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When Sam was 16, Dean saved his life. It wasn’t the first time, it wouldn’t be the last, but Sam remembers it vividly.
Dad letting them take on a hunt without him was a big deal. Dean sometimes got to find the hunts, scouring the papers for their kind of work, and Sam almost always did a big chunk of the research on the cases that needed it, but every other move on a hunt was made strictly on dad’s orders. It seemed like a waste to Sam; if you’re going to mold your sons into soldiers, the least you could do is trust them on the front lines.
So when Dean found the spirit in Wyoming and dad decided that a werewolf in New Mexico took precedence, Sam went out on a limb and suggested that he and Dean head north while dad went south. He didn’t expect dad to go for it. He’d only suggested it on the basis that it couldn’t hurt to try.
Dean’s face lit up when dad gave them the reluctant go-ahead, and they were on their way.
It wasn’t a complicated hunt—typical unfinished business, an old spirit waiting for the end too long to be anything but angry about it. It was going so smoothly, too. They found the grave, dug down to the bones, and set them up for a quick salt and burn. Of course, since things don’t just come easily for them, the spirit had to show up just as Dean struck the match to set the bones ablaze.
Sam doesn’t remember it pushing him down into the grave, but he does remember the stomach-turning sound of his skull connecting with the edge of the headstone on the way down.
Dean must have tried to keep him awake—standard procedure for a head injury—but Sam can only remember being conscious a few times that night.
---
The first time, Dean’s running his shaking hands over Sam’s face, sticky and smelling like copper, talking like there’s no reason for Sam to be scared.
“C’mon, kiddo, time to wake up,” he says, like it’s time for a bowl of Cheerios and the walk to school. Just another day, everything is fine.
Dean’s good at that—injecting normality into crazy situations until they start to make sense.
Sam doesn’t open his eyes, but he does try to sit up. He can feel the pain of the action, but it’s distant, settling fuzzy and thick like a prickly blanket over his skin.
“No, no, don’t—just stay down for me, okay?”
There’s a firm hand on his shoulder and he can smell well-worn leather, the mustiness of air filtered through the heater, so he nods sluggishly and stays down.
“Algebra test t’day?” Sam manages to force out between his suddenly chattering teeth, and Dean laughs. It sounds a little hysterical, reverberating through the car interior and bouncing around Sam’s skull.
“Jesus, Sam,” he mutters, pressing something wet and reeking of alcohol to Sam’s forehead.
He’s warm and tired and everything’s okay because Dean’s close enough to lay hands on, so Sam lets himself fall back asleep.
The pain is worse the second time. There’s no needling blanket of muted agony, just pain, sharp and ugly in its clarity. It increases in intensity as he comes to, lungs seizing up and brain going empty as it barrels down on him like an approaching freight train he can’t look away from.
He finally manages a high-pitched whine like a wounded animal, as it hits him full-force. That brings the far-off sound of Dean’s voice through the rushing, pounding swell of white noise in Sam’s ears, that same tone that says nothing’s wrong, everything’s gonna be okay, but it’s just no good. Dean’s too far away and everything hurts.
Sam doesn’t even notice the car has been rumbling under him until it stops. His body presses against the seatbelts fastened haphazardly over him, and a new burst of pain runs through him, makes him wail as spikes of red and white flare up behind his closed eyes.
The door nearest his head creaks open loudly and there’s a light pressure on his forehead—the back of Dean’s hand, checking for fever. Sam might be boiling alive for all he knows.
Sam can feel fingers running through his sweat-matted hair as Dean talks, nonsense words to fill the air. Dean wipes tears and blood from Sam’s face with his sleeve, says, “It’s gonna be all right, Sammy. You’re okay. It’s just—just a little fall. We’re gonna get you patched up and we’re gonna laugh about this one day, okay? We’re gonna laugh about it, you and me.”
Eventually he settles for humming something, so soft and low that Sam almost can’t hear it beneath his own gasping sobs, and Sam lets the sound lull him back into the blissfully painless black of unconsciousness.
Next time, Dean isn’t there. Sam knows it instantly, before he even knows he’s awake. Gone are the familiar bench seats of the Impala, the comforting smell of her leather. The stink of clean invades his senses, emanating from the unfamiliar bodies around him, voices he doesn’t recognize talking amongst themselves.
“Dean,” he tries to shout, but it comes out more like a croaked whisper, and he finally opens his eyes to look around for his brother.
All he can see is white and even that hurts, so he’s forced to close them again.
“Dean!” he tries again, more insistent this time, voice breaking and making him sound like a child squalling for its mother.
The voices murmur a little closer to him, someone says, “Think that’s the brother…”
“Your brother’s fine, Sam, just very worried about you. We’ll make sure you get to see him just as soon as possible, okay? My name is Dr. Roberts and you’re in the hospital, Sam. You must have had quite the fall, but we’re going to fix you up just as good as new.”
Dr. Roberts speaks slowly and clearly, just loud enough to be heard over the clank of metal and the dull hush of what must be nurses talking around him. Sam wants to shake his head in denial, demand Dean now, but his head and neck are secured firmly in a brace so he can’t. He can’t even move. That just makes him panic more, a brief bloom of paralyzing sensation in his gut that spreads quickly up his spine and down his arms, into his jaw and across his forehead. His heart is beating in time to the frantic beeping of the machines and there’s a sudden swell of saliva against his tongue accompanied by the bitter taste of adrenaline.
Everything in his body is screaming at him to run or fight, but he’s awfully tired...
---
He broke his leg and almost broke his wrist, too, but just wound up with a sprain. The head injury was the worst of it. He ends up with a scar about as long as his shortest finger and has to grow his hair out even further to hide it once he’s recovered.
None of it is Dean’s fault—Dean can’t be expected to anticipate every possible outcome of a situation, after all—but dad blames him anyway, Dean agrees with him, and both of them pointedly ignore anything Sam has to say about it.
Nobody suggests splitting up again for a long time, and Sam doesn’t think he even said ‘thank you’ to Dean for any of it.
Nearly a decade later, Sam kneels in a house in Indiana and thinks of all the times Dean saved his life as he holds his brother’s torn-up body in his arms.
“You’re gonna be okay,” Sam says, nodding to himself as he wipes blood spatter from Dean’s face. Empty, green eyes stare sightlessly at the ceiling. “We’re gonna lau—we’re gonna laugh about it one day, right, Dean? You and me, we’re gonna laugh…”
The crushing weight in his chest strangles down anymore words, reduces him to ugly, gasping sobs like he’s no more than 16 again, hurt and scared with the sound of Dean’s voice too far away.
Dean put Sam’s safety over his own more times than he could count, and Sam couldn’t even return the favor when it mattered most.
Bobby pushes for a funeral pyre. That’s the way it’s done in their circle, the way Dean would want it. There’s safety in being doused in salt and gasoline, carried off as smoke and ash on the wind.
‘One of the perks of the job,’ Dean would say. ‘We all get to go out in a blaze of glory.’
Sam is adamant that they bury him, though, and has maybe come a bit unhinged, so Bobby doesn’t press his luck. And it’s just too damn bad for Dean. He’s the one who left Sam with nothing but a car, a corpse, and a broken heart.
A week, he told himself; he’d have his brother out of the ground in a week. He steeled himself with the knowledge as he walked away from that hastily dug grave in Illinois. A month, tops.
It takes almost six months and countless bottles of alcohol before he can acknowledge that Dean isn’t going to crawl up out of that dirt just because Sam wants him to. There’s no bringing Dean back if the demons won’t deal and everything else Sam can think of trying fails spectacularly. It’s another two before he can force himself to accept that, hard as it was to do.
He ventures out of the state, then, chancing further and further trips each time. He still hasn’t seen the coasts, either of them, since before that night. If he gets more than a day’s drive away, he has to turn around.
Hunting keeps him busy. He’s never really done it solo, but it fills the hours, keeps him moving; it’s familiar.
Vampires, werewolves, spirits, creatures of all shapes and sizes—Sam hunts whatever he can find. He has to get pretty good at it without Dean to watch his back, has the scars to prove he learned that lesson the hard way.
Demons are the worst, though. Bar none.
---
His eyes scan quickly over the people nearby, looking for something, and eventually land on a short woman with long, brown hair, soft curls flowing over her shoulders. She’s got no-nonsense features—cool gray eyes with just the barest hint of lines around them, thin lips set in a deep frown as she looks back at him.
She glares like he’s invading her privacy, gathers her purse closer to her, but Sam’s not fooled.
A few moments go by and she must realize the game is up. A slow, wicked smile spreads over her lips, looking out of place on the woman’s face, and she winks at him like a dare before ducking around a corner into an alleyway.
‘Gotcha,’ Sam thinks, his legs eating up the pavement with swift strides to catch up.
The alley is dark, shaded from the late afternoon sunlight by two tall buildings on either side, but Sam’s eyes adjust quickly. And there she is, not making any attempt to flee, leaning up against the wall with a lit cigarette between her fingers.
“Hey there, Sam,” she greets him cheerfully. She gestures at him with her cigarette. “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, huh?”
He doesn’t respond except to reach for the reassuring weight of Ruby’s knife at his back. She never came back, after Dean, and some days he can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing. But the knife has come in handy more than once since he’s been on his own, and it’s always useful at times like this, when he’s got at least 2 or 3 demons in one area.
“You hunters are just no fun anymore. Always work, work, work,” she scoffs, taking another long drag off the cigarette before dropping it to the ground, grinding it beneath her shoe as she moves closer to him. Her eyes are black and empty when she comes to a stop in front of him, one hand coming up to press against his chest. “You and I could have a real good time. This one’s fresh, too. Haven’t even had a chance to break her in.”
“Think I’ll take a pass,” Sam says with a sneer. “But if you tell me where the others are, maybe I’ll go easy on you and just send you back to hell instead of tearing you apart.”
“Aw, you sweet talker, you,” she says with a grin and Sam glares. “Y’know, I used to work the crossroads and I swear, if there wasn’t such a strict embargo on deals with you, I’d take that adorable little soul for myself.”
She trails her fingers along the collar of his shirt and up the line of his throat, tickling at his skin with a deceptive gentleness. Her smile is sickly sweet as a hint of bared teeth challenges him.
“You know, I’m not interested in telling you much, but there is one question I’d be more than willing to answer for you.”
Apparently, she isn’t satisfied with his lack of reaction, leaning in close with an open palm pressing firmly over where his heart is beating beneath his skin. Her lips touch Sam’s jaw and his stomach turns.
“Go ahead, Sam. Ask me the one that’s wiggling around in your brain, eating at you. It’s the one I want to hear, and it’s the one that you really want to ask, isn’t it? So c’mon, baby, ask me nicely how Dean’s doing.”
Sam flinches, he can’t help it. He hates the way they say Dean’s name, now; intimate, like they have some kind of right to him where Sam has none. He keeps flinching, so they keep saying it.
“Whoops,” she whispers, voice dripping with insincerity as she pulls back and tilts her head coyly. The sharp edges of her nails are digging into his chest through his shirt. “Too soon?”
He grabs her throat with one hand, closes tightly around it as he slams her back against the wall with enough force to knock the breath out of her. It occurs to him that he ought to be careful, that she hasn’t been in the host long and the woman trapped inside her own body might be able to walk away from this with just a few bruises and some bad memories. But he can’t help himself tightens his grip further as she lets out a wheezing cackle.
“Ooh, like it rough, huh? You and your brother do have something in common.”
“You haven’t seen rough, yet,” he snarls, his face so close to hers that he can taste her breath on his tongue. “Give me something I can use, tell me where the others are hiding, or this is going to hurt a whole lot more than it has to. I’ll make sure of it.”
“What’s the matter, don’t wanna hear how popular big brother is downstairs?” she stops to suck in half a breath around the heavy weight of his fingers squeezing her airway. “I hear Lilith gave him to Alastair himself. Fresh meat straight to the Grand Torturer, can you imagine? Some guys get all the special treatment.”
Sam stops listening and starts reciting an exorcism.
She must be new, or just very good at avoiding exorcism, because there’s surprise on her face as she lets out an inhuman howl of agony at the first wave of pain. Her head slams back against the wall, body bucking up against Sam’s like there’s something eating her alive.
He hopes that’s true; he hopes she’s being torn to shreds.
“It’s always you he cries for,” she screams when she gets her breath back. Her eyes are wide and bottomless and desperate. “Never mommy or daddy, never God; always you! Laid out on the rack being taken down to parts, screaming for his Sammy like a baby for a bottle!”
Sam grits his teeth against the headache he can feel building behind his eyes, tries to think of the words that come next, but can’t. All he can think of is Dean, wailing and broken and so god damn far from his reach.
She’s still laughing, loud and maniacal, and Sam gives in, thrusting the knife up between her ribs. He twists the handle, savors the sound of the wet gurgle that spills past her lips, choking on the thickness of her own blood as lightning and fire flash beneath her skin.
His hand drops limply away from the woman’s throat as she falls to the ground, demon and all life gone. Wiping the blade on his jeans and tucking it back in his belt, Sam continues on down the alley in a daze, eyes focused on nothing.
He’s heard it all before, but it doesn’t get any easier. The words hit him like a physical blow every time, a fist to the gut that leaves him breathless with rage and a renewed sense of loss. It doesn’t matter how many times he hears it, it will never stop hurting.
“Demons lie,” he tells himself, repeats it like a mantra.
But sometimes there’s truth in the lie.
---
He doesn’t talk to Bobby much. They drifted apart after they buried Dean, and neither of them have done much to try and bridge the gap. At first, Bobby’s just trying to give Sam some space to grieve, then it’s like he doesn’t know what to do with him anymore, doesn’t recognize the man in front of him.
Bobby doesn’t approve of the way Sam drinks. Or the way he still gets motel rooms with two beds and carries Dean’s duffel around, unloading it from the trunk and tossing it on the bed nearest the door. He says it’s unhealthy, all of it, and Sam knows he’s right. He’s not stupid—he knows the steps to the grieving process, knows that he should be past them and to the point where he starts feeling normal again. He also knows that he isn’t, that he never will be.
The way Sam handles demons now is another point of contention between them. The way that they more often than not end up sucking in their last breath on the end of his knife is something Bobby’s not fond of. He looks at the knife as more of a last resort than a first line of defense.
You can’t go around killing people, innocent people, just because the demon riding them says your brother’s name, Sam.
So, he and Bobby don’t talk much. And when they do, it’s always Sam calling for advice on a hunt or direction towards a new one, never the other way around.
A little over two years after Lilith and her hounds drag Dean to Hell, Bobby calls.
---
Sam yawns heavily, back cracking with a stretch as he pulls himself out of another dreamless sleep. His hands move clumsily to rummage around in his jacket on the floor for the phone that has been ringing for what feels like the last hour. The half-empty bottle of Jack falls over, knocked by his hands and their blind fumbling. Sam curses as it spills on the carpeted floor before he can right it.
He’s already irritated as he finds the phone, and upon flipping it open, he’s tempted for a moment to flip it right back closed. He’s not in the mood for this; he needs a shower and some coffee before he can even attempt to deal with it. But he promised himself he’d make an effort, so he sighs and hits ‘talk.’
“Hey, Bobby,” he says, voice still rough with sleep. “What’s up?”
“You’re not gonna like it,” Bobby mutters, bypassing the small talk. Sam’s frown deepens.
“What is it?” he asks again, wedging the phone between his jaw and shoulder as he crosses the room to where his laptop is still open on the table.
He’s been working the same case for two weeks now, what should have been a relatively easy one by current standards. He just can’t seem to get his head clear enough to deal with it, same as the three before it, each one taking longer than the last. He runs a hand down his face as he sits, firmly closing the laptop with his other.
“Where are you?”
“Near Owatonna,” Sam answers distractedly. “What’s this about, Bobby? I have work to do.”
"Work, right," Bobby says, the slow words and tone making it clear exactly what he thinks of how Sam is working. Sam’s upper lip curls into the beginning of a snarl, but he bites his tongue. "Listen, y’think you can pack up shop for a few days? There’s somethin’... well, there’s somethin’ I need you to check out."
“I’m gonna need more than a vague ‘something’ here,” Sam prompts when it’s clear Bobby isn’t offering anything more without some encouragement.
The last thing Sam needs is another hunt, not when he’s already got one going nowhere, but maybe a change of scenery will help. It wouldn’t be too hard to hand this one off to someone else, and Bobby probably already has someone in mind if he’s asking Sam to leave it unfinished.
“There’ve been some small omens, a few weather patterns. Didn’t think it was anything too serious ‘til I got word of somethin’ absolutely leveling the place; half the forest burned to the ground, a fill-up station nearby wiped right off the map. Everything went up in flames. They’re talkin’ about a bomb or some sort of arson on the news—“
“But you’re thinking demon,” Sam finishes for him, already unplugging the computer, winding the cords up neatly. A demon he can do. Not the most pleasant of hunts, especially not now, but it’s something he can clear up without too much concentration; demons have become predictable.
“Not necessarily. Seems like there would’ve been more warning if somethin’ nasty enough to cause that much commotion was coming up, but I guess they can keep secrets when they need to. There hasn’t been much strange since the initial blast, nothin’ to suggest whatever it was stayed close, but it still needs looking into.”
Something in Bobby’s voice makes Sam stop, leaving the cords and reaching up to grab the phone, rolling his shoulders to release some of the tension between them.
“So what is it that you’re not telling me? It’s no secret that you aren’t the biggest fan of how I handle demons, Bobby.”
The heavy sigh that travels down the line does nothing to assuage his worry.
“It’s in Illinois.”
Sam’s fingers are gripping the phone so tightly he can hear it creaking in protest, plastic and metal components just barely holding together against his hand. The dull thud of his pulse pounds in his fingertips.
He thinks of a nondescript cross in a forest clearing.
“Pontiac?”
“Pontiac.”
---
The trip that should have taken six or seven hours takes Sam only five. The car really isn’t fit for the abuse of speeding all the way from Minnesota to Illinois, in desperate need of a tune-up like she is, and he feels a brief pang of regret when he thinks of what Dean would have to say about that.
“This is what you call taking care of my wheels? Dammit, Sam.”
Sam’s not surprised to find that the epicenter of the destruction is exactly where he had hoped it wouldn’t be. A hole that must be at least six feet deep and easily as wide tears open the earth where he buried his brother. It reeks of hell, glittering yellow residue all in and around the crater, and Sam doesn’t stick around long.
He gets a room at the first motel he finds,the older woman behind the counter raising a wary eyebrow at his dirty clothes, unwashed hair, and the lingering smell of stale liquor and sulphur around him. The eyebrow hikes up even further when the card that she obviously expected to be declined is accepted, but she gives him the room anyway, and Sam is grateful for it.
Bobby doesn’t sound surprised when Sam calls and passes the information on, though he does curse a few times, words muffled by his hand pressed over the receiver. He says he’ll watch for news coming out of the state if Sam sticks around Pontiac for a few days, keeps his head down and his ears open.
He doesn’t mention Dean by name, but Sam can hear the unspoken question in his voice. They’ve both been doing this for too long not to realize what this looks like, so Sam appreciates Bobby letting him pretend this is just another hunt, that there is nothing special about this. Denial is a luxury that Sam hasn’t been allowed a lot of in his life.
He doesn’t get to enjoy it for long, though. Denial doesn’t do him much good when what he’s denying is staring him right in the face. Literally.
Dean gives Sam two days before he comes to him.
---
Sam wakes up that day feeling much the same as every day before. His mouth tastes like he’s been sucking on a dirty gym sock all night and his head weighs too much, throbbing in time with his pulse. He opens his eyes and the muted sunlight coming in through the flimsy curtains over the window is blinding.
He rubs at his pillow-creased and stubble-lined face, cursing when his stomach starts to rebel the second he shoves up into a sitting position. Throwing up helps, and so does the shower he has right after. A few glasses of some questionable water from the bathroom sink, a quick shave and a change of clothes later, Sam’s ready to greet the day.
Dean’s duffel is open on the bed next to Sam’s, a faded t-shirt riddled with holes and stains balled up and abandoned beside it.
Sam does that, sometimes. He’ll open the bag and bury his face in the heap of clothes that still smell just a little bit like Dean under the mustiness of the years. He usually doesn’t indulge in that particular torture unless he’s really far from sober, though, so he must’ve had a whole lot more than he thought last night.
He tosses the shirt back inside, fingers lingering for only a few extra seconds over the well-worn fabric before tugging the zipper closed again.
He hits a Laundromat first thing, spends a couple of hours feeding change into the machines until everything in his duffel is free of blood, guts, mud and other unidentifiable substances that look and smell foul. There’s just the fresh, clean scent of whatever detergent had caught his eye in the vending machine.
With the crispness of clean clothes against his skin and the freeing sensation of his hair being ruffled by the wind, Sam feels almost human for the first time in weeks. He’s still tired, the price of a night without dreams, and all the possible implications of that hole in the ground not far away are still gnawing at him, but he feels as close to ‘happy’ he’s felt in a long time. He feels like if he walks into the nearest diner and smiles at the waitress, she isn’t going to stare at him like he’s a wild animal.
So that’s just what he does. He drives until he finds a place that isn’t a McDonalds or even a Denny’s, just some hole in the wall that only the locals would really bother with, and sits down to have a meal that isn’t liquid and doesn’t come from a wrapper.
He’s halfway through a plate of the best breakfast he’s had in a long while when the waitress comes by to refill his coffee and places a small, white saucer with a slice of apple pie on it in front of him.
It’s ridiculous how many things he can only associate with Dean now.
“Sorry,” Sam murmurs, pushing the plate towards the edge of the table with a grimace. “I didn’t order this.”
“Courtesy of that gentleman over there,” the waitress—Cathy—says with a snap of her gum, pointing at a man near the register with the end of her pencil.
Sam follows her gaze and stares numbly. His chest aches like he’s just taken a beating.
“I’d go for it if I were you, honey,” Cathy adds with an encouraging grin. “He’s real cute, if you swing that way.”
It’s like every dream and every nightmare he’s had in the last two years, all come together to form one hallucination. Because that’s Dean, right there in front of him, resting on his elbows against the chipped Formica countertop of the diner, legs stretched out in front of him in a beat-up pair of blue jeans. That faded, butter-soft leather jacket that looks like history rests on his shoulders, and he looks good as new. There’s not even a scratch on him, just a smirk playing on his lips that seems to light up his whole face.
Dean’s eyes are green, except that they’re not.
Sam thanks Cathy without looking away from where Dean’s turning and walking out the main doors of the diner. He blindly fishes more than enough for his meal out from his wallet, already walking away as he drops it on the table.
Dean is waiting exactly where Sam expected, leaning up against the driver’s side of the Impala like that’s where he belongs. Sam can almost imagine it’s years ago, before deals were made and debts collected.
“Heya, Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam sucks in a breath that makes him feel light-headed. “S’been a while.”
“So, what, you get bored of just using words to remind me that my brother’s in hell?” Sam snaps, muscles tense with shock and the boil of anger in his blood. “Thought you’d dig him up and take him for a joyride, treat me to a floor show? Thanks, but no thanks.”
The demon wearing his dead brother’s face laughs.
“Aw, man,” Dean says with a grin. “Are we gonna have to exhaust the possibilities here, or are you gonna use those college boy smarts for once?”
Sam’s lips twist into a sneer.
“You do a pretty good impression, but you’ve got nothing on the original.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a bit out of practice. S’like riding a bike, though—gimme a few days and I’ll get it back.”
“I’ll give you few seconds,” Sam growls. “You can either get out of him or I’ll drag you out. Up to you.”
Dean cocks his head—he’s not Dean—studying Sam like he can see straight through him, analyzing every little, broken piece of him.
“Y’know, I even missed that bitchy face you’re making,” is what he eventually says, shaking his head like it’s somehow okay to be joking right now. “Guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder.
“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potes—“
The demon winces a bit, but otherwise doesn’t show any evidence of being affected by the exorcism.
“You’re not gonna have much luck trying to exorcise me from my own body,” he interrupts, lifting his sleeve high enough to show the rough, red edges of a binding link branded deep into his forearm. “One of the perks of self-possession. ”
Sam’s hands are shaking as he grabs Ruby’s knife from the sheath on his belt.
“Then I guess I’ve got no choice.”
His body’s telegraphing his every move like he didn’t spend the better part of his formative years training to handle a weapon and take down a target. He brings the blade forward—arc too wide, grip too loose, stance abysmal. It’s not even a half-hearted attempt.
‘What if?’ runs on a loud, endless loop through his head.
Dean blocks him effortlessly, twists Sam’s arms behind him and pries the knife from his fingers with ease. He sighs like this is exactly what he’d been expecting, but that he’d been hoping for more.
Sam doesn’t have anything more to give.
“Okay, kiddo,” Dean murmurs, stroking his fingers through Sam’s hair. “Guess we’ll do this the hard way.”
He gets a tight grip at the base of Sam’s neck and yanks him back with both hands, bringing his skull down against the hard line of the car twice in rapid succession. Sam lets unconsciousness take him without a fight.
---
When he wakes up, it’s to the sound of the television on low, fuzzy with static because the televisions in this place are at least as old as Sam. His head starts throbbing as soon as he tries to shift on the bed, and he thinks he can taste dirt in his mouth.
It’s honestly not much different than any other morning, so he forgets for a few blissful seconds how he got here, until…
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.”
For just a moment longer he lets himself keep his eyes clenched closed, lets himself imagine it’s years ago, that he’s gonna get out of bed and eat cheap cereal, drink shitty coffee, throw rock, paper, scissors with his brother over who gets the first shower.
Then he opens them to look up at where his hands are cuffed securely to the headboard and the illusion breaks pretty quickly. Thankfully the chain between them is at least long enough that Sam can move his arms down to rub at the massive bump on his forehead. There’s a bit of blood still matting his hair, but not too much.
He shoots a dark look at the demon on the bed beside his.
“Dean wouldn’t slam my face into the car. If only to protect the car.”
He gets a grin for his trouble, Dean stretched out on the bed with his back against the headboard and his legs crossed at the ankles.
“You do a bit of hard time downstairs, then tell me what I would and wouldn’t do,” he says with a wink. “Nice place. Bit of a money-sink to still be gettin' the double rooms, though, don’t y’think?”
“So, what’s the master plan, here?” Sam asks, bypassing the question entirely as he sits up with a wince at the stab of pain the motion elicits, the metallic clanking of the chain between his cuffs echoing around in his head. “Kill me, hand me off to someone who wants to kill me more, what? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, dragging my brother into this just to smack me around a bit? Kind of overkill.”
“No shit,” not-Dean mutters, swinging his legs off the bed in one smooth motion. “S’not exactly easy to get your body back, y'know? Figured you wouldn't have burned it like you should've, mostly 'cause I know I wouldn't've—didn't, when it was up to me. But finding it, getting to it, just getting this bag of bones up and out of the ground it's been in for fuck knows how long—”
“Two years, this past May,” Sam interrupts, staring at a spot over the demon’s shoulder.
Dean gives him a speculative look.
“Point is, it’s no fucking picnic. If you want out of hell, you have to tear your way out, and it's... it's not hellfire and brimstone down there like they say, but you still burn. All the time. I thought I'd gotten used to the pain—you do, eventually, a little bit. Once you get off the rack, when they stop healing you up fresh and new, thinking each new day is the first day... it gets a little easier. Doesn't feel so much like chewing glass and breathing ash just to exist. But getting out of there?" He trails off and his eyes go hazy, a bit dark, if not quite the black they should be. He shakes his head and snaps out of it, glittering green back in full-force. "No fresh-from-humanity, lowbie demon’s gonna go through all the trouble, and the higher ups are too busy to bother with a cheap mindfuck. The only one who’s going to claw their way out of hell and into my body? Is me.”
Sam clenches his fingers into fists so tight his nails dig into his palms. It would be so easy to buy into that. He could have his brother back, even if it’s not real, and god, he’d give anything to just believe.
“It takes centuries to make one of you. Dean’s only—” Sam stumbles a bit over the word ‘only.’ “It hasn’t been centuries.”
Dean chuckles, a humorless sound.
“Yeah, well, about that—Ruby never thought to mention how time’s a little… different in hell,” Dean says, rubbing at his shoulder like it hurts. “They don't exactly keep calendars down there, but a day becomes a year becomes a decade pretty quick. A couple years for you must’ve been… closing in on a couple centuries for me.”
Sam’s quiet for a long moment. It’s hard to imagine a century. He can think of it in terms of history books, but to imagine actually living a century, passing that much time? It makes his stomach twist to think of his brother spending year after year in hell, never knowing just how much time has passed, only knowing that he still has an eternity to go.
He has to shake himself out of the thought.
“You wouldn’t—if Dean came back, if he was... like this… he’d want me to kill him.”
The demon doesn’t even try to deny it.
“Gave you a chance, didn’t I? I came to you, Sam. I didn’t run, didn't make you hunt me down, didn’t even fuckin’ disarm you until you came at me like you'd never even held a blade before. You could’ve stuck me with that knife and been done with it ten times over, if it's what you’d really wanted.”
Sam’s throat feels tighter the more Dean talks.
“But you let me take you down without a fight. Because you know it’s me in here, don’t you, Sam? Some part of you knows that. You’re playin’ this by the book, trying to do what you think I’d want, but it’s just...”
Black finally bleeds into Dean’s eyes from the corners as he runs a hand through his hair in frustration.
“Look,” he says, grabbing Ruby’s knife from the table between the beds.
He unlocks the cuffs before pressing the handle into Sam’s palm, letting him curl his fingers tight around it before he takes a step back. He doesn't make a move to put any more distance between them as Sam pushes up to his feet, holding the knife out in front of him. Instead he reaches out slowly to grip Sam's hand, directs the tip of the blade to rest against his chest, right above where his heart would be.
“If it’s what you really want—if it’ll make you feel better? Then go ahead, Sammy. 'Cause I ain't goin' back to hell—I just can't. I won’t. But without you? Well, then there’s nothin’ here for me, either. Least this'd be quick.”
Sam’s hand is shaking, palm clammy and slick with sweat against the knife handle.
If this was just a few days, weeks, maybe even months after, Sam could probably do it; he’d use his fury and do the right thing, because it’s what Dean would want. But it’s been years. Years of only his own breathing in the car, of having all the hot water in the shower, of accidentally ordering two coffees at breakfast.
He doesn't have any fury left. Just the aching, lonely, broken part of his heart that wants to see his brother’s face, hear his voice telling him everything’ll be okay.
“Dean,” is all Sam can manage, rough like he hasn’t spoken at all in the years Dean’s been gone.
One side of Dean’s mouth quirks up into a half-smile that softens the look of those still-black eyes, and much as his instincts are screaming at him not to, Sam drops the knife.
---
They leave Pontiac a day and a half later, and Sam has never felt relief more palpable than when he gets to slide into the passenger seat instead of the driver’s. Dean starts the car up, asks, “Where to, Miss Daisy?” with an impatient drum of his fingertips against the wheel, and it’s like coming home after a long, long day.
Sam thinks of streets bustling with distraction, heat coming in off the water, a place to escape the last two years.
“Haven’t been through New Orleans in a while,” he says as he pops the SIM card from the back of his phone. He stares at it for a moment, wondering if maybe he should have sent Bobby something—at least a text in response to his half a dozen ignored calls and nearly twice as many unread messages. He sends up a silent apology as he snaps the tiny card in half, does the same with his phone, tossing all the pieces out the open car window.
Dean grins and sets a course towards I-55, Sam turns the radio up.
He knows it can't last forever, but nothing ever does.