This is not real. I'm not in the Cage anymore. I got out. This isn't real! I'm free!

"You'll never be free of me."

Lucifer smiles at him, face like picture of sympathy, all but his eyes; his eyes are gleaming with satisfaction and sick pleasure.

"No! You're not real!" Sam denies, and the devil laughs.

"Oh, Sammy-boy, you hurt my feelings! Don't I look real enough for you?"

Sam shakes his head, trying to get as far from grinning Lucifer as he can; but they are in the little room, in his study in the house he once lived with Jessica before Dean came in and with him all this madness.

Dean, he thinks. Dean brought me back. He got the Death to bring me back. This is all illusion, I'm not in the Cage anymore, it's not HIM who stands before me…

Lucifer lays one hand over Sam's cheek; his touch is gentle like lovers, before he curls his fingers like claws and sinks his nails into Sam's flesh.

Sam screams and tumbles backwards; Lucifer grabs his hair and forces Sam to look at him.

"Do not ignore me!" the Devil shouts, and Sam knows that more pain is soon coming…

But it doesn't. Since right then, someone growls, and then Lucifer is dragged away of him.

It's a wolf. A huge wolf, that can at the same both be higher than any mountain Sam has ever seen, and yet somehow still manages to fit inside the room they're standing at with no problem; Sam's brains decide to not think of that dilemma. It fur has the scent of wilderness, mixed with the smoke of faraway campfires and blood; rivers of it. Most of all, the wolf gives Sam sense of something ancient, something that has existed as long as the time itself.

Lucifer is enraged, but Sam sees, that he's also unsure; he's been thrown out of balance, and at the first time, he's not ruling the situation.

"You! What are you doing here?"

The wolf doesn't answer. Still growling, it lays down on the floor, separating Sam and Lucifer from one another. Sam doesn't dare to move; right now, the wolf doesn't seem to be threat to him, but only an idiot would be relaxed while standing in the same room with it…!

"You have no power here!" Lucifer continues shouting, even angrier now because he receives no response. "He's mine! All his fears and screams and nightmares belong to me!"

The wolf huffs, clearly amused now. And then it speaks.

It's not really speaking; at least Sam's brains make their best to tell him that the growling voice can't come from wolf's mouth, since it's not possible for animal to form words like that. But Sam can hear the words, as well as the diminishing tone they're delivered with.

"Yours? And who are you to make such demands? Only a shadow of a Judaism-Christian creature, born from humankinds fear towards the unknown that waits them beyond their graves?"

Lucifer seethes, and somehow he now looks far less threatening than before; Sam wouldn't be surprised if he soon started to stump his foot of irritation.

The wolf continues, "I, on the other hand… I'm the one who first taught the humankind to fear; who made them glance behind their backs and put up little campfires to shoe the dark away. I'm in every howl of a wolf, in every roar of a tiger, in every laugh of a hyena; I'm the one that looks them in the eyes of a stranger, and I'm the one who peaks out of their own. I'm the one that makes them lock their doors at night and by guns to protect their family and property. I'm their most basic fear, older than they're as a species. Fear of the dark, of the unknown… fear of the stranger… fear of the BEAST!" the wolf stood up, standing above Lucifer who seemed to cover before it, and growled against his face, "I'm Fenrisulfr, son of Loke; I was born from chaos, and nightmares, and darkness; I'm Fenrir, who is fear and destruction and death, and I sent you away!"

And Lucifer goes, hurriedly, stumbling out of the room figurative tail between his legs.

Once alone, the wolf lays back down and says, "You should sleep now, young one; sleep, and then go back to your brother, since he misses you dearly as brothers do while they're separated."

"How… how can I, with you here?" Sam asks, covering a bit as wolf turns its huge head to look at him with one of its gleaming, golden eyes. "How can I know you won't attack me while I rest?"

The wolf huffs, and says, "I'm Fenrisulfr; and while I taught your kind how to fear, I also taught you how to fight your fears. How to use fire to scare away group of lions; how to use sharp stick of wood to hunt down a leopard; how to make friends with young wolves till one day their spawn will protect you from their own kind for a scarps of meat." If wolf can do fond, then this one truly does. "I'm a destroyer, but I'm also a soldier. A hunter. You, young one, are my pack… And the pack protects its own."

Sam starts to relax; not so much because of the words, but because of the soothing tone they are delivered. He sits down on his chair (how has he missed this chair!) and mutters, "Maybe I could sit here for a while… but I don't think I'll be able… to sleep…" he yawns.

The wolf maybe smiles, or not; Sam finds it hard to say. "As you wish, young one; to pass time, maybe I could tell you a story? I ask you to go easy with me, its been hundreds, thousands of years since I last time had a company."

"Mmuhuh", Sam mutters, his head already nodding as sleep starts to take its tool over his mind.

The wolf starts speaking, "Once there was two brothers, one as large as a mountain, other as long as a river. They lived near their father, and while they had other siblings, they hardly ever met them. One day, the younger brother, he who was as large as a mountain, asked, "Should we go look our eldest brother, he who lives at the citadel and run faster as the wind that blows in the mountaintops?" And the elder sibling said, "Our father has asked us to not come in the citadel, for he fears that our size could cause us harm there." But the younger insisted, and finally the elder yielded, after making his brother to promise that they would not do anything to cause panic…"

If the wolf continued speaking, Sam could no longer hear him; since he was already falling inside of a dream.


"..am! Sam! SAMMY!"

Sam woke up with a jolt. Dean was there, sitting before him, and hands on his shoulders implied that Dean had been shaking him.

"Wha-? Where are we-?" Sam asked, looking around. He tried to get himself rid of a dream, where a giant wolf and even larger snake went to the town and caused all kinds of havoc till man with flaming hair told them off… And was there a horse, too?

"At motel. Listen, Sam; how are you feeling?" Dean sounded worried.

"Mmmm? Oh, fine… I'm feeling fine." And it was true; he couldn't even remember when he had last time felt this relaxed.

"You sure?" Dean demanded, looking him straight to the eyes. "No more hallucination? No Lucifer looking at you over my shoulder?"

Sam shook his head. "No, the wolf scared him away… No, that was in my dream – wasn't it?"

Dean sighed, and it seemed like mountain had been lifted from his shoulders. "Good… good… Look, Sammy; the wolf was real, okay? Well, he's as real as Lucifer was, anyway – Castiel went out of bonkers, but Crowley had this guy with him who apparently was a wolf, and Bobby made them help you… It's a long ass story, so let's talk more about it, later, okay?"

Sam looked at his brother incredulously. "Crowley put a wolf inside my head?"

"No, the wolf did; and it wasn't a real wolf, it –"

"What Dean tries to say", said Bobby, who walked in the room and offered Sam a cup of coffee, "is that Fenrir, or Fenrisulfr, who is a son of Loki from norse mythology…"

"What – wait, Loki? But – I thought that Gabriel…"

Dean shrugged. "Well, either myths misunderstood something – could be his pet or something – or then he got a lot more around there than we thought."

"… Can I continue? Idjits. As I was saying, Fenrir made an image of himself inside your mind so that it could scare of the image of Lucifer that you already had there; he promised that it would wear off once it's no longer needed."

"… And you're okay with that?"

Bobby shrugged. "We were little out of options there, Sam; and isn't this still better than listen to Lucifer sweet-talking with you all the time?"

"Well… yeas, of course, but –"

Bobby laid his hand over Sam's shoulder, squeezing it firmly. "Good. We can deal with every problems this causes once – and if – they approach. Right now, we have enough worries already…"

Sam looked between them. "What? Did we fail to stop them? How powerful has Crowley become?"

Dean rubbed his neck. "As wonderful as it would be to blame this all on Crowley, well – this time, things are going to be a bit more trickier than that. You – did you hear what I said about Castiel out of bonkers, earlier? Well, that may have been me underestimating the situation…"


Notes

I'll should put up something to explain Fenrir and his siblins, and how they can be both Loke's children and still older than humankind... In my lore, they're kinda like Endless in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series: Loke is Chaos (wildfire), Ferir is Fear (beast), Jörmungandr/Jormungand/Jorgumand is Eternity (snake), and Hel is Underworld (deceased). There's also this little tidbit about Jormungand's (I'll go with that for now) current form, and I'll explain it once we come to that.