Sam doesn't look good in white. That's the first thing he notices. It makes him look pale. Sallow, sick, weak, tired. It's his eyes, that's the biggest difference. When Sam wears blue, his eyes look like the ocean. When he wears green, his eyes look like the forest. When he wears white, apparently, his eyes look … hollow. Cold. Empty. Like there's nothing left inside him at all, nothing remaining of the Sam he used to be. The Sam before Hell, before the Devil, back when he was still mostly one piece of a person. Now he's a million. Some are here, some are there, and none of them can find their way back to the others. Lost, broken. Finished. That's the worst of it. The soft click of the door that closes behind the doctor is Sam's requiem. It's officially the end. He's reached rock bottom and sunk a few hundred feet below it, and now he's locked up with the rest of the waste-cases, and he'll never get out.
He's not even sure if he wants to.
"Hey, at least you've still got me," Lucifer says, sickly sweet smile churning Sam's insides.
Sam ignores him.
Time doesn't mean anything anymore. There are no clocks here, and the shades are drawn over the windows so Sam doesn't have a clue if it's night or day. It's a blur, a nauseating, psychotic blur, like an acid trip only sadder. He might have been lying here on this small, lumpy bed for a day, or two, or a month. Maybe a year. Sam doesn't know, and he doesn't have anywhere near enough energy to bother finding out. Dean might come, that's the only thing that keeps him breathing. Dean wouldn't just toss him in a looney-bin and leave him. Right? Maybe.
"If Dean really loved you, he'd never have let you throw yourself into the cage in the first place," Lucifer points out.
There are moments when Sam thinks he's right about that. Now might be one of them. There's a small strip of skin torn away from the corner of the cuticle on his left thumb, though, and that seems much more important.
People come and go. Doctors are the ones in the long, white coats. Nurses are the ones in the colorful pajamas. Everyone here dresses in cotton. As if polyester or denim might spark a riot. Some paranoid schizophrenic down the hall might see a pair of blue jeans and take it as a sign from God to whip out that shiv he's been working on for the last five years of his miserable existence and jam it right through the jugular of some nice, unsuspecting orderly. Cut to the whole place erupting into chaos. People might get hurt, people might die. Whatever. None of them would be here right now anyway, if Sam hadn't saved the world two years ago. He doesn't see what right they have to be happy when he's drowning. And he doesn't see why the hell he can't wear his own clothes. White isn't his color.
Sam's eyes slip closed a few times a minute, but he gives himself a shake and fights it. He can't sleep. Sleep is when he comes. Sure, when Sam's awake, he's here. But for whatever reason, when Sam's awake, Lucifer can only talk to him. He can't touch, not as long as Sam's eyes are open. It's when they close, that's when Sam's magically transported right back to fire and brimstone, to a Lucifer who could touch all he wanted and a Michael who looked like Adam and didn't seem the least bit inclined to offer any assistance. Like the wife of an abusive father. Standing in the corner, watching, never intervening. Sam supposes he's lucky Michael didn't join in. But then, he remembers cold hands on him, places no one but Dean and Sam himself should ever touch, and he forgets what the word lucky means.
"You liked it. You know you did. We could have it again, you know. All you gotta do is ask."
"Shut up," Sam growls. Miraculously, he's listened to.
The walls are moving. Just a little, just a gentle thrumming like soft vibrations, but they're moving nonetheless. Sam can't be certain, but he's fairly sure walls aren't supposed to move like that. The air is too – buzzing and dancing in front of his hazy eyes like on a hot day when it looks like there's steam where there isn't. Probably, that's because he hasn't slept in over a week. But there's always the possibility it's real; that an earthquake or something is happening right now and Sam's too lost in his own head to realize it. The walls are breaking, crumbling, falling down, just like the ones in his mind. One brick at a time, Dean said. We'll build you back up, Sammy, just gotta start with one stone. Sam wanted so desperately to believe him. There was a time when anything Dean said was Sam's gospel – when his big brother's word was absolute. But that was a long time ago.
Oddly, through everything that's happened, everything that's still happening, Sam isn't afraid. Losing his mind isn't as horrible as he would've imagined. It's a slow burn, slow and steady deterioration, like falling asleep. Piece by piece, Sam loses bits of himself and he supposes eventually the last bit will fly away on the wind and there'll be nothing left, but for now, it's almost blissful. There are horrors in his past, truly terrible things that happened always way too soon after the previous disaster, and while Sam is aware that they happened, he doesn't feel them anymore. Jessica is dead, and Sam doesn't really care. So he started the apocalypse, so what. He also stopped it. And a stint in Hell, actual, real, biblical Hell, seems like more than enough to make up for whatever else he's screwed up in his relatively short time on this earth. He paid his price, in blood and screams and agony. All the things Sam had to atone for, Lucifer carved repentance into his skin. They're over now. He can let them go.
The rest of it, though, won't go anywhere. Lucifer stuck around, riding shotgun in Sam's mind, and that's what's breaking him. The soft whispers, the taunting, the voice and the words that remind him of the worst moment of his life. The moment he stopped belonging to Dean. Sam used to be Dean's exclusively – Dean's to touch and Dean's to take care of and Dean's to love. That's gone now. The Devil took it away. Sam's dirty, he's used and tarnished and filthy and Dean wouldn't want him anymore anyway, if he knew. If he knew the truth about what was happening to his little brother in the cage while he was off living his happy, normal life with a girlfriend and a surrogate son and a mortgage and a nine-to-five. Sam won't tell him, can't tell him. Broken, bruised, polluted. Beyond help, that's what Sam is. It's the reason he's here, in this barren, sterile prison. Because Dean couldn't fix him. Not this time.
Still, he wishes Dean would come. It's been so long, so many days or months or years since he's seen the one person he cares about more than anything. Loves him. Dean might even still love him back, a little. It's not the same, it's not what Sam wants, but it's something.
"He doesn't."
"Yes he does!" Sam shouts, his voice hoarse and weak but still loud enough to reverberate around the room, ricocheting off the walls and bouncing back.
"I'm bored," Lucifer whines. "You're no fun anymore."
Sam buries his face into the pillow, not even strong enough to hope he'll be alone when he looks back up.
"Dean'll come back, you know he will. Stop moping."
"He's never coming back," Sam whispers, sudden sadness gripping him so tight he can't breathe.
"For fuck's sake, he was here this morning!" Lucifer cries exasperatedly. "Your broken coconut's leaking all over your sense of time."
"You're lying."
"There is always that possibility."
"He hates me." Sniff. Swallow. Try not to cry. Not that it works.
"I don't. Could never hate you, Sammy. God, please. You gotta snap outta this."
Sam frowns. Lucifer's voice changed. But it's done that before. He used all kinds of different faces and voices, whatever he could think of to hurt Sam the most.
"Sammy." The bed beside Sam dips a little. Or maybe it doesn't. There used to be a line between reality and crazy-town but it packed up and left weeks ago. "Baby, please. It's me."
The hand that brushes the hair away from Sam's forehead is soft, gentle, loving. But Sam's not falling for that. That's nothing new either. Lucifer always used to start out gentle. He used to act like he enjoyed it, like he wanted to make it good for Sam. It never ended well. That, at least, Sam remembers crystal clear. He shies away from the touch. It's not real anyway. Not real, not real, not real. If he thinks it enough, maybe eventually he'll start believing it, and then he can get out of here. Back to Dean, back to where he belongs.
"I'm gonna find a way, okay? I promise. I don't care what we have to do. You're gonna be good as new, you'll see."
Fingers linger on Sam's arm for just a moment, and then they're gone. Doesn't matter. He'll be back. He always comes back, worse than before. He'll have some new game to play, new lies to tell, he'll have perfected his Dean impression until maybe one day he'll finally get Sam to believe that it's really his brother he's talking to, and not his own horribly vivid imagination. Bile rises in Sam's throat and he swallows deliberately to keep it down. There isn't anything in his stomach to throw up anyway. He's dizzy. He's falling, he's slipping away into nothingness. He can feel it happening. Maybe Dean will come and maybe he won't. Either way, Sam's happy ending has been chipped away, the pages wiped clean of any traces. Only blackness ahead.
"Shouldn't fall asleep, Sam," Lucifer warns. "You know what happens."
Sam knows. He just doesn't care. And after nine days and counting without a wink of sleep, Sam doesn't have the energy to fight it anymore.