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He wakes up gradually to a persistent rattle and hum that even in his semi-conscious state he knows is an air conditioner, one that's almost certainly on it's last legs. He's not exactly sure how he knows this – the information feels personal as if he's lived it but when he reaches back for a specific memory to validate this belief he encounters only a vast emptiness where the past should be.
He doesn't have time to panic over this or even think about it really, as that's right about the time the psycho comes into the room.
“Finally! I was starting to worry there, dude,” the man says, and he'd pay more attention to the words except his brain is pretty well occupied with freaking out over what it's seeing to have much room left over for processing any aural input.
Because the guy is holding a knife. A big-ass, seriously scary looking knife that would be horrifying enough on it's own, thank you very much, without the addition of the blood that's pretty well coating the blade from grip to tip. The other man is holding a rag that's stained dark and wet, and he realizes that Psycho must have been in the middle of cleaning the weapon when the minimal noises he'd made upon waking had caught his attention.
“Wait!” he says, lizard brain attempting to take charge and demanding he get away from the maniac with the knife now, dammit, now, even as the more rational portion tries to reason it's way out of this.
“Whatever you're thinking about doing, don't, just don't,” he begs, standing on shaky legs and holding up both hands in a placating gesture.
“Don't what, Sam?” Psycho asks, forehead creased in confusion, as if he honestly doesn't know why he'd be freaked out by waking up in a motel room with a stranger wielding a huge bloody knife. A stranger he now notices has blood on his clothes as well, a fine spray of droplets on his jeans and boots, while his shirt is so suspiciously clean it he thinks he must have recently changed it.
Changed it after doing whatever it was he did to get bloody. Oh, God, he's going to die. Die hard and bloody and in a cheap motel room. Wait, motel implies other people, doesn't it? If he screamed, then maybe...
A glance at the distance between the two of them is enough to convince him to abandon that nascent plan. Two quick steps from Psycho and that would be all she wrote, not even enough time for the couple next door to turn down the television and ask each other, “Did you hear that?” as he bled out onto the carpet.
“Don't, don't, hurt me, okay? I don't know what you want, but whatever it is, you can have it,” he says, taking an unconscious step backwards as he pleads for his life.
“Okay. You're officially freaking me out here. What's going on?” the man asks, waving the knife for emphasis as he talks.
As he watches in horror, a drop of viscous red fluid rolls off the tip of the knife and disappears into the stained avocado green carpet and that was it. Lizard brain fully in charge now, he lashes out in a desperate attempt to get the weapon out of the hand holding it and hopefully escape.
It turned out to be easier than he would have anticipated.
A quick punch to the throat while the opposite hand twists the wrist of the hand holding the weapon and the bloody blade is on the floor. He kicks the knife away, out of reach of both of them because reaching down to get it would be suicide, leaving him open for attack from above for far too long. Psycho is clearly taken off guard by his unexpected attack at first but rallies quickly and puts up an valiant defense.
They fight, blows flying fast and almost eerily silent in the small room. He eventually gains the upper hand when a hard punch to his captor's solar plexus sends him reeling backwards into the cheap pressboard dresser, it's blunt corner stabbing him in what must be the small of his back. Two more blows in quick succession and the other man is on the floor, clearly down for the count.
He's at the door when he pauses just long enough to ask the simple question, “Why? Can you just tell me that much?” Because he'd really like to know why the psycho killer decided to kidnap him out of of all people in the world. Why he would take him away from the family and friends who were probably worried sick about him right now.
Psycho spits out a mouthful of blood before answering, voice harsh in the aftermath of the fight.
“You're my brother, dammit.”
And he leaves, running away from the motel room barefoot and reeling, because there is no way that man is his brother. No way. Not with the bloody knife and hands and hard dangerous eyes, there was just no way.
His instincts are proven correct when he finally stops running, well into what looks like the seedy part of town. Not that he has any idea what town he's in, or even who he is, until he finally thinks to search his pockets and comes up with an ID. One with his picture on it.
And his name is not Sam or Sammy, it's John Bonham, which means he was right all along. Not only that, apparently he's an FBI agent which meant he was most likely tracking this guy when he was captured by him, maybe drugged as well which could explain the memory loss, and brought back to his motel room for God only knew what reason.
Nothing remotely good for him, he knew.
He tries not to think what level of crazy you had to be to kidnap a stranger and try and make them into your brother, because it was painfully obvious Psycho actually believed what he'd said was true.
After close to an hour of searching he finally finds a someone, a thin Korean man running a tiny convenience store, who will let him use his phone. The cops, when they finally show, run his ID and declare it, and him, a fake, and warn him of the hefty fines associated with the misuse of the 911 system. He stops pressing in the face of threats of jail time and ironically, to him at least, psycho wards. He realizes they are about to drive off and leave him there on the sidewalk with no shoes or money or any way to get them when one of the cops, who maybe feels just a little sorry for him, gives him directions to the men's mission just three blocks away.
The shelter turns out to be full, no beds available at all. But they do give him a pair of used sneakers and a sandwich, so there is that.
He sleeps under an overpass that night, grateful that at least the street people don't seem inclined to start anything with him as well as the fact that it's summer, so that at least he doesn't have to worry about freezing to death. He drinks from water fountains in the park and ignores the joggers who won't meet his eyes and tries to decide what to do. A church group hands out sandwiches every day around lunchtime and it's his only meal of the day. Hunger isn't his biggest issue, however, not by a long shot.
His biggest concern is the definitely crazy and maybe serial killer guy who was most likely tracking him down at that very moment. He keeps a low profile as much as possible as well as a sharp eye on his surroundings, sleeping as little as possible. It wasn't enough, he knew, and with no walls or weapons to protect himself he's toast if Psycho does come looking for him again.
Six days go by and he's starting to get desperate enough to consider going back to the police, in spite of the probability of either getting arrested or involuntarily committed to the state mental hospital, when it happens.
A sharp sting on his neck wakes him up and he has just enough time to wonder what stinging insect got him before passing out. That was all he knew for a long while.
He wakes up and instinctively tries to move, to stand, to get away from a situation he isn't fully cognizant of yet but knows is something he wants no part of. But that turns out to be impossible, as his hands and feet are bound together behind his back. Behind his naked back. A quick check revealed his jeans were still firmly in place, but he isn't reassured.
This was so not good.
The faint scratching sound gets him to finally open his eyes and confront reality. He was in what looked like an abandoned warehouse, tied up like a fatted calf on the cool, hard concrete floor. The noise was coming from Psycho, of course, who was drawing what looked to be circle around his prone form with a piece of charcoal, or maybe chalk. White candles were lit at regular intervals around him.
Oh man this was really, really not looking good.
“Just relax, there, Sammy, this will all be over with in a few minutes,” Psycho says, voice calm and controlled as he continues to work. He finishes the circle and now he's drawing symbols of some sort inside the circle.
“I'm not him,” he tries, “I'm not your brother, so please just don't. Whatever you're going to do, just... don't.” He knows almost instantly this was the wrong thing to say as Psycho glances at him, mouth tight and eyes flashing with anger.
He braces himself for reprisals but Psycho only answers him quietly, “I know you don't understand what's going on but trust me. You are. You got mojoed by that Galvia just before I took it out and it's taken me all this time to work out how to undo this bullshit.”
Which doesn't sound all that bad and he actually calms down a little until Psycho comes towards him with a knife. Not the same huge scary knife he remembers from the hotel room, but still a good sized weapon - more than enough to gut him like a fish.
And Psycho's next words aren't all that reassuring. “This is going to hurt, but you can't move.”
But there is no way he can not move, not with a knife coming towards him like that, gleaming with deadly promise, and he renews his earlier futile struggles. Psycho curses, briefly but colorfully. He is rolled over onto his back, arms pinned painfully underneath him, and now Psycho is kneeling on his chest holding him still with his body weight.
He closes his eyes, not wanting to see what's coming next. Three quick cuts on his chest, so shallow they sting more than they burn, accompanied by words chanted in Latin, of all things. He waits tensely for other cuts to follow, deeper ones that end with the deepest one of all slicing his flesh somewhere lethal – his throat or maybe the carotid artery, but that's not what happens. Instead, his eyes fly open in shock as it all comes flooding back between one breath and the next, as if his memories had never gone missing in the first place.
Overwhelming relief is followed almost immediately by an equal amount of shame. Shame in how he treated Dean, in all the things he thought about him, but above all, that he repudiated his brother's existence. He knew that would have been what cut Dean the deepest, much more so than all his other actions and words put together. Logically Sam knows he wasn't himself when he said and did all those things but then guilt is not always a logical emotion.
Dean is sitting back on his heels, waiting to see if the ritual took.
“Yes, Dean. It worked,” Sam says quietly. “I remember everything.” He takes a deep breath and decides to try and diffuse the situation with humor. “And by the way, you fight like a girl.”
Dean stared at him, clearly incredulous. “Seriously? You come at me with those gorilla arms when I'm totally off guard and I spend six days working my ass off trying to figure out not only what mojo made you all screwy in the head but how to fix it and that's all you got for me? I fight like a girl?”
Sam looks him dead in the eye. “Yup. Like a girl. Like a chick, even.”
“Oh, it is so on,” Dean says, even as he's untying the ropes that bind Sam's hands and patting him down carefully for injuries. By way of apology Sam lets him fuss to his heart's content over the cuts in his chest - so shallow he's pretty sure they won't even scar – and throws the rematch Dean insists on a few days later after Sam's “healed up”.
Dean was predictably obnoxious about bringing this victory up whenever he thought Sam needed to be brought down a peg or two and Sam would let him, happy to have everything – and everyone - in his universe back where it belonged.