Five
Sam wakes up with a jolt and a gasp, his breath coming in short, sharp pants, and for a moment he's not sure where he is, or what's happened. He tries to move, and groans at the ache, the feeling that his whole body is a giant bruise. It comes to him a moment later, how he got to be here.
God, his shoulder. Fuck. His fucking shoulder is especially agonizing, but it feels better than it did when Abas had kicked him, so he hopes this means he won't need another surgery.
"Dean," he says, when he is confident he won't pass out again, voice taut and pained. "Cas?"
There is no reply; they're still missing. He hates that word, missing, like it's something he misplaced, not something that's been taken from him, and he hates using it in conjunction with his brother and Cas, but it is what it is. They're still missing, absent, not here, away, and they won't be back unless he does something about it.
You know what to do.
He does. Say yes. Say yes to the impersonation of evil—Lucifer, as in, the fucking Devil, Satan, Beelzebub.
But he can't.
He doesn't even know where to start figuring all of this out, even though he remembers some of it, even though Cas told him about all of it, about Jess; and he now knows why Dean lays down a line of salt at their doors and windows every night; why every time he's near Dean he can smell old leather and gun oil; why it feels like there's something in their lives that's missing and neither of them can say, exactly, what it is.
He knows why he keeps expecting to see a classic black Chevy instead of their red Dodge.
Until now it had felt like someone had placed a bad tracing paper sketch over a picture of their actual lives, and he feels the discomfort in it every fucking moment because none of this is real.
Everything is fading, going black around the edges, and the only constant is Dean.
Dean, who is missing (God, how Sam hates that word), and Sam wants him back, needs him back because if Dean isn't in his life then Sam doesn't know what he'll do, how he'll survive. He's pretty sure he won't be able to because he just tried, and then promptly cut his hands and crashed his wheelchair and could barely talk to Ellen and almost died.
Not that a life without Dean in it is worth living, anyway. That much he knows.
You know what to do.
There is a bitter tang of sulfur in Sam's nose, not a smell, more like the memory of one. A hazy picture of a woman in a black dress with sharp jet-black eyes flashes in his mind. A knife-edge smirk, and enticing, hellish promises.
Demons.
You know
If Lucifer and Abas are involved, so are other demons.
what
So he needs
to do.
to find a demon.
Summon a demon it is, then. Not Abas this time. And it's not like he can just call the cops or go out on his own, and besides, weird as it is… this feels familiar. Demons and the Devil and magic or whatever this is. It feels… like he's done it countless times before.
~o~
It is an absolutely awful struggle, and by the time it's over Sam's entire body hurts even more, but somehow he manages to drag himself all over the apartment to find the things he needs. If Cas hadn't spoken to them, explained their situation to them, he wouldn't know how he knows—that there's some kind of ingredients list in his head like the world's most fucked up recipe.
He takes a break to rest once he's got everything he needs, and sighs forlornly as he looks at the weird little tableau he's set up. A bowl, candles, a pentagram on the floor… he feels like he's on the set of some cheesy horror flick, and not the good kind either. Despite everything, though, he can't help but snort a little at the thought of what Dean in this world would think if he could see all this.
But Dean is missing, and that thought more than anything else spurs him into action once more.
He's got the ingredients of the recipe, but he's not sure how exactly to go about the actual cooking summoning part. Horror movies tend to disagree on the exact correct method of summoning biblical personifications of evil, and in any case, they're not accurate, are they? God, this is all so complicated, and Sam can feel the beginnings of a headache in his temples. All of this is so exhausting and overwhelming, and he just wants Dean back. And, a bubble of something rises in his chest: Cas too.
You know what to do.
The words come to him without any input from his brain, without any conscious thought. It feels incredibly similar to those times when you hear a song from your childhood, and realize you still somehow know the lyrics even though it's been years since you've heard it. The words feel right in Sam's mouth, familiar, like he's spoken them so many times before that they've become muscle memory, and he knows that's exactly what's happening here.
"Ad ligandum eos pariter eos coram me."
Nothing happens, but that's probably because all he's done is said the words out loud. But that's okay. He knows what to do, now.
He drags himself forward by his elbows and torso, absolutely hating that he can't even feel the drag of the carpet against his legs. They feel like dead weight, a coarse reminder of everything that's happened to him, and he feels like he's going to choke.
Keep yourself together, he tells himself. You have to find Dean.
He tweaks the pentagram almost absently, not sure what he's drawing inside it, just letting his hand and muscle memory do the work for him. Then he puts the bowl in it, and lights the candles, and grabs a handful of the herbs he found in the kitchen. This is it, then. He breathes in, deep, and says the words.
"Ad ligandum eos pariter eos coram me."
The herbs—he thinks it's basil—spark and light up as they fall into the bowl, and Sam jolts back. He's sure he hasn't imagined the fire, but there is no heat. Instead, it feels cold, somehow dead.
There is a tang of sulphur to the air, and Sam looks up to see a demon sitting in the Devil's trap he's drawn. She looks completely relaxed, sitting cross-legged, looking at him serenely with jet-black eyes. "Hey, Sam," she says, and grins. They're normal human teeth, but in her red-painted mouth they look jagged, shark-like.
Sam, in no mood for small talk with a creature that he's only recently discovered (rediscovered?) exists, gets straight to the point. "Where's my brother? Where's Dean?"
She clicks her tongue, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her thighs. The movement causes her low-cut dress to shift, revealing even more cleavage. It's not sexy, though. By all means she appears to be an attractive woman around Sam's age, with a voluptuous figure accentuated by her black dress, but there's something about her that is definitely inhuman, predatory. It puts Sam on edge, and he can feel a chill go down whatever functional part of his spine is left.
"Now that's no way to talk," she says, mocking.
"Where's Dean?" demands Sam again. He is honestly too tired, too angry for any of this. He just wants his brother.
"Why don't you come here and find out?" she taunts. She doesn't have to look at his legs for him to know that she's mocking him.
"Fuck you," he grits out. "Just tell me where Dean is, where Cas is, and I promise I won't kill you."
She laughs, actually laughs, a loud cackle that makes his ears want to bleed. "Oh honey." She clicks her tongue. "You couldn't kill a roach in this state. But," she adds, winking, "that's not to say that you can't get better."
It takes Sam a moment for the words to work past his anger and frustration, and it feels like his brain short-circuits. "What?"
"You know what I mean," she says, leaning back again and stretching her legs out in front of her.
Sam has no idea what she means. "Is this some kind of new game?"
She sighs deeply. "Honestly, and they said you were the smart one." Before he can work out what she means by that, she reaches out and says, "Hey, hand me that knife, will you?"
"No," he refuses, glaring.
She rolls her eyes. "Don't be an idiot, I can't hurt you while I'm in this—" she gestures down to the Devil's trap. "I just want to show you something." When he still looks uncertain, she adds, "Look, do you wanna find your brother, or not?"
"Of course I do," he begins hotly, "but that doesn't mean I'm going to just give you a damn knife."
You know what to do, the voice in his head says. He blanches as it adds, do it.
It's not just saying yes this time. There's more to it. More… that he doesn't remember.
Oh god.
"Well, hon, you've gotta give a little to get a little," says the demon, inspecting her fingernails. "Look, if you don't care, just tell me and I'll be on my way. You're wasting both of our time here. I was in the middle of a really great deal when you summoned me, and I'd like to get back to that."
Sam disregards everything she says after the first sentence. "This will really help me find them?" he asks, trying his best not to sound uncertain and hesitant.
"Yes." She looks up at him, watching him carefully.
He sighs. He supposes that there's always the chance she'll kill him with the knife, but what the hell. If she wanted to, he's sure she would have already. But it doesn't seem like she will. There's something about her demeanor that suggests that she is deliberately acting like this, like she has an ulterior motive, some overreaching arc to all of this that he can't quite see.
You know what to do.
"Ugh, shut up," he mutters, before holding her the knife, blade first, and glaring pointedly at her in the hopes of scaring her into not killing him, if that's indeed what she has on her demonic little mind.
She doesn't; instead she just uses the knife to cut a gash into the palm of her hand. The sharp smell of sulphur fills the air again, this time much stronger, and for some inexplicable reason, Sam's mouth waters a little.
"What the hell," he begins, but she cuts him off, angling forward, her palm dripping thick, dark blood on Dean's floors.
"Do you feel that?" she asks him eagerly. "That hunger, that craving, that—" she licks her lips, and he is revolted, but also so, so tempted. "That bloodlust?" she finishes on a whisper, and he is surprised to find that he has moved himself almost to the edge of the trap. He didn't realize he was doing it.
"What the hell," he repeats, glaring at her. "What the hell?"
She stretches her arm towards him, and the smell hits him hard. He's leaning forward before he can stop himself, and is horrified to gather that what he's about to do is drink it. Drink her blood. What the actual fuck?
Do it, the voice repeats in his head, fucking Devil or whatever, and he sounds malicious in his glee. You know what to do. Do it.
He recoils from her. He can't, he can't, this is awful, it's revolting beyond belief, and he knows he would be throwing up if he didn't feel so damn pathetically tempted, almost like it's an old addiction, like a reformed alcoholic who smells whiskey and craves it, or a former crackhead looking for one more hit—
"What did you do to me?" he growls. It comes out strained, tense.
She laughs. "Oh, honey, nothing that you haven't already done to yourself. This isn't your first time, babe. Far from it. Or do you not remember?"
He doesn't. His body does.
"Oh wow," she says, no longer laughing. "You really don't remember, do you?"
"What are you doing to me?" he all but yells. The smell is too much, he wants, needs it now, and he doesn't care what he has to do to get it.
"Interesting," she murmurs. Her arm is still held out, not tiring, an inch away from Sam's face, and it's all he can do to hold himself back, to remind himself that this is blood, it's a demon's blood, and he may have done some questionable things in his life but he's never fallen this far, ever. Or has he?
Has he?
You know what to do, the Devil's insidious voice whispers in his ear. Do it.
This is not a good idea. This is a horrible, terrible, fucking awful idea.
It's also all he has.
Dean wouldn't like this. Dean would hate this.
But he's not here, is he?
This is evil, he's sure of it. He can't remember it, but his body can, and it can also remember a dark, cold room, the bitter taste of vomit in the back of his throat, the pain pervading every last inch of his body.
He swallows, feeling cold all of a sudden. He has no choice. He doesn't know anything, he has serious doubts about his own sanity, his body is refusing to cooperate with him thanks to the spinal injury, and all he wants is Dean, he just needs Dean. Everything's going to be okay once he has Dean back, this much he knows.
You know what to do.
He hates himself so much right now.
Do it.
If his gut instinct isn't wrong—and it never is—then this is akin to a recovering alcoholic giving in and downing a bottle. The crackhead going for another hit. He hates himself.
He needs Dean, and this is the only way. He can handle anything Dean will throw at him for this, as long as there's a Dean to throw anything at him.
He takes a deep breath, tries to prepare himself, then wonders how one can go about preparing themselves for drinking a demon's blood.
You know what to do.
"What's going to happen to you?" he asks the demon, who's gone back to examining her fingernails.
"Well, if you drink too much, I'll die," she tells him casually, like it's no big deal. "And I'll lose out on that deal," she adds. Sam can't really bring himself to give a shit about that.
"And you don't care? That you'll die?"
She shrugs. "I'm just a cog in a machine, baby. Someone else is going to take my place." He has to wonder at her absolute, unshakeable loyalty to Lucifer, that she's so ready and nonchalant about dying for his twisted cause, whatever it is.
He takes another deep breath, then another. And another. He braces himself and decides that there is no way he can do this if he lets himself think about it. The only way is to give in to the addiction screaming through his blood, running through his body—and so he does. He gives up and gives in and he lets himself lunge forward and grab the demon's arm, and the horror he feels as he begins drinking it is only an absent though in the back of his mind, eclipsed with pleasure and lust for more.
The demon makes a sound in the back of her throat, it sounds like a moan but he can't tell if she's in pain or finding a sick kind of pleasure in this, probably both, and in the back of his mind he can hear the Devil laughing and laughing, delighted at seeing him reduced to this, a cripple drinking a demon. God it sounds like a sick joke, and Sam wants to stop, wants to push her away and vomit, wants to cleanse himself of all of this, but he can't, he can't, he needs this, needs it to find Dean (and also because it's the best damn thing he's ever tasted, and he hates himself so fucking much) and he'll never be clean again, he'll never be pure again, he'll never be good again—
The Devil is going to kill himself laughing, and the sound fills Sam's ears, pervades every inch of his being, and he hates himself, he hates everything, and he wants to die, he wants to never stop drinking, he feels so alive, he feels like his soul is withering up inside him and crumbling to pieces.
He doesn't stop until there's nothing left to drink, and when he comes to his senses, the demon is lying lifelessly on the rug, and there is blood all over his arms to his elbows, and on her pretty dress, and on his face, oh God it's on his face—
He retches, but nothing comes up even as it feels like his stomach is wringing itself out. He wants to cut himself open and drain himself of this, this sickness, this evil inside him, but he can't deny that he also feels powerful, feels like he can do anything with just his mind, and oh, oh he hates himself so much. So much, and he doesn't think he'll ever stop, he doesn't think he'll ever be worthy of love ever again.
His gaze falls on one of Dean's jackets, casually slung over the back of the sofa like he just came home five minutes ago and couldn't be bothered to put it in its rightful place, and suddenly his mind feels clear, his thoughts no longer a jumble of self-hatred and wrongwrongwrong. He needs to get Dean back. He can handle anything as long as he has Dean by his side.
You know what to do. The fucking Devil, but at least he isn't cackling madly anymore.
Sam no longer has to go back to his painfully unscrambled notes for the spell to summon Abas. The information is right there at the forefront of his brain, shining, clear as day, and Sam gets to work, ignoring the Devil whispering in his ear.
~o~
Abas looks not at all amused at being summoned, and especially not at being in a Devil's trap with the corpse of another demon. "What is it?" he asks Sam irritably. "Didn't I just squash you like a cockroach?"
Unlike the previous demon, he doesn't bother getting on Sam's level, and instead remains towering, probably so he can exude power. Sam doesn't care. Let him display all the power he wanted, because in a while he was going to be dead. Of that, Sam is sure.
He counters Abas's question with one of his own. "Where's my brother?"
"I told you," replies Abas, rolling his eyes, looking extremely annoyed at having to be here. "You'll have him back when you give my father your answer."
Without really thinking about it, Sam raises his hand and clenches it into a fist. Immediately Abas grunts, falling to his knees, making choking sounds. His eyes are popping out of his head. He looks like he's in pain, and at that Sam feels a grim satisfaction. Good. Let him feel a fraction of what Sam's feeling, what he's been feeling consistently over the past few days. Let him suffer.
"I said," Sam says calmly, looking Abas square in the face now that they're eye to eye, "where's my brother?"
"I don't know!" Abas repeats, choking, and there is a frantic quality to his voice now that greatly pleases Sam. "I swear, I don't know."
"How?" Sam is kind of scaring himself right now, with how utterly deadly he sounds. He doesn't care, which scares him a little more. It's like there are two halves of him at war right now, but he'll worry about that when he has to. Right now, his focus is Dean and Cas, and only Dean and Cas.
Abas says, "This wasn't supposed to happen like this, all right? This isn't what I had in mind. I don't know where your brother is." He breaks eye contact with Sam. "I swear."
Sam believes him. He doesn't like it, but he does, and that makes him even angrier.
"What the fuck do you mean, this wasn't supposed to happen? What did you do?" he questions.
"What did you do?" he repeats when Abas doesn't answer at once.
The demon looks hesitant, like he's afraid of something. Something other than Sam, that is, and holy fuck but it's a heady rush of power, having a demon look at him like he is something to be terrified of. "Listen," he begins. "This isn't all me, okay, this wasn't my idea. I just wanted to have some fun. You want more information about your brother and that angel, you'll have to ask the big boss yourself. Okay? Okay. Can I go now?"
"No you can't," says Sam calmly, and clenches his fist again. Abas falls forward on all fours, choking some more, and he coughs up blood. Sam doesn't spare it more than a moment of thought; he's got all that he needs now, to do this.
"What do you want?" Abas all but screams, one hand scrabbling at the collar of his suit like he can somehow breathe if only he just loosens his tie a little. "What the hell do you want?"
"I want my brother," says Sam. "I want my brother, you bastard, and I want you to tell me how to get out of here with them. But before that, tell me exactly why we got here in the first place. Your whole plan." He smiles, well aware that his teeth are bloodied, and he must look absolutely terrifying. "If you don't, the 'big boss' will be the least of your worries."
The Devil is no longer cackling in his ear; he is worryingly quiet, and Sam doesn't give a single fuck.
Abas looks appropriately terrified, but still hesitant. "Look, you don't know him, all right?" he begins. "You don't know what he'll do to me if I—"
Almost looking bored, Sam casually flicks a hand towards Abas, who lets out a strangled scream, coughing up more blood, a steady stream of it by now, and Dean is going to be so pissed when he sees the mess Sam's made of his carpet. A thin cloud of black rises over Abas's head, originating from his mouth, and somehow Sam knows what this means. He focuses some more, and Abas screams.
"Stop! Stop, fuck, stop, I'll tell you," he gasps, and Sam blinks at him, lowering his hand.
"Start," he demands. "And if, for a moment, I get the idea that you're lying? You will wish you had died when you had the chance."
Abas swallows. "Look, I told you this wasn't my plan, right? It was Lucifer's. You won't say yes to him and it's pissing him off, all right? He hasn't had to work this hard for anything in ages and he doesn't like it. No one can resist him for too long, but you've been holding out and he's getting desperate now. He needs that yes. He's burning out his vessel, and there's only so much he can do to repair it before he ends up wasting too much energy on it. So he needs you, all right?
"So he told me to do all of this—" the demon gestures around them, the room Sam's in, his home, or is it? "He told me to pull you into this alternate reality, and to break you until you're so desperate to be all right that you'll do anything. But obviously, it's not working. I have no fucking idea how, but you figured it out, and now your brother and that damn angel, I don't know where they are, and I don't know what the hell Lucifer's gonna do, and what's going to happen to you. Fuck, I don't even know what's gonna happen to me."
"Okay. And Dean?"
"I don't know," Abas replies, frustrated. "Dean's not my focus here, okay? He's Michael's problem. Lucifer told us to concentrate on you. I can't help you there."
The edges of Sam's vision are swimming; he looks around to find that everything looks faded somehow, dull and discolored. He wonders if maybe it's an effect of the demon blood, then decides he'll worry about it later. "Tell me this," he says to Abas. "You pulled me away from the world I really live in. You fucked with my mind to the point I no longer know what's real and what isn't. You crippled me. And worst of all, you took my brother from me. How the hell did you think I would say yes after all of this?"
Abas shrugs again. "I told you, it didn't go according to plan, okay? I don't know what comes after this. I don't know what's going to happen now."
"Can you take me home?" Sam demands. "To where I'm really from?" Maybe that's where Dean is. And Cas.
Abas shakes his head. "No."
"Why not?" Sam says, voice shaking with barely suppressed rage. After all of this; nothing? He can't live like this, he can't, not without Dean, not like this—
"I told you," Abas says, again with that patient, kindergarten teacher tone, "I don't know. Nothing went the way it was supposed to. I can't—I'm losing power, all right? I wasted too much creating this reality, and even more trying to fix things when they started going wrong. I haven't got enough to do much of anything right now. You're stuck here, as far as I know."
All Sam can see now is Abas; everything beyond and around is nothing but darkness. The rage that consumes him is fiery in its power, eating him up from the inside out, destroying his veins as it runs through his body, his blood, his heart. He wants to scream, he wants to destroy things, he wants to hurt whoever is the reason for all of this. All he's ever wanted, for as long as he can remember, is Dean, just Dean by his side, where he's meant to be, and this, all of this, it's too much, it's too fucking much, he feels like he's going to scream from the agony, the injustice of it all. God knows where Dean is, where Cas is; God knows if Cas can help. All Sam can do is a big fat bag of jack shit. He doesn't even have it in him to hope anymore, not when there's nothing left to hope for.
"Kid, what are you doing?" Abas's voice is apprehensive.
Without a second thought Sam raises his hand and destroys the demon who is partly responsible for all this, and he pays no mind to the screams of agony.
~o~
The darkness does not dissipate even after the demon is gone; Sam feels like he's held in mid-air somehow. Everything around him is strange, nonsensical—he slight outline of Dean's jacket on the back of the couch, and how it looks blurry around the edges; Sam's own legs, folded uselessly under his body, but they're hurting, for some reason; the ingredients for his spells and the dead demons, who seem to be dissolving into the carpet, and oh man that's gonna be a bitch to clean up.
Dean can't clean up jack shit though, if he's not here, and it hits Sam once more that he'll never find Dean. He'll never see Dean again, not in this universe, not ever. There's nothing left for him here, no life, no career, no Dean, and all he wants is to curl up and die.
Without really thinking about it he moves, dragging himself to where the couch is, struggling to breathe and to tolerate the pain he feels everywhere but especially in his heart; he suffers and struggles for minutes that feel like hours until he can reach up with one hand and grab Dean's jacket, pull it to himself and hold it close. He presses it to his face, inhaling deeply, but the soothing scent of motor oil and musk is fading already, or maybe Sam's the one that's fading? He doesn't know. He doesn't care.
I can fix this. It's the Devil again.
"No you can't," Sam whispers. "You can't. Nothing can fix this." He's aware he's crying into Dean's jacket, ruining it probably, but nothing matters anymore.
Say yes. Say yes and you can have your legs back. And your brother. It's just one word.
"No." He's fucked up enough. Last thing he needs on top of it all is to destroy the world.
Think about it, coaxes the Devil. Dean. You won't have to chase his scent in his clothes if you'll have the real thing. And your legs, of course. Don't you want to be all right again?
Oh, he wants it, he wants it more than anything, to have Dean back, his legs, to be back home, his real home—but he knows the consequences. He can still feel the demon blood singing through him; he doesn't need another fuck-up on top of it.
"No," he repeats, his voice muffled into Dean's jacket. There is barely a trace of his scent left, and inadvertently Sam lets out a sob. He wants Dean, he wants his brother—
All you have to do is say one tiny word.
"NO!" Sam yells. His voice cracks. "Just leave me alone. Leave me alone."
Surprisingly, the Devil listens. Sam spares a moment to think of how this probably isn't the end, no way is Lucifer giving up this easy, and he'll probably be back… but then he turns his attention back to Dean's jacket in his hand, well-worn and soft denim, and he thinks of how this is all he's got left of his brother. This is all he's ever going to have of Dean.
All he wants to do is curl up here, against the back of the couch, clutching Dean's jacket until his body gives up and he dies. He doesn't even care anymore. He thinks maybe, if he dies, he can wait for Dean in heaven.
But is he even going to be allowed in, after the demon blood fiasco? Probably not.
There goes that hope, then. Sam muffles another sob into his brother's jacket, choking on his cries, his entire body hurting but his heart most of all, God it feels like it's going to split in half and crumble until there's nothing left of him, nothing left to save, nothing left to bury, but he doesn't care, he doesn't care. Not without Dean.
He passes out with his face still pressed to Dean's jacket, which no longer smells like Dean.