Disclaimer – Not my characters, I just use them improperly.

You like? You don't like? Review and tell me why! (Constructive criticism only please, if you don't like the subject, don't read the story.)

Okay, so technically this isn't a proper chapter, as the name suggests, and there is no actual story advancement… But insane!Sammy wanted to have his say, so this is the first three chapters from Sam's point of view, up until he 'wakes up' :) And I have to say this was the most fun thing ever to write (I'm not sure what that says about my state of mind…) so I hope you guys will like it :) it also has the benefit of explaining a few things, 'cause I know up until this point Sam has been a complete and very frustrating enigma! I'm not one hundred percent sure this fits in between the last chapter and the next, so please feel free to let me know if it doesn't quite work for you where it is. And as always, thank you guys for reading and reviewing, keep it up because I love hearing what you all think!

Chapter 6 - Interlude

Sam was so lost.

It threw him back to when he was four years old and his dad had taken him and Dean to the big grocery store to stock up for a long trip. He'd been standing by the tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce, looking at all the brightly coloured labels. There were red and blue coloured tins that contained pasta shaped like Spiderman, pink Barbie tins that came in two different sizes, the eponymous green Heinz tins filled with baked beans, some with mini hotdogs. Little Sam had been fascinated to see them, millions and millions of stacked tins on shelves taller than his daddy. And then he'd turned around and Dean and daddy weren't there. They'd gone, disappeared, left him behind. Suddenly the rows upon rows of neatly ordered shelves were terrifying, too big for him to comprehend by himself. There was so much, all different and confusing and nothing familiar to ground him.

He remembered his tiny child's heart racing in his chest, beating so hard he could feel it choking him. There had been no time to stop and think, panic dictating his actions and forcing him into a blind run, up and down aisles that made no sense anymore. Freezer cabinets of meat the size of his head and bigger, bags of peas and carrots, chillers filled with more milk than he could ever want to drink, dog food in plastic sacks, tubs of margarine. Everything was incomprehensible to his four-year-old self. Words had no meaning to him yet, the letters recognisable by themselves, but Sam had been unable to work out how to put them together.

It was both exactly and in no way like that experience.

Everything was colours and movement and chaos. He was falling and flying together, and yet sometimes he felt like he hadn't moved in an age. Sometimes he saw Jess, flashes so vivid it was like they were happening.

They had already happened? Or had he just been dreaming? Maybe he was dreaming now.

Jess, laughing with her head thrown back, her face up close to his in a soft kiss, a sweet smile. Jess, lying prone on the ceiling of their apartment with her belly slit open like a gutted fish. Her hair a blonde halo spread around her head, like a stained glass window of the Virgin Mary. But god couldn't save her.

Oh, Jess.

He was both lost and trapped at the same time; trapped in this place of insanity that showed him things he never wanted to see. He wandered aimlessly, his shattered mind an empty space without anything to hold him down, floating in the sea of psychedelic colours and pictures. Sometimes he saw people he knew, drifting past him, wrapping around him. He always tried to grab hold to them, but they were slippery and he was too weak.

Mostly he saw people he didn't know, people he'd never met before, in places he'd never been. He'd seen a brunette woman with a twist to her lips, using a steak knife to carve up a screaming naked man who'd been tied to a bed. The sun had been setting outside the window of the bedroom and Sam couldn't recall the simple disappearance of the sun ever looking so beautiful. He saw a little girl hiding under her bed as an ephemeral woman stalked her house, making glasses smash and mirrors crack without touching them. A dark creature trailed silently behind a couple as they made their way on foot to the nearest town, leaving their broken-down car in the wooded road behind them. The night had been thick like a physical presence, malevolent and wanting.

At first Sam had tried to force his way free of these scenes, to close his eyes and deny them access. But maybe he didn't have eyes in this place, wherever it was, and no matter what he tried, nothing worked the way it should.

Now he just let them happen, let them come and immerse him. He was too tired and it was too hard.

He felt himself drifting further and further away, but from what, he didn't know. Couldn't remember. All he had now were the colours, mottled and phantasmagorical and madness-inducing. It wasn't important anymore, whatever it was.

Sometimes memories came to him, snapshots of time that hit him like a bullet, and he thought to himself, how could I forget? Promised himself he wouldn't this time, made himself cling to the memory like a starving dog with its teeth in a raw steak.

Pictures of Dean, waxing the Impala and laughing, flicking soapy water at Sam. His dad looking serious and poring over some old book. Rebecca screaming from the other side of her bedroom door, the sound of her fingernails scratching uselessly on the varnished wood.

They disappeared silently after a while, padding away on velveteen cats' paws no matter how hard he tried to keep them. He consoled himself with the knowledge that eventually another would come along and find him.

He could hear things occasionally, things that weren't part of the pictures in front of him. Distant sounds, the voices of people he didn't know, or at least didn't think he knew. But memory was just a word in this endless moment, fluid and ever-changing and leaving him behind.

Squeaking shoes on linoleum. The quiet rustle of paper like birdwings. A young woman's voice; How are we feeling today...blood sugar levels are low…look at the begonias, aren't they pretty… Sometimes a man spoke, but he never addressed Sam. It intrigued him at first but soon faded into background noise. Not important.

And then one day, one second or minute or coincidental flash of time, Sam saw his brother. Dean on his own, driving the Impala with his mouth set and his eyes red-rimmed. And for the first time in an eternity he remembered emotions. Dean was sad. His big brother was sad, and Sam wanted to comfort him. The feeling of wanting something was startling, a short sharp shock of ice water on his face, and for that tiny moment in time Sam felt everything click back in place.

He stared up at a white ceiling, confined in his body. It was suffocating after so long floating free, being allowed to expand across vast distances and feeling lighter than air. He was lying down. Chilled air stroked his bare arms, and the sensation raised goosebumps along his skin. And there was a man in front of him, a man he didn't know. The man wore a white lab coat and looked at him with wide terrified eyes. This wasn't right. He wasn't supposed to be here.

Sam remembered his brother crying.

"Dean?"

The man said something, but the pull of the atmosphere tugged Sam free of his body again and he went willingly.

After drifting in the colours for another lifetime, Sam was suddenly and unceremoniously pulled back to his limp body again. This time there was no preamble, no slideshow of Dean or anyone else. One second he was watching as a woman was being torn apart by something with claws as long as her forearms, the next he was forced into the restraining body of flesh.

He was sitting, and the position felt so abstract to him he wanted to laugh. But he couldn't remember how, couldn't find the right instructions to command his mouth and voicebox to work. There was a big man in front of him, as big as his dad but without the beard. The man wore a grey uniform and was looking at something above Sam's head. The novelty of having a head again was interrupted by the sudden influx of thoughts, thoughts that weren't his own.

gun have to go for the gun don't want to kill anyone sammysammysavesam sorry have to get out now savesam

what's he doing what's in the pocket what's he gonna do

Sam felt his head fall back, his eyes (the novelty of having eyes again) catching on another man behind him. Dean. Dean wearing a lab coat and reaching into his pocket.

Then he heard other thoughts, more thoughts. Not coming from Dean, nor the man, coming from people he couldn't see or know. Millions of streams, all flowing to him like a flash flood, like he was in the centre of some huge unseen circuit board, all hitting him, and they hurt. Dean said something and the spoken words seemed faint and incomprehensible to him. Then he was running and Sam was being pushed in front of him toward a door.

He fell away again to the elated touch of Dean's thoughts.

Sam felt the pull of his body more keenly now. Could feel it like an anchor, keeping him tethered down while he flew high in the mystical world of colours and pictures. Sometimes he could even push himself into it, when he worked up enough strength. But it was exhausting and left him strung out and thin.

Being confined to one tiny body wasn't appealing anymore. It was weak and everything around him was dim compared to floating with the colours. And the feelings that came with it made him ache,both the physical and the emotional weight of them.

When he was in his body he remembered more. Memories came to him like drips of water, insubstantial but stronger for the accompanying emotions.

And they weren't just his emotions either. He could feel too much for one person, too many confusing sensations pulling him in every direction. He touched into his skin and felt the tight grip of grief for a woman's grandmother on her deathbed, the anticipation of an old lady waiting for her favourite TV show to begin, the melodramatic despair of a teenager with a hopeless crush, the agony of a man who had caught his wife cheating on him two nights' previous, the pure simple awe of a child discovering a nest of baby birds. He hadn't been able to feel all this before, he was pretty certain of that.

It was easier to stay away, to be an impartial observer of other people's tragedies as they were played to him like movie strips through the sea of colours. Everything was brighter there, every beam of light a piercing radiance, every shadow an endless void. He didn't have to eat, to sleep, to brush his teeth. All he had to do was watch.

But inevitably he would return to his body, if only for a second, and Sam couldn't understand the draw. The compulsion to feel the pain of the physical.

But there were moments. Moments that confused him, that made him feel disoriented. He pressed into himself for a second and felt the early morning glow of light drifting through the thin curtains. He was lying on a bed. It wasn't his bed (did he have a bed?) but yet there was something…

Heat spread down one side of his body, and without moving he knew it was Dean. His brother, lying next to him, keeping him safe. A flickering image of ten-year-old Dean picking little Sammy up from the ground, kissing his scraped knee and making him giggle. Dean's thoughts were disjointed, fluttering around like manic butterflies, a sharp contrast to his absolute stillness. Sam felt his mind delving into them, grasped onto Dean's darting consciousness and let it take him from one subject to the next. It jumped from hunting to dad to money to motel room to samsamsam. Images of himself in a hospital bed, lying on various motel beds with an IV in his arm. Sam watched himself curiously, remembering what he looked like. Accompanying Dean's thoughts was a feeling of barely-suppressed desolation. It itched something inside of Sam. But then he was being drawn away again, and this time without quite knowing why, he tried to grab hold, to stay.

Floating in the colours was what bliss would feel like, Sam imagined, if he could feel things like he used to. Or maybe his idea of bliss would have been just this; to feel nothing ever again. It was neither good nor bad, neither positive nor negative. He had a vague recollection of fear and love, anger and elation. He had felt them all, once. He felt them when he returned to his body, only they weren't his, they didn't belong to him.

Did he really want to go back to that? He thought about letting go, just releasing his grip on his body. He knew he could do it. He would be free, free to drift and see and be silent witness to atrocities that would have disgusted and horrified him before.

But there was some reason, something that kept that tenuous string tying him to his flesh from snapping.

Dean?

Sometimes he could recall his brother in perfect detail, as if he was standing in front of him. Other times he could only conjure up a name that had no face. It…concerned him when he couldn't find Dean.

Occasional memories would pass him by still, travelling in the opposite direction, guided by an unseen and unfelt wind. He took them in with a tinge of something like nostalgia, but the urge to keep hold of them had passed. They didn't matter, they weren't relevant anymore. He had no need of them.

Sam wondered, when he thought to wonder, just how much time had passed. Since he arrived here, since…something happened. Something that made him break free of himself and become this, whatever this was. It felt like millennia. It felt as if he'd been here always. He would accept that, if not for the tiny strand tethering him to his body. The tiny strand that was stretching to breaking point, fraying around its core.

He let himself float.

"Sammy, I need…I need you to…" Dean. His brother, talking. Sam couldn't see him, didn't want to go back. Not yet. But there was something in Dean's voice…

"Please. Sammy, please." Something. He tried to push it away and go back to the colours, to the lights and strange abstract scenes. But the something had a hook in him. Pulling him back to face it every time he turned away. Dean wanted him, needed him to do something. And for whatever unknown reason he felt compelled to do it. Because. Because Dean asked?

He dismissed it, losing it in the mist.

And then there was…a jolt. He was surprised (could he still feel surprise? Apparently he could.) A jolt. On the thread matching his consciousness to his body, the thread that was stretching to breaking point, stretching and stretching.

Sam followed it back, reeled himself in with almost painful effort. He landed in his unresponsive body, panting with exertion. The thoughts and emotions came instantaneously and it was enough to make him let go. Except in the tiny fraction of time it took him to unwind himself he was wrapped in the agonising feeling of loneliness, loss and ohgodsammy, and the feeling carried the unmistakable scent of Dean.

He opened his eyes.