Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
Sam came to in the bunker, feeling lighter than he had in a long time. He found himself standing in Dean's room, and his most recent memories definitely didn't end with him being in the bunker at all.
He should be on a bridge with Dean, Mary, and Cas. He remembered that much. They were waiting for Billie to come collect the price on the deal they made with her, and Sam was going to insist on being the one to die. Dean sacrificed himself for Sam too many times, so Sam figured it was his turn to repay the favor.
The rest of his memories come back slowly.
Mary pulled out her gun, she was going to be the Winchester to pay the price. She wanted Billie to take her, and Billie wanted to let her be taken. Sam broke out of whatever it was that Billie used to keep him and Dean away, grabbed Mary's gun, and pulled it away from her head, but she fired it anyway. Right into his head. The pain blinded him for only a few seconds before it was over.
And now here he was standing around Dean's room. He swiped his hand at Dean's nightstand, not overly surprised that it passed right through like nothing was there at all.
He was dead, but he wasn't in The Empty. He tried to leave Dean's room, but he couldn't move past the doorway. Every time he tried, an invisible wall blocked him.
So, he paced the length of Dean's room over and over. He had experience being a ghost when they prevented the seal that involved killing two reapers from being broken, but that was so long ago that Sam couldn't interact with anything the way he learned to back then. Not without practicing again.
It seemed that, with the lack of any reapers coming for him, he had plenty of time to relearn. Maybe, if he let Dean know he was still hanging around, they could figure out a way to free him from The Veil.
He heard the heavy slam of the bunker door, followed by footsteps down the stairs and through the halls. They sounded more unsteady than normal, and Sam knew that there had to be more than one person given just how many steps he heard.
If it was Dean with both Cas and Mary with him, then Sam was grateful that they were sticking together at least. He was glad that Dean wouldn't be alone.
He could peek his head out of the doorway, as long as most of his body stayed in the room. He saw Dean's back and he saw Cas. Then, they came closer, and he saw himself being carried. Dean had his arms hooked under Sam's arms, while Cas gripped his legs. Their struggle explained the unsteady footsteps, and Sam watched his own head lifelessly roll from side to side as they moved him into his room.
The last time he was a ghost looking at his own body, he hadn't really died. Pamela gave her life so that they could slip into The Veil to save a single seal.
In the end, Sam figured it hadn't really been worth it. They saved one seal, but it didn't matter. The angels made sure the Apocalypse happened despite his and Dean's efforts to stop it.
"Dean!" Sam yelled as they disappeared behind the door to his room. "Dean, I'm right here! Cas, please tell me you can hear me!"
Cas stepped out of his room a minute later, but Dean didn't follow and the door shut between them.
Sam could just barely hear Dean yell something. Cas didn't reply, he simply started walking over to Dean's room.
Sam saw Mary come into the hall with a steaming mug and knock on his door. He couldn't hear what she said, or if Dean replied, but he was glad that they'd still have each other with him gone.
Cas stepped into Dean's room and looked directly at him. "Sam," he said in a breathless way, like he couldn't believe what he saw.
"Cas, what the hell is going on?" Sam asked. "I saw you guys haul in my body, so I should be in The Empty."
"Billie was your reaper," Cas said.
"Yeah, I kinda know that part already, Cas."
"I killed her. Just after you died, I killed her. I should have done it sooner, before Mary took out her gun. Sam, I'm sorry."
Sam shook his head with a small smile. "Dean and I knew that one of us would be dead at midnight," Sam said. "But if Billie died, why did I end up here?"
"You were assigned Billie, and she died after you were already dead."
"So, now I'm stuck," Sam said.
Sam thought back to Bobby, something he hadn't done in quite a long time. When Bobby dodged his reaper, he ended up attached to the flask that Dean kept and had to stay near it.
"Sam, I'm going to fix this," Cas said. The shift of his expressions was still nearly nonexistent, but Sam learned to read them through the years. He had a determination that Sam hadn't seen in years, not since he did all he could to keep Raphael from opening Purgatory. "I'm going to do whatever it takes to help you, Sam."
Cas left the room and walked down the hall with large, quick steps.
Sam stuck his head into the hallway and yelled, "At least tell Dean that I'm still here, Cas! Cas!"
Cas rounded the corner, either not hearing Sam or ignoring him.
Sam tried to take a deep breath, and the lack of air filling his lungs finalized the realization that he was no longer alive. He wanted Billie to take him as the price, but he assumed that The Empty would be his final stop. He hoped that it would be a place where he forgot all of the things he left behind in life.
Instead, he was trapped in Dean's room with his family thinking he was beyond their reach, Cas on a mission to help (which, knowing Cas, could easily go too far), and with no idea what it was that he ended up attached to.
He looked through Dean's room. After spending their entire lives crammed in motel rooms without privacy, he figured that snooping wasn't such a big deal. Besides, he was dead. Did the normal rules of society apply to him?
Had they ever?
But once they moved into the bunker, their individual rooms became a little sanctuary for each of them. Something they could finally call their own. Violating that sanctuary was wrong, but this was a desperate time. His internal war over if he was doing something wrong or not kept raging as he tried to figure out what Dean had that Sam would be attached to.
Dean kept an array of weapons in his room, and Sam dismissed that any of them would potentially be what he was attached to. They were purely Dean's weapons, and Sam held no connection to them in life whatsoever.
He set up a few pictures around his room, the old ones they got from Jenny a long, long time ago. When Sam's premonitions were just starting and their biggest concern was finding their dad. Seeing them as a family in the pictures left him wondering if John would be resurrected one day. If Mary was, why wouldn't John be, too?
He dismissed the pictures. Most of them were from when he was an infant, and they held more importance to Dean than they did to him.
Sam paced again. Not being able to interact with objects made searching that much more difficult, and he wasn't expecting Dean to come into his own room anytime soon so he could try giving some sort of signal to show he was still hanging around.
When he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could almost feel the connection that kept him there. An invisible pull. An invisible leash that wouldn't let him stray too far. At least, not yet.
He opened his eyes again, trying to keep drawing on that feeling of being bound, and his focus was drawn to a wooden box sitting next to a lamp that had pictures leaning on its base.
He put his hand on the box, or tried to. The first time, his hand slipped right through it.
So he tried again.
And again.
He kept trying until he was so frustrated and angry that he couldn't only grip the box, but he could also throw it across the room.
It crashed to the ground, broken and its contents spilled across the floor.
Dean must have heard the crash, because he came running into his room, gun drawn. Their mother trailed behind him, her own gun in hand and looking lethal despite the red eyes and puffy cheeks.
Then Dean looked at the shattered box on the floor, and he and Sam both stared at the same thing laying near it.
Dean's amulet.
Author's Note: We've seen Dean's view, so here's Sam. A little less emotional, but he's not the one thinking his brother is dead forever. For those of you who also follow Becoming Human, I hope to have the next chapter posted later today or tomorrow.
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