Sam's mind was cotton wisps. His eyes peered into the flashing colors of the horror of the future he'd seen. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't...
It wasn't what he saw, but what he heard that brought him around at last. Dean's voice, labored by trying to bite back his emotion, greeting Bobby.
It had been a solid two years since Sam had woken up to the sound of Dean's voice. Already an eternity had passed since he went down into that sanguinary Baptism. The boy realized in his spirit that the future he had seen would never come to pass now. It was scarier to think of what could happen if he tried to stop the demon's plans for him, than if he didn't.
"I think, he...I'm not sure how he escaped, but I personally think he probably let him go on purpose. I think he set him on my path on purpose too. Yeah, this sucker... He killed Mom and now he's gunning for Sam. That's not a coincidence." Dean's voice was cracked.
"And you can't get a hold of John?" Bobby was horrified.
"I've called him like 50 times. I got better chances of winning the freaking lottery..."Dean slammed his phone down on the table. Bobby nodded.
"Has the kid been talking coherently?" Bobby looked over at him. Sam's eyes opened a little more.
"Off and on. He's been lucid, he's just not making sense. He said the demon had plans to use him to start the Apocalypse...Bobby, he may as well be speaking Chinese..." Dean slumped on his knees next to Sam's limp body, dejectedly.
"Hey, sport..."Bobby's kind voice trickled into Sam's fragile thread of consciousness.
"Bobby..." Sam smiled.
"How you feelin'?" Bobby smiled.
"Like I got...hit by a planet maybe?"
The other two men laughed. Dean got up, revived a bit to hear Sam speak, and brought back a wetted dishcloth from the sink. He washed Sam's face. The boy sat up on his own.
"Wanna tell us again what you were telling your brother earlier?" Bobby studied Sam. The boy had changed in appearance the most of them since he took off at 19. Bobby remembered how Sam had waited a whole year longer than other kids his age to get to school to make certain he could get all scholarships needed for a full ride. He was hellbent to go to school, and that had sent him hellbound, it appeared. Now, he was fraught, brow knit, hair shaggy in his eyes, beginning of a beard. Different than the teen boy that took off on his own, but also not much older, they realized. Sam's appearance, as they took a moment to take it in, made them realize the Yellow-Eyed Demon had probably had him captive longer than he remembered consciously.
"The demon...It snatched me up from campus when I went to the party Jessica invited me to..."Sam's eyes crossed, for a split second remembering pretty Jessica and the life he could not have.
"He took me to some kind of church where he baptized me over and over in demon blood. When I swallowed a lot of it, I started seeing stuff...visions, I think. Anyway, I saw that the demon wanted to make me into some kind of weapon...But I don't know what really. He's...He's trying to use me to release...the Apocalypse...I...I...the more I swallowed the blood, the less sense things made, but the blood...The blood he kept drenching me in, it's like...It's like got some kind of magic ability that could turn me into a psycho demon attack dog..." Sam frowned, blinking. He wasn't aware that while he spoke, he had sagged forward and reached and knotted his hand in Dean's shirt. Dean held him up, even though Sam couldn't feel it. Bobby looked on realizing how, even after so long apart, Sam and Dean fell right in with one another as the fulcrum of each other's balance.
"How'd you get away, Sammy?" Dean whispered.
"I...I think he let me go...Like he said something about that when the time was right, I'd get the taste for blood again...Like that, I would...like I would like it after a while...I don't know what it meant, I don't know, I don't know!" Sam got panicked.
"Okay, that's okay...Take it easy, ya idgit..."Bobby laid Sam back on the couch again. Dean reached up and ran the cloth over his face once again.
"Sammy, do you hurt anywhere?" Dean's voice shook.
"My...my head, my stomach...everywhere. The blood...It made me sick. It spoke to me...like the demons are like chattering super loud in my head and it feels like they are fighting each other in all their blood and now that's in me too and it's...it's like a nest of wildcats ripping each other apart inside my blood cells..."
Sam's arms went limp as cooked noodles. Dean turned to Bobby, frantic.
"Okay, so here's the plan. We find out where the Hell the thing took Sam. If we can find out what this whole blood baptism thing was about, we can find out what he's up to..." Bobby nodded.
Dean nodded too.
"Do you think he can take it? Going back there?" Dean looked down.
"I think he's made of sterner stuff than you realize. Anyway, we gotta take the risk of freaking him out a little more if we wanna save him..."Bobby stood up slowly. Dean's eyes were huge now, wide with fear when Bobby used the word "save" because it drove home that Sam needed to be saved.
"Where are you...going?" Dean asked as Bobby crept softly to the door.
"The porch. I gotta make some calls. If John won't pick up, then we will find somebody to relay the message to him. That damn fool is going to come in when his kid's been abducted, and-God knows what exactly this is_has been done to him..."Bobby's voice was a snarl. Dean noticed that Bobby rarely got properly angry. Usually, Bobby was in a perpetually peevish state. When his furor was tapped into, that was a frightening thing to see. John Winchester had woken up that sleeping tiger in the old hunter's heart.