Writer's Note: Trigger warning on torture. I hate torture, much less writing it, but sometimes it just pushes things to the next level... which is where I wanted to go.
Dean washed a hand down his face, exhausted. He checked his watch. It was a quarter to seven in the morning. He honestly wasn't sure what the hell he was doing or why he was staying up. He'd checked in on Sam an hour ago and the kid was sleeping soundly. It would've been the perfect time to grab some shut-eye in keeping with Sam's schedule. He'd run sick-Sam marathons before... only when the kid had been young obviously but he still remembered the crucial rule to keep up his own health.
Something was just nagging at him though and it wasn't guilt, although holy shit was he feeling that too, but it was more this unerring sense that he needed to stay on standby.
So he did.
By staring at the wall in the hallway, wishing he had a tennis ball.
...
Lucifer's words dripped into Sam's ears, freezing him to the bone.
"Most people think I burn hot. It's actually quite the opposite," he whispered before breaking into dark laughter. Sam's whole body shivered as the freezing gust of wind from the Morning Star's voice blew through him, ruffling his damp hair and crystallizing whatever water was still kept in the knotted strands. His joints locked in the frost, his breath catching as he inhaled shallower and shallower gasps of frigid air.
Sam was in the cage. It'd only been in the cage that Lucifer could be like this, incorporeal yet completely omniscient. Michael's existence had barely ever registered, the angel's grace gone - snuffed out in the fall down to the deepest cube of hell with his eternally damned brother.
Sam could barely think. His body launched into several spasms before the screech of sharp metal rented the gray white emptiness where he lay suspended. The Morning Star braced Sam's back along his spine, his touch like liquid nitrogen instantly searing him open from the back of his neck down. Sam screamed and tried to move in the nothingness but he was frozen solid already, his body uncoordinated, unable to obey his mind's commands. Sam's screams turned silent as he realized he could barely take any more frozen air into his lungs.
...
Even if Dean had a tennis ball, he'd be worried it'd wake Sam up bouncing it against the walls. He sighed and picked lint off his sweatpants, read his own palms and tried to count the number of women he'd slept with. That last one was a winner but quickly turned inappropriate were Sam to suddenly need him. He reluctantly gave up that train of thought in exchange for the last game he'd watched on TV.
...
Sleek white silver - the flat of a scythe - winked its reflection and Sam watched in horror as it lifted up and swung down, plunging the curved blade directly into the space just below Sam's throat to hook itself in, curve and latch under his sternum.
Lucifer's burning cold touch pushed and the scythe pulled. Sam gasped as he flew forward, letting out a garbled cry. He could no longer scream under the unimaginable pain as he was thrust and slammed face down onto a long slab of metal grated with jagged pieces of rusty spikes crafted to look like icicles. Frost sparkled on them in the grey whiteness and before he could anticipate the pain the scythe wrenched him up and dragged him. Sam gagged his scream which choked into a long, guttural moan as his flesh tore open and left the rusted metal icicles dripping, then quickly absorbing, the warm blood of a righteous soul.
...
An alarm went off down the hall and Dean checked his watch. Normally Sam was up around this time but they'd gone off schedule with the bath so Sam's time for meds was going to move up in favor of catching the Z's he'd missed.
Dean hummed, bored, and exaggerated a groan as he got up to go turn the alarm off. He absently wondered if Sam even knew he kept the Sam's meds on a clock; he usually hit the snooze button within the first beep and disabled it before Sam woke up.
Dean padded down the hallway lazily, rubbing an itch on his ass as he entered his bedroom to shut the device off. He stopped, looking around his room, and began to deliberate over which items he'd be willing to part with to make things up to his brother.
...
In the cage, it wasn't only Lucifer that craved the taste of a righteous soul.
Their surroundings seemed to swallow everything - every sound, every move, every thought Sam could possibly have - and need more. Everything was hungry for him, his existence in this realm was so rare. He was so full of potential, his soul begging to be corrupted. Sam was the purest delicacy in the cage.
Sam didn't know how he knew, but the gray flurry of mist forming in front of him was Lucifer. The particles of frost and snow shaped itself in front of his one eye - the other had been gouged by one of the metal shards he'd just been torn across - then transformed into a wavering, bending sheet of ice that swooped over him slowly, sensuously, to wrap around his entire body and settle over his face and mouth. When next he spoke, Sam felt the cold air of Lucifer's breath.
"Ready to come home, Sammy? 'Cause you're coming back to me."
...
Looking around, it was hard not to realize how deeply attached Sam was to nearly every item in here. Dean couldn't have missed the ball more about Sam when he'd reamed him out.
Sam didn't have a death wish. If Dean had had his head screwed on straight, he would've known it; known his little brother had always seen the bigger picture. Sam saw the panoramic where Dean could only see linearity: the journey and each challenge as they met it together. And Sam didn't see conflict as inevitable in the face of these challenges. Sam always wanted to do the right thing but unlike Dean he never thought battle was a requisite.
Dean preferred establishing sides for everything. It made things simpler, easier to put to bed, but Sam... Sam needed to acknowledge complexity; assess and analyze all perspectives in order to reach his own conclusions.
Death was not an option for Sam to Dean. Case closed. But for Sam, his analysis of what it meant for a heart to stop was obviously more intricate and nuanced. Sam probably wanted to meet death with the same spirit of fearlessness he'd exhibited in life. It was honorable. Dean should never have faulted it. Sam found strength in it.
...
Sam tried to scream at the frozen air pushed into his lungs by Lucifer's voice. The Morning Star's sheet of ice pressed into him closer and on all sides, the violation crushing gasped sobs and tears out of Sam's single eye to mingle with blood from the other. The grated metal slab soaked it up when drops fell and seemed to breathe out further storms of cold wind, whirling rain, hail and sleet down upon him.
Yet it was all muffled by the veil of ice Lucifer kept tightening around Sam's body like a vise.
"I'm taking you back," Satan promised adoringly.
...
Dean knew Sam also found strength in him. He'd lived nearly his entire life to depend and rely upon Dean's presence and support. Taking that away from Sam had been inexcusable.
Dean understood now he'd been lashing out in fear. Sam couldn't possibly die alone... so if Dean left him alone, he wouldn't die.
Which made no fucking sense.
It occurred to Dean that maybe nearly thirty years of living side-by-side with the kid would've been enough time to keep Dean's head clear when it came to Sam but damn did it cloud things when Dean was afraid.
By talking about his own death Sam had managed to hit more of a nerve in Dean than himself. It was fucked up but Dean had never and would never let go of that nerve. And he sure as hell wouldn't apologize for it.
He still owed Sam an apology though.
...
Sam's eyes snapped open to perfect and absolute darkness, still freezing cold, unable to move, Lucifer's icy pressure still bearing down on him. He heard a wheezing gasp sound out like a whistle. His own breath. Sam registered he was somehow drawing in air... and with the no doubt fleeting sensation of filling his lungs before the Morning Star's next scenario, Sam tried to scream out every piece of his soul that he thought had been claimed by heaven, not hell, this time.
He'd been damned all along. Tainted by Azazel, possessed by Lucifer, and slated for hell since the day he'd been born. There'd been no hope of redemption for him. He'd been laboring under the most dire false pretenses all his life...
So Sam screamed, his voice raw, like he'd already forgotten how to use his vocal chords. He wailed and shouted in anguish over the benighted hope he'd had for heaven and the last exchange he'd had with his brother. Did he want to die? Sam's thoughts were garbled and incoherent but he managed through the pain, screaming and writhing, suffering from loss and despair, tears flowing as he thought I didn't want to come back here! I never wanted to go back to hell! I don't deserve this!
Sam's heart twisted. Dean! He screamed. Dean! Help me!
...
Dean cinched his lips to the side and considered a couple pure-iron machetes. He knew Sam had saved his and his father's life with one of them. He tried to remember which one it'd been. He thought maybe the one with the blue grip but the red one looked cleaner. It'd look better in Sam's room.
Taking both weapons down, Dean figured they could both go to Sam. The feel of the blue one felt good in his hands and... oh man, Dean was dying for a hunt. He missed getting dressed: jeans, heavy work shirts, his leather jacket... He missed the pure, simple kill and the whisky that went down so good after. No-name bars with his brother at his back, sitting next to him matching Dean's shots with sips of beer. The two of them making jokes at each other's expense.
Maybe Dean could bring the Colt out to the hallway to clean it. It'd pass the time while Sam slept.
...
Lucifer was going to grow bored of Sam's sounds soon and limit him to thoughts. Pick out his voice box with a blade of ice or maybe just end up stabbing him with it and leaving it there to slowly melt and flood his lungs with blood and water.
So Sam made more of an effort to punch through the silence, taking advantage of his voice while he still had the luxury to use it.
...
Turning to the Colt's resting place in its case, Dean flinched as he heard some an ungodly bellow coming from outside his room and down the hall. It choked out a second later into complete silence and Dean waited, praying it was just sleep-deprived insanity.
He stood stock still, listening with his head angled to the door of his room.
Again. This time a scream, frantic and pitched, shot out and echoed through the bunker's halls, reaching Dean's room clear as day.
The sound shredded through everything, the older brother's brain reduced to only one imperative. He flew out of his bedroom.
"Sam!"
Writer's Note: My love affair with you all continues. Your reviews are inspiring - I've said it before but I'm saying it again: I can't thank you all enough for the support you've given to this story. Next update tomorrow! Please comment/review on this chapter if you can spare the time. Thank you so much!