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It’s a long stretch of interstate through the Nevada desert; it’s dry and hot and there is no air conditioning in the current POS car of the week. It feels like they’ve driven through Vegas and out of civilization; Sam is slumped low in the passenger seat with his head back, the wind from the window ruffling his hair. He looks like he’s a million miles away. It’s a look Dean’s come to hate. He reaches out, puts a hand on Sam’s knee, and he jumps.
“Sorry,” Dean says. “Sorry. You ok?”
Sam just looks at him for a few moments, like he doesn’t understand what Dean’s just said to him, but he finally blinks a few times, like he’s clearing his vision and then clears his throat a little. “Uh, yeah,” he says, voice rough from not using it for the last 500 miles. “Yeah, I’m…”
He turns back to the window, doesn’t finish his sentence, and Dean knows he’s listening to someone else, something else, somewhere in the depths of his twisted mess of a mind. Dean succumbs to the fact that Sam isn’t going to finish talking, probably isn’t going to talk again until they stop somewhere for a piss or a rest. This time Dean is startled when Sam talks.
“I knew they’d use you,” Sam says, not looking away from the open window. “The second I jumped in, I knew when they tortured me, they’d use you. Sometimes…one of them would be you, and I’d watch while the other one took turns taking us apart, a chunk of flesh at a time.” He breathes in the warm desert air, and Dean realizes Sam is talking about the other night; why he needed Dean’s fingers around his throat to come. “I don’t know if that was worse, or when they wore your face to tear me apart. At first… at first I knew it was them -- that they were pretending to be you, but … but after a while? I didn’t know what was real anymore. I didn’t know anything but the cage, their … perfect torture.”
Dean realizes that there is no way this conversation gets better, so he eases the car onto the dusty shoulder of the road. About 30 feet from the car is a sign reminding them that they’re on Junction 50, and Dean stares at it for a few minutes before turning his eyes to Sam. Sam takes a shuddering breath, sinks lower in his seat, and wraps his arms around himself like he’s actually cold in the 105 degree heat. He stays silent and waits for Sam to continue.
“After a while … it was torture not to be tortured. They’d leave me there, alone, with no sound, no smells … just … nothing. I’d beg them to – to do anything they wanted.” He traced at something invisible along his wrist and forearm, and Dean wonders if they tore the skin with their teeth or carved Sam up with a smooth, gleaming blade; Dean got both when he was in the Pit.
“Lucifer,” Sam says softly. “I know it was Lucifer, would wear your face and get me thinking that you got me out – I’d really believe it was you. He fucked me up, Dean. I … it wasn’t … I couldn’t --” he takes a shaky breath and Dean reaches over, squeezes Sam’s knee to ground him, to let him know he’s still there, still listening, and he’s not going anywhere. “You … I mean, he …” he closes his eyes, and Dean isn’t sure if he has to picture it, or if he’s trying to picture anything but. “He f-fucked me within an inch of my life, Dean. Just like when Cas felt for my soul, he stuck his hands in and started … grinding up everything. The first time, the first time he --”
The first time he raped you, Sammy Dean thinks grimly.
“He shoved his hands in and pulled things out; I choked on my own blood until my lungs stopped working. And when I woke up, he started all over again. When I called out for you, he cut my tongue out.”
Dean feels sick; the nausea rolls in his stomach and he wipes sweat from his forehead. He knows what kinds of things happen to souls in Hell; they did it to him and he did it to others, but he doesn’t want to imagine how much more creative Michael and Lucifer got for a century in the Cage with his brother. “It got all tangled up,” Sam says quietly. He’s pale, sweaty, trembling. “And everything kind of … blurred together. I… didn’t know what felt good and what hurt because it all felt the same. I-I asked him to look like you; it was easier if it was you. I-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he whispers and closes his eyes tight.
“Don’t you dare be sorry, Sammy,” Dean says firmly, even it feels like he’s speaking around a lump in his throat the size of a bowling ball. “Don’t you be sorry for anything.”
Sam wiped at his face with his hands and then clenched his fists on his knees; if he hadn’t bitten his nails bloody two days ago he’d be cutting crescents into his palms. “When I got topside, and you got my soul back, I … I didn’t need it at first, not with you because I … I could do it myself. I could … give myself the pain I needed and then, then it wasn’t enough anymore and I couldn’t –“ Dean is about to tell him he has nothing to apologize for, that it doesn’t matter because they can handle it, they can get through anything, but Sam fumbles with his seat belt and flings the passenger side door open. He slides to his knees in the dust and sand, and the sound of the force with which he is retching makes Dean cringe.
Dean gets out of the car and goes around to Sam’s side, where Sam is on his hands and knees throwing up almost nothing since he hasn’t eaten since yesterday. He reaches over Sam and into the car, opens the glove-box, and takes out the baby wipes they stashed there the first day they had the car. They never knew how long they’ll have a vehicle, or how long they’ll have to keep going, and baby wipes do the trick when there were no showers available to them. He takes out a few and tosses the package into the footwell. “It’s ok,” he says soothingly, getting down on his knees next to his brother; the sand and pavement are hot, but it doesn’t matter. He takes one cool wipe and rubs it across the back of Sam’s neck. “It’s alright, Sammy,” Dean says. “They can’t hurt you anymore, ok? They don’t ever get to touch you again, I promise.”
Sam makes a broken sound, like a sob but more desperate, more shattered. Truth be told, he knows Sam isn’t ok, but he also knows when Sam can’t handle it he’ll come to Dean, and Dean will ease the mood by calling it girl-talk and making Sam laugh. It doesn’t work like that; instead, Sam tried to protect him from all the darkness eating him up from the soul on out, and Dean wishes he hadn’t.
“Listen to me, Sammy,” Dean says firmly once Sam’s stops vomiting stomach acid. He lifts Sam’s face with gentle hands, uses a clean wipe for Sam’s face and mouth. “Listen to me” he says again, and Sam’s eyes level with his. There is destruction there Dean knows he can never fix, and it tears something in him, rips it wide open. “I will give you whatever you need, Sammy -- anything you need, you hear me? It doesn’t matter what it is – you just tell me and I’ll do it, okay?”
Sam sobs and it’s a sound Dean hates. He nods, and Dean accepts him when he slouches forward, presses his face into Dean’s sweaty neck and tries to breathe. Dean puts a hand on the back of Sam’s head and smoothes a hand over his brother’s sweaty hair. “We’ll be ok, Sammy,” he says into Sam’s hair, mouth at the top of Sam’s head. “We’ll be ok.”