Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own the show, the boys, or the network. Don't hate, don't sue =)
Spoilers: Vague season four spoilers.
Another warning: Self-harm, bondage, alcoholism, nicotine abuse, "domestic violence", vampirism (involving demon blood) and DUI are mentioned.
I'd like to thank my wonderful Betas: Jennifer & MagicianMana
Dear readers: I wrote this story only to be able to have some sympathy for Sam. I can't stand disliking him, even though season four almost made me. I just had to get this out of my system.
+#+
+#+
Leave me out with the waste
this is not what I'd do
It's the wrong kind of place
to be thinking of you
It's the wrong time
for somebody new
It's a small crime
and I've got no excuse
+#+
+#+
It's funny how the man he loves like a father now is nothing more than a mirror to his pain: The last thing Sam needs is to be reminded of his feelings every single time Bobby meets his eyes. He leaves him at a gas station two days after Dean's death. He knows Bobby will get a ride. Bobby managed to keep friends with some people after all.
He hunts. Either that or he drinks. Mostly he just drives cross country, trying to shake this feeling, losing the shadow that seemed sewed to his back.
He finds hunts 'cause he promised not to try anything to bring Dean back. Of course, the minute Dean's eyes lost their life he knew he was going to break that promise good and proper, but he likes to pretend he tried.
It's what you expect of Sam Winchester anyway, aiming for the impossible. Trying to go to college when deep inside he should have known he'd never be able to have that. Trying to save his brother from hell when deep inside he knew Dean'd be torn from him like every other person he ever loved. Trying to live on when all he's got to cling to is an old leather jacket and some pictures that hurt so much to look at that he put them in a lockbox and left them next to the landmines and the soccer trophies.
The hours in the car are the worst in a way, everything about it screams Dean. He stops at a Wal-Mart and buys an iPod and country CDs. He hates country but so does -did!- Dean. At least now he can drive and not be reminded of his brother humming along, drumming on the steering wheel, tapping his feet. The music is so bad that for an hour or two he's able to focus solely on hating it. That gets old soon, though.
After that it's just miles of road, motel rooms he gets out of habit. He doesn't sleep, not if he can avoid it. He sits in the middle of the room, salt lines drawn in rings around him, and drinks, alternating whiskey with coffee. Most nights he stares at his laptop until his eyes are sore, but getting Dean out of hell turns out to be even harder than keeping him from being pulled in.
Sometimes Bobby calls and Sam rejects the call. This way Bobby knows he's still alive. When he's not in the mood, he lets Bobby get through to voicemail, knowing this will put him off for weeks. He uploaded the one sound file he still has of Dean's voice.
"Hey dillwad, put that thing down. Put it down or I swear…."
He remembers Dean's glare, remembers chuckling and reaching across the diner table to pat Dean's shoulder and telling him that his childhood in Wonderland must have been so hard.
The first time he sits in a diner without Dean he slides into his side of the booth automatically. Without Dean there to watch his back, though, he can't sit with his back to the door anymore, so he gets up to sit at the other side of the table.
He doesn't pick up the menu, without Dean there it's no fun to flip through the pages as if he's actually reading it just to hear Dean rant about diner food being the same everywhere.
After that he doesn't really bother to get out of the car for food anymore. He orders in or grabs whatever is cheap in the drive-thru. It's not like he cares anymore, he skips meals more often than not.
He tries to strike a bargain with anything that crosses his path. He summons a reaper in Oregon, using the kind of black magic that killed Roy Le Grange's wife. Two states later he summons a crossroads demon at every crossroads he can find, he shoots them, he traps them, he begs, he even gets down there in the dust and promises servitude or to give up the powers he doesn't even know how to use.
If Bobby hears of his deeds, he never mentions them in the messages he leaves. He sounds tired, his voice breaks sometimes and more often than not, he hangs up without saying a word. Sam never calls back.
When he's in Kansas only a month after Dean went to hell -died!-, he stops to have a look at their old house, the only home Dean's ever had, the only place they've stayed in for longer than six months that Sam has no memories of whatsoever. "There's no place like home" Dorothy said and Sam agrees. There really ain't a place anything like a home.
He only knows what Azazel showed him of his early childhood. He's also heard a bit from Dean, but Dean was only four so that doesn't really count as a reliable first hand account. Neither does Azazel, of course.
Looking up at the windows, decorated with children's paintings and wind chimes, he thinks about what it would have been like to die there. How Dean pulled him back, told him it was suicide. That what happened wasn't worth dying over.
Suicide. Sacrificing yourself for your pigheaded liability of a brother.
He guns the engine, probably waking up the neighborhood. No use lingering around, there's nothing here for him, only the memory of his mother apologizing to him right before she vanished. He never got to ask what she was sorry for.
He drives until he crosses another state border, then he gets himself a room and holds a little monologue staring down the bottom of the whiskey bottle.
If he hadn't walked from the fight, if he'd turned around in time, if he'd watched his own back for once, if he hadn't gotten himself stabbed Dean wouldn't be in hell now.
He'd been weak and it cost him his brother. He won't make that mistake again. Mercy is not a concept he wastes many thoughts on these days.
+#+
+#+
Leave me out with the waste
this is not what I'd do
It's the wrong kind of place
to be cheating on you
It's the wrong time
She's pulling me through
It's a small crime
and I've got no excuse
+#+
+#+
The first time she shows up, he slams the door in her face. Well, at first he stabs at her with her own knife, but he misses, drunk as he is.
It wasn't Ruby who killed Dean, but it was her body that opened the door to the hellhounds, or rather some poor girl's body he never bothered asking about. At this point, he couldn't care less who's wearing whom, they're always the same ugly skanks underneath.
When he returns from a hunt one week later, she's sitting in his motel room. He doesn't know how she managed to get through the salt lines but he's too tired to care. He starts a half-assed exorcism but she brought booze and he already exorcized two demons that night, so when she tells him she'll be gone in the morning, he actually sits down and drinks until she wrenches the bottle from him.
"You think this is gonna help Dean," she asks and puts the bottle away carefully.
"Make it or break it, right?" he asks in return, gets up and starts hauling everything he needs to lay a devil's trap out of his duffel bag.
"Is that really necessary? You know, if I wanted to kill you, I would have done so a long time ago, Sam. Not that I'm against a little bondage."
He nods and starts drawing; the ceiling is so low he doesn't need a ladder.
"Maybe I wanna kill you, have you thought about that?"
She's silent at that. When he's done, he ties her to a chair and leaves her there. He needs ammo and maybe a new first aid kit. He needed stitches after the second demon slashed his back with a poker. Thankfully, it was the lower half of his back; it took a while to work out the right angle, but he managed to suture it himself.
She's still quiet when he returns and he falls asleep to hearing her breathe. He has a nightmare, as usual, but he gets more than three hours of sleep.
He can't be with Bobby, but now a demon's company comes as a relief.
It's either due to a potion or Dean went to hell in vain.
The next morning he releases her, tells her to get out and never come back.
He knows he should kill her; she shouldn't be that compliant after fighting her way out of hell. She shouldn't be following him around either.
Still, he's got a shadow again.
+#+
+#+
Give my gun away when it's loaded
Is that alright?
If you don't shoot it, how am I supposed to hold it?
Is that alright?
If I give my gun away when it's loaded
Is that alright?
Is that alright with you?
+#+
+#+
Dean's third month in hell starts with Ruby's return to Sam. She's wearing a different body now, a petite brunette; as far as Sam can tell, it suits her. He doesn't let her in until she shows him the body she's wearing belongs to a coma patient. He briefly wonders whether that makes her undead or just gives her some weird in-between status, before he realizes that no matter what she's wearing, she's still a demon.
It's typical bumper sticker wisdom: Never make fun of small creatures; they have to be mean to survive.
Well, Sam isn't as small as Ruby, but he's a younger brother and he's tried about everything there is to survive. He knows he's turning into an alcoholic. He smokes while driving; the heat next to his digits keeps him awake. He took up that habit after the Impala swayed into the oncoming traffic and almost hit a minivan. He picks up fights just so, when his knuckles are swollen and aching, when his ribs hurt and his head is spinning, he'll be able to focus on the physical pain and block out the rest. He's no better than Ruby.
Of course, she wants him to use his powers to get Dean out of hell. Sure, as if it's ever been that easy.
She keeps nagging him, mostly when he's drunk 'cause she thinks she'll have more leeway. At first he tells her no, Dean said not to, Dean said to stick to what he's been taught. Ruby never argues, just turns that sad, understanding gaze on him that stings even worse.
She gently pushes back his bangs, looks at him like he's some poor animal she hit with her car and had to take in until it could walk on its own again.
The first time she touches him like that, like he is actually her business, like only Dean ever did, he gets so angry he releases some kind of… power.
She scrambles back from where she lies on the floor and smiles.
"There Sam, was that so hard?"
He feels blood trickle down his lower lip and then hears a thud as he hits the floor.
When he wakes up, he feels nothing. He closes his eyes again and drifts away, swathed by numbness. His head aches, he feels sore, but apart from that, there's nothing. When he realizes that for the first time since Dean died he's not grieving, he panics, gets up and pukes.
When she cradles him in her arms, tells him she'll take care of him now, it's OK, he breaks. He's crying, harsh sobs that shake him and wrench choked off half-sentences out of him she was never meant to hear. He can't seem to stop and he doesn't even know what he's crying over anymore. Maybe, for the very first time, it isn't just because he lost Dean, because Dean is suffering, it's because Sam lost himself.
Dean is in hell to save a person Sam doesn't know how to be anymore.
He grows stronger day by day after that. At first, he tries it on Ruby, mostly when she pisses him off, which is practically all the time.
Then they hunt together. He never trusts her to have his back, but she can hold her own and that's more than enough. She pushes demons his way, makes him practice. Sometimes he's gone for days, he still hasn't given up on striking a deal, so he drives to every shaman, Magus and hoodoo priest he gets a whiff of, hoping they can point out the big fish to him so he'll know which demon to pull.
When he comes back, Ruby is usually waiting with another hunt; he lets her dig up their work.
One night, though, Ruby gets in his way during a hunt and when the demons are back where they belong, he turns around and slams her into a wall, holding her up by the neck.
He sees the light go out in her eyes and drops her, shaking. This is all he has left.
When he crouches down next to her, prying her fingers away from her throat to see if he's done any lasting damage, she yanks him in and kisses him.
This is when she offers him her blood.
He has demon blood himself, he's no better than Ruby. He sees that now, clear as day. He's tried to run from it and he's failed. He's lost his brother. This is all he has left, pulling as many demons as possible down with him, saving as many people as possible.
Still, when he licks the first drop from her wrist, he knows he has failed Dean.
+#+
+#+
Please take the time to leave a review if you liked this story ;)
+#+