CHAPTER SIX

"This isn't real."

Lucifer smirked. "You say that a lot Sam…" he laughed heartlessly.

"I know this isn't real. – This is a dream." Sam cursed himself for not expecting it, the dream root was potent and his mind was weaker now than at any other time in his life.

"A dream is it?" Lucifer glanced around himself then shrugged. "Well, you know what they say Sam… 'Dreams are the bridge between the real world and the underworld'."

"Who says that?" Sam frowned.

Lucifer chuckled with a wave of his arms. "Someone, it's not important who said it Sam, just that it's true."

Sam stared at his nightmare, refusing to believe it.

"So you're here to save my brother. How sweet of you." Lucifer taunted. "Waste of time of course. He won't be able to help you, even if you could get him out of here. – besides he's not an angel anymore."

Sam swallowed. Telling himself over and over this was just a dream. This was his mind using his fears against him.

Lucifer looked back at him over his shoulder. "You don't believe me?"

"No."

The man, disillusion laughed. "I killed him. You know I did…" he grew quiet for a few moments. "I didn't want to, he gave me no choice. I had to."

"Why because he wouldn't take your side?" was he really arguing with his own nightmare. Sure he was, it wasn't the first time, he'd done it a thousand times since the wall came down.

"No, I killed him because he took yours. He'd been corrupted by you… humans."

Sam stared open mouthed, part of him knowing it was a trick, while a small part of him said there was no way it could be.

"… If he had chosen Michael or me, I would have spared him, he was my brother after all, but he stood against me to protect creatures unworthy of his love." Lucifer shook his head mournfully. "You know what he said to me before he died?"

Sam sighed. "And how am I meant to know that, me and Dean were already gone."

Lucifer turned angry eyes on the hunter. "Yes you were weren't you? Like the little cowards you are."

Sam's spine stiffened. It was true, they should have stayed, should have fought at the archangels' side. They should not have left him there to die alone.

"He told me the reason he was helping you, help humanity was because you were better than us. That though you weren't all good, you tried. – Like that was a reason to turn against his family." There was pure distain and anger in the devils voice.

"Family?" Sam repeated scathingly, touched by Gabriel's words and angered by the disrespect Lucifer treated them with. "You're not a family; if you had been you would never have killed him. – Family stands together no matter what."

Lucifer cold laugh echoed the basement. "Like Dean did for you, you mean?"

Sam lifted his chin, straitened his shoulders and met the devils gaze unflinchingly. "Yes."

"Like he did for Castiel?"

Sam swallowed, feeling those words like a psychical punch that he'd received on behalf of his brother.

He knew Dean still blamed himself. He'd gone through all the what if's months ago. What if he'd trusted Cas more? Would he have been able to convince him to return the souls sooner? Maybe even stop him all together. What if he paid more attention, listened better, would he have seen what was happening to his friend? There were no answers of course, just guilt and loss and pain.

Lucifer laughed again. "I rest my case. – I did what I had to do and now my brother rots here in a hell of his own making."

"What does that mean?"

"It means Sam, that you're right, this is a dream. – But it's also Hell; because here there are no rules, no magic knife, no colt, no holy fire just your deepest fears, pain and guilt. What better hell is there for a traitorous brother?"

Sam was still consuming the information what he realised he was alone, back in the warm sunlight, on the green grass, in a hell of Gabriel's own making.