prompt
They couldn't even tell it was Sam.
***warnings: this fill has Lucifer and castration.***
Two hundred and eighty-one days. Sam repeated it in his head; he had been here for two hundred and eighty-one days. He leaned back against the walls of the cage, staring blankly at the wall across from him. There was no point in studying it; he'd memorized its pattern at seventy-three days.
Lucifer was currently fiddling with a knife he was trying to build from scratch from pieces he summoned into the cage. He couldn't use any of his powers against the cage, but he could summon certain objects. Sam knew because the objects he summoned were usually blades and he could attest to how real those were. Lucifer had occupied himself with building this blade for the past eighteen days, saying that it was supposed to be more painful than any other blade he'd used on Sam and that he was excited to play with it. Sam didn't reply; he couldn't. Lucifer had sewn his lips shut.
His right hand was picking idly at a scab on his thigh; it hurt, but he didn't really notice it. It didn't compare with the pain he normally felt, and if it bled, Sam had forgotten what he looked like when he wasn't bleeding. It didn't matter. Lucifer would hurt him again anyways.
Two hundred and eighty-one days. Dean glanced at the calendar on the wall, then back at Sam - or what was left of him, anyway. Death hadn't been able to put Sam's soul back in, but it couldn't be left out, so it had been put in the panic room. It took the form of Sam's body, except a bit ghostly pale and covered in more bruises and cuts than Dean could count, and Dean had been watching over it for over eight months. He'd also been dealing with a soulless Sam for eight months and he was reaching the end of his patience with both of them.
Dean pushed the sharpening stone over the blade of his knife as carefully as he could, trying to minimize the noise so as not to scare the soul - though it didn't do much, anyway, other than stare blankly at the wall. Dean's eyes took it in and noticed it was scratching at a pale scab on its right thigh; he sighed and walked over to it.
Lucifer stood up, setting his blade down and sauntering closer to Sam. Sam looked up - two hundred and eighty-one days - and fought back tears as Lucifer reached down and pulled his right hand away from his thigh, yanking him harshly up to his feet.
Dean softly grazed his fingers over the soul's wrist, feeling the slight chill, and used two fingers on the inside of his wrist to guide the hand away from the scab. The soul whimpered and pulled its knees up to its chest, leaning away from Dean, who pulled his hand away, staring sadly at the soul.
Lucifer started dragging Sam towards the center of the cage, summoning a rack and throwing Sam onto it. He tried to yell, but his lips were sewn shut and white-hot pain burned through his face instead. He felt Lucifer's hands roughly flip him over, then pull one wrist up to one end of the rack and Sam couldn't even whimper as he felt the cuffs click tightly around his wrists and ankles.
Lucifer snapped his fingers and the thread on Sam's lips was gone, leaving his lips burning with pain. He gasped, eyes following Lucifer as he summoned his traditional weapon cart and picked a scalpel up from it, inspecting it.
Dean gave up on the soul and walked back over to his chair, picking up the knife he was sharpening and examining the edge. He looked over at the soul and couldn't even force himself to smile. It looked like Sam, sure, but all the light and life was gone. It was a hollow shell of what used to be Sam, his brother who had a smile like the sun and a heart of gold. Lucifer had taken those things from him, and Dean cursed the archangel every day for it.
Lucifer smiled at Sam, who arched as much as he could on the rack, fear spiking through him - and then he wondered why he was afraid anymore. Two hundred and eighty-one days.
Dean picked up the sharpening stone and took his gaze away from the small, huddled form of not-Sam, walking over to the panic room door and stopping. He picked up the Sharpie set on a folding table and drew an X in the calendar square for today's date.
Lucifer traced the scalpel across Sam's bare skin, dipping between his legs - he'd been castrated at one hundred and twenty-two days, Sam remembered vividly - and smiling with delight at Sam's sharp intake of breath and how he stilled completely, shaking with the effort of not moving because he'd learned the hard way how a slight movement could make an "accidental" cut. Lucifer then pulled the blade away and jabbed it point-first deep into his thigh. Sam threw his head back and screamed into the fiery, unfeeling depths of Hell, his voice joining with thousands of others in a haunting chorus.
Two hundred and eighty-one days.
Two hundred and eighty-one days.