Thank you so much Jenjoremy for beta'ing this and picking up the little details I overlooked. Thank you Ncsupnatfan for pre-reading and encouraging.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dean was walking back to Sam's new room after spending some time in the library, checking in with the others, when he impulsively detoured to the dungeon. He came to a stop outside the doors to the filing room and took a breath. The creature he hated above all others was in there, chained and broken, and though Dean knew he was powerless, he hated that he was so close to Sam. He wanted to see him dead already. If Sam didn't need to see it happen, he would have Jack in there now, taking care of it.
"That you, son?" Lucifer called, his shout muffled by the doors between them. "I can hear you out there. Come on in."
Dean pushed open the door and walked inside. A part of him knew he shouldn't do this, that he should stay away from Lucifer and the only weapon he had left—his words—but he also knew needed to face him again now that Sam was doing better.
He opened the shelves that led to the dungeon and stepped inside. Lucifer was bound to a chair, and though he was held upright by the chains around him, it was obvious that his body was broken. His shoulders hunched, and his legs were twisted into angles that they shouldn't be. The skin under his eyes and ears still bore the black blood Jack had drawn from him when he'd crushed him to pieces.
Lucifer blinked and his smiled faded, "Dean. You weren't who I was expecting. How's Sam doing? Is he recovering from what Raphe did to him?"
Dean glared at him. "Your bullshit isn't fooling anyone. We know there's no demon. Maria came through with Sam. She told us what you did to Sam and why; you wanted the spell to open a rift. Sam wouldn't give it to you, so you tortured him."
Lucifer looked wide-eyed and innocent for another moment before he laughed cruelly. "You got me. I really did. But I didn't just torture him, I killed him, too. Didn't she tell you about that?"
"She told us everything," Dean said.
Lucifer grinned at him. "So, is Sam still a shell? You might as well tell me; you know I'll find out one way or another."
"Sam's fine," Dean lied. Sam was better, but he was far from fine.
"Really? Did you save him with the power of love?"
"Sam saved himself." It was half true. He had killed himself, but somehow that had broken through what he was like before and brought him back to what he was now. Dean hadn't been able to do that for him.
Lucifer raised an eyebrow. "And you know I really doubt it? I think Sam is just as checked out as before."
"It doesn't matter what you think. You don't matter anymore, not to me, not to Jack, and least of all to Sam. Jack is going to kill you for what you've done."
Lucifer shook his head, unconcerned. "He won't do it. He can't. Doesn't matter who tucks him into bed at night, blood is thicker than water."
"Blood doesn't make a family," Dean said. "I learned that from Crowley and Rowena. It takes more than that. It's about what you do for each other and how you feel. All you did for Jack was lie to him, torture and kill the man he loves like a father, and give him the power he'll need to end you. There's one thing worth thanking you for in there. Jack is our family. He will kill you, and he'll enjoy it. I'm not the only one that wants revenge. Sam and Jack want it, too."
"Sam wants nothing apart from to be put out of his misery. That's what he needs."
"Sam is back," Dean said fiercely. "He's fine."
"You're lying. I know what I did to him. Maybe he's up and talking, but he's not fine. You don't just get over the kind of damage I did to him. And you know that, don't you, Dean? You can see it when you look into his eyes. Have you had Castiel check his soul yet? I didn't think to do it, but I know how it felt the last time I had it in my hands, and it was a thing of ruined beauty. That soul is my best work. I'd love to know what it's like now. It's got to be shredded."
Dean turned and walked away. He was sure Lucifer was right about that, at least to some degree. You only had to look at Sam to know it. He was walking and talking, but there was so much he wasn't able to do, like bear another person's touch.
"Leaving already?" Lucifer asked. "Tell Sam I said hey. I'll be seeing him real soon."
Dean spun around to look at him. "The day you see Sam again will be the day you die. The only reason he will be anywhere near you is to see you ended."
"You're wrong. Sam will come to me one day. I know your brother better than you or anyone else in this hole. I have certainly been with him longer. You can't compete with those years we spent together in the Cage. He belongs to me."
"He's nothing to you!" Dean snapped. "You're nothing to him."
Lucifer shook his head slowly. "I'm the one he sees, Dean. He looks at you, he sees my face. You speak to him, he hears my voice. When he sleeps, it's me he dreams of. He is mine."
Dean lurched forward and slammed his fist into Lucifer's jaw, making his head snap back. It felt good, but it wasn't enough. Even as broken as Lucifer was, Dean wasn't a match for him.
Someone cleared their throat behind him, and Dean turned to see his mother. He could tell she had been there long enough to hear Lucifer's theories on what Sam saw and heard, as her face was strained and her eyes sad. But she smiled at him and held something out. It was a set of the brass knuckles with Enochian sigils etched into them.
"Bobby found these in a store room," she said. "Do you want them or shall I try?"
Dean wanted to attack Lucifer, to hear his pain, and the magic the brass knuckles Mary held might allow him to really feel the pain they were dealing him, but he could tell Mary needed it too. She had suffered as much as Dean, maybe more. She had experience the horror of watching Sam kill himself.
Dean took them from her and slid them into place over her fingers. "Go ahead."
Mary smiled cruelly and stalked towards Lucifer.
"Haven't we been here before Mary?" Lucifer asked. "Last time you tried fighting me, you got trapped in that world with murderous angels. Do you really think this time will end much better?"
"I do," Mary said, and then slammed her fist into the side of his head.
Lucifer rocked to the side and grunted, but his look of pain quickly became a smile and he laughed. "Is that really the best you can do? You'd have been better off letting Dean do it. At least he has some experience with causing pain. Have you told mommy about that yet, Dean? She should know just what it was you did in Hell."
Dean's heart lurched. He knew Lucifer was sick enough to tell her now, to expose Dean's secret to the last person he wanted to know about it.
"Screw you!" Mary spat, landing another punch to his cheek, splitting the skin.
She landed blow after blow, spreading out the damage, until he was bloody and beaten. Dean would have let her carry on, but he recognized that her breaths were now becoming sobs. He quickly dragged her back from Lucifer and out of the room and into the hall. With his arm around her, he led her into the next free room, a storage room, and wrapped his arms around her.
"It's okay," he soothed. "It's over."
"It's not," she said through her tears. "It will never be over."
"It will," Dean said fiercely. "Sam is back, and Lucifer is going to die as soon as Sam is ready to watch."
Mary pulled back and shook her head. "He's not back though, not really. He's scared and in pain. I can't even touch him. If I'm even sitting too close, he can't bear it. He won't say it, but I know. He's hurting so much, Dean, and that animal in there did to him."
"He did," Dean said heavily. "And, honestly, I don't know how to help Sam. All we can do is be there and give him what he needs when he can tell us what it is."
"I want Lucifer dead," she said vehemently.
"Me too, but we've got to do it when Sam is ready. He deserves to watch it happen, he needs to so it's real for him. We have to wait for him to be ready. He deserves to make the choice. He's earned that."
Mary nodded. "I know, I do, it's just having that animal so close and seeing what he has done to Sam make me sick. I want it over."
Dean felt the same, but he suspected that she was expecting too much from Lucifer's death. It wasn't going to magically heal Sam. It couldn't. It would only help him. Sam could see Lucifer tortured for an eternity, just like he had been, but it wouldn't repair the damage done to his soul.
There was no repairing that.
Sam had hoped, stupidly, that the longer he was 'back', the easier it would get. He'd thought the sensory overload would ease up and he'd get used to the feeling of the air against his skin, that he could stand for people to be close, but nothing had changed. Even sleep had failed to give him any kind of release. He'd slept after eating a little of the soup Mary had made, but his dreams had been filled with Lucifer and he'd woken panting repeatedly with Castiel watching him and the soup rolling in his stomach.
He'd given up on trying to sleep eventually, and when Castiel asked if he was okay, he told him he didn't remember dreaming at all. Castiel clearly hadn't believed him, but when Dean had come back to Sam's room a little later, he didn't mention it to him. Sam was grateful. It was obvious he wasn't back on his feet, he couldn't hide that from any of them, but Castiel was letting him have what privacy he could. Sam was in pain, he was suffering, but he was dealing with it, and that was all he figured he could hope for now.
Now he was sitting in his bedroom with his family, having eaten more of Mary's soup and half of a sandwich Jack had proudly presented to him. It felt like lead in Sam's stomach, but he had smiled and said it was good but he was too full for more. He knew he needed to eat, his ruined body told him that, but he didn't know how long it had been since he'd last had food, and his stomach had evidently shrunk.
Mary was sitting on the recliner Castiel had carried into the room, and Dean was sitting on the arm. Jack had the chair that had been at Sam's new desk, and Castiel stood sentinel by the door. They were giving him his space alone on the bed, and he was grateful, but he wished he could be alone in the room, even if just for a few minutes. He hadn't been alone once since he'd woken up; Castiel was always there. He thought he knew why he was there, but he wished he wasn't. He would have liked to be left alone to react freely to how he felt for a while.
"You don't all need to stay," Sam said with forced casualness. "There's got to be other stuff for you to do." He hadn't asked about Michael, but he knew they had to be busy with him, not to mention the devil in the dungeon.
"Do you need some more sleep?" Dean asked solicitously. "We can clear out if you need." He shot Castiel a pointed look and the angel nodded.
"You can all go. You don't need to stay here," Sam said. "There must be important stuff for you to be doing, Cas."
Castiel shook his head. "It's all taken care of."
Sam sighed. "Really, I get why you think you have to stay, but you don't need to. I'm not going to hurt myself again."
Mary looked stricken and Dean uncomfortable as he said "I don't want to think you're lying, Sammy, but that's exactly what someone would say if they were. What if you change your mind?"
"I won't," Sam said. "Things are different now. Really. You don't need to worry."
"We can't help it," Mary said sadly. "We're the ones you were trying to leave behind. Let Castiel stay for me. I saw you do that to yourself, Sam. You died in my arms. Let me breathe by knowing you're not alone."
Sam ducked his head. It was mostly a blur, but he had a vague memory of Mary being there when he'd killed himself. He realized now that he wasn't the only one that had been through hell lately. He'd put them through it, too.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
"We know," Dean said seriously. "And we're sorry we can't give you the solitude you want now, but we can't risk it."
"I get it," Sam said, forcing himself to look up. He understood that they needed someone to watch him, but he wished they didn't. He just wanted to be alone for a while.
"Do you want to talk about why you did it?" Mary asked.
"No," Sam said honestly. "I don't need to. Do you?"
They all shook their heads, as he'd expected, but Sam saw the disparity in between their actions and faces. Dean especially needed to know.
"When I was in that other world with Lucifer, I was in hell again," he said. "The things he did there were… It was too much, but I was hanging on. I had to believe you were all alive here, so I couldn't give him the spell; I didn't want him here, too, with Michael. But then I saw you die."
"You saw us die?" Jack asked, confusion etched into his features.
Sam nodded. "It was like a vision again. Lucifer had locked me in my cage, and put me to sleep. I dreamed it, except it didn't feel like a dream. It was so real. I saw Michael coming through here and killing you all one by one. Then the ghosts came." He drew a shaky breath as he remembered. "You were all there, telling me these things. You said that Michael was destroying the world, and with you all gone, I was the only one that could stop him. But I knew…"
He stopped for a moment, feeling all eyes on him. He had to admit next how he had given up, and he was ashamed of it. He thought Dean was the only one that might understand, and even he would be disappointed in Sam.
He bowed his head and forced the words out through his shame. "I knew I couldn't do it alone, and there was no one left. I had been tortured and killed, and I knew it was only a matter of time before Maria found the spell. It was too much, so I gave up. I just let go. Everything went away for a while, even the pain, but then I went through the rift, and all my ghosts were here with me again." He looked up. "You were all here. I could hear you talking, but I couldn't understand the words. I thought it was a new hell. I knew that I was going to see the world end and the people I loved coming to me one by one as ghosts, and I couldn't handle it. Then I saw Jody and Patience, and it broke my heart, knowing they'd died, too."
Mary sucked in a breath as if something had suddenly clicked for her, and Dean nodded slowly.
"Go on," Castiel said.
"I decided that I was going to end it, hoping I would be able to find a way to stay in the Empty at last. I was just waiting for my chance. Then I saw Kevin…" He shook his head jerkily. "I don't remember much about it happening, but one moment I was here, the next I was in Heaven."
Dean's face slackened. "You were in Heaven when we brought you back?"
Sam nodded. "I don't know how or why, as I had always ended up in the Empty before, but I was there."
"It's got to be Billie," Mary said.
"No way," Dean said dismissively. "She wouldn't help us."
"I don't think she's as cold as she would like us to believe," Castiel said thoughtfully.
Dean shook his head jerkily. "However it happened, that was where he ended up." He looked at Sam. "And Rowena's charm dragged you back. I'm… I'm not sorry. I know I probably should be, because Heaven sounds a lot better than what you're feeling now, but I can't lie to you."
"You don't need to be sorry," Sam said. "I wasn't dragged back. I was saved."
He was suffering now, and he could have been able to stay there with Bobby if they hadn't done it, but he hadn't wanted to. He'd already made the choice to try to come back.
"I wasn't alone there," he went on. "Bobby was there, too, and he made me see that I'd been stupid. I'd seen that dream thing and then you all, and I'd believed it. I never considered that it could be Lucifer pulling my strings, making me see what he wanted me to see, believe what he wanted. After talking to Bobby, I realized I needed to come back. I was going to look for an angel to deal with when Rowena's spell worked. It was what I wanted."
Dean stared him in the eyes, searching for a lie, and then nodded. "Okay. I get it."
"It wasn't that I didn't want to live," Sam said. "I just wanted the pain to stop. I don't want to die now, even though it still hurts, because I have things to live for." He looked at Castiel. "If you need to stay, I can deal with it, but I really won't hurt myself again."
Mary and Dean exchanged a long look, communicating silently, and Sam sighed. They didn't believe him.
"I get it," he said. "I probably wouldn't believe me either. But I'll find a way to make you see I mean what I'm saying."
"Thank you, Sam," Mary said quietly.
He knew it was going to take a long time for them to see he meant what he said, and he would have to bear Castiel's presence until they did. He owed them their peace of mind, having taken it from them in the worst way. He just had to be patient and learn to hide his pain better.
So… A little time with Lucifer and a little of Sam's story for the others. I love to write Lucifer, he's so deliciously dark, but I also enjoyed Mary beating his ass. That was satisfying. How was it to read?
Until next time…
Clowns or Midgets xxx