Author's Notes: Finally a more legitimate verse now! The third entry to the series! You can find the first onehere and the sequel to it here. Please enjoy! Currently partially beta'd, I will update it a bit here and there if I run into any godawful things I need to fix. Y'all know how late night writing is!

Warnings for depressing shit (like Sam being miserable because life sucks), mentions of gore and violence, forced drugs/needles, etc. Totally typical grim Supernatural tale.

There is a certain point that Sam had realized that God absolutely loathed and despised him - drifted past apathy and into reviling, hatred, wanted to make Sam Winchester suffer with every ounce of his being. Of course, he'd suspected as much when he had fallen into Hell, because he'd called out to him wordlessly as he fell begging for something else, anything else. He didn't answer. Sam had always tried denial, tried to imagine God just didn't see what he was doing, the suffering he'd let ripple out over the earth. Sam liked to imagine God had put his fingers in his ears, closed his eyes, and hummed a tune while his angels were lost and his humans were bleeding and Sam was burning alive in a soup of his own flesh.

Sam had realized God not only didn't care, but he'd hated him utterly, in that bloodbath ring. And outside of it. Before and after becoming a wild thing.

God had never been on Sam Winchester's side. He sees that now.

How stupidly late of him.

Sam sits with his knees pulled nearly up to his jaw, crunched small in his kennel of a cage with unkempt hair and the beginnings of a raggedy beard — straw on the camel's back. The loss of nearly everything he loved was the start of a teetering pillar of resolve, when he was younger. Hell had broken in him ways that would never be salvageable, but he had come out of it with his old sins burned right out of his flesh (so he'd thought). The hallucinations were a small price. The physical agony of the Trials had been child's play compared to the torment of Dean's heavy, accusing stare, boring its way into his brain. The filthy taint of Gadreel still fizzled in his stomach, but he fought the urge to wretch, stood next to Dean even as his brother slowly began to push him aside and cradle the blade like the trustworthy partner and brother he'd always wanted.

There's just — nothing now.

Dean has — probably abandoned him at this point. He had been at the mercy of the Mark of Cain, something synonymous with murdering your kin, and wouldn't it be poetic to let him die buried in blood and guts, all alone? Sam couldn't dredge up anything it took to blame him. Really, for all Sam knew, he'd deserved it, being in a hell on earth what with his own time in the Cage blissfully cut short. He tries not to think of Glenda, years ago, poor Glenda. He tries not to think about Jeffrey or Hector, or Paula or Nadia. He tries not to think of the small nameless werewolf that impaled herself on his blade so that he would live. He tries not to think of the first time he laid down and refused to eat, prepared to waste away — and how they had threatened him back to life, telling him they'd gorge themselves on children's flesh right in front of him.

He wonders if the people they're inhabiting are awake sometimes.

What he wouldn't give to gut their bodies so that they wouldn't have to see what the demons have done with them.

It would be the most merciful thing a man could ever do with his hands.

He shudders to life when the demons come in; the roaring noise of the holding rooms is familiar, ingrained, easier to ignore. Today, he thinks. Today could be the day. The other days, the attempts to flee, they'd all failed. Sometimes he was too physically exhausted, or too injured, or there were too many. One time, he'd made it to the back doors. Ahaaa, one time. They'd kicked the shit out of him then and slit a man's throat so he could lead by example. Then they'd injected him with those fucking tranqs, made his limbs like spaghetti. Would it be monstrous for him to try again? Would they kill more people? Sam Winchester cares about that sort of thing; Sam Winchester doesn't let that go. He shakes his head, trying to focus. Still need the drugs to wear off entirely so he can think straight. They like when he isn't all there in the ring. They'd gotten bored of the fiery angry creature he turned into at the sight of them.

He looks at the angel sigils on the walls, blinking tiredly. Nobody's listening.

"Up and at 'em, tiger," a demon with a pretty young woman's face says. She had her whole life ahead of her.

These are things Sam thinks about, sometimes, to keep his humanity.

She reaches over and strokes the bars of his cage.

She says sweetly, "Guess which freckle-faced hunter is snooping around here?"

Sam feels a trill of something tingle up his spine, naked hope hidden behind his bangs.

Oh, please.

"He's on a hunt — found some of our corpse dumping sites. They're all monsters, of course. He'll probably assume they're all the clean-up of some excellent hunter group. I wonder how impressed he'll be?" He wants to throw his head forward, snatch her fingers with his teeth and tear. He cares about ruining the girl's fingers, though. He really shouldn't; vessels had never stopped them before, from tearing into them. He wonders when they stopped caring. The woman cocks her head to the side, smiling. "But then… hunters are getting far too common around here. It's alright. We've overstayed our welcome, anyway. So we'll be loading up, moving somewhere cozier."

She taps on the bars of his cage.

"Dose him up. Our prized fighters, too. You can kill the shitty ones any way you'd like, boys."

Sam jerks upright with a snarl, slamming himself into the bars, his nails just managing to scrape roughly on her arm, leaving thin patches of blood. She just shakes her arm with a huff as he roars, "You piece of fuc—", which is all he manages before someone's hands reaches through the bars and grips his neck from behind. He kicks and writhes and chokes, shaking his head back and forth despite himself as the needle slides into his skin. Everything spirals out of his control, as it always has.

When he wakes up in the back of the food truck, he isn't aware of much, and his body still feels like jelly It's pitch black with the hoot and holler of creatures all around him as it's always been; his eyes adjust quickly, and he can see the faintest streaks of life dancing around, bouncing metallic sounds off the walls. His beard is shaven off, he notes groggily. His hair is cut down to the scalp again, probably with scissors — ah, no, probably just a blade, quick and lazy. He touches along his cage with hands that barely listen to him, feeling two walls, which means he's in the furthest corner. He must have been loaded into the truck first. On two other sides, he feels someone else's cage bars. Surrounded. Not unexpectedly, he feels a cage sitting on top of his, too.

The engine is rumbling, and they're moving. They're taking him away — away from Dean, it means. He's not sure where the next stop is, but he knows that wherever it is, it'll have blood and guts and cages, too. Bloodbaths. He doesn't have it in him to cry about it, saves his tears for a rainy day, if he even has the capability anymore. Instead he tries to plot through a drug-hazed mind and figure out if there's a new way to break out; god help him, he still feels it, that need to get out. Get away. This can't be it; this can't be the end of it, how his life spirals to its end. And if - if he dies running, at least Dean'll find him and know he really tried. He really did.

He mumbles incoherently under his breath, plans trying to stick in his ravaged mind. If he can get his legs to listen to him, he can kick the walls of the truck. Maybe someone out there on the road'll freak out and call the cops. Granted, he'd probably get arrested, charged with a shitload of things he had (and hadn't) done before, but at least he'd be out of one metal jungle and into another. And he's pretty damn confident that he can handle prison just fine nowadays. He can handle most anything. He's a fucking Winchester turned half-feral, for fuck's sake.

He snorts to himself at the thought. Sam Fucking Winchester. Yeah, he's really great; just look at him. All drugged up to his neck in god knows what. It really — pisses him off. He clenches his fists, unfurls them again, lets the feeling and control return at a snail's pace.

Then something explodes; the tire, it explodes, he feels it under them give out after a loud crack.

Sounds suspiciously like a gunshot.

He bites his lip, waiting for the miracle, years in the making.

Dean?

The noise around him is overwhelming, voices and screeches and wild sounds drilling deep down into his eardrums. He clumsily slaps his hands over them, clenching his eyes shut tight, wishing for it to go away. The sound. The sound. It never fucking stops —

Well, it never stops until the truck tips over. A deafening crescendo of panic and violence blares around him as the cages clash like lightning, monsters smashing into their bars as yowls and sharp cracking noises burst like stars behind his eyes. His head slams into his roof and everything goes blissfully black.

"Good shot on that wheel, son. You got — Jesus tit-fucking Christ, do you see this?"

The hunter Dean knows as H.R. pushes up on his hat, staring into the mouth of the opened food truck with bushy brows raised nearly into his hairline and a flashlight trained on the mess inside. It had taken a handful of them just to deal with the black-eyed bastards up front in the hot nightmare air; really, that was Dean's part of the bargain, when he'd agreed to get his hands dirty with the monster corpse business — mostly because he wanted to get him a live demon, wrestle some possible information out of them about Sam's whereabouts. Sam, who wasn't in Heaven, who could've been simmering in Hell… So far, the demons mostly just taunted him, spit in his face while he carved them up when their answers weren't sufficient.

So far, none of them knew anything. Or if they did, they were willing to die on a blade instead of humor him in his little quest. But this — getting out there, doing what he could, this was at least something to keep his mind sharp… sharp while he ran through lead after lead. The corpse dump hadn't been extremely far from where Sam had disappeared that night, long ago. He had been sure to dig through it long and hard just to make sure there wasn't any sign of his brother's demise in the rotted mess (and then he calmed himself, because he was going insane, pretty sure); nothing but wendigos, wraiths, rawheads. He couldn't say he was upset at the loss there, since they were all supernatural things he ganked on a weekly basis, but something about it stunk about as much as the corpse pile.

Hunters usually burned their kills. This wasn't the work of anyone he knew. And if it was, they were goddamn sloppy. He suspected something pretty quickly, but it was running into H.R. and his younger lady friend Tilmika that they clued him in on something sinister in these parts — food trucks that pass in and out, demon smoke sighted drifting through the night. It could be another stepping stone. Could be that someone knows where to always find a Winchester; god knows Crowley's been out of contact for ages now, and Dean frankly says good riddance. If the bastard couldn't help him, he was nothing but a reminder of Dean's fuck-ups.

Dean leans in to look into the truck himself, his own bounty — a roped up demon fucker in those good old special handcuffs — left on the side of the usually desolate highway. The sight inside the truck was something out of a hunter's fever dreams. A vampire's wild eyes glinted at him, a wraith screamed and wailed with her arm swinging to grab at Dean's jacket. An Ōkami thrashes around, and behind that, a shivering rugaru licks blood off its fingers; there's a dead creature slouched in its cage, and Dean fancies that that was where the blood came from. The whole thing is an open mouth full of supernatural beings, all thirsting for a fight.

Jesus.

"Demons transporting a fuckin' zoo of monsters," Tilmika whispers, shaking her head, thick curls dancing on her head. "And I bet there's more where this came from, too. Can't fucking believe it."

Dean could believe it, though he's thinking that's not quite where she was going with that; he remembers a human keeping a monster zoo. He's not surprised demons do the same. As they examine the sad state of things, the posse of hunters who'd agreed to follow along murmur their disgust behind Dean, and he finds he's too tired suddenly of this whole mess; he just wants to get out of here, get free. He's got a bottle of whiskey with his name on it, and a few torture tools singing for demon blood. Funny how that is; he's free of the Mark, but he still can't wait to get this bad boy home and give it a sponge bath in holy water. Dean takes a step back from the self-contained riots going on in each small cage, expression stony, cold. He just — wants to find his brother, and standing on the edge of a cold trail leaves him feeling frozen over, guilty. He gives himself some rotgut because he's not sure how else to handle that guilt that festers. After all, who had been the one to leave Sam there, at the mercy of whatever the hell took him away?

"Guess we could be humane and shoot 'em all between the eyes," H.R. considers, and Dean snaps out of his dark thoughts.

A guy in the back huffs his disapproval, some jarhead-looking guy with a buzzcut. "Let's just burn the whole truck. Grill 'em down to the bones. One swoop. Then we won't have to spend a million years trying to scrub the damn thing clean. We don't got much time 'til our fake roadblocks get found out, you know."

"Demons sure are making things easy for us," Tilmika replies, nodding. "Burning it is. You wanna stick around for clean-up, Dean, or are you heading off? Couldn't blame you if you wanted to hook your fangs into that fucker." Dean glances back at the subdued demon, who's shooting daggers at him; yeah… yeah, he needs to get back to the bunker, or maybe just keep it short and simple and drag the bastard to some abandoned area for something simpler. It's a pain to have to worry about a demon in your trunk for that many hours, huh? He runs a hand over his face, nodding.

"… Yeah. Yeah, I gotta get going. Good luck with your clean-up, huh?"

H.R. gives him a pat on the back. "Mm. Call if you need somethin'."

Dean eventually drives away, the last sight in his rear-view mirror the dark figures pulling gasoline tanks from their pick-up trucks.

Well… at least they're getting a few more monsters off the streets.

Sam blinks away the fog he'd been left in, groaning at the bump growing on his temple. Shit. What had happened, again? It's hard to remember. If he could just shake it loose like water from the ear, get his thoughts set straight. The first thing he's aware of is the overwhelming stench of gasoline. It burns his nostrils and makes his eyes hurt, but it also serves to jar him straight into alertness; shit, what is that? There are lights, and if he squints through them, he can see bobbing heads. Trucker cap. Reminds him of Bobby, rest in piece. His mind is quick to supplement 'hunters', but before he feels any relief, he soon realizes it's too foolish to hope so soon: they're dousing the truck. They're going to burn them all down, take out every monster in here (him, him too, but that's fitting enough). A little kitsune child is staring at him, shaking violently in her cage with her thin fingers curled on the bars. He can hardly stand to look at her and her blonde hair and terrified eyes.

Some of the monsters are screaming obscenities. Some are praying. Praying to what? Sam's not sure.

God doesn't care about them, either. God hates them, too.

After all, look where they all go, when they die.

Sam stares at a lit match held between two calloused fingertips, his voice lost in a sea of sound, and wonders —

Will he go to purgatory, too, now?

After all, look at him now.

The kitsune cries out for her sister. The orange flame flickers brightly, carried like a proud torch toward the clutter of trapped beasts. And Sam — locked up tight in his little prison, aching, godless — prepares to face fire yet again in his lifetime.

He's not afraid of a slow burn.

"It's gonna be okay," Sam tells the child, swallowing and remembering who he used to be, for a moment. He takes everything he has left of himself from before and delivers it all at this child's feet, kneeling low and looking at her — her, not the hunters, not the wild things in the truck. His lips thin into a smile, brow furrowing, and he feels like himself for the first time in a long time. "It's going to be okay; just look at me, alright? Just look at me."

She turns to him and obeys while Sam puts his hand over hers, through the bars.

And then he waits.

The demon laughs and laughs and laughs, bloody spittle peppering Dean's dull old boots.

"You fucking idiot! You fucking joke!"

It laughs, mouth and eyes looking misshapen in the muddy shadows of a warehouse a day later. It chokes on holy water, salt sizzling on its tongue.

"Sam Winchester was in the fucking truck! You were right there! You were right fucking there!"

It laughs and laughs and laughs.

Cold with sweat and mouth suddenly too dry, Dean runs the demon-killing blade through its guts, killing everything the person inside ever was and ever will be with it.

So why can he still hear it laughing?