Chapter 10

"I'm getting pretty freaking tired of waking up in a dungeon," Sam says.

"Maybe you should stop passing out, then," Dean suggests, tone dead serious until Sam rolls his eyes, and then Dean smirks, red eyes gleaming.

Cas was nowhere in sight when Sam opened his eyes. But Dean was here, sitting on the dungeon floor as he fiddled with his phone, back to the wall, one leg stretched out so his boot's toe tapped the mattress Sam lay on. He was wearing the same red and blue plaid from the cemetery, before he went to face Amara, and Sam suffered a brief, piercing stab of hope, that this could be, not a vision, but a ghost.

Except that the dungeon is protected against spirits. Even if there could have been anything left to linger, after.

And when Sam sits up, Dean puts down the phone and lifts his head to show his eyes—blood-red, ready to bargain.

But his grin at Sam is only a little false, only a little forced. Almost believable, if Sam could let himself buy it.

Sam really is sick of these walls, the artificial glow of the lamps. But Cas had done what he could, and Sam is grateful for it. He's gone that much longer now without the blood. Has stayed human, for however many hours he lay unconscious.

"It's been almost nine hours," Dean supplies, and he turns his head to glower toward the door. "Don't know if you were out for all of it, though—Cas didn't wake me until a little while ago. Anyway, how you feeling now?"

Sam's head is pounding and his body aches, the bruised stiffening of the flu; he feels more exhausted than rested. "All right," he says.

Dean narrows his demon eyes. "You want to try that again, for real?"

"I am," Sam says, honestly. "It's better than it was."

Dean's smile gets a little broader, white teeth showing. "Cravings letting up?"

Sam hesitates, then shakes his head, running his dry tongue over his chapped lips.

Dean presses a hand over Sam's forehead. "Fever's still pretty high." Red eyes or not, he hasn't demanded a price yet, so Sam closes his eyes, leans into that cool, callused palm. Dean doesn't pull back, his hand stabilizing Sam; but his voice is rough, annoyed. "And you look like you went ten rounds with Ali and a wendigo tag-team."

"But I've got a bed I'm not tied down to," Sam says.

"Point."

"And I'm not fighting any demons."

"No, we'll hold off on the steel cage matches for at least a couple days," Dean agrees.

"And Cas is here."

"That he is. And me, too."

"Mm-hmm," Sam mumbles, noncommittally.

"...You know I'm here, right, Sammy?" Dean says, delicately, like a man balancing on one foot over a chasm. "That you're not seeing things—it's me, alive."

Sam opens his eyes, meets his brother's. Dean has blinked them back to green, but the crimson cast lingers. "It would be great if you were," Sam says.

Dean groans, more irritated than shocked. "Dammit, I knew it...so what can I do? What'll it take? There's gotta be something, some way to prove to you that it's really me."

Sam almost smiles. Dean can lie about being almost anyone, but he's never been a salesman. "'Fraid not. Anything I can think of for you to do, I could imagine you doing, so..."

Dean sinks his head into his hands. "Goddammit, Sam, if you're going to be off your rocker, why can't you commit? Just like last time—you're way too rational about being completely nuts."

"Umm, sorry?"

"Don't be sorry, just be crazy! If you're going to be seeing things anyway, why not try believing in some of them?"

"I do," Sam says. "Given how I feel, I doubt I've been given any more blood, and I don't remember being interrogated, so I'm willing to believe that maybe I did get away from the Men of Letters. Maybe I am in the bunker, even; that's been pretty consistent."

"And I haven't been?" Dean asks, low and pained, almost convincing.

"My brother never was a crossroads demon," Sam points out.

"You think I'm a..." Dean blinks, eyes switching from green to red and back like some malevolent Christmas ornament. "If that's what you're seeing now—then test me! I've seen you bite your cheek, I know what you're doing. If that'll prove what's really here—" He reaches for Sam's hand.

The scar is almost faded, long past the point of pain; but it's the principle, the reflex—Sam pulls his hand back, tucks it under his other arm. "No," he says. "It doesn't really work anyhow, not with these visions. But I wouldn't do it anyway. Not for this."

Dean looks as baffled as if he pulled his .45's trigger and got a burst of confetti. "Why not?"

"You know why." The headache is spiking, nauseating; Sam shuts his eyes against it. He doubts he could throw up—he genuinely can't remember the last time he ate anything, and whatever liquid he's kept down has been sucked up by his parched and desperate cells.

He slumps back, expecting cold concrete, but hits a pillow instead, hastily tucked behind his shoulders. Sam leans into that softness, almost smiles. "So what's the price for this?" he asks. Kind of joking, kind of not. "The going rate on my soul can't be that much, these days."

Dean doesn't answer. Sam slits his eyes to check, but Dean is still here. He's sitting on the edge of the mattress, shoulders curved away, curled in. "What would you give..." he mutters.

"What?" Sam asks.

"What would you give," Dean repeats, "if you could have your brother back?" He twists his head back toward Sam. He's smiling, sharp and hard under the crimson eyes. "What would you give, to really have him here?"

Sam's stomach is so knotted already, it's hard to tell if the thought makes him any sicker. "That's not a deal you could deliver on, even if you were real."

"But I'm real, Sammy." Dean with those red eyes reaches out toward him. Sam shies back, and Dean yanks back his own hand, fast, like he's flinching from a fire. "I'm real!"

His voice cracks, crackles. His eyes are tongues of scarlet flames. The room is pulsing, walls swelling out and sinking in like the ribs of a breathing giant. The lines of the devil's trap throb in the peripheries of Sam's vision, in time with the hammering in his temples.

A damp towel wraps over his face again, smothering his eyes—burning against his skin, and then freezing. He presses his head back against the pillow as he measures seconds in breaths. Someone pushes a plastic bottle into his hands, the cap off, sour, lukewarm water to wash down the bitter spots of pills on his tongue. There's a voice—voices, speaking his name, shouting other names.

"Sam," Ruby says, whispering in his ear. "Just hold on, Sam, it won't be much longer," and she puts her hand over his mouth, over his nose, so he can smell her skin, can smell the blood pumping underneath. He bares his teeth, tries to bite down, but there's nothing—there's nothing there at all; he's finally alone, when he manages to open his eyes.

"So here's the thing—you're not getting better," Dean says. His eyes are green now, instead of red or black. But as he crouches by Sam, his face keeps changing in the lamplight, shadows moving across it to hollow his cheeks, turn his smile into a forced grimace. "It's been days now, and every time it looks like the fever's breaking..."

"The effects are worsening, instead of diminishing," Cas says. He's standing next to Dean, and Sam's not sure where to look. Whether it's rude to Cas, to look at Dean, when he's not really there. But then, maybe Cas isn't really here, either. Isn't shaking his head, saying, "The progression isn't like the last time we witnessed this."

The last time was after confronting Famine, in Bobby's panic room. Sam's memories of then are hazy—screaming for them to let him out, for them to keep him in; to help him, to leave him alone.

Dean's jaw is clenched. "Your temperature's hit a hundred and ten—or more, that's as high as the damn thermometer goes," he says. "You—you should be dead, Sam."

Should be, but he's not, and Sam cringes back from that truth, like he can escape the damning thunder of his own heartbeat thudding against his skull. Proof of life that shouldn't be.

"Your body can't take this," Dean says. "Something's gotta give, if this keeps up—your heart or your brain or—it's demon blood, Sam. There's a lot we didn't know about it—about what it could do. They've been doing research, Cas and...anyway, turns out our library's got some books on it, and this," he waves at Sam, "the withdrawal—it's not just a chemical dependency. It's more than just cravings or whatever."

Sam could have told him that much. How much more it was. But the twist of Dean's mouth isn't disgust at Sam's weakness but something else. "What do you mean?" Sam asks.

"Those powers—yanking out the demons," Dean says. His voice is steady but his face is afraid. "No one's meant to be able to do that. It's way more than your run-of-the-mill psychic gifts. Using that kind of power does damage, to, like, everything. The nosebleeds, the headaches—it's like a stroke and a heart attack and a seizure, all at once.

"And you're strong, or you'd have dropped dead with the first demon you exorcised—but you're not that strong, Sam. The blood—it can't heal; it just fakes it. Like a demon possession—it keeps things together, keeps you on your feet, while your body heals. But this time..."

"The damage is too severe," Cas says, quiet and remote. More like the angel they first met than Sam can remember him sounding in years. "Too much for your body to repair itself."

"Oh," Sam says faintly. Not sure if he really understands, or if this is all in his own head anyway. Wishful thinking. It hurts to breathe; he inhales, draws in the most air he can, so the pressure of his lungs against his ribs stabs knife-like and pure through his chest. "So I'm human after all?"

"What?" Dean says, soft like Cas, then louder like himself, "What the fuck—of course you're human. Whatever they put in you, Yellow-Eyes or those British bastards—they did this to you, they didn't make you. You're still you."

Sam looks up at him. "Still your brother," he says, not a question so much as a reminder. Because Dean is gone but Sam is still here, for now. And if he's still human, then that much of Dean still exists, in all the blood in Sam that's his.

"Always—nothing's gonna change that, ever." Dean's nonexistent eyes flash now in his nonexistent face, teeth bared in a snarl more than a smile. "Besides, everything we've found out, it's just a theory. The Men of Letters were just guessing about what demon blood could do, they didn't have any test subjects—"

"Until me," Sam says, hoarse with his dry throat.

Dean's eyes darken—not demon-black, but almost as empty a void as Amara's knight. "Until you. But whatever those sons of bitches did, we're gonna figure it out. Find a way to get you through this. But...until then."

Dean stops. Drags his hand through his hair, not looking at Sam, so Sam can't see what color his eyes have gone.

"The demon blood lingers in you, Sam," Cas says. "But its power is waning. And that power is all that's sustaining your body now. If it were strengthened, you'd be strengthened."

"Strengthened?" Sam asks, "How would it get stronger—" not getting it, and then he does.

He shoves back until his shoulders hit the dungeon's concrete wall, staring up at Cas. "No—no. I can't—there isn't any here—" There can't be any blood here. He's in the dungeon, and that's the only place they could keep a demon in the bunker. Even when Dean's a demon, he's here. And only in Sam's head anyway.

Dean draws an uneven breath. "We can go to a crossroads—even if no one will show for me, we've got another...anyway, we can do it."

"No," Sam says, shaking his head. "You can't—"

"We won't take enough to hurt the host," Dean says. "Not bleeding them dry—we'll just draw a couple doses. Enough to get you stable, and then we can exorcise—"

"No," Sam says. "Not a dose, not a drop—I'm not going to drink any more. Never again. These powers, I'm not using them again, whatever you do—"

"You won't have to! It's not for the powers, it's just to buy us more time—Sam?"

Sam's shoulders are shaking, the air rattling in his lungs as he tries to gasp in enough not to suffocate. It looks so much like the bunker, even now—and Dean he knew wasn't real, but Cas, he'd thought that Cas at least might be. How could he have been so stupid—giving into hope, when he should have known better. When he knew so well how much faith could hurt, when it was broken. "Screw you, I won't do it—you can't force any more of that poison down my throat—"

"Sammy!" Dean's green eyes before him, but the hands on his shoulders, clutching tight, might be real. Sam twists, swings a wild punch that connects with something, breaking him free but throwing him off-balance. He staggers to find his footing, orient himself toward the door. He's not going to make it far, but it's the principle, when he's given in for too long.

Sure enough, Cas—what looks like Cas, to Sam's delirious mind—grabs his arm. The angel's grip is like iron, brow lowered darkly over his blue eyes as he moves to press his other hand to Sam's forehead, to knock him out again.

"No—no, Cas, wait!" Dean says—or not Dean, for all the painful familiarity of his green eyes as he climbs to his feet, rubbing his jaw. Not a hallucinated ghost after all, but mistaken identity—or deliberate manipulation? Maybe Sam's not imagining everything; maybe this is a trick, some new spell...

"Sammy," the thing that's not Dean says, "no one's gonna tie you down, no one's poisoning anybody." He spreads his arms outward, hands open, nonthreatening. "We're not going to hurt you; you're safe here. As long as I'm...I can't, I can't always protect you, I've royally fucked that up how many times? But here—Sam, in here, for now, you're safe. I swear."

If Sam had a chance of getting past the guy who looks like Cas—if he had a chance of getting through the dungeon's doors, or whatever the hell was beyond that—but he doesn't. He knows he doesn't, so he just stands there, swaying, dizzy and breathless, trying to figure out what he can do.

Dean—the thing that looks like Dean—takes a step toward him. His arms are lowered to his sides, empty palms turned outward. "That's all we're talking about, Sam," he says in Dean's voice, low and strained. "The demon blood—it's to protect you. Keep you going, a little longer, while we figure out how to fix this."

"If you—" Sam tries to swallow, the dry surfaces of his throat scraping. "If you were really him—even in my head, my brother—Dean wouldn't, he'd never give me demon blood. He hated it—he hated that I was a monster, that I could drink it at all; he'd never—"

"Hey—hey!" and that is so convincingly like Dean's outrage, the balance of performed insult and genuine ire that only a brother with decades of practice can hit. "I didn't—I never said you were a monster, that wasn't me—and anyway, I did give it to you; we had milk jugs of the damn stuff in the trunk, remember?"

Sam blinks at that reminder. "That was to defeat Lucifer."

"And this is to save your life—you think I wouldn't give you anything, for that?" Dean's false eyes are fixed on Sam's face, searching. "We won't force you to drink it—I'm not tying you down again, that's not happening. But we can get a couple doses, just in case, if it comes down to the wire—"

Sam shakes his head, for all it off-balances him, makes him waver dizzily. Cas and Dean—what looks like Cas and Dean, in his confusion—both move toward him, and Sam lurches back. "No," he says, "no, because if it's here..."

It's not here; he could feel it, if there were a single drop of that power within the devil's trap. And yet for a moment he can taste it, thick and liquid on his desiccated tongue. A red film passes over his vision that he can't blink back, pulsing. "If it's here, you wouldn't have to tie me down."

Sam shakes his head through that haze. "But it can't, it won't save me," he says. "The blood, it can't heal—something might survive, but it wouldn't be me."

And maybe that was why he had drunk it before, more than the thirst, more than how they had tied him down and forced it into his mouth. More than those demons tormenting him or the poor victims they were riding. Maybe that's what he wanted, to be gone—not just dead but replaced, everything he was erased. Like everything that was Dean is gone.

Dean is gone, but he wouldn't have wanted this. Sam can imagine his brother so clearly, gone white, staring at Sam.

Sam turns to Cas—or probably not really him at all; but it's all Sam can do. And they haven't tied him down yet, and they haven't brought blood here yet, across the dungeon's seals, when it's all they would have to do, so maybe... "Cas, please. You know what it'll do, if I drink that blood. What I'll become, what they wanted me to become—don't do this to me."

Cas looks at him, as lost as when Lucifer had broken him. Then looks to Dean, as if he's really there.

Dean is motionless for several long breaths. Finally he shakes his head, once, and Cas nods, straightens with the certainty of an order to follow. "We won't, Sam," he says. "We won't give you demon blood, if you don't want it."

Then Dean pushes forward, ahead of Cas, to look up Sam. "But if we do this—don't do this—you have to promise. You have to swear to me, Sam, that you're gonna make it through this. That you'll survive this—you're not gonna give up."

Years ago, Sam had made Dean promise—had forced a promise from him, 'You go live some normal, apple-pie life, Dean.' And Sam had known—had thought he'd known what he was asking; he had lived it for four months. But he hadn't understood yet, how much worse it was each time.

But Dean is staring up at him, green eyes burned dark with resolve in his pale face, a memory almost real enough to touch. Here, not here; it doesn't matter, with Dean looking at him like that. "All right," Sam says. "All right, I'll try. I promise."

"Good," Dean says. Nods, satisfied.

Sam nods back, but the tilt of his head tips him too far, overbalanced, the dungeon's walls swooping around him. He falls forward, expecting the pain of his knees hitting the concrete; but hands catch his shoulders first, prop him up.

They look like Dean's hands, but those aren't real. Maybe Castiel's are, though, his arm crooked under Sam's elbow, pulling him up, drawing him back to the mattress. The dizziness is slow to recede, even sitting. Sam struggles through the whirling chaos to reach out, snag Cas's arm. Grabs on to that one steady point, Cas strong and solid, watching Sam with somber blue eyes. "Cas," Sam says, "thank you."

Cas raises his free hand. "There isn't any more healing I can do, with the blood in you, but should I try to make you sleep again?"

Sam glances to his side, moving his head slowly, to not send the gradually settling room spinning again. Dean is sitting next to him on the mattress, his shoulder against Sam's, buttressing him when he would list over. Not real. But here. "No," Sam tells Cas. "I'm okay."

Chapter 11

Later, Sam's mother is here, in the dungeon. Sitting beside his mattress with an icepack in her hand.

She doesn't look like the Mary Winchester Sam got to know, for that brief moment back in the past. She looks as she did when she died, like she does in the last couple photos they have. Except instead of a blouse or bloody nightgown, she's dressed like a hunter in jeans and flannel.

When he blinks at her, she smiles back, but it's not a beatific maternal smile; it's sad and strained. But heartfelt, like Dean's smiles. Her eyes are bluer, but she looks like her eldest son, more here in Sam's mind than she ever has in any of their pictures. "Hey," she says to him, finishing wrapping a washcloth around the icepack, before laying it over his forehead.

Sam wants to reach for her, but he's too slow; she's withdrawn her arm before he can raise his own. But she stays next to him, smiling tiredly. Her eyes are red—not a demon's, but bloodshot, like she's been crying.

"What's wrong?" Sam asks her.

To his dismay, that brings those held-back tears, welling up. "Oh, Sammy," she says. "I'm sorry—I'm so sorry."

Sam frowns, confused. Wishing that he could touch her, that she was real enough to comfort. "For what?"

His mother doesn't answer, her breath catching jaggedly as she shakes her head. Drops it down to hide from him, and he realizes what she's seeing. That she's crying over what her son has become, and his own breath stutters, thickening in his dry throat. "Mom," he says, "Mom, I'm sorry, I didn't—

"No—please, Sam, no." His mother shakes her head harder. Wipes her eyes with the side of her hand and lifts her face to him, struggling to retrieve her smile. "Dean didn't want me here," she says. "He asked me not to come in. To not confuse you...but also, I think, so I didn't see you like this. Or maybe so you wouldn't see me like this? I don't know if he was trying to protect you, or me."

"Both of us," Sam says. "That's Dean."

"Yes." Her smile is still sad, but softens a little, as if it takes less effort. "Both of you, you're so..." Her head falls again, hair hiding her face.

But her shoulders are shaking, and Sam tries to sit up, to reach for her. "Mom—"

"—so gullible," Mary says, and lifts her head to reveal that trembling is with laughter. A cruel, greedy grin splits her face.

Sam knows that grin, that terrible glee. He's seen it on enough faces now to recognize Lucifer wherever he goes. "No," he says, swallowing, forcing himself to stare at her direct. "You can't be here. You can't be in her."

"Oh, Sam," Lucifer says with his mother's lips. Extends her hand to touch his cheek, and smirks wider when he shrinks back. "Who else could I take? If John could host my big brother, where do you think the bloodline to hold me came from? Why do you think Azazel was so interested, the moment he laid his yellow eyes on this lovely young thing?" and Lucifer raises the vessel's slender strong arms, turns them admiringly.

"You're not real," Sam says.

"Think so?" Lucifer asks. "You're tasting blood, but I seem to still be here."

Sam unclamps his jaw, releases the mangled inside of his cheek caught between his teeth. There's iron on his tongue, but the pain's not sharp enough. Not real enough, even though he knows this can't be. "Even if you could get through all the bunker's wards—"

"—Not that hard; maybe that woman of Letters broke a few my dumbass little brother didn't know how to fix—"

"—my mother is dead and in Heaven," Sam says. "And there's no way the angels would release her to you."

"You sure of that, Sammy?" Lucifer looks down again, appraisingly, at his new vessel. "Are you really sure that's where Mommy dearest ended up? She made a deal, after all. Damned you to this," and her wide wave encompasses more than the dungeon or the bunker; covers more than thirty years. "Maybe she deserves me—maybe we deserve each other. Your two worst tormentors, the two of us who love you most. Our beautiful Sammy," and she moves too fast for Sam to duck, takes his head in her hands. Strokes her fingers across the curve of his cheek bones. "You wouldn't be here now, without either of us."

"No." Sam stares up into those blue-gray eyes. Wishing he knew them better, that he could more easily recognize the lie of them now. "This isn't her fault."

"Whose fault?" Dean's voice floats to Sam's ears from somewhere behind him. It's remote, that vision less vivid than Lucifer standing over him. But if he listens he can hear Dean asking, "What are you seeing, Sammy?"

Sam could almost laugh at the irony, one hallucination asking after another. Different planes of consciousness; or maybe it's a split-brain scenario, like an epileptic with a severed corpus callosum. So is Lucifer his left hemisphere, and Dean the right? But then, they're both more emotion than logic... "It's Lucifer," Sam says. He gazes up into that face, branded into his memory from those few photos. "I'm seeing Lucifer, in Mom's body."

Mary's smile opens to show her white teeth. "Not just seeing," she says. Puts her hand over his heart, crooking her fingers so her nails dig indents into the gray knit of his sweat-stained t-shirt.

Sam shakes his head, or tries to, against her other hand gripping his chin. Tells Lucifer, "No, this isn't real. She's in Heaven, where she belongs, safe out of your reach. The deal she made, it wasn't for her soul. And she didn't know what it would do—I've done worse. Made worse calls, knowing better. I'm here now because of my choices. Not hers."

"Right—the wrong choices," Lucifer says. "And you just keep making them, don't you, Sam? Do you think you'll ever be punished enough for them? Do you think I can punish you enough?" and her lip curls up in snarl as Lucifer plunges her hand into his chest—reaching for his soul, and Sam tries to shove him away, to force that hand from him. Claws at his chest, shredding the t-shirt, the skin underneath.

Behind Lucifer, Dean's voice echoes against the concrete walls, raised and panicked—"Oh, shit—Cas, get in here, he's—"

Hands force him down, shoulders flattened to the mattress—his mother's hands, clutching at his arms, holding him down. Sam can feel the warm wet of blood spreading through his t-shirt, trickling down his chest. It feels real, not the pure torment of a slashed soul, but physical, torn nerve endings throbbing. Lucifer is laughing, bent over him. Saying his name, voice screwed up with mocking concern, "Sam? Sammy? Sweetheart, can you hear me? Just stop, look at me, please—"

Other voices echo in his ears, tinny like he's hearing them through a tunnel. "Should we—"

"I don't—if this doesn't—"

"It will work, Dean—"

"It damn well better—if this keeps up—"

There's a new pain, brief and sharp, pinching his arm. Sam tries to flinch back from it, but he's held in place, Lucifer's hands stronger than steel.

It starts as a tingling, then a prickle, and then it's burning like a shot of acid direct into his veins. It spreads, diffusing through his tissues, circulating through his bloodstream until every fiber in him is radiating agony.

He doesn't know how long it takes before the pain recedes. Gradually, cell by cell, it ebbs, until only his chest is still aching, a tugging soreness as he breathes. That harsh panting sounds loudly in his ears, muffling the voices under it. "Sam—come on, Sam, stay with us, this'll pass—"

"His heartrate is leveling, Dean. I think the worst is over."

"The worst for now...if it was this bad with the first—"

"We didn't have much choice."

"Not much isn't the same as none. If this is the wrong call, if that woman's fucking with us...can you try again?"

A warm, weighted hand settles over Sam's face, his lashes brushing the palm. After a moment it lifts, and Cas says, "There's nothing I can do yet."

"Okay." Dean breathes in deep, lets it out in a hiss. "Then can you go and check on her—tell her I'm sorry for kicking her out? I just...he's so messed up, and this..."

"She understands, Dean."

"Yeah, whatever, just—make sure she's okay. And if she's ready, we're gonna to need more..."

Sam's chest still hurts, a throbbing itch. He raises an unsteady hand to scratch at it, only for fingers to wrap around his wrist, pulling back his arm. "Whoa, no, why don't we keep that bandage on," Dean says.

"Bandage?" Sam pries open his eyes, squints to bring into focus Dean's face, hovering over him, frowning. Wonders vaguely what is the psychological symbolism, that even his visions are blurred.

Dean puts his hand over Sam's chest, where Lucifer had plunged in his mother's hand. Dean's touch is gentle, barely twinging—so light it's not there at all. "The, uh, the demon blood got a little frisky. Ramped up the visions, made you...anyway, got it butterfly bandaged for now; hopefully you can skip the stitches."

"It wasn't...I saw..."

"Yeah, you mentioned," Dean says. "It was in your head, Sammy. The blood, messing with you. Lucifer's nowhere around here—he's not getting near you again."

Sam doesn't see him now, anyway. Doesn't see anyone but Dean, whose eyes are green in his wan, worn face. "How you feeling?" he asks Sam.

"Okay," Sam says automatically, then realizes it was more than a perfunctory question by how Dean's expression tightens. Sam takes a deeper breath, attempts to self-evaluate. "Chest hurts," he says. "Feeling a little nauseated." His voice is hoarse; his throat is sore, shredded though he doesn't remember screaming. He coughs, admits, "Thirsty."

"Water?" Dean asks, grabbing for one of the bottles by the mattress. By the time Sam nods, he's got the cap off, helps Sam sit up enough not to drench him when he tilts the bottle to his mouth. Dean doesn't even ask if Sam can hold it on his own; it would be annoying, except for how Sam can't even muster the strength to wave him off.

The water is lukewarm, astringent from the plastic. Sam makes himself drink it anyway, gulping without tasting. "Easy there," Dean says, but he's smiling, patient and gratified. Says, "Good job, Sam," like Sam's done something genuinely impressive, taken down some ancient monster rather than half a bottle of water.

Afterwards Dean sticks a thermometer in Sam's mouth, all but cheers at the results. "Down four degrees—still way too high, but maybe it's working after all!"

"What's working?" Sam asks.

That sobers Dean fast. "Okay, so this is the bad news..."

He looks relieved to be interrupted by Cas pushing open the dungeon door. The angel sees Sam and breaks into a smile, or at least a less pensive frown. "You're awake?"

"And back with us," Dean says. "More than he was—it's a good sign, right?"

Sam doesn't notice. He's transfixed by what Cas is holding—a hypodermic, one of the antique syringes from the bunker's medical supplies. The lamplight glints off the narrow metal needle.

The barrel's glass cylinder is filled with red.

Sam's up before he's fully aware of moving, jerked to his feet so fast his teeth clack together. One of his hand's reaching out and the other's clenched in a fist. He wants to run; he wants to leap on Cas and bring him crashing down; he wants to dig through the concrete under his feet and bury himself; he wants to fight, swing that clenched fist; he wants—he wants—

"—Sam," Dean is saying in his ear, nonexistent hand on Sam's arm, "Sammy, it's okay, it's—"

Sam's chest is aching, but he forces out the last air in his lungs. "No—no, Cas, you told me, you wouldn't—"

Cas is shaking his head, but whatever he would say is drowned out by Dean's sharp, "Sam!" Dean's voice is loud, for not being here at all, right in Sam's ear. He's got a vise grip on Sam's biceps, dragging him down to look him directly eye to eye. "It's not demon blood," Dean says. "I swear. I told you, we wouldn't—and I know my track record sucks for this kind of thing, but you promised me, Sam, and I believed you. I'm trusting you, so trust me. The blood in that syringe, it didn't come from a demon."

Sam is shaking, and he doesn't know if it's from the effort of standing or of not fighting back. Doesn't know whether he wants to rip his arm out of Dean's grasp or lean into his brother's support. He's staring at the syringe in Cas's hand, the iron red of the blood.

"Like we were talking about before, it's not just withdrawal," Dean says. "What's happening to you, our books had theories, but nothing about how to fix it..." He hesitates, long enough that Sam manages to pull his eyes from that crimson to glance at Dean. Who's frowning, but he's looking straight at Sam, not wavering. When he sees he's got Sam's attention, he resumes, "You said it yourself, the American Men of Letters, they didn't have enough info on the demon blood. But someone does. So we contacted the Brits—that woman, Bevell."

"Toni," Sam says. His mouth is so dry it aches, the surface of his swollen tongue stretched to cracking.

"Yeah," Dean says. "Since she was the one who tagged Cas, I figured maybe she'd be willing to help, if they had anything. And she was—said she wanted the chance to make it up to you. It sounds like their expert is out of commission—" The Man of Letters Aloysius—he could be dead, could be in a coma, could be worse. Sam doesn't want to know, doesn't want to care. And Dean doesn't know it should matter, so just goes on, "—But Bevell went through his research, and came back with something. Not a great something, but it was what we got..."

Sam looks back at Cas, and the syringe he holds. "Not demon blood?"

Cas shakes his head. "The opposite."

Dean flicks a finger at the hypodermic's red-filled barrel. "That's consecrated blood."

Sam blinks. The déjà vu is enough to give him vertigo, even if his head weren't already spinning. Dean's hand tightens on his arm, steadying his sway. Before, it was Dean here—for real, then. Except not really Dean. But in the dungeon, within the devil's trap. Tied in a chair, while Sam held the needle. "The demon cure?"

Dean grimaces. "More or less—with some extras. A few more spells over it, a couple more specific requirements. Because you're not a demon, but..."

"I'm close enough."

"No!" Dean snaps. "No, you're not, Sam. This garbage is in you, but it's not you. Believe me, I know the damn difference."

"Dean," Cas says, low and intense in a way that might be reproach, might be sympathy. The angel looks from him to Sam. "This blood is of you, Sam—nearly of you. The hope is that it will replace the demon blood—cleanse those impurities from your system. And once cleared, I should be able to heal you."

"But that's the problem," Dean says. "As the demon blood's power drops off—the weaker it gets, the more your body's hurting."

"The more my body's hurting me," Sam says.

"Yeah, so we need to do this quick. Get it all out to get Cas fixing you. And now that we've started..."

"We have to keep going." Once a spell is begun, it needs to be continued; rituals rarely come with an undo button.

Dean swallows, jaw tightening. "I didn't...I don't want to do this, Sammy."

Sam stares at him. Of everything he's seen Dean be in the past days, this is the most unbelievable hallucination. "You don't want to save me?"

"No! I mean—fuck, yes, obviously, but..." Dean shakes his head. "I know what this feels like. How much it's gonna suck."

"Yeah," Sam says. Privately doubting—Dean can't know, not really. His heart has pumped demon blood, but he's never tasted it. But Sam promised. He holds out his arm to Cas, turned up to show the vein through the elbow. "Then we should get on with it—get it over with."

The angel moves forward, but Dean puts out his hand. "No, I can do it."

"You don't have to," Cas says. But he gives the hypodermic to Dean.

It would make a difference, if Dean were really here. Cas is competent in most things, but he has little firsthand experience from either side of medicine, and even less in reducing pain.

Dean's hands are steady, his grip gentle. Sam watches the needle go in. Barely feels the prick, through the burning. "So whose blood is it?" Sam asks. "Cas's?" He's not sure whether angel blood even could be consecrated; it's a metaphysical quandary.

But Dean shakes his head as he slowly pushes in the plunger. "No. Didn't want to risk mixing magics. Or giving you a new habit."

"But not yours," Sam says, only slightly challengingly. It can't be Dean's. Because whatever is injected in him—whoever is really injecting it—it's real enough to do something.

Dean hesitates, but finally shakes his head again. "No, not mine." He puts his thumb over the skin to gently pull the needle out, pinching closed the prick. "Couldn't risk that, either," he says quietly. "Whatever's in me might not be pure—not like there's a test for ex-demonhood. And Chuck himself said that I'm tainted. But this blood—don't worry, Sam, the donor's willing. Wants to help. After this is over..."

It sounds like Dean wants to say more, and Sam wants to listen. But the cleansing fire is flaring through his own tainted veins, and his breath is catching with that pain.

He squeezes shut his eyes, focuses on breathing through it. And for all that he's being burned from the inside out, the warmest thing he can feel is Dean's insubstantial hand on his arm, holding fast.

to be continued...

For anyone interested, I'm posting chapters more regularly on AO3; FFnet makes posting more difficult, and as there aren't many people reading here, I opted to save time and consolidate updates. There should be 3 more chapters to go, which I'll put up on FFnet once the fic is done.