AN: Shoutout to freetobescary for his/her kind review. Many thanks for your feedback, sir/ma'am.
Sam immediately starts dialing after ending the call. Cas is sitting on the couch adjacent to his, obviously still reeling from the news, so Sam says swiftly, "We gotta tell Crowley."
Cas tilts his head, blinking. Processing. "Sam, are you sure that's wise?"
"I… Dammit Cas, this is the only thing we can try, all right? He's on Crowley's turf now. If we don't call, we might as well just sit here with our thumbs up our asses waiting for, I don't even know, for Crowley to find Cain and have him kill him, or for him to crawl out of the pit again, which could take months." Sam's finger pauses, trembling over the phone. "Or… or we could go in after him."
"Follow him into hell?" asks Cas immediately. "How?"
Sam's face falls. "You've done it before," he says desperately. "You saved him from hell all that time ago."
Cas shakes his head. "That was a combined effort. I could not do it on my own. And that was when we all had wings."
Sam groans. "Okay, well, I've been to hell on a covert mission, when I freed Bobby's soul. Part of the trials. Got a lift from a reaper, who took me to purgatory and directed me to a back door into hell. Maybe Eloise knows the same way?"
Cas blinks. Sam knows how it sounds. Their lives are so weird. "Okay," the angel says presently. "Except neither of us is in any shape to undertake such a mission."
Sam stares angrily down at his legs. "You're right," he admits. "I couldn't even go. You could, but if you were caught it would be the end. You can't fight. Best case scenario'd be whoever finds you takes you to Crowley instead of killing you, but then he'd be, at the very least, suspicious. It would defeat the entire purpose. Maybe Eloise will be willing to go?"
Cas shakes his head. "She's a reaper, Sam. Non-interference is their policy. They can't even enter heaven or hell."
Sam drops the phone into his lap and just places his face in his hands for a long moment.
Dean is in hell.
Again.
Back when he sold his soul, when he spent every day trying to distract himself from how little time he had left before he had to go… before he was torn to shreds by invisible beasts, and then the real torment began… this is the exact thing he was so terrified of. Of becoming one of the very monsters he'd spent his life hunting. And thank God that didn't come to be, but it was not without a price. He did his time, and took on scars that would last through a lifetime of terrors. The years he spent in hell never really left him.
Oh God.
He's back there.
Sam still carries the dim memory of something that Meg said during her stint in his body, that hell is "like hell, even for demons." He just… he just doesn't know what this will do to Dean. If—when they bring him back home, and back to himself, will he be sporting new traumas from hell?
Does it really matter, piled in with all the other traumas he's undergone as a result of that damned mark?
If only Sam had been there. If only he'd have known. He would have stopped Dean from taking on the Mark, without a doubt. Killing Abaddon wasn't worth this. Not even close.
And it's not just the fact that he's back in hell, although that alone would be quite enough. No, it's that the thing that put him there was an exorcism. Dean has now experienced being exorcised. Like a common monster.
His brother has now been hunted, in the same way that he used to hunt.
His brother… is a monster.
"Sam." Cas's voice reaches him like they're underwater. Presently he realizes how erratically he's breathing. He closes his eyes, trying to calm himself. Maybe if he just… just clears his mind…
It's not that in recent weeks, his meditation methods have become ineffective, but when he does sit down to clear out his head, he finds himself in an emptiness that's much darker than it used to be.
He shakes his head, feels his lips forming the words "I'm fine," though he's not sure they make it out into the open air. Eventually, though, he opens his eyes, and the immediate horror of the situation grows duller as he distances himself from it.
He releases a long, soft sigh, and refocuses his eyes on the phone in his hand. "I'm gonna call," he says tiredly, and Cas doesn't make a move or say a word to stop him as he dials in the short number.
The phone rings three times before it stops and Crowley's voice rises from the speaker, "Crowley, King of Hell. If the purpose of this call is to whine about your brother, kindly go screw yourself. Otherwise, leave a message."
Sam sighs in frustration as the phone beeps, and he starts right in: "Crowley, pick up the damn phone, it's important. We know where Dean is and we need your help. Call me." He presses END CALL and drops the phone onto the cushion beside him in favor of immediately resting his forehead in his hand.
"Don't want to be more specific?" Cas inquires.
"No," Sam says flatly, eyes closed. "If I'm telling him at all, I'm telling him, not an answering machine."
"When's the last time he acknowledged a message you left?"
Sam shakes his head, taking his hand down. "Before we lost the spell. We shouldn't count on him getting back to us."
For a long moment Cas just nods, apparently deep in thought. "So what now? Shall we call Eloise?"
"Yeah," Sam says. "Maybe she can find the girl who Dean—" He stops short. "At least she can bring us the Impala, I bet. I'll text the number that just called and ask for a specific address. Probably should've thought of that earlier."
"You have a lot on your plate," Cas tries.
"I don't need you to be conciliatory, Cas," Sam says flatly. "Bring me my computer, would you? I'll start reading up on news in Morgantown and the surrounding areas while you talk to Eloise."
Everything about life in general these days is still weighing him down, but damn does it feel good to have something to work with after all this time.