A/N: a ficlet I wrote the day after 6x22 aired.
My part of the cage was fire and then ice seeping through my veins, burning my body, claiming me over and over; it was darkness and blood, it was Michael and Lucifer, taking it all out on me and Adam.
I could tell you this, Sam. I could tell you about the bleakest darkness, about a pain so deep rooted because it was meant to annhilate my soul. I could tell you about how hell is lack of texture and one too thick, too suffocating all at the same time. I could tell you how hell is countless hours, days, years and decades spent in a void with pain and blood and remorses as the only companions only to be suddenly filled with more pain, more blood and more remorses.
It wouldn t make a difference, though. You wouldn t listen. I doubt you would even care. I *do* know you, after all.
You don t remember, you don t know yet how we clung to him in our mind.
Whenever it became too much, whenever fear threatened to rip what was left of our sanity apart, we clung to him. We fought Michael and Lucifer in the cage, to be able to cling to our memories, Sam. We fought with everything we were, seeking refuge in our memories, finding solace and reprieve in them.
In the end, Michael decided to leave us our memories of him.
Fitting punishment, Sammy we couldn t have chosen it better.
Hell was ever ending pain, it was unimaginable torture, it was having your soul being ripped apart over and over as we clung to something we couldn t have, something that kept us sane and destroyed us and the bitch of it was: we couldn't ever choose it any differently. We just coudn't, Sam.
Hell were the memories of Dean, of the last moments in the cemetery, of the millions of seconds in our life spent with him. Hell were the regrets of the things we never said, the dreams of things that would never be, the ache in our soul different from the countless others inflicted upon us and there was really a reprieve from that.
I know you. You won t leave him alone out there. If you are to die, you ll do that together. It's a no brainer, it's the right thing to do. He protects you and you protect him. He loves you and you love him, more than everything, more than your own sanity.
You can t give up on him: even down there, even amisdt all that pain, even when we forgot how to think and we were just a shiny ball of energy pulsating with agony, a little speck of it still belonged to Dean; it would always belong to him, and I'm pretty damn sure Dean felt the same on the rack. It's how we tick, Sam.
You'll remember, to save him. You'll remember the moment you broke in hell, when Lucifer reminded you that there wouldn't be a happily ever after. Not for us, Sam.
We had known that, it had been in our mind when we decided to jump into the cage, but hearing it from Lucifer broke us.
"That's your happily ever after, Sam. I could have given it all and more. I could have given you him forever". Lucifer's essence had caressed us, his touch fire and ice against our soul and then he whispered, "He'll go to Heaven when he dies. Happy now, Sam? Eternity apart, do you like the sound of it?"
We broke, letting the pain in, letting Lucifer and Michael play with us, in whichever way they chose to. Yet you still clung to him, to the memories.
You'll remember and it will probably break you, or maybe not. Not yet. You'll have to save Dean, reach Dean and be next to him, go down swinging with him.
I do know you; you'll try and you'll cling to that little speck of your soul that didn't get shredded in the cage.
You'll have him by your side and he'll have you by his.
You'll have the happy ending I didn't think I'd have, down there.