"Leave me alone!" Sam yelled, his gun raised. Deans' eyes widened as his little brother screamed at the empty air.

"Woah! This does not require a gun." Dean took a half step back, raising his arms.

"I said, leave me alone!" Sam yelled louder this time, the gun shaking in his hands. A loud cracking sound rang in Deans' ears; Sam had unloaded two shots at the wall. Dean moved forwards towards Sam, speaking in a calm voice,

"Sam. Look at me. What? You don't know what's real?" Dean raised an eyebrow, keeping his hands upheld in front of him as he approached his brother. "I have been to hell okay; I know what torture feels like. Enough to know that it feels," Dean paused, looking at Sam's shaking hands. "Different." He lowered his own hands a little before going on. "Different than the rest of the bullshit pain we feel up here."

"But-but you don't know that for sure; I don't know that for sure." Sam's voice quaked as he spoke, hands shaking, lips quivering.

Dean gestured to his brother, "Let me see your hand." Sam looked at his right hand, the one holding the gun. "No, no, the other hand. Let me see the other hand Sammy." Sam glanced at the bandage on his left hand, covering his stitches.

"Oh well aren't you Florence Nightingale?" Sam's head whipped around, only to see Lucifer staring back at him, a smug smile across his face.

"Sam!" Dean's loud voice startled him again and his brother grabbed a hold of his injured hand. Taking Sam's hand in his own Dean said, "This. This is real. Not months ago, not in Hell, but now: right now. I was with you when you sliced it, I was the one who stitched it up. Look!" Dean dug his fingers into Sam's wound, twisting his hand. Sam winced loudly in pain, his eyes flickered up, and Lucifer was standing right there in front of him, next to Dean.

"Oh you've dealt a lot more with pain," Lucifer said as he winked at the hunter.

"This! This feels different," Dean pressed harder into Sam's hand, "I feel different. Right?!" Dean raised his voice, and Sam jerked his now bleeding hand away. A look of shock washed over Dean's face; he looked down at his own hands, then back at his brother.

"Yeah, yeah I think so.." Sam trailed off, his words breathy and quiet. Lucifer stepped forward towards him,

"You sure about that Sammy?" The former angel said smiling. Sam began to shake again, his eyes narrowing in anger. Sam pressed his right thumb into his wound, bringing more blood up through the bandaging. The more 'real' pain he felt, the less he could see Lucifer, the quieter he got. Sam's let out a small groan of pain, still able to see the fallen angel.

"Sam, you're out okay? We got you out. Sammy? Believe me. Okay? You gotta believe me." Dean pleaded. Sam pressed harder into his cut, "Do you understand?" He asked. Sam shook his head up and down,

"yeah. Yeah I understand." Dean wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but he knew that he couldn't. He began to think, what if this wasn't the kind of thing that he could fix? What if Sam would always see Lucifer? Then Sam's phone rang, interrupting Dean's thoughts.

"Bobby!" Sam answered, trying not to sound as frantic as he actually was.

"The hospital case if definitely our thing. Bled black ooze. I'll meet you at the house and we can regroup." That was all Dean was able to hear through the phone. Bobby hung up and Sam pulled the phone away from his ear, looking up at his brother. Dean looked worriedly at Sam, "okay, let's go." Sam followed Dean silently back to the impala, trailing behind his big brother. The two hunters got into their car wordlessly, and remained silent throughout the drive back to Bobby's. Sam tried to sleep, the whole ordeal had shaken him up badly, but in all honestly, he wanted to be asleep so that Dean wouldn't try to talk to him about what had happened. It wasn't Dean's style to talk about feelings, or as he called it, "having a chick flick moment". But to Sam, the fear was still there. Now Dean knew that he definitely was not okay. No matter what Sam said now, Dean would always know Lucifer was up there in Sam's head, tormenting him.

Not long later, the pair pulled up at Bobby's place. The older hunter greeted them in the kitchen, "You two want a beer?" He asked. Dean accepted, but Sam declined. Bobby debriefed them a little bit about what had gone on at the hospital, how the Leviathans had taken over roles of doctors and nurses, feeding on the patients, and how they bled black goo. Dean tried to pay attention as best he could to Bobby, glancing besides him at Sam every few minutes. Sam had settled down a little throughout the car ride, he wasn't shaking anymore. Instead, Sam was ringing his hands, thumb pressed into his wound. He wasn't really paying attention to Bobby as he spoke, he could hear Lucifer's quieted whispers slowly growing louder in his head even though Sam couldn't see him again yet. Instead he tried to focus on the pain in his hand, his real pain. "Sam?" Bobby asked, Sam looked up away from his hand. "You okay? You should probably get some sleep.." Bobby looked down at Sam's bloodied bandage, "Go change that or it'll get infected ya igit." Bobby shook his head a little, taking care of these boys got the best of him sometimes. Dean padded his brother on the shoulder,

"Yeah, you better try and get some sleep Sammy." Dean looked at him with pleading eyes.

Sam sighed, "okay." The young hunter got up from his seat on the couch and walked upstairs to the guest bedroom that he shared with Dean. Once he entered the room, Sam pulled off his shirt and headed for the bathroom. He looked in the mirror, his eyes were red. Sam rubbed at them with his good hand. He looked down at his left, he really should change the bandaging; he thought. He unraveled the gauze from around his palm, the stitches oozy with half dried blood.

He went to open the mirror cabinet when he heard it, "Oh Saaaaaam" the voice cooed. He turned around, and Lucifer laughed. "Didn't think you could get away that easy, did ya?" He cocked his head a little to the left, smiling at Sam. The young hunter backed up, placing his hands on the sink. "Hurting your hand to make me go away? Tsk tsk," Lucifer shook his finger at Sam, "doing my job for me now, torturing yourself?" The fallen angel laughed again. Sam pushes his left hand back into the sink, the pressure against the reddened flesh stung, but Lucifer's image wasn't fading. Sam turned around, trying to open the medicine cabinet. "Not like there's anything in there that can make me go away Sammy," Lucifer mocked. Sam looked frantically through the medicine cabinet, he could hear Lucifer's lowly take a step forwards. Sam frantically searched through the medicine cabinet, not really knowing what he was looking for. Sleeping pills? No. Nail clippers? No. Nail polish remover? Why did Bobby have nail polish remover? And then he saw it. A small red and silver Swiss army knife. Sam pulled it from the small glass shelf, and turned around; he was face to face with Lucifer. Sam pointed the small knife at his tormentor's chest, Lucifer chuckles and shook his head, "Oh Sammy…" he trailed off, rolling his eyes. "This is just too much fun!"

"This isn't for you Lucifer, this is for me," Sam turned the knife around, bringing it to his left arm and without thinking, sliced across his flesh. Lucifer's image crackled like static. It was working. Sam tried to focus on the pain, tried not to look at Lucifer. He drug the knife across his arm again, this time cutting a little deeper. He groaned out in pain, biting down on his lip. He couldn't make out what Lucifer was saying now. Sam made a third cut, Lucifer was gone. Sam dropped the knife to the floor. Oh shit, he thought, what had he done? Sam took a moment to breathe, and rested his back against the off-white porcelain sink. Sam knew this was a bad idea. Maybe he could just press into his hand a little harder next time. But it hadn't worked only a matter of minutes ago. Sam felt his face get hot, his eyes stung. He was crying. Sam turned back around and turned the faucet on. He ran his arm under the cold water, watching the blood be washed away. He pressed a towel against the fresh cuts, they had stopped bleeding; they weren't very deep. Sam breathed a little sigh of relief. They'd heal up in a few days. He ran the small knife along the towel, cleaning it of blood and placed it back into the medicine cabinet. Sam opened the bathroom door and peaked his head out, Dean hadn't come back upstairs yet. He didn't know how long he had been alone for, but he figured it couldn't have been more than ten minutes or so. Sam quietly opened the bathroom door all the way, and practically ran over to his black duffle back, fishing through it trying to find a long sleeve shirt. Thankfully it was fall, so wearing long sleeves outside wouldn't be a problem or provoke any suspicion. As Sam pulled a grey shirt over his head, a feeling of guilt washed over him. It's not like Dean had said he shouldn't do anything specific to keep Lucifer away, but hiding things from his brother had never turned out well for Sam. He didn't want to lie to his brother, Dean was practically his best friend. But he knew he couldn't tell him, Dean wouldn't understand. Right now it seemed like this was the only was to keep Lucifer, well his hallucinations of Lucifer, away. Focusing on his physical pain, making himself feel real again. Keeping that control over what he could actually feel. Exhausted, Sam pushed his duffle bag over onto the floor and climbed under the blue covers of the twin bed adjacent to Dean's. He rubbed this thumb over the cuts, the soft t-shirt fabric rubbed against his skin. Sam laid there, thinking about what he had done, the things that Lucifer had said, thinking about his brother, about Bobby, about Cas. But soon exhaustion took hold of him and Sam fell asleep. Dean had come upstairs only half an hour later, relieved to find his little brother curled up underneath his covers. Dean slipped into his own bed, and wished that tomorrow would be better.