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In the Biggerson’s bathroom, Sam tries to wipe the blood from his mouth with a wet paper towel. Dregs of it stick to his face and the faint pinkish outline of the stain remains. Not clean, never clean. He sighs, washes his hands, and steps out into the unseasonably cold night to meet Dean and Castiel by the Impala. His breath puffs into vapour in front of him, but he doesn’t feel the chill, just feels numb. It’s pitch-dark out, the meagre street lights and flickering neon signs providing little in the way of illumination, so Dean’s face is cast in shadow when Sam approaches.
Sam can’t meet his gaze as he climbs into the passenger seat, the silence heavy between them in a way it’s never been before. He thinks of the innumerable car rides that carved the shape of their childhood—fleeting homes were just the punctuation marks, the long stretches of road between those forming the real substance of their brotherhood. The silences were frequent but companionable: never like this. Tears almost spring to his eyes at the thought of it—you’ve ruined everything, he tells himself, everything.
“Here.” Sam doesn’t say anything that he’s thinking, doesn’t know how to even start—extends a hand out to Dean, Famine’s ring sitting on his palm. “You should hold on to this.”
You, not me. Can’t trust himself with anything anymore. Sure, he didn’t drink from the demons that Famine offered him, though every cell in his body was screaming for it, but what does that matter in the end? The damage was done already—he drank from the others, the ones he sent to the motel room. Shame burns through him like acid.
“Right,” Dean says and pockets it.
Dean glances at Sam for a second and hesitates, and Sam notices how tired he looks. Feels guilty about it, because it’s probably his fault. What isn’t, these days.
For that brief moment he thinks Dean will turn to him and smile a little, and say, hey, at least you did it, Sammy, you got him, we got the ring. Then his stomach turns as Dean just looks away, tension knitting his brow, and he feels sick that he even thought it in the first place. The arrogance of that. Of course Dean wouldn’t say that—why would he? Nothing he did today deserves praise. He’s weak, pathetic. Jonesing for another hit of bitch blood. Monster, it means you’re a monster. Would want to hunt you. The words might be Dean’s but the thoughts belong to him now too, carved onto the inside of his skull, into the cells of his grey matter, permanent markings. He’s not wrong—he wasn’t wrong, it’s Sam that was wrong, that’s always wrong. He knows that now. What Dean says has to be right, because Sam was so terribly, terribly wrong. He’ll pay the price, he’ll pay any price, beg for and be sated by any scrap of absolution because he knows he deserves none.
Sometimes he sees Ruby in his dreams, and they have sex and he drinks from her flesh, and he wakes up in a cold sweat feeling dirty, tainted, in a way that can’t ever be scrubbed clean. He wishes he could talk about it with someone, what she did to him and what it feels like, but it would just sound like he’s trying to pass the blame. The blame belongs to him and he needs everyone to know that he knows it, so they might not think of him so poorly, so they might forgive him one day. So he swallows it down.
“Um,” Sam says, clearing his throat. He doesn’t remember ever drinking this much blood at one time, and he knows now what that means—he can start to feel it. “What’s gonna, um, happen?”
They’re on the highway now, headed back to Sioux Falls. Sam knows the answer.
Dean sighs. “I’m sorry, Sam, I really am. I hate this as much as you do. But you know—you can’t have more of it, and—”
“I know,” Sam says quickly. Making sure Dean knows that’s not what he wants.
“So, yeah. Detox at Bobby’s again. In the panic room.”
Sam thinks for a moment about the last time, and bile burns his throat as he almost vomits. But he doesn’t want to make Dean pull over, doesn’t want to see the way Dean might look at him if he does, the pity not fully hiding the slightest hint of revulsion that Sam detects now, every time he meets his brother’s gaze. Maybe it’s not really there, but if it’s not, it should be. So he swallows it down.
I hate this as much as you do, Dean said. Sam thinks that maybe he doesn’t.
Maybe he can ask them for something more comfortable this time, he reassures himself, now that he’s submitting voluntarily, maybe it can be slightly less punishing. Maybe some painkillers, the good stuff as Dean calls it, maybe those will take the edge off, he thinks, nearly frantic as his body starts to tremble violently at the thought of what’s about to happen to it. It—ever since what Azazel told him about the demon blood, ever since what Lucifer told him about being the vessel, his body isn’t him, doesn’t belong to him. It’s evil, pure filth. It deserves this. But that’s another cop-out, Sam thinks, because he also deserves it, doesn’t he? Doesn't he? His breathing starts coming in staccato gasps as panic—hah, fitting for where he’s going—starts to set in.
Dean glances at him in concern, noticing this change in demeanour. Even after everything, there’s nobody that knows him like his brother. “Sammy?”
“Yeah,” Sam manages, his throat feeling closed up, as if he were going into anaphylaxis, his teeth knocking together. Swallows down bile again. “Yeah, I’m—just wish it didn’t have to—it’s fine. I’m fine.”
He doesn’t want to sound ungrateful.
“I’m sorry, but—Cas’ll be there this time, on stand-by,” Dean says, by way of reassurance. “So that’s good, right? He’ll make sure it won’t go too far, make sure it won’t—it won’t kill you. Can’t cure you but he can do that much, right?”
“Right,” Castiel pipes up gravely from the back seat.
Sam nods, taking this in. There is silence for a few long moments—save for the constant hum of the engine and the light drizzle of cold rain pitter-pattering on the windshield.
“He wasn’t there last time,” Sam says finally, carefully. “To make sure it didn’t kill me.”
Dean doesn’t say anything, but Sam sees the way his knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. He thinks back to that night, even though he normally keeps it locked away, he has to. The one thing that had kept him from complete despair was the notion that his family was doing what they thought they needed to do to save him. He knew he was dying in that panic room: could feel himself being ravaged from the inside out as he screamed for help, as he seized, as his body thrashed in agony and broke down, broke apart. But he held on to the conviction that they didn't. Wrong again. Wrong about everything.
“Sammy…” Dean begins. Agonized.
Sam looks down and smiles, but he doesn’t feel it. Smiles but wishes keenly that he were dead. The early symptoms of withdrawal are starting to set in, and he tells himself, you deserve this. “Nah, don’t worry about it. Probably would’ve been for the better, anyway.”
The panic room is set up the same way for him. This time, he steps into it willingly, head bowed, unable to look at Dean or Bobby or Cas in the eye. Doesn’t want to see the pity, the disgust—the I’m sorry and you’re family but you’re also weak and you’re a dirty little abomination and this is just the price you have to pay for that. Why me, he had asked Ruby, asked Lucifer, and he feels that deep in his bones right now, a profound exhaustion at what he has been made into, at what he must endure. It’s dangerously close to self-pity, and Sam can’t do that anymore, doesn’t have the right, so he tries to stop. You were weak, he reminds himself. You drank the blood, you’re unclean, now pay the piper.
A cot, a jug of water, a bucket to piss in, or vomit, or both, if it’s going to be anything like last time. Sam remembers his desperate little idea in the car ride over to Bobby’s, thinks about asking Dean or Bobby for painkillers or whiskey or something else to dull his senses—even though they would hardly do anything to help with this demonic affliction. But he decides against it anyway. Pain can purge sin. That’s what hell is for, after all. Maybe this will be the first step to absolution.
This time, they restrain him to the cot from the start in anticipation of the seizures. Maybe someone could stay in here with him, watch out for him, instead of this, Sam thinks, but he doesn’t suggest it. Nobody else does either—probably for the best. Dean gets Cas to lock him in the cuffs: it’s something, at least, Sam thinks with a twinge of hope towards repairing what he broke with his brother, that Dean can’t bring himself to do it.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Cas says, hovering by that heavy, heavy door, as he leaves Sam chained up and to his own devices.
Sam doesn’t know how to answer that.
The shakes and sweats have already started, the nausea and the burning fever coming up behind them. This is the easy part. Help me god please, help me, somebody, I can’t do this I can’t I’m gonna die, please, please don’t leave me here again, I can’t do this again—he thinks suddenly and frantically, any pretensions of stoicism lost completely as the room and its impenetrable iron walls close in on him, and its carefully constructed pentagrams to keep the demons locked in—the demon is you, he reminds himself—makes him remember.
He doesn’t know how long this will take: he realizes that it was cut short last time. He realizes, with a dread that threatens to consume him, devour him and spit out nothing but bones, that there might well be more to this process than what he felt last time, and he wants to scream. He wants it to stop, wants everything to stop. He can’t take this.
When the pain starts to set in—he thrashes against his bonds, but to no avail—the screams start ripping from his throat as if by force. No elaborate hallucination of torture this time, or not yet, it’s just torture: his limbs feel like they’re being torn apart, drawn and quartered, his flesh and organs set on fire.
Nobody will help him, because this is the helping. This is the saving.
He screams the names of his friend and his brother, even though they’re the ones that put him here. He screams and hopes somebody will hear him, if not them. His faith is twisted, mangled beyond recognition, but, stubbornly, it remains: he hopes that somebody will hear him and see that he’s paying for what he’s done, for what he is, in the only way he can. He screams and hopes that agony will bring him to salvation: he screams and it’s a prayer for deliverance.