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There was humming underneath his skin and it was driving him insane. It's not like there was anything he could do--not with Dean's watchful eyes. Everything hurt though, his head pounded with a vengeance and his limbs ached as they begged to be used. Not here. Not when Cas was resting slightly on Dean, and Kevin was talking with Charlie excitedly, not when Jack was listening to the noise around him and smiling. He couldn't ruin that.
“Okay so a tulpa is a--?” Charlie began
“Something made from extreme focus” Kevin replied and Charlie grinned at him, something akin to pride sparkling in her eyes. Or maybe it was mischief. Sam couldn't really tell anymore. The ache that was infecting him persisted all the while a steady whine and ringing in his ear that was pressure begging to be let out.
Not here. He would not ruin this domestic moment, this sense of normalcy (because it was normal now). He would not risk that. Still though, everything hurt, and Sam was tired.
He winced when another surge of pain flared in his head, something that was not left unnoticed by Jack.
“Are you getting sick, Sam?” Jack suddenly piped up, and all eyes snapped to him. It was the easiest out, he knew that, but it also meant he would be further confined and kept under a watchful eye.
“No,” He tried to smile softly, although it might have come out as a grimace "it's just a headache”
Dean raised an eyebrow, and Sam internally cursed. Dean had this sense when Sam was unwell, it might have been because of how often he had gotten sick when he was younger. The Shtriga must have weakened his immune system, but somewhere along the way Dean had learned how to pick out which coughs meant he was going to need an ice bath, and which meant he needed a nap.
“Promise” He said after no one seemed to be letting up, “Im fine”
Charlie snorted “You know how many times you two said that in the books and were completely lying?”
“We really need to burn those damn things” Dean muttered, before continuing “she does have a point Sammy.”
“I'm fine.” He said again, and his frustration must have seeped into his tone because they finally backed off. The slow chatter of the room resumed, Cas was leaning on Dean fully now, Jack, Charlie, and Kevin were all happily talking with one another and he could ignore the ache that had settled in him.
By the time everyone had gone to bed Sam had been half convinced that his head was going to explode. His whole body was in pain, but he refused to ruin this. He refused to lose what he finally got back. Trust.
"Listen to me you blood-sucking freak. Dad always said I'd either have to save you or kill you. Well, I'm giving you fair warning. I'm done trying to save you. You're a monster, Sam, a vampire. You're not you anymore. And there's no going back."
He can't risk that. Wont risk that. He doesn't understand why Dean let him live but putting it into question creates more problems then solves them.
A sudden spike of pain came and he barely swallowed the yelp that he let out. His head was killing him. He wouldn’t give in, not now, not ever. These would stay locked in his ribs and kept far far away from anyone's view. The pain dulled again, and Sam almost cried in relief. It's fine. It would be fine. His alarm clock blaring didn't wake him up anymore than he already had been, and slowly he dragged his hand over the button. Life moved on despite the pain.
Dean was in a good mood, he was making breakfast and Cas was helping Jack use his powers. Sam tried not to claw his skin off at the humming. There was a fluttering of wings and the kitchen stilled for a moment.
“Hiya, mind if I borrow the moose?” It was Gabriel, who carelessly threw an arm over Sam and the humming cried out. Safe, safe, use us, safe, its safe. The mug on the counter shattered and each of them froze.
“Sorry” Gabriel said, an easy smile on his face. He fixed a look at Sam and he wanted to question it. Dean gave Gabriel a nod, clearly too focused on cooking the food in front of him than anything else. Sam doesn't know when Dean started to trust the archangel so easily.
“Lets go, Samshine”
Gabriel didn't wait for a response, just grabbed him and tugged him into his room. He thinks he heard Kevin make some joke which Charlie cackled at, but he was too focused on the screaming pain to know for sure.
“What's wrong?” Gabriel said, his eyes fixated on Sam. It almost wasn't like a question and more like a demand.
“Nothing is wrong”
“Your soul has been screaming for weeks.”
Sam’s brow furrowed, if that were true why hadn't Cas noticed? Even then, what did it matter?
“Im fine, Gabe.”
The pain swelled again and Sam didn't even try to suppress the wince that it brought on.
“See there it is again. You’re screaming”
“No im not” Sam said through gritted teeth, he would not ruin this. Not right now. Not ever. He felt like his blood was going to explode out of his skin, like his bones were on fire and melting everything inside him. Gabriel raised a hand up to his forehead and ripped it away as if it had burned him. Maybe it had. Does that make him like fire? Like the chill of Lucifer? Does that make him a sinner?
Lucifer was cradling his face and it sent fear through every part of his mind that was still aware. He was speaking gently, but his words were cruel.
“Why do you think Dean didn't kill you?”
“I don't know” Sam answered honestly, because what was the point of lying anymore? He had nothing left to give, he had nothing left to hide. It was cold. So, so cold. Sam hated the way that he pressed more into Lucifer's hands because somehow they were warm, warm despite the cold.
“Maybe it was one last act of defiance against your Dad?” He mused, tugging Sam closer and wrapping his warm body around him. Sam wanted to scream. He didn't.
“Maybe” He agreed. Lucifer’s wings were wrapped around them, closing them off from Michael and Adam's solitude.
“Or maybe he just pitied you.” Lucifer brushed his hand down Sam’s spine. “What do you think?” There was a grin on his face, a grin that somehow looked so kind but so cruel, something that promised pain but also gentle words and forgiveness afterwards. Something that promised him a familiar pattern, something that wasn't new.
“I think” Sam started after a moment, the enochian words sounding so natural in his mouth, “that he hated me so much, he let me live.”
Lucifer smiled at him, and he looked proud. It made Sam sick. It made him happy too. Proud that he had made him proud.
“Thats a good theory”
“For fathers sake, you’re burning up.” Gabriel hissed and there were arms wrapping around him.
SafeSafesafesafesafesafeyoursafeuseususeuspleaseletusoutithurtsithurtsithurts
He wouldn't. He wouldn't become that abomination.
“Sam” Gabriel's voice cut through the fog, quick and demanding and he realized that he had spoken in Enochian.
”What is happening?” He pushed, and Sam’s mind was almost weeping in joy at the fact that someone was speaking something he could understand. This was right, this fit. No it wasn't, you’re human. But it's the language he knew like he had always spoken it. Decades in the cage, and maybe that was true. Maybe Enochian was the only language he knew.
“It hurts” He finally replied, and Gabriel's grip tightened.
“What does, Sam?” Gentle. He sounded gentle but cruel.
Lucifer has a knife in his hand, and Sam is not afraid. In fact he hopes--foolishly of course--that he will finally end him. He should know by now that he would never grant that mercy.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore”
Lucifer almost smiled at him.
The pressure was building, and building and he wanted to scream.
“Sam, please stop screaming.” Gabriel was asking, maybe begging. Sam had never known the archangel to beg. Had he been screaming? Sam is normally very good with keeping quiet.
“Stop screaming” Lucifer snapped, nails digging into his chest and drawing blood.
“Im not saying anything-”
“Your soul. Your soul is screaming and it's loud and calling for someone so shut it up or I will.”
Gabriel suddenly gasped and his grip faltered, he supposes that learning how to cocoon his soul was a beneficial skill. The pain was still radiating around him, but he knew not a single sound would come from him.
“How did you do that” Gabriel almost sounds horrified, his hands shaking and Sam wishes he could explain. He couldn't. He just learned how to do it.
“We need to tell the others about this” Gabriel spoke again after a moment of silence, and it took his brain a second to realize that he was back to talking English. His heart almost cried at it.
“No,” Sam whispered, after what must have been far too much time.
“Sam you’re sick--”
I know.
“--you need to let them take care of you until we figure out what this is!”
Lucifer’s wings are wrapped around him again, Sam sits wrapped in his arms and he wants to run. He doesn't.
“Am I sick?” Sam asked, and he knew he shouldn't have.
“Yes.” Lucifer responded just as fast, bringing a hand up to run through his hair. “You’re an unholy abomination. But so am I. So I think I can forgive you for your sins.”
Sam wishes he didn't find comfort in it. He did.
“Thank you” Sam says, and he tries to pretend like he's somewhere else. Anywhere else but here, anywhere but in his arms. He's the favorite of the devil. What does that make him? How much praying and cleansing will he have to do to be clean?
He goes to open his mouth, to reassure the archangel that he really is fine and it's nothing to worry about but his door is being thrown open and Cas is looking at him like Sam has done something terrible, not like something terrible had happened to Sam.
“Cas?” He asks, and he thanks god that he didn't say it in enochian. He had managed to keep that a secret.
He looked so confused, he looked afraid. Dean was catching up to Cas, he could hear the thumping of his feet. He could play this off, it would be fine.
“You know why people are able to take advantage of you so much?” Lucifer asks one day, or month, or year, as he slips out of Jess’s image a sick grin on his face.
“Why”
Ignore the ache.
“Becuase you are such a bad liar”
“Sam? What--Gabriel you must have heard that?”
Jack was coming down the hall too, overtaking Dean.
“I heard it” Jack breathed out, appearing at Castiel's side with fear etched onto his face. “Sam what's wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong!” He repeated, and it started to sound more like begging than a statement.
“Begging wont make anybody nicer to you, Sam” Lucifer muttered as he was sorting through his guts, bleeding him clean. That's what he had promised.
“I know”
“In fact when you beg me for something it makes me want to do the opposite.”
“Sam your soul screamed so loud I wouldn't be surprised if every supernatural creature just heard you-”
The pounding in his head was somehow becoming worse and all of it was clawing for release, it was as if it was sown into his flesh that he needed to exorcize this energy, that he needed to fix himself.
“Im fine”
His hands flew to tangle in his hair, and he barely registered the various yelps that he heard as the door slammed shut. The door slammed shut. The door slammed shut?
His head snapped up, the aching in his head had finally gone away, and he realized with a sinking feeling that there was no way he was going to hide this. Everything around him was floating, Gabriel was no longer in his room, and the door was shut despite the knocks that were resounding against it.
This domesticality was ruined. He ruined it.
“I think it's funny that people will say things like the devil made me do it,” Lucifer drawled one day, when he was feeling merciful and opened the cocoon.
Michael snorted from the other side of the cage, "Don't you?”
Lucifer grins, “They do it themselves, those sick things, then they just blame it on my name”
Michael tilted his head, his brow furrowing.
“Ask Sam, he ruins everything, and that's not on me.” Lucifer grins at Sam where he sits, and he doesn't try to deny him. Because it was true, he chose to do those things, to drink the blood, to kill lillith- it was him, he was the harbinger of death. The vessel of Lucifer. The abomination.
Someone is shouting something and Sam can't understand what they're saying- it's blurred and illegible.
“Did Azezal give me the powers?” He had been brave enough to ask one day
“No,” Lucifer said, “They were yours. You just made them evil.”
Sam remembers why he doesn't ask questions knowing that the answer will be brutally honest. He thinks that he kept asking them anyway.
“Sam, please open the door”
Finally, finally something he could understand, words that didn't blur as they entered his skull and pop and fizzle before the meaning escapes him. Someone is speaking, and he can't really tell who. He doesn't know if it matters. Today he will die, because he ruined another good thing. Today he will die for being unclean. He can't tell if he's crying or not, it doesn't feel like he is.
It feels blissfully numb, like the breaks from Lucifer he would receive sometimes, in those delusions which were not real but gave him peace if only for a moment.
“Okay” Sam replies, and he lets himself relax. He's okay with dying now, and selfishly he's happy he got to invade those domestic moments. The door peels open, and Gabriel is walking inside, with Dean on his heel and Cas soothing someone who he cannot see.
“Is my soul still screaming?” He dares to ask, and Gabriel shakes his head, and Sam laughs. Dean says something, and he can't understand it. The words pop and fizzle once more and it doesn't stick.
“Sam,” Gabriel kneels down, and Sam tries not to flinch.
No.no.no.no.no.Not again.Not again.
Gabriel stops, and scoots back, knocking Dean along with him.
“Do you know where you are?”
No. He didn't think it mattered. Wherever it was he was meant to die would simply be where he would die. So he shook his head no.
“Youre in the bunker”
The bunker? Oh. Right. He dared to wonder if they were going to lock him in the dungeon, if they were going to let him suffer before the gun, or the knife, or whatever was to be pressed to his head.
“Could you get on with it?”
Gabriel's eyebrows raised, “With what?”
It was somehow gentle. It was somehow kind. It was somehow genuine and that scared Sam more than anything.
“Killing me”
The floating objects that surrounded him dropped all at once, and if registering the fact that he would need no defense, that he wanted no defense. Gabriel stares at him as if he's said something horribly wrong.
“What? No one’s killing you”
Sam’s head was starting to hurt again, that made no sense. He ruined the peace, Dean had promised to kill him. Promised. Promised. “That is a non-promise, promise” That wasn't fair. They couldn't do this to him again.
Lucifer is above him, and Sam wants to claw his skin off.
“Why do you think you whinchesters lie so much? Force of habit? Genetics?”
“I dont know, im sorry please just stop-”
“Begging gets you nowhere. Tell the truth.”
“Because none of us love each other enough to want to keep the family together!” Sam shouted
“Wrong”
Another finger was broken and Sam screamed without care, Lucifer liked it when he screamed at times like these, it made him feel happy.
“I dont know- I dont know-”
“Ill tell you why then, i think they lied to you because they felt so much pity for the freak that you are that they thought by doing a nice thing that Dad would want to take them into those pearly gates.”
The hands stilled, and Lucifer suddenly drew Sam into a hug. He wanted to cry, he wanted to scream, he wanted to fight. He didnt do a thing.
“Im sorry he made you a freak” Something about it sounded mocking, but gentle, and genuine all in one sentence. His brain swelled with confusion. Nothing was right. Nothing was normal.
“But he doesn't play nice with his favorites”
Favorites. Favorites. Lucifer’s favorite toy. Favorite. God's favorite abomination. Sam Winchester, the boy king. Sam Winchester the vessel of the devil. Sam winchester the failure.
His vision was blurring, he couldn't breathe and it was too much. Everything was wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
“Sam!” These words didn't fizzle and pop, but they didn't feel right either. His eyes snapped open. (When had they closed?). It was Kevin. Kevin? When had he gotten so close- had Sam really been out of it that badly? What the hell happened-?
Bright lights flooded his vision, and he realized with a sickening feeling that he was in the living room. Kevin had a hand on his shoulder and Sam wanted to scream.
“Dean he's awake!” Kevin said, and Sam felt his heart drop. This was wrong, this was not death, these words were almost elusive to him and everything was wrong. Everything was too much.
Dean was in front of him, and he knows he should say something, but he can't find the words.
“Sammy?” It was gentle, so gentle it made his heart ache. “Are you understanding English again?”
English? Oh. Right. That was the language he was meant to be speaking. Right.
“Yeah” His voice came out with shakes lying in it, he pretended to miss the wince that Dean gave at how he must have sounded. Sam wasn't sure what to say. Dean was looking at him as if he was waiting for something and Sam realized that he must want him to explain.
“Im not-im not on the blood again.”
Dean blinks at him, “I know”
“You know?”
Dean sighs and sits next to him, Sam pretends that he doesn't flinch away.
“Gabriel told me that he checked you, said that you've continued being clean.”
What does that mean? Will Dean still kill him?
“Are you still going to kill me?”
Dean went still at his side, and Sam almost regretted asking the question. But just like in the cage the not knowing was so much worse than any punishment that could come.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
For the first time, Sam dared to look into Dean's eyes. He almost reeled back. Dean looked mortified, (why did everyone look at him like that?) his brows were furrowed in the way they did when he was confused.
“The voicemail?” Sam said, and he pretended it didn't hurt when Dean's eyes showed no signs of recognition.
“What voicemail, Sammy? What the hell is going on-”
“The voicemail before Lillith.” Charlie said, and Sam snapped to look at her. How long had she been there? How long had the rest of them been in the room? She bit her lip before continuing,
“I had always figured that Sam had asked you about it already-”
“Asked me about what!” Dean was almost yelling now, and Charlie looked at Sam. He inhaled before repeating the words that he did almost everyday aloud,
“Listen to me you blood-sucking freak. Dad always said I'd either have to save you or kill you. Well, I'm giving you fair warning. I'm done trying to save you. You're a monster, Sam, a vampire. You're not you anymore. And there's no going back.”
He kept his eyes closed, he didn't want to see Dean remember and follow through on his word.
“What the fuck is that? Who-?”
“It was the voicemail Sam got from you. It was tampered with by Zacharahia.”
What?
“What?” He let the words slip through his mouth, “You mean Dean didn't say that?”
“I didnt- of course i didnt Sammy!” Dean said, and again there was that tone of misery in his older brother's voice that he could never understand. When Sam would come home with a black eye he would use that same voice asking who did it.
“Hey, I don't know if this should be the focus? Could we talk about what the fuck just happened? Why was everything floating? What language were you talking in?”
“Sam’s psychic powers seemed to have overflooded after prolonged disuse. The same way Jack and I must take out our wings so that they do not get damaged.” Cas replied easily, and Sam wanted to cry. There was no shaming, this was nothing like how Lucifer said it would happen.
Lucifer had laughed when he asked, but he was desperate.
“Accept you?” Another wheeze, “Oh Sam, no. No they would never”
There was a cold hand on his face, it was demanding, it was too much for him to handle.
“Dean would shoot you on the spot”
And Lucifer didn't lie. That's why Sam dared to ask these questions, because Lucifer would never lie. It hurt, but it hurt in the way that truth does. It hurt. It hurt. It was so cold. So, so cold-
“Sam”
Demand. Demand. It was a command and he should follow it, but he can't bring himself to look at Lucifer and he knows it will make it worse. The hands on his face burn with the chill. He does not scream, even as the hands beginning taking his flesh away from him.
“And the language?” Dean asked, the words shook as he heard them
“Enochian.” Cas replied quickly
“The language of the angels? Are you kidding me?” Kevin says, and he knows that they will want an explanation, knows that he owes them one. But Lucifer told him what would happen.
“I um…I learned while in the cage.”
No one says anything. It's so deathly silent it makes Sam want to run, and people are considering each other, looking at one another as if waiting for someone else to take the charge.
“How long have the powers been back?”
What should he say? The truth? Should he lie?
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“I never lost them.”
Dean is looking at him, he's looking at him like he’s the world but somehow also disappointed him and Sam wants to scream. The room is tense, this was more like what Lucifer had shown him. Now he could be prepared, now he was ready for the gun to go off.
“Okay” Dean said instead of a bullet, and Sam was so confused. This was wrong. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. The barrel of a shotgun was meant to be pressed to his chest, or a knife through his neck, not “okay.”
“What do you mean, okay? Dean I lied to you”
“If the voicemail made you think that I was going to kill you Sammy, I'm not going to harp on you about that.” He seems like he wants to say more, and he's opening his mouth like a fish trying to decide if he should say something or not.
Finally he settles on:
“So yeah, okay. We’ll figure the rest out.”
Sam was confused. But Dean only lied when it was needed, so if he was lying Sam should assume that it was a mercy to him. That was that for now.