A/N: Writing out my Season 10 feels.
So far, the Impala is the only one he's really talked to.
He takes her out for a drive one night when Sam's asleep, runs his hands over the wheel and the dash, murmurs his apologies along long stretches of road (because somehow, in all of this, his neglect of her is the sharpest blow that his loss of humanity struck).
And he talks and tells, long strings of thought that sometimes make sense and sometimes don't, explanations that trail into silence and long pauses that say more than words.
It's more than he's said to Sam.
He remembers Hell, how he couldn't talk about that (until he did).
But this is worse. He has been in Hell, but now Hell has also been in him.
(He remembers every second of it.)
There was blood and blackness, the sick sweet rush of diabolical strength—
He didn't care, then.
He didn't have to.
It's what he remembers most.
The words and the blows and the hatred, hot and ugly and absolute.
Hatred for Sam.
He winces because there's no one to see him.
There is a thickness to this pain, a heaviness, like some unholy quicksand, pooling above and below him and never letting go.
Strange, that Heaven once thought of him as a vessel.
All along the highway, he watches yellow headlight beams collide silently in the night. Can he really be surprised? This is his fate. To fall, as men have always fallen—
But he fell farther.
It is like his brother's voice said once, in the devil's words.
White suit, red rose, empty eyes.
"No matter what choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up…"
His voice, his words, his blows hurting Sam, always Sam. Human enough to feel guilt. Demon enough to do it anyway.
"We will always end up…here."