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There were complexities about the Devil that Sam saw in his dreams. Beams of light shot off of him at every angle, like sunlight off a cracked glass, spider-web-thin and random. They wavered and fractured every time the Devil moved.
Whenever the Devil moved, it was usually towards Sam.
The Devil could look like whatever he wanted in Sam’s dreams. There, the Devil wasn’t real. Lucifer was real and he was standing on a hill of dead and buried bodies, all the women and children of the town. Sam could smell it on him as clear as anything else, and Sam would know the smell of dead-and-buried. He’d know it before he knew daylight.
He’d know Lucifer, too, in dreams and in waking. There were no beams of light surrounding him in the real world, but here his visage was no less otherworldly. Here, he was blurry, unfocused, vibrating like the temporary vessel was not enough to hold him, which of course it was not. Sam had never seen anything, angel or demon or nightmare behave in the way Lucifer was.
When Sam looked at Lucifer, he saw time warping. He saw the scabs crusting the vessel’s forehead, which he knew were from the present, but the longer he looked the more he could see. He could see the Devil breaking into a full-faced grin, lips stretched wide and unmoving even as his words filled the air. Anger made his face bleed into the night until he was something closer resembling the true-formed Devil, not this imprisoned smoke figure hiding behind someone else’s flesh. He saw the smile of an angel, the despair of the fallen, the reflection of moonlight. Whenever the Devil had eyes to reflect something back, they would always look like Sam’s.
Sam gasped, panted, trembled. He wasn’t good for much else. A voice in his head that sounded like his own told him to get used to it.
“Six months,” the Devil promised. He smiled sweetly and moved towards Sam.
-
Dean shot the Devil in the forehead with the Colt. All that work, all that worrying they’d done for months, and the gun fired off in a millisecond. It was gone so easy, leaving smoke twisting into the night sky from his brother’s hand.
Sam would have liked to be the one looking down the barrel, looking down at the Devil instead of up a pile of bodies and Earth. A familiar weight in his hands and his finger ready. Power. His hands around cold steel, the feeling reminding him that the sensations were his own.
Instead, he was the bait.
-
Dad taught him how to shoot animals before he was allowed on real monster hunts. Sam didn’t like it, of course. He wanted to kill something worth killing, not some deer that didn’t deserve it. Dean said he’d seen too many Disney movies. Dad cuffed Sam on the back of the head, a little too hard to be joking.
When Dad took them more east than usual on hunts, there would be more forests. They went to West Virginia on a demon lead. Dad came back to their motel pissed after a day of no sightings and drove him out to one of these forests.
In the car, he let Sam sit shotgun and went over the firearm basics. Sam had heard it before, but he listened anyway. How to aim, how to brace for kickback. Sam asked, timidly, if it would hurt. Dean scoffed from the back seat. Dad told him maybe, but that it would hurt the deer much more.
-
Lucifer was standing in front of Sam. Dean was lying crumpled behind him, behind Sam’s back, in the sight line of the Devil. Unconscious and probably bleeding like a stuck pig.
The Devil had thrown Dean against a tree but just looked at Sam, amused. There was an air of confidence about him, after all, he’d proven that the brothers could do nothing to hurt him. But it wasn’t just that.
He looked Sam up and down. Sam wanted to flinch away, cover himself. There was a gun in his waistband but it offered no comfort. They’d wasted their best shot already and nothing he could do or say would stop Lucifer if he came any closer.
Sam only had one thing. A lifeline, one word. No. He braced himself against it, his one word barricade against the most ancient evil. He shook his head and tried to steady his legs and screamed it in his mind because he knew Lucifer could read it. No.
The Devil looked him up and down like he’d already won.
-
The deer was grazing in a meadow. The meadow was beautiful, and so was the deer, which went without saying. It was late afternoon, so the tall grass was sun-dappled and soft. White flowers that Sam couldn’t identify bloomed in clusters. It smelled delightful. There was a warm breeze.
The deer had a long brown body and spots near its tail. It had no horns. Its ears were giant, but even so, it did not hear him adjust his grip on the shotgun.
-
The Devil raised his arms over the mass grave and began chanting.
-
Sam knew what it was like to be possessed by a demon. He remembered being trapped, claustrophobic, folded against his own spine. He was inside a body that didn’t listen to him anymore. He felt warm blood rush over his hands but not how it got there, who it belonged to, what he had done. And yet, imagine Lucifer.
He saw it now, somehow. Exactly what it would be like. A swirling, choking thing invading every cell of his body, scorching him with hellfire. That burning smoke clogging his lungs. True contamination. To become the vessel for evil in its purest, most unadulterated form. Looking into Lucifer’s warped face, he felt the Devil inside of him and knew the sensations were more than guesswork.
And yet. There were worse things that the Devil could do to him, things the simple word no were powerless to stop.
-
Lucifer smiled, leaned against his dirt-and-body-crusted shovel. Two shots rang in Sam’s ears. The deer was dead, the Devil was not. Sam couldn’t stop shaking.
-
Cas held his finger to his lips as if Sam was capable of speech.
His pulse jumped when he saw Cas but he didn’t think it was out of relief, only surprise. In an instant his eyes were back on Lucifer as he watched his demons die. He was so calm. Content. His crowd of minions, exploding in their foreheads. Fizzling out like orange lanterns.
He didn’t feel anything until Cas stepped closer, grabbing his shoulder. A wave of fear flashed through Sam faster and brighter than a demon death. He fell (or was rather knocked down) to his knees, bile surging to his mouth. He was so weak, helpless .
Cas had a now-awake Dean under his arm and both of them turned to the trembling boy.
“Sam!” Dean urged, nearly silent. Cas shushed him anyway.
He stepped back into Sam’s line of sight, now blocking the Devil out. Sam jerked involuntarily in a full-body shiver.
Cas laid his hand on Sam’s shoulder again. The movement sent a shock through him, pushing him into action. Sam reached out and held on to Cas's coat.
-
After he shot the deer, Dad carried the corpse back to the Impala, skinned it on the pavement. He offered the knife to Sam halfway through and he wordlessly refused.
In fact, Sam didn’t speak at all for days after. Dean asked him what was wrong but he didn’t answer.
Dad spoke for him. “We use all parts of the deer, now. Remember that.”
Jerky with the meat, sinew from the tendons, a knife handle from the antlers. Dad told him that in this way, they were honoring the life of the deer. Respecting its sacrifice. Peeling the meat from its defenseless bones and sipping the marrow, ripping its organs out by the handful. Making room for your hand inside the warm flesh of another.