And here we have the No Rest for the Wicked coda wherein Sam is... not so happy fluffy as the last one. There's some disturbing imagery regarding Dean's new body in this one.
When Dean dies, Sam curls his head onto his brother's shoulder and cries. He can feel the demons milling out front, whisper scratches of conversation and sulfur frustration, and he's pretty sure that the hellhound is still in the room with him, but he needs to cry.
Then he stands up and walks out the front door.
He takes the knife with him, shoves it through the belly of the only demon stupid enough to come at him after Lilith ran, rips it out to spill guts while the demon shudders orange in its death throes. The rest of the demons part to let him pass, their black eyes wide and shining and afraid.
Sam doesn't stop to look for Bobby. He slides into the Impala
It's easier this time around. Not losing Dean, because even after a hundred Tuesday's, one Wednesday, and a Friday (happy birthday to me, some small part of Sam thinks hysterically), it's never going to be easy.
It's easier to cut out that part of himself that listened when Dean told him it wasn't worth his soul. It's easier to cut out the humanity and let the hunter take its place again, even if this time what he's hunting is Lilith and a way in instead of the Trickster.
He has a cache of weapons and nothing left to lose, Ruby's knife still flecked with gore on the jacket he'd carefully lain on the seat, Dean's amulet wrapped so tightly around his fingers he's afraid of losing circulation.
And, this is the important thing, as far as the fucking demons should be concerned, he has himself.
It's more than enough. Sam sets out to prove it, and, if in the meantime, he feels something writhing just under his flesh, something bright and powerful and white, like Lilith's eyes, it's not fucking important next to Dean.
His body feels weird.
That's the first thing Dean thinks when he flits back into consciousness, and then, what the fuck, I don't have a body, I have a soul. Which hurts like demons have been shredding holes in it for fun (which they have) and he curls into a ball of soul and hopes they go the fuck away, just for a little while, leave him alone with the Sammy in his memories before they try to take that from him too.
Only he can't shake the feeling that his body feels weird.
He lifts his hand, mildly surprised that he can, because the demons aren't big on the whole moving thing while they torture your soul into tiny, tasty pieces. Stares at the way the fingers are longer than they should be, the palms wider.
Not his body.
"Your old one was too fucked up to save," a very calm, very flat voice tells him from somewhere to the left. "It was getting pretty rank, dude."
Dean would like to whip around. But his soul hurts and his body isn't his body, so the best he manages is a sideways shuffle that makes it so he can look to see who (what) it is.
His brother's sitting on the floor next to him. At least, Dean's going to assume it's his brother until he's proven otherwise and his heart rises in his soul (weird as fuck to think, but he does not have a body anymore, the demons had shown Sam burning it) at the sight.
"Sammy?" he rasps out. Holy shit, that's not his voice. He touches a hand to his throat, but it feels weird, not right. He's tempted to think that the demons have moved past shredding him physically and gone for the mindfuck.
Then he stops fucking thinking at all because he gets a good look at his brother and he's... he's wrong.
Sam's eyes have never been that pale, washed out hazel bleached almost to colorlessness. His pupils are the only dark thing in his eyes and it's fucking creepy. Dean catches something pale shimmering in, under, Sam's face, and stares.
"Hi, Dean," Sam says. There's something shifting just under Sam's face, something demon not quite what the hell is that just below the surface. It's like looking at a mask sliding over an oil slick, rainbows and brightness and black, but that's not demon, no matter how much his flayed open instincts are telling him it is.
He doesn't know what the fuck it is.
Dean finds out that bile feels pretty damn weird in a new body. "What did you do, Sam?" he asks helplessly. Please, let this be just another form of torture, more wounds for his soul, blood and viscera and bone dripping from him in hell.
Sam tilts his head to the side, that not as ugly as a demon, what the hell, what the hell, it's shining thing under his skin tilting with it until Dean has to close his eyes and look away. When he opens them again, Sam's still watching, face still over the thing under it, eyes reflecting the street light in a flat white glare.
"I kept my promise," Sam says matter-of-factly. He twirls Ruby's knife through his fingers, lightning fast, before he adds, "No more deals, but I got you out."
Lilith had white eyes, Dean thinks. All the demons in hell had been black eyed and uglier than sin, taking their turns ripping pieces off of him that they could lick and chew on, Dean feeling it even after they'd swallowed and come back for more.
His soul's ragged and Sam's more than halfway to soul-less. This isn't how he envisioned returning from hell, all those lovely months days hours how long has it been? moments he'd been trying to forget that the demons were feeding off of him, slowly turning him into one of them.
Something dangles in front of his face. He can feel it even with his eyes closed. Dean snaps back into focus, huddling his soul down tight in this new body that he doesn't know where the hell Sam got it from. He keeps his eyes closed, because he doesn't want to look at Sam, not quite human anymore, sliding nauseatingly into the demonic because he never could take good advice and run with it.
"Here," Sam mutters.
Dean opens his aching eyes when his brother drops something over his head, familiar, even without his real body. He traces the amulet that's resting on his sternum and looks at Sam with a little quirk of the mouth that's the closest he can come to a smile right now, with that staining Sam white from the inside.
"Kept it for me, huh?" he asks, voice still not right. This is going to take getting used to. If it's real.
No answer.
Sam's staring at him, not blinking those creepy, milky hazel eyes at all. His head's tilted to the side, in the same damn way Dean's noticed demons always tilt when they're trying to understand something, and Dean's throat seizes closed on him. "Sammy?"
Sam's face just... shatters. One second there's that oil slick of not human not demon something fucking else what are you little brother behind the bones of his skull and the next it's just Sam; too tired, too ragged, too thin.
Dean startles and pulls into himself when Sam touches him, wraps around him. He's soundin' like a broken record here, but it feels fucking weird, having someone else touch him without trying to rip pieces off in the process and his damn soul...
His damn soul starts singing sappy love songs inside him, big hair ballads, as soon as Sam curls against his shoulder and buries his face in his neck.
"I couldn't," Sam mumbles into his brand spanking old skin. "I couldn't just leave you in hell, Dean."
Dean splays his hand on the back of Sam's skull. It feels real under his fingertips, like this all has, and if this had been his imagination, or, hell, the demons having fun, they wouldn't have given him a Sam that broke without him. They wouldn't have.
Dean wouldn't have believed it. He can, however, believe his own fucking soul, all but shooting goddamn rainbows inside him at how close Sam is. Yeah. There's a soul in his brother still, his and not a demon's, and Dean's willing to work with that for now.
He doesn't have much room to talk. He's pretty sure his own soul is spread out inside, oh, about fifty or so demons.
"I get it, Sam," Dean says.
They'll deal with Sam's eyes and his powers and his not right under the skin tomorrow. Come to think of it, they'll deal with Dean's impending freak-out (he can feel it, lovely and full of pain and he has less than half of a soul now, he knows it because the demons had been eating it and did that mean he was partially demon himself now?) later too.
For right now, Dean's eyes fasten on his little brother's bowed head and he just drinks him in.