell wasn't supposed to seem normal, and maybe if he could have remembered more about Earth than a few flashes here and there, he would have realised that. A demon on each side practically frog marched him past the Insurance Agency setting and as they past none of the other minions of Hell looked up. They were all filling out forms. In triplicate.

For the first time in ten years, Sam was allowed to sit down and he did it with a swiftness, not realizing or caring at first exactly whose office he'd been marched into. The demons left him there, closing and locking the door behind them, and Sam subsequently collapsed into the single chair positioned in front of an impressive looking mahogany desk. The chocolate coloured leather practically swallowed his body whole, becoming in an instant the most comfortable thing he'd ever sat in. For all the instant healing technique Alistair employed, he'd never been this far away from the pain.

" First time we see each other in a month, Sammy, and you're sleeping on me?"

Yes, he was sleeping. Sleep didn't come easy when one was suspended in the air with meat hooks that dug underneath the skin. Sleep had taken over as soon as he'd gotten comfortable in the chair and Sam couldn't even remember closing his eyes, but upon opening them he could clearly see a living nightmare looking down at him. "You…"

The Devil, dressed in his usual impeccable fashion, reached down to grab Sam's chin after he trailed off and his speech became intelligible. "Alistair didn't cut out your tongue, did he? I told him not to." He tilted Sam's head upwards, obviously attempting to peer into his mouth. "You know, employee reviews are coming up. We're really going to have to consider his file this year."

Sam could only blink. Mostly because his jaw was still caught between the Devil's fingers.

The older man grinned. "You're so happy to see me you're speechless, I get it. I've missed you too." Rough fingers scraped across Sam's skin once more before he finally let go, stepping back into a clear and full line of vision and taking three short strides to down in the chair behind the expensive looking desk. "How've you been, Sammy?"

Tortured, cut open, killed a million times over, broken, bound… "In hell."

"Rapier wit, as always."

"What do you want?" Dry and filled with venom, Sam barely recognized his own voice. Croaking out the one sentence was all he could do before dissolving into a sick sounding fit of coughs that had him doubling over in the chair. The restorative properties of Alistair's rack only went so far, leaving the fact that Sam hadn't done any speaking aside from screams in ten very long years. His chest meeting his knees and a hand covering his mouth, Sam didn't notice when the Devil stepped from around his desk again, placing a glass filled with something brown into his free hand. He brought it to his lips and took a large gulp, an action that didn't lead to anything besides a renewed and very vigorous fit of coughing and sputtering. "What the hell…"

"You looked like you could use a drink. That's two hundred year old brandy, kid," the Devil answered. A hip balanced against the edge of his desk and his arms crossed over his chest as he looked down at Sam. "Only the best for you. And you didn't answer my question… how are you?"

"You've got to be kidding me..." Sam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to ignore the fact that his voice was little more than a wheeze. "You're not serious. How am I?"

The Devil rolled his eyes. "I told him to leave you with full brain function, especially since you always were a little, y'know." He tapped his head, indicating exactly what he thought of Sam's general frame of mind. "I'll speak slowly: How. Are. You. Feel. Ing?"

"Like shit."

"Oh, good," his boss smiled again, pushing away from the desk. "I didn't want him to go to hard on you, but, hey, we've gotta keep up appearances and Alistair's got a reputation to keep up. We can't have souls thinking we've lost our touch or we'll have anarchy down here. But you're feeling like shit?"

Sam glared. "Yeah."

"Excellent. Can't have them accusing me of nepotism."

"Nepotism?"

"Oh come on, Sammy. You know better than anyone else how the souls get," the Devil shook his head, smiling in an almost rueful manner. "They look for any reason to complain down here and the last thing I need is them accusing me of going easy on you just because you're my kid."

"What?"

"Alistair really did a number on you, didn't he? You might've ended up being a dud on Earth, but you're still mine and you made it past the ten year mark with your faculties intact and a… well, a semi-functional brain. That makes you worth something in the family business."

"What?"

The Devil made no secret of the sigh that escaped from between his lips, nor did he bother to even try and hide the two fingers he brought up to rub the bridge of his nose. "You're dead, in case you'd failed to notice."

"I got that," Sam bit out. The taste of the brandy was still fresh in his mouth and talking around it had him reigning in his gag reflex. "The demon and the ten years of torture gave that one away, asshole."

"You talk to your father with that mouth?"

"You're not my—"

"We're skipping that argument." And as quickly as he'd been all smiles and white teeth, the Devil's look turned almost murderous and Sam felt his body recoil instinctively, pressing back into the plush leather. He half expected a truck to materialize in the corner of the room and come barreling at him. Barring that, the look on his face was terrifying enough. "It's a fact of life, just like that contract that signs over your soul and I won't have you pretending you hadn't suspected it. Those demons you were palling around with certainly had. You're my flesh and blood and I like you, Sammy, but you will do as I say or the protection I afforded you from Alistair vanishes faster than you can drop out of college."

"That was protection?" Sam asked incredulously. Fingers very consciously felt across places on his body where not two hours ago he hadn't had skin. Every blink of his eyelids recalled the memory of a thin razor blade slicing across to remove them. He balled his hands into fists and could feel his knuckles crack simply because they weren't used to being in such good working order, much less being able to move of their own volition. His entire body wasn't used to that anymore, acting instead of reacting to one of Alistair's sessions. Movement, something he'd once taken entirely for granted, had been rendered a luxury.

There was an anger building up within him as he continued touching certain spots on his arms and hands, almost wishing that there was some remaining trace of what Alistair had done to him that he could shove in the Devil's face. Something that would say, 'look what you did to me'. Maybe, possibly, if he'd been braver, something along the lines of, 'fuck nepotism, what kind of father does that to his son?' would have shot past his lips, but Sam knew he was talking to the Devil. 'The Prince of Darkness', was the answer that question was looking for.

Sam looked down, refusing to meet the Devil's eyes. "You had me tortured. For ten years."

"Builds character." And for him it was that easy, brushing off the anger that Sam knew he had to see. The devil grinned down at him before making his way across the office to the far wall, lined with a large built in bookshelf that seemed to match the desk. The tomes he ran his fingers across sent dust flying up into the air and Sam watched as he went from leather bound book to scroll to paperback, unwavering until he came to some battered looking old thing with a cover that was half falling off the spine.

Sam looked at it the same way he looked at anything else the Devil touched: like it was going to kill him. "What is that?"

"Your contract," the Devil answered as he flipped the book open.

"I thought your gave that to me."

It was a characteristic eye roll that he received in response. "Like I couldn't get it back after you died? Honestly, Sammy, use what little brain you have left."

"Screw you."

"You're my kid, you can do better than that, but wait." Dropping the monstrous book that was his contract on the top of his desk in a dramatic fashion, the Devil seemed to find the page he was looking for immediately and dragged his finger across the page to find the lines he was looking for with seeming ease. "In exchange for the granting of an eternal life, Lucifer, the Morningstar –that's me, Sammy—will receive on first born soul. That soul will be leased freely to said firstborn until the age of twenty one when the lease must be renewed in exchange for continued life of the lessee. The lessee will agree to work for Lucifer, the Morningstar until point of death. When the lessee dies –that's you, by the way—'"

"Lessee?" Sam interrupted.

"The way I see it, you were leasing your soul from me those first twenty-one years. That was me being generous," the Devil explained, looking up at Sam only briefly before turning his eyes back to the page. "As I was saying, 'when the lessee dies his soul shall be turned over to the proprietor posthaste and the lessee will then be obligated to serve the proprietor for eternity, however long that may be,'— that would be subject to the discretion of the man upstairs, of course. Details of timing aside, your lease is up."

Shaking his head, Sam could only shrug at the news. As if it was any worse than anything he'd already experienced in Hell. "I knew that already. I knew I was coming to Hell when I died, you told me."

"This is more than 'going to hell'. This isn't a vacation. You don't just get to sit on your ass all day, and I think ten years of that was, again, me being generous. No, from now on you have to earn your keep; like I said, the family business." The Devil closed the contract, pushing it to the side. "You're going to work for me."

"Like that's new?"

"No more collecting escaped souls. That's grunt work and you're better than that, Sammy. No… no, I've got new work for you. Souls, but the shiny new kind. Untarnished and free until you get them to sign on the dotted line. That's cool, right?"

"It's never going to be cool. Stop trying."

"This from a member of the generation that voluntarily smokes themselves to death to look 'cool'."

"Didn't you invent cigarettes?"

"That doesn't make you people any less stupid for falling for them," the Devil grinned and gave a good laugh. "Anyway, shiny new souls. I think this is your calling."

"And if it's not?" It was a pointless question, but one Sam felt he had to ask anyway. It was all part of that wonderful illusion that he still had some control over his life… and death. While everything that had happened up to that point should have made it clear that he most certainly did not, he still felt like he had to ask. "What are you going to do if it's not?"

The Devil shrugged. "Well, Alistair's always free."

Again, Sam had to hold himself back from spitting out what would have only been pointless. You're supposed to be my father! What would that have really meant to the Devil? It barely meant anything to him. As far as Sam was concerned his real father, by blood or no, had been buried alive by a group of over eager demons. The same night he would have died if the Devil hadn't saved him, an act that didn't confuse as much as it had, now that he knew the biological truth. But that was all that it was, biological. It didn't mean anything to Sam, and he could only assume it didn't mean anything to the man standing in front of him. He didn't know any parent whose smile would grow wider as he watched a threat send a shudder of true fear down their child's spine.

Going back to Alistair –going anywhere near Alistair— was the last thing he wanted. He understood where they were now. Alistair's rack was the new Andi tied up in the back of his trunk. This was how they were going to play the control game now and it had gone far beyond a girl and a crush. He shouldn't have been surprised, Hell being the Devil's home turf and all. Whatever tenuously set rules they'd had between the two of them were gone now.

The Devil continued to smile until Sam began squirming back against the leather. "It's cool, right?" he asked again.

What was he supposed to say besides, "right." And then, for good measure, because that smile really was creeping him out, he added, "When do I start?"

Leaning forward, the Devil ruffled Sam's hair. "That's what I like to hear, kiddo. That's what I like to hear."

---

"Why so glum, chum?"

"I'm not your chum."

"Your dad was right, Sam… you've really got to get into the spirit of things or you'll never enjoy yourself." There was a pause as the small, blonde child turned to face Sam completely and a bright, gap-toothed grin spread across her lips. "That look was positively demonic, but keep your eyes on the road, please. We're getting off at the next exit. I want to stop for cake."

About three or four weeks before Sam had learned what happened to those who refused Lilith's demands for cakes and other sweets. Devil's son or not, he wasn't going to risk the same.

Besides, it wasn't the first time she'd insinuated demonic tendencies on his part. Spending any amount of time with this child-cum-demon, in Sam's opinion, would drive anyone insane, but still he wasn't interested in her input on the matter. He pulled his glare away from her smiling eyes and focused back on the road, locking his eyes on the green signs flying by above them as they sped down the Ohio freeway. They'd been driving together for days, and this cross country romp of murderous demon and relatively terrified getaway driver was nothing like the pretend games of cops and robbers Sam had played when he was younger and much more alive.

Sam had already decided that if this was the family business, then he wanted nothing to do with it. Not that he had much of a choice, but it comforted him to know that ideologically he was still against everything he'd seen in the past two months, even after all the time he'd spent underground.

"You spend too much time moping around," the girl started up again. She'd turned away from Sam, resting her chin on the windowsill as the wind blew her hair back. "You could be having fun."

"This isn't—"

"Ugh, I know. 'This isn't fun'," she mocked him, her voice deepening in a way that would have been funny had she not been a demon inhabiting a body of what had to be an absolutely terrified ten year old girl. "You're no fun." She shook her head and sighed. "That's alright though, we'll have some fun tonight. There's our exit!"

He'd never considered that there could be more than one type of demon. He'd never had reason to consider it and, to be frank, it had been better for his psyche to not think about it in the first place. Giant horns and scaly bodies were plenty, as far as Sam was concerned, when it came to what crawled out from the depths of hell. When the Devil had explained the intricacies of 'shiny new soul' collection, he hadn't mentioned that it would involve playing chauffeur to a demon composed of black smoke and a stolen body. Nor had she mentioned that she was hardly the only one of her kind.

The explanation made sense in that weird way that explanations having to do with Hell, the Devil, and demons tended not to, but Sam, in order to keep his head from exploding, didn't question it. The demons he knew had originally been angels, fighting at the Devil's side when he'd decided to rebel against God. The one who sat next to him in the car now had been mortal once, but her time in hell had turned her into what she was now.

Lilith loved to remind him of the difference between the two with a smile on her face and white eyes as she did so. It was her way of reminding him that he too could end up the same way, and given his bloodline, was far more likely to in the end.

Sam's knuckles were white on the steering wheel as he pulled off the I-80. "Where're we going?"

"Old Timbers," Lilith answered easily. She was still staring out the window. "It's a bar."

"I thought you wanted cake."

She shrugged. "We'll see."

"Whatever that means," Sam muttered underneath his breath.

"It means I'll have—" She stopped, falling silent and turning sharply to face the radio. Her face lit up again and she reached out to turn it up, obviously having heard something that Sam hadn't.. "Listen!"

This is an Amber Alert. Jessica Holm, aged ten from Macedonia, Ohio has been missing since September 7th, 2008. Jessica is a white female, standing at four feet and two inches. She has shoulder length blonde hair and green eyes. She was abducted leaving St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Macedonia wearing a blue dress detailed with white flowers. Her abductor is described as a white male between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, standing at five foot eleven, with brown hair, and last seen wearing jeans and a blue and white striped shirt. They were seen leaving the scene driving a—"

Given that Sam knew exactly what kind of car they were driving, he had no qualms with reaching over to turn the radio back down before the Amber alert had finished.

"That dress was ugly." Lilith picked at the green cloth of dress she'd demanded that Sam buy for her a few days before. "I like this one better."

"The police are after us. You get that, right? The police are looking for you… or for that body." Sam just barely took his eyes off the newly turned dirt road to look at her. "I'm on a list."

She rolled her eyes. "You're dead, Sam. You're not on any lists that matter. Don't worry about the police. I'm not." She smiled and then laughed as she reached down to turn the radio back up. Only Lilith could make humming along to a Billy Joel song sound so downright creepy.

Now just a county stretch, the road narrowed quickly off the freeway and as he looked around Sam found himself noticing (and worrying) that the area was anything but the abandoned dive he'd been expecting. Their headlights were the only ones on the road, coming or going, but lights shown through the few storefronts on either side of the street that were open at the late hour. Accompanied by the two or three dim streetlights and the stoplight at the dirt intersection beaming down from overhead, the small rest area outside of Sheffield didn't look overly inviting in Sam's eyes.

Lilith, however, seemed more than content to point and direct until they'd pulled into a dirt parking lot in front of a small, rundown looking wooden shack of a place. A neon sign on a pole to their right read, 'Old Tib'. The E and the R were out.

Sam stared as the demon child hopped out of the car as if there was nothing innately wrong with a ten year old girl making her way into a bar. There was nothing he could do about it, another lesson he'd learned the hard way during his first week 'on the job'. She went where she wanted to go, and did whatever she wanted to do. No one told Lilith what to do aside from, maybe, his father. He knew that whether he stayed in the car or went inside with her, she would do whatever it was that she was already plotting inside that demonic brain of hers. He wasn't going to stop her, but he didn't enjoy watching her work either.

The dirt parking lot was a stereotype in itself. Sam hadn't noticed the group of about twenty or so motorcycles parked in the corner until he'd climbed out of the car and closed the door behind him. Paired with the buzzing neon sign, the faint smell of puke, body odor, and sex, he just knew the inside of the place was going to be a veritable fiesta of leather boots, bandanas, and facial hair far more creative and unkempt than Sock's.

He turned his eyes towards the traffic light in the middle of the intersection. "It's a crossroads."

"Of course it is," Lilith laughed. "Where else would we go?" She didn't turn around and Sam watched as she flounced straight through the bar door. He half expected the place to fall down flat around her as soon as she entered. But it didn't.

There was one fleeting look back towards the red light before he turned to follow the girl, cursing the being that called himself his father while he walked. "Where else would we go?" He couldn't stop her, but he could mock her. Quietly. And not to her face.

He slunk into the bar after her, trying not to notice the looks various leather clad men were giving the girl as she made her way towards the counter as if there was absolutely nothing wrong with what she was doing. Groups of men looked from her to Sam and back again and he knew eventually they were going to come to the point where they started asking him why he'd brought a child into a bar and why she was being allowed to sit at the bar itself. With that in mind Sam ducked away quickly, heading towards the small restroom area where he could see that the separate bathrooms were labeled, "tits" and "balls".

"Classy." Sock would've loved it, and on a good night probably could've convinced Ben and Sam that they loved it too. On a great night it wouldn't have taken any convincing. This was neither a great nor good night and the sign only left Sam rolling his eyes as the door swung shut behind him. Had he matured in death? Maybe. Though it was more likely he was just depressing himself with the thought that his friends were still alive back in Seattle and he was here, in the Middle-Of-Nowhere, Ohio making deals for people's souls with a demon girl. He wasn't immune to sentimentality and sometimes it really was the little things, like tits and balls, that reminded him of his friends.

Past the novel sign on the door there was nothing novel about the bathroom itself. It was disgusting, something he probably should have expected from a biker bar. He did his best to ignore it and turned the hot water knob to rinse his hands.

He was drying his hands on the few scraps of towel left on the roll on the rack when the commotion started up outside. As much as he wanted to ignore it, it was girlish shrieks of, "Sam! Sam! Sammy!" that lured him towards the bathroom door to peer through the crack in the jam, and finally poking his head out to see what was going on. It was his own mistake, thinking that anything that had Lilith screaming for help had to be serious. It was the little girl's voice that did it. For just a second he forgot.

He was quickly reminded when, upon stepping back into the bar, he was greeted by Lilith smiling face, no sign of distress at all even though the hands of two very angry looking bikers were resting on her shoulders. There were enough equally angry looking bikers standing behind the first two that worries for his undead body began to flash through his head.

"Sam," Lilith smiled at him, cold blue eyes staring into his. "Duke and I were talking about a deal when my picture came on the television." A small thumb jerked back towards the fuzzy television that was sitting behind the bar. It was black and white and as far as Sam could tell, there was a football game overlapping a news report, though neither picture was completely clear. Unfortunately it was clear enough that he could make out the picture of her stolen body with an Amber Alert banner just underneath. "Tell them they're being silly, Sam. I'm not being kidnapped!"

"She's not being kidnapped." Whether or not he sounded in any way convincing was completely up to personal judgment, though Sam couldn't help but think that the bikers didn't look at all persuaded. "She's my… little sister."

"Your lil' sister's face is all over the news," said the bearded man holding tightest to Lilith's shoulder. His mouth (or what Sam could see of it through all the hair) and eyes were set into one rather deadly glare that Sam knew he could never hope to reproduce. One that obviously meant, 'we will cut you'. "So's the plate numbers of that piece'a junk you're drivin'."

The sad thing was the Sam would have gladly ordered Lilith out of the girl's body, turned the girl over to the bikers who were obviously liquored up enough to play hero (or maybe they were just good people? Sam couldn't help it if his inner cynic was growing) , and made a mad dash to get as far away from the bar at the crossroads as possible. He was all for returning kidnapped girls back to their parents and punishing the ones who'd done the kidnapping. Getting into bar fights with drunk bikers who had forearms thicker than his neck despite their guts hanging out inches over their belts was not his cup of tea. But with the way Lilith was staring at him, as if she was thoroughly enjoying the mischief she'd caused, Sam wondered whether or not he would have a choice.

"Sam!" Lilith stomped her foot. "Tell them!"

"I just did," He looked from her to the bikers once again. "Listen, the picture on that screen's really fuzzy, right? That's just some other girl who looks like my sister. But it's not her. We just stopped in here so I could use the bathroom—"

"Hey, Red," the biker holding Lilith interrupted, yelling over his shoulder to the man behind the counter. "I say you call the police down here and maybe we get ourselves some'a that reward money."

"Okay, no, really," Sam started again. "You don't want to call the cops. It'd be for nothing, for one. I'm not kidnapping her."

But 'Red' –at least he thought it was Red— had already pulled an old style rotary phone off the hook and was during the dial while cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder. He'd gone far beyond the standard 911 and Sam figured it was just his luck that they'd end up with the group of people who actually had the direct number for the town's police station. Did a town that seemed to consist solely of a bar and a stop light even get a police station?

Hypothetical were something he didn't have time for, not when someone had obviously picked up on the other end of the line and Lilith's eyes were turning a familiar shade of milky white that the men standing behind her couldn't see. Sam, on the other hand, could see it just fine and began wondering what in the room was secured down firmly enough to brace himself on.

"We're driving back to Macedonia right now." Sam changed tactics quickly, even though he knew it was likely of little use. "I saw her picture on the news too. I'm taking her home!"

"Pervert." Sam couldn't tell who'd said it, not that it mattered.

Lilith shook her head. "It's like I have to do everything myself. You're supposed to be helping me, Sam. This is not helping things."

"No!" He winced thinking of it and held up his hand. "Don't do this one yourself. Please?"

"What are you going to do about it then? Talk them to death?" she grinned at him before shaking her head. "Don't worry, Sam. I'll handle it."

He wasn't prepared for the full on milky swirls that dominated her eyes just moments later and, as it turned out, neither were their accusers. Lilith turned to them, still smiling in that pleasantly sinister way of hers as she leveled her gaze on the entire group. There was little of the fanfare that Sam had grown used to, though the lights of the bar did flicker, the wind did pick up, and had he been paying attention he might have noticed the temperature dropping far faster than it normally would have. But paying attention to any of that would have meant missing the minute flicking gesture Lilith made with her hand held high, the one minute gesture that completely decimated the entire bar.

Bikers, bar stools, tables, chairs, bottles, and televisions… everything that had surrounded them before was gone. Oh, Sam could see it's remains –he could even just see one of the bikers impaled on the metal foothold of a telephone pole about twenty yards away—but the bar itself, as it had been, was gone. It looked as if a bomb had gone off, the way things had collapsed in an almost circle around them. They stood in the perfect center of the neatest and most direct bomb to have ever existed. The bar was gone and the men were dead, but aside from bodies hanging from various limbs, sign posts, and poles, everything around where the bar had stood was left perfectly in place.

Sam had no qualms looking around in obvious shock. At least Jessica Holm's house had been left intact, along with her family, even if they had left with her body. He'd been with her while she'd terrorized entire families, but this scene held something eerily morbid about it, even with the bodies scattered far and wide, out of his line of sight if he chose to ignore them.

"That was handling it?" He finally spoke after a good minute of silence and only because he could hear what sounded alarmingly like a siren floating through the air.

She shrugged at him. "Or they could have arrested you."

"That would have been better."

"Oh stop it, Sam. You're very ungrateful, has anyone ever told you that?" Lilith rolled her eyes and stepped gingerly over one of the few pieces of wood that had survived her barrage of power. A breeze blew through reminding them that they were indeed outside now and the car was just a few feet away. "Let's go now."

"We can't just leave this here," he protested.

"Yes we can," she said, already halfway to the car. "Now come on. Let's stop at Carvel. We never did get cake."

---

The powers granted to him by virtue of being his father's son had been a part of his life since his twenty-first birthday. A relatively short time of his life, all things considered, but when you added on his time in Hell, they'd been with him a lot longer. But in twelve years Sam had never bothered learning how to control them. The telekinesis had at least been familiar, something that had cropped up that first time the Devil had visited him. Controlling it had never occurred to him, only because he hadn't wanted it. It was fine that they'd kicked in every now and then when he'd been alive and saved his ass, but overall Sam had sought normality.

Then he'd died and telekinesis had been the last thing on his mind. Maybe if he'd thought about it a little sooner it could have helped during his ten years of torture. It would have been more useful than floating kitchen appliances in the air.

"Did I startle you, Sammy?"

There was a loud clattering and banging as several items crashed to the ground. The bowl from the mixer rolled until it stopped right at Sam's feet. "No shit. What gave it away?"

"Something about the floating blender. I'd learn how to control that if I were you," the Devil laughed, stepping into view from behind Sam. He nudged the bowl with a shiny black shoe. "So what's with the SOS call?"

The look Sam gave his father was par for course even if he shouldn't have been surprised. "Why aren't we in… y'know?"

"Oh, we're in, 'y'know'." Teasing tones and the fingered quotation marks accompanied the words. The Devil grinned and gestured around the room which, aside from the appliances all over the floor, Sam had to admit was relatively nice. It was clean with pristine white walls and tiled floors, wooden cabinets, and silver appliances. A shiny refrigerator door led the trend. There was small table in the form of a kitchen island across from the long counter underneath the cabinets with two tall, bar style chairs. The Devil walked over to one and sat down. "I thought that maybe this setting would be more up your alley."

"Martha Stewart's kitchen?"

"She's hardly going to be greeted by a kitchen, Sammy. Now what's the matter, you don't like it?"

Sam shook his head and shrugged. "It's nice, but does it matter if—"

"Then it's yours! Not just the kitchen, the entire apartment. A little home away from Hell, so to speak." It was obvious from the look on his face that for his act of generosity, the Devil expected a little recognition in return.

"I'm not going back to work with Lilith. Stop trying to bribe me."

"What are you talking about?" His fingers stopped mid drum on the island table top and their eyes met across the room. Sam suspected feigned innocence. "Lilith? Is that why you're playing damsel in distress?"

"Yeah," Sam rolled his eyes and decided not to comment on the phrasing. "Yeah… I'm not working with her anymore. I can't do it, and an apartment in Hell isn't going to get me to change my mind."

"She's a peach, Sammy. One of the best."

"She killed an entire bar full of people."

"And?"

Taking a breath, Sam felt his lips pressing together and heat rising in his cheeks as the usual frustration that came with talking to his father started building up inside of him. His eyes closed for just a moment, only to reopen when he felt something hard smack hard against the side of his head. "What the—" It was the blender again, along with just about every other appliance that had fallen to the floor the last time. They were up again, orbiting the room counter clockwise like they'd been caught in a tornado that Sam was at the center of. He hadn't been watching ten seconds before one of the items, a coffee pot, broke free from the pack and launched itself straight at the Devil's head.

The Devil, being the Devil, only laughed as he ducked and the pot smashed against the wall behind him. Glass flew everywhere. "That's coming out of you salary, kid."

"How do I make it stop?" Sam very pointedly rubbed the side of his head, tender after being hit by the glass container.

"You're probably going to want to figure that out, aren't you? Especially being down here..." the Devil shrugged, offering one of his trademarked grin. "Back to the point at hand; what's your problem with Lilith? Other than her methods, which I, by the way, approve of."

Sam crouched to avoid being whipped by a power cord. "She's insane."

"She's loyal."

"No, she's insane," he insisted. "She murdered everyone in that bar because someone recognized the body she was running around in from that Amber Alert."

"She saved your ass, Sammy," the Devil answered, as if that should have been obvious. "Look at you, down here in this apartment I made just for you instead of up there in handcuffs for kidnapping and possibly molesting that poor little girl. She could have abandoned that body and left you to take the fall, but she saved you instead."

"Because you would have killed her if she'd let me…" No sooner than he'd started did Sam stop, trailing off as he realised that thinking that the Devil actually cared enough about him to threaten Lilith over his well being was a stupid assumption to make. They'd established a long time ago that the Prince of Darkness did not do things for his son that normal fathers did, cushy apartments aside.

Sam only glared towards the floor as the Devil grinned and raised an eyebrow. "Maybe. Maybe not," he said pleasantly. God forbid he ever admit that he cared. "You really want a new job?"

"Yes."

"I spoil you, I really do," the Devil sighed. "Nepotism, honestly, it's just begging to rear its ugly head here, but fine. If you insist."

Sam nodded, letting out a deep breath. "Yeah, I insist." Appliances crashed to the ground around them.

"Fine, it's done." The Devil gestured to the items on the floor. "You have the hormones of a woman in menopause, Sammy. And here I thought Lilith could throw a tantrum. Just wait until the world gets a'load of you."

And then he was gone.

---

Typical. The one thing he was really good at was the one thing the Devil wouldn't let him do. Sam knew he'd spent most of his time complaining about catching souls while he'd been alive on Earth, but at least he'd been good at it. Until he'd died… but that had just been one time. Could anyone really hold that against him? Well, yes, the Devil could. No matter how many times Sam asked for his old job back, his father refused. So it was job after job that Sam found himself bounced between and not a one of them actually fit.

He wasn't a chip off the old block. He couldn't simply reap souls for fun as Lilith seemed to do. At least the souls he'd gone after before had done something to deserve their time in hell. As far as he could tell, the 'new shiny souls' were just innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lilith and others like her heard the thoughts and soft whispers of mortals having a moment of weakness or desperation and approached them with deals that seemed and were too good to be true. After all, who knew better than he did, a product of one of those moments. He could only imagine what the Devil had said to his mother. "You carry my son, I heal your husband." And then how exactly had that one proceeded? Had his mother and the Devil—

"Ouch. Bad mental place, Sam,"

"What'd you say?"

"Nothing."

At first the Devil assumed that maybe it wasn't the job itself that Sam was no good at, but the company, so instead of Lilith he was paired with a woman simply known as, 'the Crossroads Demon'. She was good looking –demonic, but good looking—and didn't stick herself in adolescent bodies prone to temper tantrums. It had seemed like a decent match. Sam would never say perfect, given this was hardly what he'd been wanting to do for all eternity in the first place, but she at least had going for her the fact that she didn't kill at the rate Lilith did. She didn't toy with them either. Yes, the deals --in an of themselves-- were a way of toying with human life, but there were no days and days of repeat birthday parties lasting until she tired of the residents of the home she was threatening. Sam had seen enough birthday cakes garnished with blood.

But it wasn't just Lilith's methods that kept him from getting into the job, and it wasn't just Lilith herself. It was the job. Call him crazy, but he just didn't get how wanting to save the life of someone who was dying of cancer was a damnable offense. As far as he was concerned it wasn't, and his refusal to participate in tricking people into selling their souls (the Crossroads Demon being far easier to stand up to than Lilith) resulted in the next assignment.

Unfortunately –or fortunately, depending on how one wanted to look at it-- his time at the DMV didn't last very long at all.

Another round of, "Sammy, what am I going to do with you" led to various desk jobs around 'the office' which were so dull and tedious that Sam knew the Devil was only giving them to him because he was pissed at his failure to do the first two things he'd been assigned.

It was difficult to keep track of time, going between Hell and Earth as often as he did at first. By the time the boredom of office jobs began to set in he couldn't actually remember how long he'd been 'down there' to begin with.

"Forty years?"

"Listen, you can either stop talking to yourself or shut your pie-hole. It's freaking me out."

"Says the one holding the scalpel."

For a moment as he met eyes with Dean Winchester, Sam wondered whether he'd stepped over the invisible line they toed on a day to day basis. But Dean eventually turned away and Sam stared back at the ground; right back to where they'd started.

The room was a cell much like the one Sam had spent ten years of his own in. The corners were harder to hide in, because the cell was slightly smaller. Sam had only just folded himself into his space, pulling his legs up against his chest and wrapping his arms around his legs after that. There were few places to stare around in the room and Sam was doing everything to keep his eyes away from Dean and the prone form on the table in front of him. Light from the fires outside only just eked into the room, bathing everyone in dark pattern of shadows that danced playfully over the planes of their faces and only served to enhance the sinister purpose of the room.

A scream jerked his head back towards Dean and the woman on the table. "She didn't do anything to deserve this."

"How do you know?"

No one deserved this. "I know her."

"Is that why you're here?" Dean paused, hand and knife just above the abdomen.

"No, I—" He shrugged, but didn't stop for long. He was only drawing out the older woman's torture. "I don't know why I'm here."

"Probably has something to do with your father having horns."

"How'd you hear that?"

"People talk."

"Sam didn't want to talk about his father and if word was getting out to the other demons, he didn't want to know about that either. Somehow, he didn't think that demons gossiping about him could lead to anything good on either side. " Her name is Maria Gonzales. She's my friend's grandmother."

Sam still had the scar on his hand from when the woman had shoved a fork through it. Unlike the scars inflicted by Alistair, any he'd gotten on his own had remained. There were plenty of job scars, and not just from reaping. How many times had Sock come up with hair brained schemes to sue the Bench for workman's comp? They probably would've had a case. But the three fork prong holes going though his hand were a reaping work hazard and there'd been no compensation for that. The Devil would have laughed at him if he'd tried.

Feverish sounding Spanish prayer followed the familiar sound of a knife meeting flesh. Sam pulled his hand and eyes away from the scars on his right hand. As angry as he'd been that night, that one incident didn't warrant Hell. She'd been a saint in life. "How did she die?"

"I don't know," Dean shrugged.

"What did she do?"

"It doesn't matter."

So you just torture people without knowing what they did to deserve it. If they did anything to deserve it? Sam caught himself with the words literally moments from spilling out of his lips. "She shouldn't be here."

"Not my problem."

"The Devil might be my father, but I forgot that you're the one halfway up Alistair's ass." It was only when the knife previously embedded in skin was flying towards his head that Sam thought to wonder what Dean had done when he'd been alive to get that sort of aim. Serial killer? Circus knife thrower? What was the happy medium between those two career paths and how did it lead to an eternity in hell? The knife stopped just short of the bridge between his eyes, floating there without Sam even thinking twice about it. It hovered, turning full circles in the air without even a thought from Sam. He'd given up on control, as long as they kicked in when it was time to save his life. He grabbed the knife easily from the air, gripping the hilt tightly in his hand.

"How'd you do that?"

"Doesn't matter," Sam threw the words back at him. "What'd Ben's grandmother do?"

"I don't know, but whatever it was, it was bad enough to end up in this room. With me." Dean didn't bother looking at Sam this time. "She wasn't important enough for Alistair."

"She went to church every Sunday."

"And you think that automatically makes her a good person?" Dean laughed bitterly. "Wake up."

"She was devout."

The room was silent for a moment until another string of Spanish prayer floated through the air and the sizzling sound of acid eating away through skin floated through Sam's ears. There was no denying the wince that made its way through his body as he remembered the feeling of the liquid rolling across his own skin and biting through everything in its path. He was good at this, Dean was. "The most devout are always the worst sinners. How do you think they find God in the first place?"

Sam shook his head, refusing to believe it. "That's bullshit."

"No," Dean answered. "That's the truth. I wouldn't touch her if it wasn't."

"You do everything Alis—" He stopped, quickly remembering the knife in his hand that had been floating above his head just moments ago. "Yes you would," he said instead.

Thunk. "Fuck you." A knife pushed through skin in anger, hitting the wood of the table on the other side. Sam actually looked up this time, only to see the knife stuck straight through Maria's shoulder, standing straight up even though Dean was no longer holding it. He couldn't look the woman in the eye. Sure, she was dead, but it would be just like his life if she managed to escape and made it up to the surface to tell Ben that he was sitting here watching what Dean was doing to her and provoking her torturer.

They met eyes again, and Sam was glad. It meant he didn't have to look at Maria. "I'm not a demon."

"…you're not?" Sam blinked in genuine surprise.

"No, I'm not."

Could he have been blamed for thinking so? Really? It was Hell, and this section of Hell was populated by demons with black and yellow eyes, all who seemed to have knives permanently attached to their hips or sadistic smiles planted on their lips. Dean lacked the latter, but sitting in this room Sam had barely seen the knives, acid, and other tools of the trade leave Dean's hands. For someone non-demonic he was sure focused on his job.

Thoughts of whether or not he'd been a serial killer in his former life passed through Sam's mind again. "You're human?"

"Dead. But human."

Maybe it made sense. He'd never seen the other man's eyes flash white or black, and he certainly didn't have horn. But while Sam was perfectly aware of the evil that man could do, he didn't like to think that a man would do something like this. Hellish torture was the job of demon's like Alistair, and given how much time and attention Alistair put in with Dean –almost as much time as the Devil seemed to spend with him-- Sam had assumed the worst. "So why—"

"Because not all of us got an automatic out," Dean snapped and Sam knew he'd hit yet another chord. His body flinched automatically, half expecting another very real knife to come hurtling his way. The focused glare he received was almost as bad. "Yeah, Alistair told me as soon you showed up. Ten years on the rack before he had to get rid of you. Some of us didn't have a time. Some of us held out for forty years before getting off."

"You agree to torture souls and Alistair lets you go?"

"Yeah. And I'm good at it." Sam could tell.

He canted his head away from Maria once more. "You enjoy it?"

"People end up down here for a reason, Sammy," The nickname startled Sam more than he was willing to admit, as did the gentler voice Dean used when he said it. The effect was almost ruined by the screams and other sounds of demons going about their work in cells around them. Sam watched as Dean took hold of a blunt ice pick. "It's not random. They don't die and go through a game of Russian Roulette. I don't like it, but we all did something in life that got us sent here, whether it was a deal… or putting a bullet through someone over some drugs when they were nineteen."

The ice pick plunged down through her right eye and Sam got the feeling that his previous question had just been answered. "We're all here for a reason. You want to survive? Do what you have to and don't feel guilty about it. You don't have to."

---

Sam hadn't known Maria Gonzales very well, if at all, really, so for her presence in Hell to shatter his world view would have been a slight extreme, but that didn't stop the continued sounds of her Spanish prayers running through his head from chipping away at the foundations. Every so often he couldn't help wondering if that hadn't been the Devil's plan, and of course that only made him want to put the whole experience out of his head, but the less he tried to think about it, the more it came to mind.

"The house always wins, kid," Sam could hear the Devil laughing all too loudly in the dark recesses of his brain. His insistent need to always be right was getting old.

He'd been removed from the cell soon after his conversation with Dean and sent back to Earth, the Crossroads Demon looking none too happy to see him again.

"You were down there almost five years. Daddy knock some sense into you?" was the first thing she asked when they met once again.

"Shut up." Sam brushed past her, headed down the familiar dirt path that led to the crossroads where they did the dirty work.

She laughed, calling out, "sounds like you grew a pair," before striking out behind him in the same direction.

Crossroads lore had to have been abundant wherever they were (Sam couldn't place it, and simply assumed somewhere down south judging from the nighttime humidity) and they didn't have to wait long at all after sunset for a young woman to show up, bag and small gardening shovel in hand. She got down on her hands and knees unabashedly and started digging into the ground. It wasn't long before the hole was deep enough for her to plant the bag inside and quickly cover it back up. She stood back up after that, waiting almost too expectantly for the things that went bump in the night to show up and grant her her wish.

As much as he didn't want to admit it, Sam knew one thing for sure: these people did it to themselves.

"I don't do women," the Crossroads Demon leaned easily against a tree just behind Sam, eyes flashing black as she smiled wickedly. "She's all yours."

Sam shook his head. "I'm not a demon."

"Don't even try that excuse," she tossed her head back, laughing heartily. "You're the son of Satan. Demon or not, any deal made with you is going to take. Go on. Pucker up. You're lucky, she's cute." Far too cute to be selling her life away, but Sam didn't say that. His reluctant walk forward began instead as he told himself that maybe, just maybe, he could get her to change her mind, take the bag back, and run as far as she could in the other direction.

Except since his twenty-first birthday, Sam could count on one hand the amount of times things had actually worked out the way he wanted them to.

He didn't know when he'd become invisible in the first place or when he'd broken that shroud of magic, but the girl jumped when he walked out of thin air not ten feet in front of the spot where she'd buried her spell.

"Hi."

"Hi."

It was his first soul and Sam, being Sam, was making it painfully obvious.

"Are you…"

"Yeah."

She couldn't have been that much older than him if she was a day. Clouds covered most of the moonlight he might have used to see by, but Sam could make out enough to make his stomach lurch at the fact that she was standing in front of him, ready to essentially make a deal with the Devil. His eyes met her brown ones and from there he began taking in her dark skin, full lips, slightly upturned nose, and small ears almost hidden behind long hair. Even this much, he didn't want to know. Worst of all was the Denny's nametag on her shirt that read 'Cora'. The last thing he needed was a name to put to the soul.

You used to do this all the time, he tried telling himself. But he knew that this was completely different. This girl had never been to Hell and she wasn't trying to escape. Yet.

"I want out of this town," Cora said. Her words, equally desperate and bold, dripped down over a thick Southern accent. "I wanna be discovered. I can sing, see, but here no one knows and they don't care. But my grandma always used to tell me 'bout the crossroads. Gris-gris bag and a little dirt and you get what you want. Said my cousin did it before I was born… moved to Europe and we never heard from her again. Probably 'cause she found something better over there. That's what I want, something better. So you're gonna make me a singer."

Sam could only assume that they'd never heard from this cousin because at some point the hell hounds had come for her as they did for all who made deals. They're all down here for a reason…

"You don't want me to do this." Sam looked at her before pointing at the pile of dirt where the bag lay underneath. "Seriously, you should dig that thing up."

"I thought you said were the—"

"I am." Sam cut her off, not wanting to actually hear her call him a demon. "But I'm not like— I don't want you to do something that you're going to regret."

"Oh no," she said, her voice determined. "I'll regret staying in this town more. I want it. I know it can happen. There're stories about this spot a mile long."

"I'm not a genie, It's not free."

Cora nodded. "I know. You want my soul, don't you? And not the one outta my shoe like Br'er Rabbit," she laughed almost bitterly at her own joke. "You can have it. What do I need it for?"

"…to live?" Sam felt as if the answer was obvious.

"I'd rather live famous without it."

Sam didn't know what he was supposed to say to that or how he was supposed to convince someone so set on doing something that it was the worst possible thing they could do to themselves. He would've given anything to own his soul, or even to have the illusion of owning it. "You'll only have ten years left if you do this. You get ten years of fame and whatever, but when it's up you'll die and you'll go to hell," he finally said in the bluntest manner possible. "I mean that's not—obviously that's not what you want, right?"

"Ten years is a long time," she answered simply, shrugging her shoulders. "I want to make a deal."

Those are the words, Sam. Do it. The Crossroads Demon's voice seemed to float through the air on the breeze for his ears only. Cora gave no indication that she'd heard the voice and just stood in front of him, waiting. Sam looked over his shoulder toward the clump of trees he'd walked out of. He could see the demon there, leaning against her tree and waiting. She looked as impatient as Cora did pleading, both wanting him to get on with the task at hand but for completely different reasons. Sam would've preferred to be anywhere else. Contrary to popular belief, we do not have forever. Hurry up.

"Hell is worse than you think, trust me. It's—" He paused as he struggled to think of a way to put exactly what he'd experienced into words, but he couldn't. Failing at that, he separated himself, or tried to at least, as he attempted to describe the experiences of others. But that was impossible as well. Torture, beatings, flames licking at your feet while demons poked at you with whatever they felt fit well into their hands that day, the Devil making it his business to single handedly and thoroughly ruin your life… well, it was most likely that the last was only him, but the point remained the same.

Sam didn't know how to put it into words and Cora seemed to catch that hitch in his voice. Before he was able to figure out how he intended to explain why she didn't want to do this, she was speaking again. "I want to make a deal. Ten years, right? You make me a star."

She's an idiot, Sam thought.

That's really not your problem, the demon answered.

Maybe not, but Sam couldn't help thinking it partially was, after all he was in charge of bargaining for her soul. But she was an idiot. Some would probably say he was just biased given what his own parents had done, but in his mind that didn't matter. Hell was Hell, no matter which was you sliced it and Sam didn't understand why anyone would want to go there purposely, even if it was ten years down the line. Ten years still meant it was coming, and he could only imagine that the closer it got the more it felt like a freight train hurtling towards you. Nothing you could do, nothing you could say to avoid it, all because you'd made one stupid choice even after being warned by the one who was going to take your soul into his hands.

Cora was twice the idiot, as far as Sam could tell. He could only guess that those of Lilith's ilk didn't go around warning their victims before striking and sealing their deals. He'd tried to do her a favour, but she had whatever defect there was in humanity that made them go against the grain and take the candy from the stranger, or in this case the deal from the demon. They all wanted the easy way out.

If that was the case, then did they deserve it? No, that was the Devil talking.

But if it was her choice then wasn't it better than what his father did on a regular basis. She had summoned him, not the other way around. He hadn't walked into an AA meeting with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand and a grin on his face like some people he knew. They'd been laying in wait at the crossroads, but the woman in front of him begging for a change in life had been the one to do the summoning. Sam cast a glance back to the mound of dirt in the center of the crossroads. She'd collected the ingredients for the bag, dug the hole, and muttered the spell. He couldn't feel guilty for being an inevitable consequence of a stupid decision. After all, if it wasn't him it would be someone. Most likely the demon leaning in the trees. She'd do it, even if she didn't particularly like kissing other women. Like she'd said, at least Cora was cute.

"Well?" Cora asked and Sam looked at her, determined to find some sort of nervousness or regret in her eyes. The problem was, there was none and he hated it, but it was hard to have sympathy for someone who would willingly do this not after what his parents had done. As far as he could tell, she wasn't ill, she wasn't dying –yet, anyway—she just didn't like working at Dennys. "Fuck it."

"What?"

Sam looked up and from the way Cora jumped back he knew that his reflection had changed and that he probably didn't want to know how. But at least, he thought to himself, she was finally scared. It was a deal with the Devil. You were supposed to be scared. "Fine."

"It's a deal?" He almost laughed when the woman offered up her hand, as if a simple shake was going to do it. There was a lot she had to learn about Hell.

Looking at her hand, he shook his head. "It takes more than a handshake."

"Are you going to take it now?"

"Take what?"

"My soul."

"Uh, no. I meant—" Prolonging the entire thing was certainly possible, but Sam cut himself off. Why explain when he could just do and then get out of there. They couldn't possibly have more than one customer per crossroads per night, the legends and stories couldn't be that popular and there couldn't be that many people who believed them. He figured it had to be different, driving all the way out into the middle of nowhere to burry a bag in the middle of the road, than having the Devil himself turn up in your living room.

He stared at her again, briefly wondering what she was seeing in him that put that look in her eyes, but still not entirely wanting to know.

Tick, tock, tick, tock… the demon's voice sounded slightly.

It was just a kiss. It wasn't like kissing Andi, no, but it was just a kiss. No more, no less. And she'd asked for it. It was her choice, her decision to accept the kiss that would send her to Hell in ten years time. That only slightly helped the eerie feeling that washed over him as he grabbed Cora by the arm, pulling her in close and quickly placing his other hand on her cheek as their lips met.

It wasn't until he had her lower lip between his teeth --having already taken the kiss much further than he'd meant it—that he felt it, a small tendril of power winding around him slowly as their lips continued to meet. For a moment he contemplated pulling away, wanting to know if there were objects floating and orbiting around them. It felt almost like that, at least the few tastes he'd gotten from his completely uncontrolled telekinesis, but there was something more sinister about this. It crawled up through him, from his stomach. Sam would have sworn he could feel it latching tiny hands as it worked its way up through his throat, pushing its way out through his mouth and into hers where it grabbed onto every piece of who she was and worked on ingraining itself within her until, by the time they'd pulled away, Sam could practically see the taint of the deal surrounding her. A faint change to her aura that would mark Cora as a member of this obscene fraternity to any demons who encountered her, and to the Hounds of Hell who would eventually come for her mortal soul…

…At one forty-three in the morning, ten years from now.

Sam grabbed her again, leaning back in to press his lips up against hers as he willed the process to begin anew. He could feel it, power again crawling out of him towards her ready to go and steal a few more years of her life away.

But before he could become too comfortable or too involved, he felt a hand on his shoulder and it proceeded to wrest him away from Cora with a force and grip Sam couldn't help but acquiesce to.

When he turned around, it was the demon, not Cora who faced him. He could see the other woman still there, but quickly realised that as soon as he'd been pulled from her, she'd lost the ability to see him. He recognized the look on her face, obviously wondering whether or not she'd just dreamed the entire encounter.

A soft hand on his face gently steered his vision away from the mortal woman. "Well?" asked the Crossroads Demon.

Instead of answering, Sam leaned in and kissed her. It was just as deep and just as purposeful as the kiss she'd interrupted and the one before that, and he kept it going waiting for that feeling of power that Cora had provided. The demon only responded in kind, pulling him closer with a hand that rested on the back of his head and one around his shoulder. He waited for something to happen. Anything to rekindle the surge of power he felt missing. But nothing happened.

The demon pulled away just briefly, only to return and trace a trail of kisses up his cheek towards his ear. Her hand threaded through his hair as she leaned in to whisper to him, "As much as I enjoy this, you can't take my soul, Sam. Stop trying."

Throwing cold water over his head would have been equally as effective. "What are you…?"

"First soul," she said simply, tracing her thumb across his face, just underneath his eyes. Something she saw there appeared to make her smile. "Your father'll be proud."

And there was the ice to accompany the water. "He's not my—" He stopped himself. That argument, given what he'd just done, was null and void. "No he won't."

"You enjoyed it." She pressed her body up against his and kissed him again. Almost immediately Sam could feel his power looking for something to latch onto within her. But she was a demon and there was nothing there so it just stayed there screaming for release in other ways, and as she continued to kiss him the other ways slowly became more than apparent.

"So?" he managed to pull away for only seconds.

"It felt good, didn't it?" she asked almost innocently. Her hand moved gently across his scalp. "You even went back in for a second helping. That's an overachiever if I've ever seen one." She laughed at her own joke before kissing him again, this time allowing her hands to wander.

In his own defense, Sam would cite the fact that she was a Crossroads Demon. Temptation came naturally to her as a tool of the trade. He could have stopped her and stopped what happened next, but she was doing everything to make that look like the least desirable of options. The longer she stayed attached to him the more determined the power inside of him was to have a place of release, even if it wasn't through the taking of a soul. She had to know this.

Sam barely felt the ground hit his knees when they both fell, He could see Cora, still confused, wandering away from them in the corner of his eye, but when he tried to watch her the demon very firmly redirected his gaze towards her and a few purposeful squeezes made sure that his attentions stayed on her until some time later when they'd both successfully quelled his need for release.

---

"It's about survival, I get it. I respect that, but don't be afraid to admit that you're starting to like it."

Sam was a known presence around the 'office'. It wasn't unusual to see him where it had all started, seated cross-legged in the corner on the floor of a cell studying what was going on in front of him.

"I am not enjoying it."

"Deny it all you want, Samuel. You're the one sitting on my floor watching me work."

"You have a nice ass."

"I know that, and it doesn't change the fact that it's not my ass you're looking at. It's gone past obligation at this point. You're daddy's little boy. If you hated it so much you'd have asked for a switch by now. You've done it before."

That wasn't worth arguing over and even as he opened his mouth to do it, Sam knew there was no point. This was what? Job the eighth… ninth… tenth? He'd lost count.

"You go from job, to job, to job… and I don't think it's because you hate them anymore. Is it?

Sam liked Bela Talbot about as much as he liked anyone else he'd met in Hell, which was to say not very much at all. He thought she talked too much. She thought he was in denial. It wasn't the sort of thing where one of them had to be right and one of them had to be wrong which was bothersome because there was every possibility that they could both be right. Bela's accusation was far more worrisome than his own against her. After all, he was the one taking souls weekly.

He told himself it was because he liked what happened after doing the deed, not the power he used during it. Even if what occurred between he and the demon was a direct result of his desire to continue what the bargaining over souls had already begun.

It was a conscious decision when he decided not to think about that. He stood up instead, wandering closer to Bela and the man on her rack. He was unconscious. "Who is this?"

"I've not got a clue," Bela answered, going through a chest of supplies that Sam knew all too well from his time on the rack. Her fingers ran slowly over tools with the same loving touches he knew Alistair gave them. She turned around only when Sam took a few steps closer. "But I wouldn't worry about it. He touched children."

"If you don't know who he is then how do you know that?" Sam asked.

"Because they're the only ones I get," she answered simply. "I know what to do with them. And I'm willing to admit, unlike you, that I enjoy it."

That didn't earn her many points in Sam's mind, not that much would. "You've got no idea what you're talking about."

"That's not what I've heard." Bela, on her knees, continued rustling through the tool chest. Now he was staring at her ass. "If you haven't figured it out by now, demons talk down here and you're right up there with the Boy King."

"The who?" Sam decided just seconds after asking that it wasn't important. "I don't enjoy it, it just…" his voice trailed away as he walked closer to the rack.

"Hmm?"

"It doesn't count after you explain it to them."

"Explain what to who?"

Sam found himself poking at the man's thigh, wondering if he would move. When he didn't Sam stopped, jerking his hand back to his side as if he'd only just realised what he was doing. "I mean, it doesn't count if you tell them what they're signing up for, tell them about everything they're going to see and experience down here, and then they still want to go through with it. If they can't understand that selling their soul to the Devil after you explain exactly what that means, then it doesn't count if I enjoy it. It's not my fault."

"Well it's never been your fault." He could practically hear Bela rolling her eyes. "And you're right. Some of us were stupid. We all got what we deserved—and some of us get a bit of time off for good behaviour."

"Good behaviour? What's that mean to Alistair… screaming loud enough?"

"Keeping the screams to yourself," she said before laughing. "The way they tell it, you'd still be on there if he hadn't intervened."

"Gee, thanks." That was probably the nepotism the Devil had been so worried about.

After pulling everything she'd been looking for out of the chest, Bela got up off the floor. She dusted off her jean clad thighs and looked him straight in the eye as she picked up one of the knives that she'd just picked out, blade first. She held it out to him so that he could take the hilt. "You are who you are, Samuel. You're the Devil's little boy, and you've got to be to survive down here. I don't know why you would try to be anything else. You like what you like. Deal with it. You're not running away from me like you have the others because you're scared of what you might find out about yourself.

she thrust the knife towards his hand again, looking at him expectantly until he wrapped his hand around it." Here. Let's see what else you enjoy."

---

It turned out there was a lot he enjoyed.

"I'm proud of you, Sammy." Five words he'd never liked to hear the Devil say before, but now here they were, and it was hardly the first time they'd crossed his lips. Sam supposed that between a steady stream of sex with a demon, and a daily routine that more often than not included time spent in a room with knives, blood, and the sounds of the screaming condemned, the words had reason to be come far more commonplace in his life.

Besides, what was he supposed to do when even the angels told him this was his destiny?

"I like where you're going. Does me good to see, y'know?" The Devil stood by the sidebar in his office, pouring two glasses of scotch. There was a bit of blood on his face marring his usually impeccable appearance, and one or two white feathers were clinging to his suit jacket. "Even with all the meshugas out there. Here," he handed one of the glasses to Sam. "You look like you need a drink."

He neglected to make any comment that the Devil sounded like someone's grandmother and instead just took the offered glass. He really did need it. "What the hell was that about?"

"Raid of angels. They happen."

"They… happen?"

"Every millennia or so. It's not a huge thing, but the paperwork's murder."

Sam drained his glass at that. Decades in hell and every so often something still managed to take him off guard. "Why?"

"The big man upstairs decided he wanted someone back," the Devil answered with a shrug. "You win some, you lose some. I put up a fight, kill a few of them for appearances, but here's a secret, Sammy: I don't really give a hoot."

"Who was it?" Sam sat down easily in front of his desk. It was hardly anything like the scene when he'd first arrived, tired after ten years of torture and angry. Now he crossed his legs, leaned back against the plush leather, and while he wasn't happy to be here, he accepted it. He turned the glass over in his hands and waited patiently for the Devil to answer his question. That he could accept having a conversation with the Devil was, in itself, a vast improvement.

The Devil knew this, he had to. "Dean Winchester. Honestly, the minions are obsessed with him and his brother. Business-wise it'd be nice to have them both, sure, especially since the big man's so interested in Dean, but it ain't necessary." He laughed, taking a sip from his scotch. "So I put up a fight, chop off a few wings, tempt a few holier-than-thou asses while they're down here, and let the rest of them get away with what they want. Alistair loses a pet project and believe me, he'll be bitching about that one at staff meetings for weeks, but in the end it all works out. I replaced one human soul with three angelic ones, and another one on the way."

"Another one?"

"He'll be down here soon. Three months tops. Want to put some money on it? He was with the one you stopped to have a chat with—don't look so surprised, Sammy. I can smell angel on you," he laughed again and raised an eyebrow in Sam's direction. "Don't lie to your dear old dad."

Sam had to stop himself from spitting out some sort of snide remark in reply. The 'you're not my father' line had gotten old decades ago. Lying to the Devil was something else he'd learned not to do early on. "Yeah, I talked to one." And those two or so minutes had told Sam more than all his decades in hell.

"Want to share?"

"Not really." It wasn't a lie. It was the honest truth.

"No, Sammy," The Devil emptied his glass, the rest of the brown liquid disappearing down his throat in one last gulp. He set the heavy tumbler down on the table with an audible thump and looked pointedly at Sam. "I want to hear what Castiel said to you."

"He didn't tell me his name."

"What did he say?"

It wasn't something that Sam wanted to revisit, his talk with the angel Castiel. It hadn't been long and it hadn't –perhaps—been the friendliest thing in the world, but it had happened.

Sam knew an angel when he saw one. The wings tended to give that sort of thing away along with the whole aura of a divine presence that surrounded them and seemed to scare off so many of the demons that had originally swelled up to fight against them. Only the strongest, most determined stayed in the fray, the rest skulking back to defend their right to the sinners they had strung up by meat hooks and chains. But Sam knew, watching them, that if it came down to it they would give those up as well, rather than die. There were plenty of souls in Hell. Most were taken aback when it turned out that the invading angels didn't want to take their tortured souls from them.

Just the one.

And for a moment Sam had found himself in a stare down with an angel of the lord, as that angel held tightly to Dean's shoulder with just one hand. The soul Dean had been working on remained tethered to chains from the ceiling, blood dripping from the various wounds that had been inflicted over the course of the session. Dean had no choice but to drop his tools as soon as the angel's death grip slammed down on his shoulder. Sam dropped his out of pure fear tinged with a good deal of guilt.

The clanging of the knife against the floor of the cell was all too audible against the silence which Sam found himself breaking, with two words.

"Why him?"

"I'm sorry?"

Sam pointed at Dean, nearly limp in Castiel's grip. "Why him?"

"You mean why not you." He could have sworn that the angel next to him, one who took the form of an imposing, dark skinned man, was laughing underneath his breath. If anything he seemed to find this amusing. Sam was glad someone did.

"Because this is his path, and this," Castiel answered shortly, nodding around the room. "Is yours, Samuel, son of Lucifer."

"I belong here."

"I'm sorry," the Devil looked up from the sidebar where he was once more pouring a drink. "I think I missed that. You what?"

"He said I belonged here."

The Devil grinned. "He tells you that and suddenly you want to believe it? I've been telling you that for years, kiddo."

He didn't protest. "I know."

"And now you believe it?

"What am I supposed to believe?" Sam asked blankly, the words devoid of the anger or disbelief that could have filled the space. He stared up at his father and shook his head. "It's different when it comes from an angel."

Rolling his eyes, the Devil grabbed Sam's glass and started to pour him a second drink. "I think I'm insulted, possibly on behalf of my entire population," he said with a short laugh. "Look around you, Sammy. Past the office, past the minions, past the bureaucracy. Think about where you've been spending time. Think about the cell those angels just dragged your friend out of. You have the blood of the soul you were torturing on your shirt. You bargain with people for their souls knowing first hand the consequences of a deal with the Devil, and then fuck the demon that harvests them on the spot where they've sold you their lives and you enjoy it. I saw you out there, just now, put a knife through an angel, one of the holiest of beings. You stepped over him when he fell, Sam. You defended Hell. You defended your home and your place as my son, and you doubted the fact that you belong here? Were you that deluded? Because if that's the case, then maybe I need to send Castiel a thank you note.

"But I don't think you were that deluded," He placed the glass in Sam's hand, smiling and very obviously shaking with laugher as he did. "Deluded, no. Denial… maybe. But I'm glad we're over that, because I'll be honest… it's boring. Watching you enjoy yourself and then turn around to go sulk in your room because you enjoy using the powers I gave you? Makes me feel damned unappreciated for one, it doesn't do you any good. You've hit your stride down here, Sammy, and you don't belong anywhere else. If it takes an angel of the Lord to make you realize that, then fine. But now that you've got it through your thick skull that you are my son, I don't want to hear anything else about it."

"Now." The Devil leaned a hip against his desk and stared down at Sam. "You're going to finish your drink. Then you're going to go oversee the cleanup that little skirmish caused. After that, I believe there's a soul that needs collecting somewhere in Paris and I think you should take that demon friend of yours with you. Think of it as a mini-vacation, father to son. You need a break, I understand that. Take it. Come back refreshed. Because, Castiel was right. You belong here and contract on your soul or not you, my kid, were meant to serve at my side."

After that? There was nothing to do but down yet another glass of scotch. "Pick-me-ups are not your thing, are they?"

"I'm the Prince of Darkness, Sammy. Finish your drink and get going," he answered in his typical 'that should be obvious' tone that Sam often thought he didn't use on anyone but him.

With a smile and slight wave of his hand he nodded towards Sam and pointed towards the office door. "You've got work to do."