Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

"I'm still me," Sam said. He didn't feel a haze enveloping his mind or the foreign sensation that he was trapped in a body not his own. He wasn't possessed, and he also didn't want to waste time. Liu was right in front of them, on his hands and knees and too shaken from his possession to fight them. Too shaken to make a run for it or pull out a hidden weapon.

"Okay, Sam, I know that. Maybe we should just talk for a minute. Is vengeance worth losing yourself over? Is it worth trading everything you are and becoming something twisted?" Caleb asked. "How about we tie Liu up for now, then we find John and hope he hasn't left yet. Let him take care of it."

"No," Sam said, his voice a low growl that sounded feral and foreign to his own ears. "This is my fight, not his."

"Sam…"

"If you have a problem, Caleb, get out."

"I'm not leaving you alone like this."

"Then, shut the fuck up," Sam said.

Sam saw Liu try to pull himself to his feet in the corner of his eye. He turned his full attention to Liu and flung out his right hand. "You don't get to leave," he said.

There was a pull from deep inside him, the core of his power (the darkness that shrouded it wasn't something he wanted to think about at the moment). It was on fire. All of him was on fire and pulsing with power that he could taste, and it was a taste he could get drunk on, every molecule comprising his body humming with energy.

Liu fell flat to the ground, struggling against restraints that weren't really there. But Sam saw them. Sam could feel them. They were a part of him, creations of his own mind that became real in all the ways that mattered. The bracelet from Missouri burned on his arm, glowing white like hot metal before disintegrating and falling to the ground in a pile of ashes. Maybe it worked after all, but now any negative thoughts and energy it was supposed to absorb and block could run free.

"Shit, Sam, you need to stop," Caleb said. "This isn't your power. You shouldn't be able to do this."

Caleb's words were no more than a dull roar in Sam's ears. Whatever the new evolution in his power was, whether it was due to his own strength or to demonic influence, it was serving a purpose.

He moved closer to Liu, who started spewing out pleas for forgiveness that alternated between English, Chinese, and other languages that Sam couldn't pin. He crouched beside him, feeling the empowerment of their reversed positions. Him in control, Liu at his mercy.

Mercy that was in short supply.

"Are there any slaves being held here?" Sam asked.

"I'll tell you if you let me go." One last trade. One more business transaction. But really, it was one last act of bravery, but Sam saw through it. When his power was taken away, he was just as pathetic as anyone else in his business.

"You'll tell me, and I won't kill you right now."

"You'll kill me anyway," Liu said. "You're a monster. I saw it in your eyes when you set your room on fire. I see it in your eyes now."

"I'm what you made me into. Now, are there slaves here?" Sam asked again, saying each word slowly and carefully. He put his hand on the back of Liu's head and pushed his face into the floor. His other hand was wrapped in flames, and he moved it close enough to Liu's face that he started sweating and panting.

"No. No," Liu said, shaking his head as much as he could. "The last ones here were shipped out yesterday morning. This is just a midpoint. They moved on to more permanent placements."

"Where?" Sam asked.

"I know the people, not the places," Liu said, every ounce of fear and desperation audible in his voice. He struggled again against the psychic restraints keeping him pinned.

"Then, give me names."

"No one uses their real name in this business," Liu said. "That's all the use you'll get from me. Just let me go."

"Just let you go?" Sam asked. "How many of your slaves asked you to let them go? Did you listen? Did you care? I do have to ask you, though. Why did you do it? Why do anything of this?"

Liu laughed, an almost forced, breathless huff. "Because I could," he said. "Because I enjoyed the power and money."

No sob story. No sugar coating. He gave his reason in as cold of a way as he could when staring at the face of his own death.

No more pleas left Liu's mouth. He looked resigned to the fate that no amount of begging or bribery could change. Sam saw him as pathetic. Without drugs and his helpers disabling his victims, he was nothing. He held no power, and money couldn't buy mercy from someone like Sam. Money meant nothing to him, not like it did to Liu.

"You can turn back, Sam. Let me kill him; you don't have to have his blood on your hands," Caleb said.

"Do you have a knife, Caleb?" Sam asked, ignoring Caleb's requests for him to back down.

Caleb hesitated. "Yeah, of course."

"I need it."

Caleb handed Sam a knife hilt first. "What are you planning on doing?"

"Keeping him still," Sam said. He crouched at Liu's feet. With one swift movement, he severed the hamstring tendons of Liu's leg. With another swift movement, he severed the hamstring tendons of the other leg.

Liu's cries of pain echoed through the room, but Sam didn't feel remorse for his actions. The power he had over Liu and the new evolution of his abilities left him high on adrenaline. As much as it scared him, he wanted more.

Sam gave a stunned Caleb his knife back.

"Holy shit, Sam."

One more thing. Just one more step, and he would be free from Liu's influence. As he released the psychic restraints holding Liu down, he started feeling the drain on his energy. The surge of his power was dwindling as the final moment of his vengeance drew nearer.

He gathered up all the energy he had left, every grain that he could scrap together, and the room erupted in a violent inferno, the largest and fiercest display of power that Sam had shown thus far. A display that shocked even him. Liu's screams were short-lived, and Sam thought he could just barely smell burning flesh.

Caleb's hands were on his arms and pulling him out the door. Sam stumbled along behind him, his vision covered in black spots and eyes and lungs burning from smoke. He tasted blood and felt it, warm and wet, streaming over his lips and dripping off his chin.

But he smiled anyway. He smiled at the knowledge that Liu could never hurt him again. Liu could never hurt anyone again.

"C'mon, Sam. You gotta help me out here," Caleb said between hacking coughs.

Sam used all his energy in his vengeance. His muscles no longer listened to him. His sight no longer showed him anything other than darkness. His legs gave out, and the unconsciousness he slipped into was warmer and more welcoming than it had been in a long time.

"I'm proud of you," the demon said, clapping slowly. Just a few times, almost mockingly.

"So, he's in Hell?"

"Yes. He's in pure agony now. He'll be in pure agony forever."

Sam wasn't standing in any specific place beforehand, just a nondescript room that served the purpose of a meeting place for the demon. But after the demon mentioned Liu's agony, one of the walls melted away and showed a torture rack with Liu and Davies strung up beside each other. There were others strung up with them, but Sam didn't recognize their faces.

Their screams were inhuman, unlike anything Sam had heard before. He thought he knew what it sounded like when someone was in pain so deep, it made the soul ache. He'd heard both humans and supernatural creatures die on hunts. Some quick, some agonizingly slow. He'd heard his dad's drowned out sobs in the middle of November nights. Sobs that he tried to hide, but the unhealthy level of alcohol coursing through his veins brought them out anyway.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up even after the rack faded from the wall and the room returned to normal. The sounds of their pain echoed in his ears. He caught a glimpse of true Hell, and he didn't know how to process it.

Was that where he would be headed? He was a murderer now, wasn't he? Hasn't he been since the night he first used his power?

The demon gripped his shoulder and spun him around, planting him right in front of a mirror. The demon vanished, but Sam was frozen in place, staring back at a pair of eyes that were golden where hazel once was.

"That's not me," Sam said, nobody there to hear him. He closed his eyes, and they were still gold when he re-opened them.

"C'mon, Sam. You gotta keep it together. Your family's gonna kill me if you don't pull through this."

Caleb's voice was familiar and a sign of safety, so Sam made no move to try opening his eyes. He felt like shit. He felt worse than shit.

His head jostled against something hard, and he knew they were in a car. He didn't have the energy to stop his body from shifting with every bump and dip the tires found. Warm blood still dripped down his face from his nose.

"I'm gonna get you to a hospital, Sam. You just have to hold on 'til we get there," he said. "And then you and Dean can be roommates or something. You'll get to watch him drive the nurses crazy while he looks pathetic and steal his pudding cups when he isn't looking. Hell, I'll even steal them for you, if you want."

Caleb kept talking to himself, and Sam drifted in and out, catching bits of a one-sided conversation that made less and less sense with each word spoken.

No matter how bad he felt, the world seemed lighter. They won a battle. Maybe, just maybe, he could start healing and then start moving forward, whatever 'forward' meant for him.

But he remembered Liu had sent slaves off to other people, people who were just as twisted as he was. People who needed to be stopped, and slaves that needed to be saved.

Maybe the world wasn't any lighter, and maybe the battle to help innocents was something that never ended.

His thoughts grew fuzzy and the darkness of his vision thickened until he was no longer aware of what went on around him.

Dean groaned and cracked his eyes open. He remembered burning pain, and after Sam left with Caleb, his memories became hazy.

"Shit, Dean, how ya feeling?" Bobby asked.

Dean rolled his head to the side and saw Bobby perched at his bedside. "Better than before."

Bobby laughed. "That's thanks to the cocktail of painkillers they have you on. Can't say I'm not a little jealous, but I think you need it more than I do right now, son."

"Sam?" Dean asked.

"He's alright, far as I know. Your daddy is with him while Caleb is sucking down fresh oxygen for smoke inhalation. The doctors are doing all kinds of scans and tests on him, but I'm not sure they're gonna find much. Sam's problems are a bit beyond what they're equipped to deal with."

Dean tried to sit up, but the drugs in his system weighed him down and left him uncoordinated. "Why?" he asked. "What's wrong with Sammy?"

"Nothing as serious as what's wrong with you," Bobby said. "He just exhausted himself. According to Caleb, Sam went a little overboard with his powers when he came face-to-face with Liu."

"What? What does that even mean?"

"It means you need to shut up and sleep for now. You can ask Caleb all about it later, we were a little too busy to play twenty questions with him."

"What happened to me?"

"That bullet shattered your femur, and you're lucky that you didn't die from blood loss. You were rushed into surgery, and now you'll be setting off metal detectors for the rest of your life. Although, you're looking at a long recovery."

"Well," Dean said, "that's the good thing about physical wounds. I can see it, and I know that it's going to heal. I even get an estimate for how long it will take and what to expect. I won't have to live the rest of my life with a broken femur."

"Unlike Sam, right?"

"Yeah, unlike Sam," Dean said. "I mean, shit, we thought we were in over our heads with him before, what the hell is it going to be like now? He killed Liu, didn't he? You can't tell me that's not gonna mess with his head even more. Just seeing Liu again had to be rough on him."

"You just worry about that leg of yours for now," Bobby said. "We can figure the rest out once we get back to my house."

Dean settled back onto the mound of pillows behind him. He ended up as the one in the hospital bed plenty of times after a hunt gone wrong, but that never made it any easier. When he thought about Bobby's comment that he had a long recovery ahead of him, he already felt caged.

He didn't know the full story of what happened between Sam and Liu at Liu's mansion, but he knew that Sam would be needing him. Sam needed him mobile and useful, not lying around with one leg kept stable in ten tons of medical equipment.

This was going to be one hell of a recovery.

"Sam, I know you're awake."

Sam cracked one eye open and found his dad staring back at him. "That makes one of us," he said, his words soft and slurring.

"Well, this is probably the only chance I'll get to talk to you without Dean trying to shove me out the door, but I have to know what you know about all the demons that were in Liu's mansion that day, and about your eyes changing color," John said.

"I don't know anything about either. The demons were just there, and Caleb told me my eyes were yellow. I didn't do anything to cause those things to happen," Sam said.

"Caleb also told me the message that demon gave him. Was it the same demon that's been haunting your dreams? The same demon that took your body for a test drive around Chengdu?"

"Yes."

John ran his hand down his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Shit," he said.

"He killed Mom, didn't he?"

"Yeah. I think he did. I suspected it was a demon, but could never prove it."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"Your eyes are back to normal," John said, gripping either side of Sam's head and turning it back and forth so he could see at every angle. "What about your powers? Caleb mentioned that they had a new twist to them."

"Telekinesis, but I'm not sure that I could do it again." Sam tried to sit up or move, but everything felt so heavy. He just didn't have the energy. "I don't have anything left in me."

John shook his head. "That last part is true, and probably why you needed a blood transfusion, but psychic abilities don't just come and go."

"I wish they would just go sometimes," Sam said. He left out the second half, the part where he would feel a little more normal if his powers would slip away and never come back. He could be almost human. "How's Dean?"

"He'll make it," John said. "He's got a shattered femur held together courtesy of modern medicine, and it'll keep him off his feet for a good, long while, but he'll be fine. Young and healthy, the doctors expect him to make a full recovery."

"That's good," Sam said. "I'm glad you guys got him here in time."

"Me too, but I shouldn't have left you behind like that either. You shouldn't have faced Liu without us, but I was afraid that Dean would bleed out."

"Had Caleb."

"I'm not sure Caleb was enough."

"You would've tried stopping me," Sam said. "Or you would have shot me yourself when you saw my eyes change."

"You honestly believe that?"

Sam shrugged.

"Sam, shit, I'm not gonna shoot you, but I'm scared that these powers of yours are going to get you killed one day. You're a danger to yourself and others. If it isn't a hunter or some creature that kills you, it'll be your powers themselves. Look at where they've put you."

Sam didn't have the energy to look around, and he couldn't argue with John either. He knew his powers were dangerous. His head was killing him, and he could sleep for a month and still be exhausted. Already, his eyes were slipping closed again.

John's hand brushed away his bangs in a surprisingly gentle movement. "Don't worry, Sammy. We'll kill that demon bastard and figure out a way to keep you safe from yourself and everything else. No one's gonna be shooting you."

It was weird for John to be so nonchalant about the recent events. His eyes and his new ability. The revelation that it was a demon with yellow eyes who killed Mary. Last time, he had to drag him to Missouri in Kansas to have her tell him that Sam was Sam and nothing else. That he wasn't evil or a demon or the thing that killed his mom, just psychic. Although, Sam suspected that John still splashed holy water on him while he was unconscious, just in case.

Maybe John trusted him more now. Trusted that psychics could be powerful and crazy and messed up without being evil.

Or he had another plan. Another promise to himself to keep Sam under strict observation, watched like an animal to keep him from becoming a monster.

How had he gotten to the point where he couldn't tell who to trust anymore?

Dean's head felt a little clearer when John stepped into his room. "How's Sam doing?" he asked.

"You two are going to be the death of me," he said, taking a seat. "Luckily, his scans didn't show any brain bleeds or anything abnormal. They gave him some blood, tested his, and apparently he's anemic now."

"Shit, it was that bad?"

"Caleb described his nosebleed as being like a faucet that he couldn't turn off, but he'll be fine. You'll both be fine."

"You can't know that for sure."

"No, I can't. But I can know that you'll both be physically fine," John said.

"What are we supposed to do?"

"Get both of you back to Bobby's for a long recovery," John said. "From there, well, I don't know."

Dean hated plane rides already. With a broken femur, he couldn't imagine how much worse it would be. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and resting his head back on his pillows to fight the dizziness that made the world spin.

"Have we ever known?"

"I thought I did once," John said. "Guess I was wrong."

Sam was discharged before Dean, but he didn't want to go back and rest at a motel with Caleb and Bobby. He sat in Dean's room, the same way that Dean sat in his room the first time they were in China.

Dean was asleep, and Sam realized that it had been a long time since he last saw a sleeping Dean. Usually, he was the one being watched over. Having their positions reversed left a strange feeling. He wasn't the natural caregiver that Dean was. He could barely take care of himself, let alone someone else.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he whispered. "This is all my fault. I couldn't just suck it up. I had to get vengeance, and that makes me the same as Dad. I've become the person that I used to fight against so much. I don't even feel anything. One man is dead, but how many more are out there like him? I can't save everyone who deserves it, and all I've done is get you hurt."

Dean, of course, didn't answer.

"I'm a murderer, Dean. I have been since the first night I used my powers, and I saw Hell. The demon showed me real Hell. Is that where I'm heading?"

He stayed quiet for a moment, just listening to the routine sounds of the hospital.

"I'm scared," he said. "I don't want to go to Hell. I only saw it for a second, and that was more than enough. But I still hear the demon's voice in my head. If he wanted me to do something, I don't think I'm strong enough to resist him."

He should've saved these words for when Dean was awake and could hear them, but it was easier to talk to someone he knew couldn't respond. Someone who couldn't judge. As much as Sam wanted Dean to help with all these problems he was acquiring, he didn't want Dean in the middle of his demonic, psychic mess.

"Don't worry about it," Sam said. "I'll figure it out."

Getting back to Bobby's was easier said than done. Sam was exhausted, and Dean was worse. No amount of painkillers was enough to keep him numb through a long flight followed by a long drive. Through some miracle, they made it to the Salvage Yard and set Dean up on the couch, leg propped up on pillows and the TV remote in his hand.

Dean was already irritated, and he was looking at up to another half a year of recovery with a heavy brace keeping his leg still. Sam tried to distract him with movies and card games, but there was only so much Sam had to work with, besides having his own recovery to deal with. A recovery that wasn't guaranteed to only go forward. A recovery that didn't have milestones or tests they could use to check progress.

John left days ago, not bothering to say where he went, just that he would be back. Sam didn't blame him. It was hard enough when he had to deal with one healing son. Two, well, that had to be weighing him down. If it was a few nights to unwind that he needed, who was Sam to fault him for it? Did he appreciate the timing? No, but they still had Bobby around to help.

Coming home the first time was easier. He was too drugged to realize what went on around him. When that wore off, his mind was shutting down on itself under the belief that he was in a vivid hallucination and nothing more. That maybe he'd been overdosed and his brain was creating a false reality to make dying easier on him. He didn't have to deal with his problems or anyone else's then.

When night arrived, Dean fell asleep easily with the help of stronger painkillers, and Sam settled himself upstairs. He felt the heat of Hell on his skin and heard tortured screams when he closed his eyes. He saw Liu and Davies and others whose names he didn't know bleeding and burning, torn apart, on a rack.

Dean didn't need to witness the nightmares where Sam was strung up alongside them. He didn't need to witness the nightmares where Sam spilled more and more blood not out of righteousness, but because he wanted to relive the thrill that came from power over life.

He spent his nights alone in the room he shared with Dean, who was confined to the couch for the time being. He spent his nights fighting sleep. He didn't need to give anyone a reason to believe that he was the monster that Liu saw him as. That he was the monster he saw himself as.

Bobby had given him an anti-possession charm that he strung on a chain to wear around his neck, and he clutched the charm throughout the night. If there was a Hell filled with demons, he hoped that there was a Heaven filled with angels who heard his prayers. Most nights, he didn't even know what he was praying for.

This was supposed to be the end of his nightmare, with Liu dead and no one to pay any bounties put on his head to give traffickers incentive to track him down.

Somehow, it felt like his nightmare was just beginning.

Author's Note: In a way, this is the last chapter. Up next will be a short epilogue/transition for the third part. I know that a lot of you were looking forward to Liu's death and had different ways that you wanted it to play out. I rewrote that section so many times, and although I don't think I could ever make it perfect, I hope that it didn't disappoint.

Thank you to everyone who reads, reviews, follows, and favorites; it really makes my day!