Warnings: Language that's harsher than usual, horror-esque things, violence, more hell PTSD.
"Into the flood again,
Same old trip it was back then.
So I made a big mistake,
try to see it once my way."
-Alice in Chains, Would?
Chapter 11a
"Are we going to talk about it?"
Sam blames the question on the beer. Actually, he probably blurted it out because of Bobby's whiskey, which they've already polished off. The beer was just an afterthought. To be fair, they have plenty of reasons to be laying on the junker in the salvage yard, getting wasted while staring at the stars. Things like nightmares of hell, nerves that would rival a paranoid junkie's, and the apocalypse. Sam hopes the hangover is worth facing Bobby's wrath after the man finds out they drank the last of his whiskey.
"Talk about what?"
They showed up at Bobby's yesterday morning, two days after Dean found Sam in the bathroom with a newly shaved head. To Sam's surprise, Bobby had a few choice words for Dean when he opened the door. Dean seemed to be expecting it and didn't offer much of a defense against the other man. Sam just stared, wondering what Dean had done this time to set Bobby off. After a slew of cuss words and multiple threats of violence, Bobby let them in with a final word of "idjit." Dean spent the day fixing up things around the house, pretending that he wasn't watching Sam's every move. Sam spent the day researching the apocalypse.
"About me being Lucifer's vessel."
Dean sighs and takes a long pull from his beer bottle, "Nothing to talk about."
"You're kidding, right?"
Dean shrugs, "Not really."
"So you're perfectly alright with this? Not bothered at all?" Sam's having a hard time wrapping his head around Dean's nonchalance. When Lucifer wriggled his way into Sam's brain to personally deliver the message, he was terrified. Never mind the self-loathing, the disgust, and the horror that came with knowing that he is the sole vessel of Lucifer, Sam's freaking scared. It worries him that Dean isn't too.
"Course it bothers me," Dean replies with a snort, "But it's not like you're going to do something stupid like let Lucifer lead you by the nose, right Sammy?" he finishes the sentence with another drink of beer.
Sam blinks, wondering if he's really hearing the sarcasm and barb in the response, or if the whiskey is messing with his head. Maybe it's a bit of both.
"…Is there something you need to say to me?" Sam asks.
"Nothin' I haven't already said."
Alright, Sam knows that he didn't imagine Dean's hostility that time. He shakes his head.
"No. C'mon, Dean, let me have it. If it'll make you feel better, tell me how much I screwed up so we can move the fuck on."
That was definitely the whiskey talking. No way would he normally bait his drunken older brother, especially with something so sensitive and fragile. He's been waiting for Dean to bring up old feelings but this is bordering on kamikaze. Maybe deep down he still wants Dean to punish him for what he did. Hell and Tim punished him for the apocalypse, but who's punished him for hurting the people he cares about?
Dean finishes off his beer, tipping his head and the bottle all the way back before he chucks it into the abyss of the salvage yard. Sam hears it smash in the distance. Dean slides off the hood of the 67' Chevy truck they are lounging on and staggers a bit as he gains his footing. Sam stays on the hood but he sits up.
Dean regards him for a moment. It's dark in the salvage yard; the only light sources are some dim lights from the house yards away, and the moon. Sam doesn't need the light to know that Dean's pissed. He's seen the narrowed eyes and tense jaw enough to know that right now, Dean's contemplating either hitting him or cutting him down with words. Sam's prepared for either.
That's why he's so surprised when Dean simply shakes his head and says, "Forget it. S'not worth it." Then he starts to make his way back to the house.
Sam gapes for a moment and then he hops off the truck hood, and starts to follow his brother. When he catches up, he grabs Dean's shoulder and hauls him back around so that they're face to face. The move makes them both sway drunkenly and Dean glares.
"No. You started this so finish it." Sam just wants it out in the open. He doesn't know about Dean but he doesn't have the energy to walk on eggshells anymore. He knows that underneath Dean's gratefulness for Sam being alive there's a mountain of resentment and anger lying there, waiting to erupt. Sam would rather they just get it out of the way.
"You really want to re-hash all this?" Dean demands, "You really wanna go there?"
Not really, no, Sam thinks but instead, he says, "You're obviously still pissed..."
"No shit, Sam!" Dean explodes, "You sucked down demon blood, lied to me for a whole year, damn near choked me to death, and let Lucifer outta his box! And you did all of this after I fucking told you that you were wrong! Damn right, I'm still pissed!"
There it was. Dean looks a little surprised as if he isn't sure where the words came from. Sam feels calm, if not a little stung, because he's known from the get-go that this is what's been right under the surface.
"Finished?" Sam asks evenly.
Dean snarls and for a second, Sam thinks that Dean is most definitely not finished, but Dean just growls, "Screw you, Sam," and stomps back to Bobby's house. Sam can hear the door slam from his spot in the salvage yard.
Sam sighs, grabs another beer out of the cooler they brought out earlier, and slides to the ground. It's gonna be a long night.
Dean.
Dean's not sure what happened. One moment, they're relaxing on the 67' Chevy enjoying the lull of the alcohol, and the next he's screaming at Sam. He barely remembers getting from point A to point B; he blames it on Bobby's whiskey.
He sighs as he paces the guest room, dragging a hand over his face. Sam does this on purpose, there's no other explanation. The persistent, selfish bastard knows what buttons to push; only he doesn't push them, he bangs on them like a two-year-old.
'Let's talk about it, Dean.'
'Tell me what you're feeling, Dean.'
'You started it, Dean.'
Shut up, Sam.
Shut up.
Shut up.
SHUT UP!
Dean kicks his duffle bag and then gets irritated when the action does little to calm his anger, or Sam's voice in his head. He didn't want to fight and he definitely didn't want to bring up all the shit that Dean was sure was behind them, but Sam just had to push. Like always.
These past few days all Dean's been concerned about is Sam: whether or not Sam's sleeping, if he's eating, if he's ok, or if he's going to have another breakdown. He just wants his little brother to be ok. The only time Dean even thought about what happened pre-Tim, was when Sam asked – more like stated, really – that Dean still had to be pissed about the Ruby thing. That was close to three days ago.
He doesn't really know where his earlier words came from. Maybe it was Sam's persistence. Maybe it was the Jim Beam. Or maybe Sam was right all along and he is still pissed, and he just pushed it aside in the aftermath of fear, revenge, and relief. But he thought that after Zachariah's mind fuck and Sam's murder that he'd gotten over all of the other stuff. When Sam was dead, Dean wanted nothing more than to have one more moment with him. He just needed one more moment to tell Sam how sorry he was and to tell him how much he still cared about him. Could his feelings have changed so quickly? Was he really that pissed at his brother that it all could come rushing back now that Sam's safe and sound? Does it even matter anymore?
Dean sighs and rubs his hands over his face again, harder, like he can scrub away the thoughts and feelings in his head.
"I'm too drunk for this shit," Dean mutters out loud, ripping his shirt over his head, preparing to collapse on the bed and fall into a drunken oblivion.
-0-
He's at the warehouse again. The air is metallic with blood and heavy with decay; Dean gags as the combined smells hit the back of his throat. In the center of the over-sized room, there's a singular chair resting in an impossibly large puddle of blood. Dean recognizes the chair as the one that he'd tied Tim to.
Suddenly, Sam's sitting in the chair. His image flickers like a spirit's before it solidifies. Sam looks unharmed but his arms are tied behind him, and there's unmistakable fear in his eyes.
"Sam?" Dean says. Panic thrums through him along with desperation. He can't let Sam get hurt like this again. Dean moves forward; he has every intention of untying his brother and getting the hell out.
A second presence stops him. Tim is standing behind Sam, lead pipe in hand. Only, Tim doesn't look like Sam does, whole and human, he looks like a zombie. Dean can see all of the lacerations that he carved into Tim's body, along with the dark bruises that he put there. He can even see the rope burn around the hunter's neck.
Dean stares in horror as Tim starts to circle around the chair that Sam's bound to, and staggers from his broken and bruised knees. Tim's eyes are all white and cloudy, there's no trace of humanity or soul left in them at all.
"Isn't this what you wanted, Dean?" Tim rasps through his crushed throat, "He's a monster. A thing."
Tim swings the pipe in a perfect vertical arc, catching Sam under the chin. Sam's head snaps back cruelly with a loud crack. Sam cries out and scrunches his face in pain, trying to control the agony that's surely throbbing in his skull.
After flinching from the sudden assault on his brother, Dean snarls, "You bastard. I'm gonna…"
"Kill me?" Tim finishes smartly with a smirk. He spreads his arms, revealing decomposition, "Don't you think you did a good enough job the first time?"
"Dean…" Sam groans through clenched teeth. He rolls his head until he's hunched over in the chair, his hair covering his face.
Dean starts forward again, intending on taking Tim out and relieving Sam's distress, but he finds he can't move. Confused, he looks down and sees that he's secured to his own chair; ropes are wrapped tightly around his arms and torso. Dean frowns and starts to struggle.
"Not so great, is it? To be on the receiving end."
Dean starts and then gags as the putrid stench of Tim's crumbling body fills his nostrils. Tim is standing right in front of him and getting closer by the second. Dean eyes the pipe in the hunter's hand.
"You gonna hit me too, Timmy?" Dean's bravado does little to cover up his fear.
"No," Tim's hoarse voice replies. He's right in Dean's face and he leans closer, almost pressing his dry mouth to Dean's ear, "I'm just gonna make you watch."
Then Tim's next to Sam again, like he never moved at all. Dean pulls and twists but the ropes around him don't give. Tim smiles; the curl of his lips reveals blood stained teeth. Then he starts beating Sam with the pipe, and he doesn't stop until Sam doesn't have enough oxygen to scream anymore. And then, Tim wraps a rope around Sam's neck and pulls.
Dean threatens, yells, struggles, and cries, but Sam still dies. Afterwards, Tim collapses to the ground in a pile of rotting flesh and bone. Dean's left in the chair, unable to do anything but stare at the corpses.
Sam.
Sam drinks until all of the beer in the cooler is gone, and then he stumbles to the couch in Bobby's living room. It's late, around three in the morning, and Bobby's house is silent. Sam lies on the sofa with one foot on the floor, staring at the hazy ceiling. He pushed Dean to remember how messed up they are and how badly Sam screwed up, but he doesn't regret it. It felt wrong letting Dean take care of him and fuss over him like a mother hen, when Sam knows he doesn't deserve Dean's concern. Besides, the sooner they both face reality, the sooner they can fix this mess he's created with Lucifer.
For the first time in days, Sam falls asleep not thinking about hell, but about Lucifer and what's to come.
-0-
"We have eternity here, Sam," Nix's voice flows over Sam like an unwanted caress, "But I'm losing my patience with you."
The warning in the comment does not go unheard, and Sam shudders under the chains that are strapping him to the rack. The chains are hot; Sam's skin turns red and blisters underneath them. He stopped feeling it some time ago.
"Patience is a virtue," Sam says with a small, sardonic smile.
Nix hums with fake amusement, "Irony, cute. Have I told you lately how alike all you Winchesters are?"
The demon ends the rhetorical question with the swing of a hammer, which he brings down on Sam's arm. The limb snaps cleanly and Sam howls. One of Nix's favorite things to do is compare the screams of all the Winchester men. Nix hums again but this time, it's with approval.
Sam's chest heaves in agony and he purposefully avoids looking at his mangled right arm. It's not the most painful thing that Nix has doled out but broken limbs are no walk in the park. Sam remembers that from life.
Nix snaps his fingers in front of Sam's face, "Don't check out on me yet, kiddo. We're just getting started." Sam flinches away from Nix's hands, and the demon chuckles.
There's something new in Nix's hand, something that Sam has become too familiar with. Against his will, he tries to struggle under the chains, which only sends shooting pain through his broken arm. The pain is almost unnoticed against the fear that has consumed him. It takes all of his will not to beg, to plead for anything but what Nix has planned.
Nix knows it, too. Sam can tell from the perverse, satisfied smile on his face.
"Say yes, Sam."
He wants to. God help him, he wants to. In this moment, staring at the beaker of acid in Nix's hands, Sam wants nothing more than to give in.
But he doesn't. He presses his lips together in an attempt to keep them from quivering, and rolls his head back and forth against the rack. 'No.'
Nix shakes his head in mock disappointment, smile still plastered on his face, as he starts to pour.
Sam wakes up screaming.
Bobby's living room is flooded with pink light as the first signs of morning make themselves present. Sam's on the hardwood floor, having apparently thrashed enough in his sleep to push himself off the sofa. His chest is still heaving with residual fear and panic. He remembers that particular moment in hell clearly. It was one of the only times where he felt his resolve weaken, where he considered saying "yes" just to stop the pain.
Sam snorts in disgust. His father lasted one hundred years without breaking. His brother last thirty. Sam was in hell one week and he wanted to say yes. Pathetic.
He sits up on the floor fully and puts his head in his hands. His head is throbbing but Sam's unsure if it's from the nightmare –memory? – or from the hangover. Maybe it's both. His forehead is tacky with cold sweat and he feels hot, but he finds that he can't be bothered.
Sam's just worried about the voice in his head, whispering, pressing.
"Say yes, Sam."
"Give in."
"Say yes, and it'll all be over."
"Dean will forgive you, Sam."
Sam presses his palms into his closed eyes, "Not real," he mutters, "You're not real anymore."
But he knows it'll always be real. As long as Lucifer is still on earth and not back in his box where he belongs, it'll always be real.
Before he ever realizes what he's doing, Sam's half stumbling, half crawling to the basement and bolting himself in the panic room. Maybe down there the voices won't be as loud.
A/N: Part two with the rest of Dean's POV will be in the next (and final) chapter. Bobby's going to make an appearance as well.