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Sam doesn't get the time to process Hell any of the times it seems he's finally gotten out.
When he was trapped, back when he still bothered to hold onto his imagination before the Devil could rip and tear it out of him, he used to picture his escape. Grandiose, emotional, tearing himself out from the earth until the dirt fell from his eyes and it felt like he could choke on all the fresh air. It would feel like breaking free, like the snapping of ropes, the shattering of chains and the world would feel so light it would be like he could fly. Maybe Castiel could take him flying, he would think, and he would picture stony, stoic Cas against the bright blue sky with the fluffy white wings of every cherubic little lawn ornament that decorated American suburbia, and he would soar, and Sam would smile if he could, he would laugh. And then Lucifer would laugh, too, and Sam would forget himself and he would choke on his own throat, and he would try to remember how sunlight looked, dappling through trees.
His body stumbles upright, laying in a circle of dead grass, and his eyes read the lettering on the metal gate that reads "Stull's Cemetery". But his body doesn't notice the crisp fall air even as it gasps into healthy lungs. His body blinks and it stands, but Sam cries, because there is fire in his veins and blood on his hands and flesh under his nails. Forgive me, he cries in Enochian, a terrible garbled prayer that forsakes the holy, and the syllables rip themselves from his clumsy throat until his mouth drips blood, warm and metallic and he wonders if there's anything out there in the abyss that doesn't taste of blood and tears and flesh and bone. He wonders if he was made to taste it, if Azazel's on his tongue as a baby was the first page of a novel that ended in fire and brimstone and blood. It is everywhere. Lucifer cannot burn in from under his nails, from the stains on his teeth. He never swallows it, though, and he never says yes. Are you proud of me, he asks the sky, I never say yes.
He wakes up in the panic room, the panic room. For a moment, he is terrified, but when he jolts upright, nothing holds his wrists down- the door is swung wide open.
Was I dreaming? He wonders incredulously, but it didn't feel like a dream. Lucifer felt real and he felt real as he wrenched free from the terrible fire of a comet, the falling Morningstar, and his chains fell to the earth, and he fell into darkness. He recalls the feeling of Dean's bones breaking beneath fists that were his but weren't, Bobby's body on the ground and Cas's blood in the air. Suddenly, he is running. Up the stairs (and he skips a step because it's a little uneven, it has been since he was seven) and into the living room.
Dean is alive. Bobby is too.
He buries himself into Dean's arms, because he'd been so afraid. But he's still here. Outside, the world is still turning. The sky is bright blue and Sam thinks that means something to him, but it's fuzzy and out of reach and he's just happy to be ok, to maybe believe that miracles can be real for one more day of his fucked up life.
His stomach growls.
Soon enough, he's on a case again, and it's like nothing changed.
Except maybe Cas. Sam misses all the signs and for some reason he can't forgive himself.
The third time it comes back to bite him, he can't be grateful, because it's like he never left. The Devil lounges on a couch in the brand new bunker and carves five-petaled flowers in Dean's skin, like a child doodling on the wall with crayons. Sam pretends not to notice, and then notices he's pretending too much because he didn't hear what Dean said. But it's weird because then Dean walks down the stairs, asks what he's doing. He sounds upset. Sam looks down at his hands and traces the bloody gouges in his arms and legs, each crude little petal leaking blood, and Sam remembers how it can pour out forever and ever and never run dry. He was born with blood on his tongue, that's how he'll die.
You're crazy, Sam, and you don't even know it. That's what Dean had said, gleeful and crazed and he had clapped his hands together. His voice hadn't been right, a little too high. Other Dean's voice is just right as he wraps Sam up in bandages and slaps him across the face. Sam doesn't flinch. It's lazy, for his subconscious. He wishes he had his knife back so he had something to do with his hands.
Dean sobs into his shoulder, apologies and curses.
Sam watches Lucifer perch on the entrance balcony of the bunker, playing shadow puppets with the light of the lamp down below.
All he can taste is warm and sticky and blood.
He's himself again. Relatively. It's hard to draw the line where he ends and all the other shit begins, at this point, but when he looks in the mirror it all seems to be there. Every puzzle piece shoved together, even if some pieces are forced.
He nicks himself shaving and stares at the cut, wonders if he'd still feel whole if all his blood finally ran dry. If he stood ankle deep in it and glared at his own reflection. Wonders if he'd be nothing at all.
He'd just be dead, his brain reminds him, and he puts the razor down.
Outside, the world is big and expansive, stretching on for so many miles, mountains and trees scraping the horizon. Dean is sad about Cas and mad at him too, and he's worried about the leviathans, exhausted because he hasn't been sleeping much at all, so he gives Sam that look. The defenses down look where he smiles out of the corner of his mouth and pride shines through his heavy eyes, the Winchester way of saying "I love you" right before certain doom or when things are too scary, too heavy for words. On John, it was a coward's move, but on Dean, it's reassurance and relief and clumsy love as he slips away to crash into bed. Sam smiles back, but nobody's around to see it. Not even the Devil.
The air in the big wide world is wet, heavy with a coming rainstorm, and when he tries to breathe it in, he throws himself into a coughing fit and he spits up blood because his organs are still weak. He doesn't feel free. He never has, not even at Stanford.
But he is.
Nails dig into his palm (his own) and he stares with defiance into the dark, cloudy sky.
You can forgive me, if you want. I guess I wouldn't blame you if you didn't. But I forgive myself.
He is free.
He repeats it over and over again and his feet sink into mud as the rain pours over his skin. I am free, I am free, and the wind lashes against his skin, water in his mouth and it tastes like the blue sky and the clouds.
He laughs until he cries, and he ruins a good shirt.
Dean finds him in the middle of the night, sitting in the soft clearing grass that grows just behind the bunker, flanked by skinny birch trees with gentle, fluttery leaves. The sky has cleared and it's beautiful, dark indigo and pitch black. There's so little light pollution to mask the galaxies, and Dean takes the moment to stare up at it, mimicking Sam like they used to do on the hood of the car.
"What're you doing up, Sammy?" he asks gently, voice heavy with sleep.
Sam turns his face. His eyes are wet, but he isn't sad. Honestly, he isn't really sure what it is he's feeling, but it makes his heart lighten, like the wind on his face going 90 down the highway, or waves crashing against his ankles in the California surf. His cheeks are red like he's wine-drunk and Dean knits his eyebrows together.
"Just watching the stars." Sam sniffs, and Dean plops down ungracefully next to him, but his weight against Sam's shoulder is kind and warm.
"Sure are somethin', aren't they." Dean comments, trying to appear nonchalant, but his words are chosen carefully and Sam can tell.
For a long while, there's silence. Sam's face breaks into a smile, and he traces constellations with his eyes until they blur up and he has to wipe them with the sleeve of his jacket.
"He never got them right."
Dean stiffens, turns to face his brother.
"What?"
"Never really cared, I guess. But I did. I do." Sam says, and a comet shoots by, hurtling off into the endless expanse. "They're nice."
His voice cracks. Dean pretends not to notice, and Sam keeps smiling, through tears.
"Yeah."
The air is heavy, sharp in his lungs and he feels his loss tugging at his heart, needles and hooks in his skin that weigh him down. Sometimes it's almost like he could drown in midair with everything that drags behind him, the people who's faces he can never forget. He claws his way to the surface every morning, fights for his life. But his mouth tastes rich, like coffee and dew, and he's sure he wasn't born just to carry around blood, or bloodlines, and he's not the sacrificial lamb at the alter, spilling it's guts for the good of the many, the mistakes of the few, the scars on his hands. Fuck you, he cries to the sky, bright but not blue, I am alive. I am not what you wanted of me.
Fuck you, he screams, sinful and raw, I am free.
Freedom is that feeling, wet against his cheeks and exhilarating and terrifying, lonely and unsure and sharp but so dazzlingly bright, so much of it it's like he could choke on it.
But he is alive.
The stars map highways across his eyelids, rivers in his soul.