A/N: Ok, so this chapter doesn't have any Cas in it. Sorry guys, I know most of you are here for the Cas but I started writing this whole story with a plot in mind and I need to get it out onto paper. This chapter is totally about Sam but fear not for the next chapter is about Dean and Cas. I shall attempt to update again tomorrow. ;) Even if you're patiently waiting for Castiel scenes, I would certainly like feedback on Legion. I tried to make him scary but I don't know if he comes across that way. He freaks me out in my head but it's hard to translate to words.
He's falling again. Tumbling through darkness so pitch black that he can't even make out his hands in front of his face. He can't breathe either, there's a terrible pain in his chest that spreads like a fire lit behind his ribcage and he flails helplessly against it. The burning only grows though until he feels like his whole body will burst into flames at any moment. His eyes sting and his stomach lurches from the fall but it doesn't seem to end. He falls for an eternity. He falls until the darkness around him grows as cold as ice and numbs his hands even as his chest sears white hot and he wonders if there's steam rolling off him when the two elements meet against his skin. He isn't sure which he'd rather crawl into, which would be more merciful, but he decides in time that neither is a good option and he's left trapped between them. He feels thin, like fragile paper suspended between a glacier and a volcano and kept alive only by some miracle. He opens his mouth, screams for Dean, but nothing comes out. Or maybe it does but he can't hear it over the rush of wind. Perhaps the darkness simply swallows it. He wishes he could cry but the tears don't come and the heat burns away at him until there's nothing left but a world of pain. He prays to anything that might listen for it all to stop and when it does, he wishes he'd kept his mouth shut.
He hits the ground with an impact that shatters stone and he can feel the skitter of tiny pebbles dancing and slicing over his skin as they fly away. Every bone breaks. His organs rupture. He can feel his skin stretch horribly as everything in it is flattened unnaturally by the blow but then it all starts to re-knit itself together again and he is denied the sweet mercy of death. He screams silently as his muscles stitch themselves back together and he utters forth every curse word he's ever heard. Then he makes up new ones. The pain of the healing mingles with the pain of the burning in his chest and he wonders just how much he can take. He doesn't pass out though and finally, at long last, the pain ebbs some. He's left panting and weeping into the dirt beneath him. He's alone. Naked. Scared. Dean can't help him now and as he lays there he begins to realize his brother may have gone through something similar. He doesn't know, Dean never told him, never talked about it. Maybe he should have asked more just so he could know what he was getting himself into. He pushes up onto his knees after what feels like forever but there's only more darkness before his eyes. For a minute, he isn't sure if he's been blinded.
Then there's light. It's faint at first, dim in the distance, but as he squints through the pain and the tears, he can see it getting brighter. He stares at it, clings to that bright spot in all the darkness, and reaches out a trembling hand toward it. He says a prayer, says the name of every angel he can think of, and hopes it's someone coming to help him. The light shatters and radiates a million tiny rainbows across the tears still clinging to his lashes as he squints into it. It's so bright it hurts but he can't look away because it's better than the darkness. It's sunshine bundled into too tight a form. He can feel it radiate over his skin but it's not burning him and the pain in his own chest gets lighter as it approaches. He says a name, he think it might be Castiel's, but he still has no voice in this place. The light wavers and then dims leaving only a human form standing in the middle of it. He blinks away the last of the lingering spots before his eyes and stares up into the face of his little brother. Adam. He'd forgotten in his pain that his brother had also fallen and he reaches up a hand for support as he tries to find his feet.
When it isn't taken, he looks up again and finds that Adam's face is contorted into an unbridled rage. "Look at what you've done," the young man growls, "Look at what has happened to us now, what you've done to me. This is YOUR fault, Lucifer. I had a fate and you have denied it to me. You have pulled me into your perdition and now we are BOTH punished." The scowl on Adam's face deepens into a look of disappointment and loathing so intense it makes his soul recoil. It leaves him shaking as his younger brother takes a step forward, looms over him in a way that shouldn't be possible…and then a whole new pain starts.
Sam wakes up screaming and straining against the chains around his wrists. It takes him a full five minutes of panicked struggling to realize he isn't back in Hell again. He could almost weep with gratitude though it's an odd feeling considering that he's still shackled hand and foot to a dank brick wall. There isn't much light in the room save for a single bare bulb across the room from him. It's set into the stone next to the only door he can see and he scans around quickly to take in his surroundings. He's alone and he hopes with all his might that Dean didn't get caught too. His mind turns to Castiel and his heart tightens painfully. The last time he'd seen his friend, the infant was clinging to his chest, crying out in terror as Legion approached, and then the world went black. Sam tugged uselessly against the thick bindings that held him to the wall but his aching shoulders were a testament to the fact that they could apparently easily hold all his dead body weight so it he knew he stood little chance of breaking them by sheer force.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, ignoring the moisture that immediately seeped through his shirt. He took a few long deep breaths as he shoved away the terrifying memory of his time trapped with Michael and tried to just concentrate on getting free and finding Castiel. Sam could only imagine the infant was utterly panicked by then and he didn't want to think about what could have already befallen the little angel. He shuddered at the memory of the demons they had already fought and the hunger he'd seen in their eyes. Crowley had called the child a 'delicacy'. The mental image that accompanied those thoughts made Sam want to vomit. He craned his neck to better examine the thick manacles that were wrapped around each wrist. They had been attached to the wall by a short heavy chain which had been nailed into place and Sam tugged experimentally to see if there was any sign of weakness in the attachments that he could concentrate on to free himself. Sadly they held perfectly firm and he hung his head as he tossed aside his mounting frustration in favor of just trying to think of an alternative way to get free.
Sam's wrists were bloody and raw with his efforts by the time the echo of footsteps reached his ears from the hallway and he paused to watch the door intently. The newcomer stopped just outside the entry and the smell of soil leaked in around the edges leaving Sam with no doubts as to who his visitor was. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he pressed back against the wall as far as he could go but there wasn't any way to escape. The handle squealed with years of disuse and the door groaned as it crept open revealing the horror on the other side. Legion glided in silently with his head tucked so that his eyes were hidden behind the ratty curtain of red hair. He moved with a strange unnatural grace made all the more pronounced by his lanky form and every now and then he would twitch or shudder in a jerky movement so fast it could only be seen as a blur. The scent of damp earth rolled off him in a pungent wave and Sam recoiled from it as far as his chains would allow, his nose scrunching in distaste.
Suddenly the demon was in front of him, mere inches from his face, until all of Sam's field of vision was taken up by those horrible sunken green eyes staring at him from within a dark ring of dead looking flesh. The thing met his gaze and Sam shuddered. Its presence laid a heaviness on the very air as if someone had wrapped the world in damp blankets and the hunter struggled against the feeling of suffocation. The torrent of negative emotions he'd felt back in the tunnel returned full force, crashing over Sam in a wave and he jerked at his chains hard enough to bring a fresh trickle of blood down his forearms. There were so many different emotions warring for control but Sam latched on to the only one he felt might be of some use: anger. His teeth ground together and he glared at his captor. This thing had Castiel and that was what he would use as his point of focus.
"Where is he?" Sam snarled at the demon, "Where's Cas?"
Legion made an ugly rattling noise somewhere in the back of its throat and when it opened its mouth, Sam decided the smell of soil wasn't so bad, at least, not compared to the fetid stench of rotting flesh that wafted up from the grotesque maw. When the demon spoke, it's mouth didn't move, it merely hung open limp and dead and a chorus of voices at least a dozen strong burbled up from somewhere within it. "So much concern for your broken angel. Such loyalty to a being that cannot and does not truly care about you." Every word was a mixture of cries and whispers wrung out from voices that ranged from the high lilt of a little girl to the deep throaty rumble of a fully grown man and every variation in between. Sam swallowed down his revulsion and tried to just concentrate on what the thing was saying. "I should think you would be more concerned about the current state of your own brother over some divine being that will never truly accept you. Perhaps we are more alike than I thought."
"Dean." Sam's heart fell straight through his shoes and he felt his anger ramp up a notch. The thing had Dean. He'd hoped his brother hadn't come back in time, that Legion had simply taken him and Cas and left, but apparently no such luck. Sam shook his head and tried to control the shaking breaths he was taking. "We aren't anything alike. I would never hurt my brother. You killed yours."
The demon snorted and curled its lip to reveal a row of yellowed teeth. "And so shall you." It leaned in and the smell of it grew strong enough to burn Sam's eyes. "Unless you make the choice I did not. Unless you choose to save him."
Sam resisted the urge to close his eyes and pull away. The world felt like it was tipping on its side the closer Legion got to him and his very skin felt like it was crawling. Sam gagged but held down the bile that rose up in his throat. He clung to the words Legion was saying and eyed the demon warily. It was a trick, that much he was sure of, he just needed to find out what the catch was. "Yeah? And how am I supposed to save him? Sell you my soul?" he asked bitterly.
Legion grimaced in a way that Sam could only assume was an attempt at a smile. "No," it whispered in its myriad voices, "all you need do is that which you have done before. Reject divinity. Turn your back on a god that does not care about you or your brother." A single jagged nail was drug down Sam's cheek and as the skin touched his, Sam could hear the sound of a thousand voices screaming somewhere in the back of his head. The finger was clammy and lifeless, devoid of warmth, and he jerked his face away. "You are the vessel of Lucifer. An empty vessel, yes, but still a vessel. You have been touched…tainted…imbued with him. My master needs an angel of great power to free him. You are no angel but you housed one. With a proper sacrifice, it will be enough to break the Great General's cage." The voices dropped to sibilant whispers. "Free him, Sam. Free him and you and your brother will go unharmed. Free him and make the world more pure for he shall lay down upon the lands and cleanse the earth of those who are deserving of punishment."
Sam gritted his teeth and willed the wall behind him to give more so he could put space between him and the overwhelming taint of the thing in front of him. He felt soiled just being that close to it. "Let me guess. The sacrifice? It's Cas, isn't it? You want me to kill him so your boss can go free?" Sam turned his head to glare at the demon. "Go back to Hell."
Legion withdrew slightly and Sam breathed in what little fresh air he could gather. "The angel will die," it said flatly, "that is inevitable. He rebelled against his own brothers. He slew his own blood for the sake of another. He rebelled, just as the Morning Star rebelled, and he will be punished for it as was his kin so long ago."
"Cas didn't rebel against God," Sam said hotly, "he rebelled against the other angels who were trying to end the entire world! He helped save billions of people!"
"Irrelevant." Legion waved the idea away dismissively. "He rebelled. He slew his own kind. He will be punished." The demon spouted the rhetoric with a conviction born of years of repetition.
Sam wondered how many people had been slain by this thing while hearing that. "I'm not helping you kill Cas," he said with matching determination.
"Then you choose the death of your brother instead," Legion said simply, "and he will die at your own hand."
Sam shook his head in denial. "No. Never. You can't make me kill Dean. Even Lucifer couldn't make me kill him."
Legion did smile then and the grotesque sight sent a shiver straight down Sam's spine. "The Morning Star made the mistake of trying to control you," it hissed as it stepped toward him, "I will simply strip your control away and in your madness, you will destroy all that you love." Sam twisted away in vain as Legion reached for him once again but he couldn't move enough to dodge the gnarled hand which slid like oil into his hair. Darkness seeped into his mind and coiled serpent-like around his thoughts. Every horrid thing he'd seen in Hell, every pain he'd suffered, every moment spent at the hands of Michael in his rage were all wrenched forward in bright Technicolor glory and somewhere Sam could hear a tormented high keening. It took him several minutes to realize it was his own voice raised in a scream.