Sam lost a week to drinking and screaming and crying. That's what he assumed had happened anyway, he didn't actually remember anything except the smell of cheap booze and the overwhelming fear and the nearly physical pain of losing Dean.
On the eight day he vomited up blood and looked at it bleakly and thought about getting food. On the ninth day the innkeeper told him he'd only paid up for eight days and kicked him out unceremoniously. Sam took Impala's reins, he couldn't bear to ride her yet, and wandered towards the marketplace to find some food. That's how he saw the posters announcing the Regent's offer of anything his kingdom could provide to the person who could recover his brothers from their cursed state.
Sam looked at it meditatively and recalled Bobby telling him about how this kingdom had magicians in court positions, that the Regent was rumored to be a magician himself. That night he looked up what books he had on hand and decided to travel over. It was only about seven hours away. Sam thought about renting (or stealing) a horse for himself the way they he would've before instead of riding Impala, but he gave up that idea.
"Do you know any way of bringing people back from the land of Hell?" Sam asked the council sitting before him.
The council had been contemptuously talking over him and asking for the next candidate until that moment when everyone went quiet at once. Sam felt all seven of them scrutinize him heavily. He knew why, very few people knew about Hell, that it was real and not just tales to get children to behave themselves. The few that knew about it didn't talk about it.
"Yes," the leader said, a dark woman sitting in the middle with three people on either side of her.
"Six of our seven princes are swans. Can you cure them, boy?" a man with papery white skin asked, wrinkling his nose as if he had smelt something terrible. "Magicians from three kingdoms have tried and failed."
"I'll do it," Sam said, his chin up.
The council was in a furore, all of them coming up from their seats to tell the leader their views. Sam could hear the youngest of them, a beautiful blonde girl with clever eyes drawl out that he was a joke.
The leader heard them all and finally clapped once. All of them went quiet to listen to her, she spoke directly to Sam, "If you succeed, you'll get the secret to go into Hell. If you don't, you'll leave this kingdom and not return."
Her voice left no place for negotiation. Sam nodded and left. The terms were fine by him, he'd succeed.
It took him three months to find out how, and it was easy to see why trained magicians from three kingdoms had failed. A demon had set the curse and it would take demonic magic to bring them back. Sam felt sick at the idea of using the taint in his blood but if it helped bring back Dean, he would do it.
He went back to the council and told them he'd need to stay with the swans for an indeterminate amount of time and he would need to be accommodated because he wouldn't be able to speak during that time.
This time, there was still an air of contempt in the room but there was a level of uncertainty underneath it. Sam refused to tell them how he was going to remove the curse, he was certain if they found out they'd get someone else to do it and throw him out. Or possibly execute him for having demon blood. The leader told him he would have whatever he liked but he needed to succeed.
Thus began the twelve months Sam would need to be silent. At first, it was both difficult and lonely. He needed to pluck their feathers and weave them into cloaks with tendrils of his own magic in them making out the words that would cure them. Weaving was possibly the most boring job Sam could ever have imagined.
The swans didn't like him, most of them tried to peck him when he went to get their feathers except for one reddish-brown one that gave him sympathetic eyes and slept in his room sometimes, when she sensed that he was feeling exceptionally lonely. There was a brown one that didn't actively hurt him until he tried to pluck him, instead seeming to be rather curious about what he was doing, and there was an off-white one that looked down his beak at Sam. Sam noted that however many feathers he plucked, the birds never seemed to be denuded.
The routine of the days wore on his mind and made him restless but there was nothing he could do. Then one fine morning about five months later he heard cheerful whistling and he abandoned his loom to go out and see who was there. Everyone knew he and the swans and Impala were on this field and no one ever came except the servants who brought him the things to make his food, or clean clothes.
His first impression was a cheerful laugh and golden eyes blinking at him from some distance away.
"Seem to have lost my way," the man yelled, moving towards him, "Know where a fellow could get some food around here? I'm hungry enough to eat you up, kiddo."
Sam only just stopped himself from laughing out loud, he grinned instead. The man seemed to carry around the air of a carnival. Loud, and brash and fun. He beckoned at him to come inside and the man climbed over the fence enclosing the stone house and the swan's lake and came to him. Sam took out the food he had made and set it on his small table and noted that he would have to make some more for dinner.
The man looked him over with an air of appreciation that made Sam's cheeks flush under his tan. The man looked at him curiously when he refused to answer any questions that needed him to speak, and asked him once whether he was capable of speech. Sam shook his head at that and the curiosity on the man's face deepened. He was an entertaining companion, telling Sam tales about the outside world and his own past that Sam was sure were exaggerated. He implied as much with a raised eyebrow which the man responded to by shaking a finger at him and telling him no one liked cynics.
Sam smiled so much that his cheeks hurt.
"I'm Loki," the man said, just before leaving. "I'll be hanging around near here. Probably for longer than I'd planned." He wagged his eyebrows at Sam to demonstrate why. Sam put a hand on his shoulder to stop him going and rushed back in to find a pencil and paper and scribble, 'I'm Sam' on it. He handed it to Loki, hoping that by some wild chance this man who seemed to be of the peasant classes would know how to read.
Loki looked at the paper with a slight frown, then a rather sweet smile curved up his lips and he looked up at Sam with bright eyes and said, "Nice meeting you, Sam."
Sam wasn't sure whether he should count on Loki coming back; he had met smooth talkers before. His brother had been one after all, Sam thought, suppressing the rage and pain that came with the thought.
Three days later, Loki came back, around the same time and grinned up at Sam and told him he had only come for the food. Sam fed him and listened to him talk and saw him playing with the swans who seemed to like him, and felt the world become just a little less dark.
Loki came around almost everyday after that and often tried to coax or tease or surprise Sam into talking. Sam tolerated it, only occasionally getting annoyed because Loki didn't know what was at stake. He only knew that Sam wouldn't talk or laugh or make any noise really. At times Sam wondered how long Loki would tolerate this state of affairs. Less than two months was the answer.
Two months after Loki first came into Sam's life, some seven months after Sam had begun his attempt to break the curse Loki and he were sitting by the lake, and Loki shooed away the swans coming up to be fed and then pulled Sam down to kiss him. Sam curled his fingers into Loki's tunic and licked at Loki's lips with his tongue to get him to open and Loki moaned. Sam jerked back when he could no longer stop himself from saying something.
Loki looked at him for a long moment and Sam's heart sunk at the way his lips were pressed together. He put one hand on Loki's shoulder but Loki shrugged it off and turned away from him, walking to the fence. Sam stayed where he was, recognizing the forbidding set of Loki's shoulders. Waves of frustration rolled in him because words were all he had, Dean and Dad- they were good with the big gestures and stuff. All Sam could do was talk. Now he didn't even have that.
After a few moments Loki turned back to Sam and said flatly, "I'm done with these games. Either talk to me now, come away with me. What are you doing here, alone with a bunch of… of swans!" he jerkily gestured at them and one or two of them honked at him uncertainly, seeming to be rather hurt by his dismissal.
"Or we're done," Loki finished, "I can't do this."
Sam looked at him and held a pleading hand out. Loki jerked forward almost unconsciously and then visibly held himself stiff. Sam dropped his hand. Loki looked at him with betrayal clear in his eyes.
"You're staying? You're not gonna quit this? You are going to…" Loki shook his head despairingly and said, "I don't know why I even bothered. Have your swans then kid, I'm done with this."
Sam ran after him and caught hold of him just beyond the fence because with Loki's shorter legs he had a considerable disadvantage. But when he had caught up, Loki just looked up at him challengingly, "Well? Convince me to stay! Go on, I dare you."
Sam leaned down to kiss him but Loki moved his head so that it fell on his cheek. Sam held him for long moments but Loki didn't soften by look or gesture, even his eyes were the hard gold of the summer's unforgiving heat and slowly Sam's hands fell away from Loki's shoulders. Loki turned around and walked away and Sam watched him go, heartsick and weary.