A/N: First fic of the new year!
This was written for rokhal's awesome prompt: Somehow, somewhen, Sam is coming down from demon blood, and no one who could possibly help him is anywhere around. But there are lots of civilians.
So... I might've slightly cheated when it comes to the Outsider PoV? But I hope you'll like it anyway.
Warnings: This is set between s3 and s4, but SPOILERSfor all of s4 as well. Blood and gore, vomit, slightly disturbing imagery, weird things in italics and parentheses. You know the drill.
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Sickness
There is a house in Madras, Oregon.
It is an old house, long abandoned and falling apart at the corners. It smells of mould and old wood and the unmistakable stench of death. The story behind this house and its original owners is no longer important; their tale has been so distorted down the years that nobody quite knows—or believes—that the house held any life at all. What the people do know, however, is that nobody who has ever gone to the house has ever been seen again. They mourn the missing, weave tales of untold horror around that house, and tell their children every night to never take step in there.
Every few years though, curiosity overwhelms caution, and more people come to the house to die. They do not arrive with that intention, of course—but when the house has them, it does not let them go. An attempt at escape means death, in horrible, gruesome ways.
The bodies pile up, blood upon rotting flesh upon crumbling bone.
She watches.
She sees a sickness in his eyes from the moment he steps in.
It is obvious that he doesn't belong to the group of youths who entered the house a few minutes before him, whispering and giggling. He walks in warily, a double-barrelled shotgun in his hands and a bag on his shoulder, carefully surveying his surroundings before taking a step. When the door closes behind him, he only looks at it with a sort of determined resignation.
He knows he will die, and he does not care.
He finds the other kids—five in all—and gives them short, barking orders to leave. Although he doesn't seem much older than them, he is physically intimidating, tall and well-built, and his voice is weighed down by an authority that speaks of experience far, far beyond his years.
(special, he'd say. just like you and i, ali. just like you and i)
The others grumble but pack up, but just as they are about to leave, all of the doors and windows to the house slam shut. The kids scream, huddling together, but he only rolls his eyes, mutters, "Well, it was worth a try," then shouts, "All right! All of you stay with me—and do not stray out of sight!"
(forever and ever and ever, he'd say, and she'd kiss him with every 'ever', tasting blood and whiskey and everything she's ever wanted in her life)
They do not listen, of course (they never listen, he'd say, and she understands, she understands), and one of them breaks from the group and pulls at the knob of the front door. It rattles but does not open, and before the boy can turn and voice his frustration, even as the tall man reaches toward him desperately, a rotting wooden beam lifts off the floor and skewers the boy through his middle.
The boy dies choking on his own blood in the tall man's arms, to the sound of his quiet prayer and the half-sobs, half-screams of his friends.
She watches.
The tall, young-old man's name is Sam.
(he'd probably sing 'green eggs and ham' while he's flaying him open, and she'd smile and smile and smile)
Sam only took a moment to mourn the boy, his hands painted with fresh blood and his shoulders stooped with a familiar loss, before he snapped back to action and herded the kids into the living room. They're quiet now, in shock, and do exactly what he says.
(good boy, he'd say, and pet their hair)
Sam takes out containers of what he reveals as salt, calls one of the other boys and instructs him to pour the salt across window-sills and doorways, along the walls and every corner he can find. If the boy finds this instruction bizarre, he doesn't show it. He scampers off with the salt, and Sam turns toward his bag. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, sways on his feet like he's dizzy, before he's moving again.
There's a sickness in him, she can tell. A sickness that runs deeper than the physical.
(she'd had that sickness too, although he wouldn't call it 'sickness', oh no, oh no, for him, murder is the most exquisite of arts)
He pulls out various objects from the bag and by the time the boy bursts back into the room, he's set up an elaborate ritual. He pours the last of the salt in a circle around the kids, opens an old book, and starts chanting.
She doesn't recognise the language but feels the power behind every word, every syllable, and knows (he) can feel it, too. The house sways and creaks and a wind blows through the rooms, but Sam only keeps chanting. She can feel the power of the spell, a near-physical tension that she hasn't felt in decades. The feeling intensifies, tautening, suffocating, until—
—it stops. Sam's finished the spell, but nothing's happened. He looks around him in stark surprise, at the still-shuttered windows, at the closed doors, before he starts the spell again, slower, more careful. Once again, nothing happens, and Sam sighs, pulls a helpless hand through his hair.
(He)'s triumphed, as she always knew (he) would.
(and she'd resisted, hadn't she, she'd resisted, but with every boy he killed, he'd win, he'd win, he'd win, because of the sickness-art-love, because of)
She watches.
Sam tells them about ghosts and demons, about werewolves and vampires and monsters in the dark.
He sits slumped against the wall, his voice already low and hoarse and fading. When it fades out altogether, one of the kids, a girl, finds the courage to crawl out of the salt-circle and kneel by his side. "Sam," she says and places a hand on his forearm, "Sam, hey."
He straightens suddenly, gripping her hand hard, staring at her with a slightly unfocussed gaze. He relaxes almost immediately, however, swallows painfully. "Sorry. I'm just—sorry."
"You're sick," the girl tells him matter-of-factly. "Like, really sick."
Sam shakes his head. "I'm—I'll be fine," he says, digging in his bag until he pulls out a small silver flask. He opens it, tips it against his mouth, but nothing comes out. He slumps even more, and for the first time since he entered the house, she can sense defeat about him—not the suicidal single-mindedness of before, but something darker, and impossibly enough, even more desperate.
(but you know me, he'd say, and yes, she knew him, and that's why she drugged them and held them down and held her hand against their last desperate calls)
"Do you—do you think we should check the door now?" one of the boys pipes up. "I mean, none of our phones are working, it's not like the, uh, ghost is doing anything right now, and Johnny is lying right there—"
"No." Sam gets up with visible effort, his sweat-slicked face gleaming in the candlelight. "No. It's not gone, and we are not risking trying to escape. We'll—I'll... something. Get us out. Something—" He cries out suddenly, goes to his knees, and begins retching.
(but she'd always close their eyes afterwards)
The retching goes on for a while, long after the vomiting stops, and at the end of it, he lays on the floor, panting, dizzy, eyes half-closed.
(always)
She watches.
It's when Sam starts seeing things that aren't there that the kids begin to feel afraid again.
"Jess," Sam calls to an empty corner, "Jess... please. Jess, don't say that, Jess—" His hands, sticky with blood and drying vomit, are outstretched in desperate entreaty. With all of his strength and dignity stripped, he looks even more beautiful than he did when he first set foot in the house.
(and covered in blood, the knife blade held high in the air, a wild joy in his eyes, he'd look at her, look at her, look at her, and never before and never again would she ever feel that special special special)
Suddenly he goes rigid, then all of his muscles start spasming at once. He's flailing, his head slamming repeatedly against the wooden floor (thud-thud, thud-thud, they'd go, bits of bone and brain flying in all directions), and all of the kids start panicking, half of them yelling that he must be held down, and the other half insisting that he mustn't be touched.
He stills finally, limp, eyes closed—
(take a deep, deep breath. this is art. this is art. this is art.)
—before he is lifted into the air by invisible strings, and slammed against the nearest wall. She knows that (he)'s not doing this (knows knows knows), and she does not understand—
Sam is lifted again, flipped and slammed into the opposite wall with bone-crushing force, and his limbs are flailing again, his eyes rolling, froth collecting at the corners of his mouth.
The kids are terrified, screaming, and when Sam falls to the floor, deathly still, the oldest among them just nods at one of his companions, and both of them reach toward the fallen man warily. After they seem satisfied that he isn't going to suddenly levitate again, they hook their hands underneath his shoulders, and drag him into one of the inner rooms. They close the door, place a chair underneath the handle as a barricade.
She goes into the room; she has no interest in watching the kids.
(so loyal, he'd said the day the police came, so beautiful. he'd stroked her hair, so gently, gently, gently, then he'd shot her)
Sam comes to after a few minutes, then curls up, sobbing, and all he says is, "Dean dean dean dean..." over and over again, in a pitiful, desperate litany.
She watches.
Another spell is being performed, a far more powerful one by someone vastly more experienced.
(He) resists, of course, one last time, before (he) disappears with an ethereal, echoing scream, and the whole house sags as if in relief.
She doesn't leave, however.
The door to the room where Sam lies curled up slams open, and a woman strides in. She thrums with power, and it manifests in the air around her like some sort of miasma, thick and oily and black. The woman is all harsh angles and furious eyes before she sees Sam, and then she just... softens, and the miasma around her gleams like water at midnight.
"Sam," she says. "Oh, Sammy, I'm so sorry."
(so sorry, so sorry, so sorry ali, he'd shouted as the police gunned him down in his own house. she watched.)
Sam sits up, squints at the woman. "Ruby?" he says. "Ruby... please. It's—it's you, isn't it—god! Gah—Ruby, I need, I need—"
Ruby kneels in front of him. "Ssh," she says, stroking his face, tucking his hair behind his ear. He leans his face into her touch. "I've got what you need, right here."
She reaches into her boot, pulls out a short knife, and makes a deep cut across her forearm. As blood wells from the wound, she offers her arm to Sam. He grabs at it, lowers his mouth to the gash, and begins sucking. Ruby's eyes flutter closed as if in pleasure, and her lips curl into a slow, slow, slow smile.
She watches.
Finis