Who Made Who
When Sam thought about Hell – pre-caging, that is – images of fire, brimstone, and flashes of imagined pain plagued him. Sometimes he would even swear he saw pitchforks and little red beasts with horns on their heads and hooves on their feet. But then he would realize it was Halloween time again and that was just someone's spoiled child begging for candy. But most of the time he could convince himself that it was worth it. That saving the planet and the billions of people was worth his one, lonely, miserable little life. He would be a body amongst foundations and he could live with that.
Or so he thought.
Unless you've been to Hell, you won't ever truly know what it's like. Sam thought he knew. He thought he knew because Dean had been and his brother had come out on top – mostly. He thought he knew what tortures Hell would bear down upon him because he'd been with Ruby for that year and she never held back on the descriptions. He thought he knew, but he didn't. He wasn't even close. Sure, his image of Hell might have been correct had he gone to the 'regular Hell' that everyone else went to – the one with the red storm cloud of blood and torture chambers and chains with nasty looking hooks on the end. But that isn't the Hell that Sam went to and, to him, his was so much worse.
It was nothing.
No, amend that – the Cage wasn't nothing, per sa, but everything. It was white and black and colorless. There was neither shadow nor light – not even that in-between color that Crayola had deemed 'Twilight Dreams' and had glitter in it. Regardless, The Cage was blank except for Sam.
Well, Sam and Lucifer and Adam and Michael, of course.
And somehow, that only made it all the more terrible.
Brother – Lucifer would plead, voiceless yet booming an echo sharply in Sam's nonexistent ears. Though Sam could not see him – nor Michael, nor Adam, nor his own person – he could tell where the Devil was and knew what his expression held. Grief. Rage. Utter and all consuming pain. Sam knew the feeling well.
No, Lucifer – Michael would say, time and again, cutting off his brother (the apologies, the lies, the cruel truth of the situation that had damned them all to an eternity of this prison). Just, no. He sounded so weary, so full of disappointment and his own brand of ironic torture.
Adam would remain silent, most of the time, though Sam tried his best to change that. To force a silver lining on their situation somehow. "Hey, we saved the world and have all the time in the world to know each other." On paper, it may have worked; in this twisted, logic-less reality it was nowhere near so simple.
Please – Lucifer would beg, sounding so sorrowful that it almost broke Sam's soul to hear it. But then the Winchester would remember who it was coming from and the hate would start up again.
He would get the same responses from Adam every time he tried.
Please, Adam, talk to me. I'm your – he would start, only to be cut off, just as Michael did to Lucifer.
If you say brother, so help me I will find a way to kick your ass, the youngest Winchester threatened. The years that they'd spent here – it felt like years, at least, but one could never really tell – not having softened him to the idea of his 'brother.' Yes, Dean and Sam had come for him when Zachariah used him. Yes, he was his brother. But for right then, and an indeterminable amount of time afterwards, Adam could not forgive him just yet.
Just, not yet.
And that's what Sam couldn't live with. But then, before he had time to beg his brother to absolve him, he was yanked out of the whole and to a body he almost didn't recognize as his own. And something was off, but he couldn't quite figure out what. But then he found Samuel and hunting and a rifle that could shoot a grape off a tree a hundred yards away and he couldn't force himself to care anymore.
Still, the not-voices of the Pit echoed through him, a haunting melody he tried to grasp only to slip right through his fingers.
Brother –
A/N: It started out as funny. It ended up as serious. Damn you introspection for ruining my comedic plotlines with angst.