Flames licked around his ankles, but they felt a lot more like ice than fire. The orange glow lit the room dimly, the corners still shrouded in shadow. He shook his head, trying to fling the blood out of his eyes so he could see when they came at him again. Even now, with escape more impossible than it had ever been, his hunting instincts told him to be vigilant, to be aware, to comb every inch he could see to find a way out. A way back to Dean, back to Bobby and Cas and sweet smelling air. His wrists and ankles were bleeding freely, bruised from the shackles that bound him to the wall. A resounding creak split the silence, and Sam cringed involuntarily. It was starting again. Lucifer drew out of the shadows and knelt down beside Sam, his freezing fingers brushing the matted hair away from the hunter's eyes.
"Come on Sam. You didn't think I would be gone for long did you? No, we've barely started!", Lucifer chuckled as the flames crept higher, crystals of ice forming on Sam's torn jeans, on his damp skin. Familiar faces swirled around the edges of his vision, but he was unable to see them when he tried to focus. Jessica's voice whispered at the edge of his consciousness, replaced swiftly by Madison's, and then his mother's. "You did this to me." "This is all your fault." "You killed me." "How could you do this to me Sam?"
Sobs tore at his throat, Lucifer and Michael tore at his skin, the blood that bubbled up becoming a thick sludge, so cold was the room. It was inside his skin, inside his bones, clawing its way up his throat and finally wrenching free a scream that mingled with the maniacal laughter of his tormentors, the faces of people who died because of him pressing in on him until the pain reached a fever pitch…
Sam woke with a strangled cry, limbs tangled in the sheets, drenched in cold sweat. Dean had left the air conditioning in the shabby, island-themed motel room on full blast. He struggled to free himself from the sheets, and stumbled to turn off the air conditioning, trying to calm himself down without waking Dean.
It was just a nightmare, he thought. Nothing to be afraid of… Sam pulled the spare blanket out of the closet and threw it over his bed, sliding underneath it. He glanced quickly at Dean to make sure he was still asleep, and then pulled the covers up over his head, just the way he used to when he was little. Sam wished that things were still so simple, that his nightmares still vanished in the morning light, and his dad could tell him exactly how to kill whatever plagued his dreams. Sam wished Dean could still remind him that, "If it bleeds, you can kill it."
Sam wished that his demons weren't real.