Title: the freshly turned earth of a guilty mind
Characters/Pairings: Sam, Adam, Lucifer, Dean
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sam sees Adam as well as Lucifer.
Word Count: 1267
Notes: Season 7. Companion to bury my body but can be standalone.
Warnings: Hell PTSD.
30/10/11 - my apologies, while editing bury my body I accidentally messed with this story instead _ it's back up now.
"Hey, Sam." Adam steps out from Lucifer's shadow. "Missed me?"
"Sam!" Dean comes running up, the lines of his face taut with anxiety. "Where were you?"
"Now," Adam says. "That's a really good question."
Things only go downhill from there.
Lucifer's new favorite pastime is haunting the corners of Sam's sight. He's always there, a silhouette cutting a patch of sky out of the window, a shadow over Sam's shoulder when he tries to read. He picks things up and remarks on them and always puts them just the slightest bit off the place where he found them so Dean and Bobby never notice and only Sam does, the gleam of smudges in the dust sticking in his mind like bits of sharp wire.
Once Lucifer sets the house on fire, flicking sparks off the ends of his fingers onto the ancient books and old dry wood. The flames reach all the way to the ceiling before Sam cracks, leaping out of his chair and yelling at Dean and Bobby to get out. They stare at him and it's long moments before Sam realizes that he's no longer choking on the smoke filling the air, that the books still sit on the shelf, unharmed.
It's not the first time. Far from the last.
"You know that he's not real, right?" Dean says. He keeps saying this, as though he can make it true with enough repetition.
"You're lying," Sam says to Lucifer, who's lounging on his bed tapping out some annoyingly familiar rhythm on the wall. "Leviathan, Cass thinking he was God..." He laughs, humorlessly. "This crap is too crazy to make up."
"So, I'm just a figment of an overactive imagination too?" Adam asks. Sam hadn't seen him enter, but he's now perched on the table. His face is whole and unmarked this time, a minor mercy. Sam deliberately keeps his gaze above the vivid red stain on Adam's shirt and the way his hand pushes protectively against it but memory drags its dirty fingers through his brain anyway, the feel of his brother's flesh splitting open under a patient blade and he has to swallow the compulsion to throw up. Adam always shows up hurt; last time it'd been a gash in his throat so deep it'd almost taken his head off and Sam had been so ashamed but so glad he couldn't speak and join in the fun as usual.
Sam finds it impossible to ignore either of them. At least, with Lucifer, it's okay, it's allowed for him to do his best and go on with whatever scraps of his life he has left. With Adam...
"If he's lying," Adam continues, "You know that means I'm alone in Hell with two pissed off archangels, right?" He grins, showing Sam a glimpse of stained, broken teeth. "So much for our promise."
"You should have known better, kiddo," Lucifer yawns.
"I'm sorry," Sam says again. He can't say it enough. "Death could only take one person - "
Adam merely looks contemptuous, and with good reason. He leans close and whispers, "You chose to be here. Not me. If anyone should get a free ticket out of Hell..."
His breath wells up against Sam's face, foul and black as though from the depths of an overflowing sewer and Sam can barely breathe, frozen in horror and disgust. His arms go stiff with the effort of not pushing Adam away and - well, this is his punishment, isn't it? It's far less than he deserves for abandoning his brother. Because this isn't real, Sam did get out without Adam in tow -
"It's okay, though." Abruptly, Adam rocks back on his heels, rage wiped clean like the sky after a storm. "You haven't broken our promise. You're still with me, and we're still gonna find a way out one day. Maybe I'll even forgive you then." He smiles, holding out one hand palm-up and Sam can't help but take hold of it, tangle their fingers together -
"Uh, thanks?" Dean says. "Are you okay, Sam?"
"Feel free to join us whenever you're done playing house with my dolls, Sam," Lucifer says, and with a last cheery wave, vanishes.
"What do you see?" Dean says, his tone - needlessly, Sam thinks - accusing. He leans against the door to Sam's room, where Sam spends most of his time nowadays so he doesn't have to deal with the trauma of Lucifer randomly picking up the nearest blunt object to beat Dean or Bobby to death with.
"You already know," Sam snaps, nose practically glued to the pages. "Just the Devil, making my life more Hell than it already is."
"So why were you saying sorry to that son of a bitch?" Dean asks with uncomfortable perception. Maybe Sam isn't the only one with guilt issues as well; it might only be in his imagination with the rest of the dark things, the hellish things but Dean sounds - afraid.
"I'm not exactly in my right mind around Lucifer, Dean," Sam says. He turns a page. "Now, if you don't mind, we've got a Leviathan to catch."
There's a silence that Sam has become familiar with, the ghosts of words wanting to become reality. In the end, though, as usual, Dean swallows them and rests one hand on his shoulder. Then he walks out and Sam is alone once more.
Or not so alone.
"Misery shared is misery halved, you know," Lucifer says helpfully.
"Shut up," Sam mutters.
Dean's fingers push brutally against the cut in his palm, and for a moment the pain is the only sensation in the whole world. Lucifer flickers in and out of existence like a picture on a TV with crappy reception, Adam's voice crackling into nothing but white, nonsensical static.
"Feel that?" Dean shakes Sam's hand insistently. "This is real. I was here when you cut it, I was the one who sewed it up. This is different! I'm different."
Dean stops. Adam returns, glaring across the space that separates them. Sam flinches away from the raw anger twisting his features into a grotesque stranger's mask.
"How many times now, Sam?" Adam says. "Is it really so horrible for us to be stuck together for all eternity?" He laughs. "'Cause we're never going to get out, Sam. You can stop lying to me. There's no escape from Hell."
"Believe in that! Believe me, okay? You gotta believe me," Dean pleads.
"Who're you gonna believe?" Adam demands. "Him or me?"
"Don't bother," Lucifer says from what sounds like a long distance away. "Sam will pick Dean over you anytime. Even if it's just Fake Dean. Isn't that right, Sam?"
Their rising voices clash into a ringing cacophony in his head, threatening to split its walls open. Sam closes his eyes, dropping the heavy weight of his skull against his chest. Go away, he thinks, desperate. All of you, just - go away -
"Sammy?" Dean asks. His hand curls around Sam's wrist like an anchor to reality, solid and reassuring. "Please, just come back with me - "
"Sam?" Adam's hand is cold on his other wrist, the smell of dirt and blood and rotting meat wafting strongly around him. He whispers, "Just wake up and come back, Sam. Don't let me suffer alone."
"I'm sorry," Sam breathes out, and slams his thumb hard against the wound in his palm.
When he dares to look up again, Adam has faded away like the aftermath of a nightmare, the space where he had been empty as though he had never been.
-end-
Ending Notes: bawwww poor Adam right? Such a missed opportunity, Show! *shakes fist*