A/N: Random drabble alert! An attempt to capture the final moments of the very awesome 5.03: Free to be you and me.
Warnings: SPOILERS for season 5 until 5.03. Metaphor abuse and angst.
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Atrophy
Lucifer is gone, but he is still here.
Sam can feel it.
The smell of burned plastic hangs heavily in the air, stinging inside his nostrils, sulphur coated thick on his tongue, fire zinging through his veins.
The burnt cards, the force-fed blood, he attributes automatically.
Starting the Apocalypse, leaving Dean.
Time has passed since all of them, yet they linger in the air, congealing and hardening and suffocating – fingers down his gullet, weights in his lungs, impinging on his diaphragm, the pain flaring sharp and dull – his body betraying him with its need.
Need for –
Demon-blood? Escape? Redemption? Dean?
Could he ever know?
(could he ever accept –)
"You will say yes to me, Sam."
Maybe he will. He has been condemned to this since before he was born, after all, and his scramble to escape from cold, hard inevitability has only lead to him being dragged back, kicking and screaming, thrown and buffeted in equal measures by evil and love and desperation and his own deeply etched human flaws, with the world to pay the eventual price.
Sam's body burns from within and his mind collapses upon itself, his despair the singularity point for the black hole it has become.
Lucifer is gone, but he is still here.
And he is waiting.
Finis