Work Text:
Sam blinks slowly at his reflection. Tendrils of the Darkness are creeping up in his veins as he brushes his teeth and spits it out. He feels it mingling with the demon blood in his bloodstream, crawling under his skin visible only to his eyes, like huge snakes slithering up around his neck and suffocating him. The long shower involving a lot of skin-breaking scrubbing has done nothing to help him. He is used to this though. The feeling of being tainted and unclean in the biblical sense has been with him as long as he can remember. Black eyes or black veins don’t really make a difference.
He shakes his head to pull himself out of this line of thoughts and focuses on getting dressed up. All he wants is to lie down and sleep for the next month, let himself come down from the year of adrenaline-induced haze that had been fuelled by nothing but stubbornness and raw willpower on his part. He felt like he has run out now that Dean’s safe and free of the mark. He doesn’t have it in him to stay awake or upright any longer. But he has to. He doesn’t deserve rest or reprieve, not when he let out another powerful being out of its cage and doomed the world again for his selfish reasons. The last thing he wants to do is slack off and not take responsibility for his actions.
But it seems his body is not on board with that plan as it refused to co-operate when he tried to get it moving. He has to go to the library and start turning the Men of letters collection upside down to find something that’ll help. No excuse or exhaustion is more important than that right now.
He wonders briefly how he’ll pay for his sins this time. Another cage? Another millennia of unthinkable torture?
It should be you up there, not her.
Sam shudders. The room gets colder suddenly, a glimpse of something he usually keeps under lock and key coming back to terrify him. Red eyes glow dangerously in the corner of his mind, taunting him, breathing life into old fears.
None of this is real. We’re just playing, Sammy. I can’t wait to see how beautifully you’ll break when I cancel this production.
Sam’s hand immediately finds the big bruise on his flank and digs in brutally, the exploding pain blinding him with blissful agony and grounding him. He limps his way to the bed and sits down, trying to get his heart to stop pounding.
Despite the surging panic and heaving breaths, he can’t help but think that it almost makes better sense than this reality. Mark or not, there’s no way Dean would ever say he’d rather see Sam dead. Or try to do it himself. Sam’s still not sure if Dean really meant to kill Death or if it was just a momentary lapse of judgement. How can Death even be dead?!
Or maybe it really is an elaborate game by Lucifer and this Dean is just a puppet playing his role.
He takes another shower.
“Get your shit together”, he tells himself under the spray of water. “You’re okay. You’re fine.”
It doesn’t work. He pretends it does.
It takes him a few more minutes to get his head on straight and walk out of his room.
His steps are feather light on the floor and don’t make a single noise as he makes his way over to the kitchen in search of coffee. He’s learned to be quiet around the bunker, makes it easier to roam around the halls like a ghost in the middle of the night. Sam does that a lot these days. For all his exhaustion and desire to sleep, he never did manage to do it for more than two hours at a time.
The smell of bacon and a soft hum makes him pause at the doorway. Dean is in front of the stove, humming a tune Sam vaguely recognised and making breakfast. Despite all the bruises he stubbornly wouldn’t let Cas heal, there’s a softness in his face that had been missing for quite a while.
And he’s reminded for the upteenth time why it was all worth it. Dean is okay. Dean is here. Maybe he got a shit deal being stuck with Sam again, but he is here and alive and in control of himself to enjoy his burgers and beer and that’s enough for Sam. He knows he’d do it all over again and carry the guilt for the rest of miserable existence, if Dean gets to have all of this.
“Hey”, he says and goes for the coffee machine.
“Took you long enough. Had your beauty sleep, Samantha?”
Sam rolls his eyes and doesn’t tell him how he laid on his bed and stared at his ceiling fan all night.
“Breakfast?”, Dean adds a few more pieces to a growing pile of bacon.
“This is not as good as Dean's” Charlie pouts in his head, chewing some cheap roadside diner bacon in what feels like a distant memory.
His stomach rolls at the delicious smell permeating the air around him. He downs the scalding coffee and lets the burn in his mouth distract him from the thought of throwing up.
“No, I’ll eat later”, he says and hopes his voice didn’t sound too strangled.
“Alright, but don’t come complaining when there’s nothing left”, Dean calls after him.
The smell haunts him and Sam’s not quite running from it, but it’s close. He tops off his mug with a generous amount of whiskey from one of their many stashes; he’ll be coming back for more before the morning’s over, it’s one of those days. And then he’ll throw himself a pity party in his room later that night and curse himself in the mirror until he passes out on the floor. Sam is pathetic like that sometimes.
He heads straight to the War room because that’s the farthest from the kitchen he can get and finds Cas sitting there. Cas smiles, weak but genuine, when he sees him coming.
Even after all this time, it’s still surreal to believe that an actual Angel, a good one at that, chose to be his friend. Sure that was mostly because of Dean, but over the past year, in their collective effort to save Dean, he and Cas have grown closer and Sam no longer feels like he’s just an extension of Dean in the angel’s eyes. Looking at him now, worn down and still reeling from the after effects of Rowena’s curse, Sam can’t help but think if this is what befalls to anyone who manages to get close to him, pain and blood and misery, and for the first time in his life, he lets go of his slight jealousy and feels grateful that everyone of their friends and family always gravitate more towards Dean than him. Then he feels stupid, his narcissistic ability to make everything about himself is in utter contradiction to his alarmingly low sense of self-worth. Why is he like this?
“Sam, are you okay?”, Cas asks with a soft frown between his eyebrows and Sam would laugh if he could. There has not been a time in his life where he could answer truthfully to that question, as far as he can remember. He takes a huge sip from his liquor-coffee.
“I should be the one asking that question, Cas. How you holding up?”
Cas sighs. “Recuperating is hard.”
It’s been a few days since Rowena reversed the curse she put on Cas. Cas was too tired to argue with them, so he agreed to rest up until he was back to normal. He looks much better than he used to, but there’s still exhaustion and pain lingering in his eyes. Dean has already sworn a hundred times to burn Rowena alive.
“Dean’s movie collection is that bad, huh?”
Cas shakes his head, not getting the quip. “The movies are not at fault. I’m not dealing very well with being stationary for so long.”
Sam smiles sympathetically. “Why don’t you and Dean take a drive somewhere? Go see a ball of twine or something, make a day out of it. It’ll help with the cabin fever.”
Cas perks up a bit at the suggestion. “That would be nice. You won’t be joining us?”
Sam waves his hand. “Nah, you guys go. I got some research to catch up on and there’s still a ton of books left to sort out in the library.”
Cas accepts his explanation easily; never one to push too much. “Alright. I’ll ask Dean.”
Cas goes back to the enochian book he’d been proof-reading and Sam begins gathering all the books that were misplaced by the Styne’s break in. They work in silence for sometime before Sam disturbs it.
“Hey, Cas, what’s the Empty?”
Cas looks thoughtful. “It’s supposed to be the final resting place for angels and demons. I’ve heard rumours that it’s a combination of heaven and hell, as in you keep dreaming of your worst moments and your best ones in an eternal sleep.”
“Can anyone come back from the Empty like in heaven or hell?”
“No, that would be nearly impossible. No being except God can do that.”
Maybe that reaper would be doing him a favour after all.
“Why do you ask?”
Sam shrugs. “Just came across it in one of the books the other day”, he lies easily.
Cas buys it, thankfully.
Putting all the books back in their respective places as per the catalogue is a tedious process, but it’s necessary work and it provides some much needed mind-numbing distraction for Sam. It also makes him feel a bit better to fix at least a miniscule part of this whole mess. Speaking of messes.
“Cas? I know it’s too little too late, but I’m sorry.”
Cas looks at him imploringly, the same intense gaze that Sam could feel searching through his soul.
“It’s not your fault, Sam. It was my choice. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to save Dean’s life. Or yours.”
Sam smiles, touched by Cas’ affection for them as always, even if disagrees with his first point.
“So would Charlie”
Sam freezes with his hand halfway up the bookshelf. No one has said her name out loud in the past month and it’s a punch in the gut to hear it again. Or maybe Sam’s the only one who isn’t allowed to talk about her. Sam flicks a quick glance towards the hallway to make sure Dean isn’t there.
“Sam, it’s not your fault”, Cas says again. In his earnest voice, it even rings true, sounds like absolution. Too bad he’s not the one Sam’s seeking repentance from.
Cas sighs like he can read Sam’s mind. “Anything Dean may have said, he didn’t mean it. Your brother was grieving and the mark is extremely manipulative when it comes to negative emotions. He has moved past it now.”
Maybe. Maybe the hate Sam sees flashing sometimes in his brother’s eyes is just a reflection of his own self-loathing, or maybe, years of dressing up and playing pretend has enabled Dean to mask his resentment most of the times, God knows how good of an act Sam puts on all the time, being all cheerful and upbeat when he is dying inside. It’s not the first time Sam has gotten a loved one killed. He very much doubts it would be the last. By now, Dean must have had plenty of practice in hiding his hate for Sam and acting normal. There's no way to know for sure.
So, Sam nods and pulls his lips up, hoping he doesn’t look creepy like a ventriloquist doll. “I’m glad you’re back home safe, Cas.”
Cas’ eyes brighten with a small, heartfelt smile, despite his familiar exasperation with Sam and his tendency of being melodramatic and playing the victim. “Me too”
He stumbles back to his room around 2 am, drunk and tired enough to start seeing double after sorting through a whole section of the library. Dean had texted him before saying he and Cas are staying in town for the night, promising to come back with breakfast.
A voice inside him says his brother is finding ways to stay away from him because he can’t stand to look at Sam’s face anymore.
He dreams of his hands dripping red with his sister’s blood, every stab on her body from his own hands, and crawls out of bed to pace his room lifelessly like a zombie for the rest of the night and pastes a smile on his face the next morning for Dean and Cas. He pretends he can’t hear different variants of his brother’s voice on loop pointing out reasons for why he should be dead, why he shouldn’t be alive.
There’s something so beautifully tragic about having someone who is everything to you, someone who’s life is more important than your own, someone you can’t live without. Your sense of self-worth depends solely on how they see you. You are what they say you are. You become what they say you are. Sam may have gotten through two centuries in a Cage match with a fallen archangel, but pathetically he is still a little brother at heart who seeks validation from his big brother. And to listen to that brother listing out all his mistakes to show he’s evil and the world would be better off without him in it... it’s a good thing Lucifer’s favourite past time was tearing his heart out and crushing it in front of his eyes, all that practice has finally come in handy.
His brain has a hard time remembering the part where Dean only said all that because of the mark. Did he though?
Only reason Sam hasn’t actively tried to kill himself yet, was because the voice dismissing his every argument against it sounds a lot like Lucifer. And he needs to be here to fight the Darkness.
But he’s screwing that up too by being distracted and useless in hunts, only dragging his brother down. As always.
Dean, stitching up a bite that was disappointingly too far from his jugular, chides him and calls him careless and stupid and won’t last two minutes without me to save your ass, and Sam barely stops himself from agreeing out loud. Dean gives him a weird look when just sits there like a statue, but then tells him to stop sulking and helps him change his bloodied shirt.
Sam’s mind doesn’t waste any time storing everything Dean says as always, word by word so he can pick apart every letter and drive himself crazy once he’s safely locked away behind the door of his room.
You pulled me back.
I was wrong.
Sam gasps awake with a scythe in his throat.
“What are you doing up?”
Sam doesn’t look up from the coffee that’s cold as ice in his hands. The bunker feels naturally chill as well, more so now than usual, or maybe that’s just another one of Sam’s imaginations. He is tired enough to sleep underwater but there are sharks in his head that will tear him to pieces if he loses his guard.
“Couldn’t sleep”, he mumbles.
“You okay?”, his brother asks and Sam would scream his throat out if he could.
“Yeah, I’m fine”, he says instead.
Sam didn’t have to look up to know that Dean doesn’t believe him. So, he frowns, letting that innocent and confused look on his face do its job. He’s managed to fool Dean all these years, it shouldn’t be that hard.
The bruises in his face are healing well and Sam’s glad to see it. He wished Dean would just let Cas heal him, but he knew the yearning for penance all too well to interfere.
Dean sighs, somewhere between annoyed and frustrated. He quietly washes and refills the water jug, the reason he must have come here for.
“Go to bed”, he commands softly as he leaves.
Sam watches him go and thinks it must be impossible for Dean to not hate him, to act as if every redhead they come across doesn’t send a pang through his chest and increases that hate a bit more. It sure does for Sam.
He’s paralyzed with fear sometimes because he’s lost all sense of morality and direction. He’s lost. He’s doomed so many lives, will do so until he’s dead. He was never the good guy to begin with, but now the needle of grey has been pushed so far that it’s in pitch black. He doesn’t know what to do the next time Dean is in danger. And considering their life, it won’t be too long till he’s faced with the decision. Should he save Dean or not? How far is he allowed to go? How far is too far? Is it okay as long as Sam’s the only one getting killed in the process?
It’s difficult to make his own decisions when the brother you would die for, hates you now for what you did trying to save him. The same brother who hated you for not saving him the last time you left him unknowingly in a bad place. Sam had believed Dean was in heaven, with their father and mother, happy and finally at peace. He had no idea Dean was in purgatory, he would’ve turned the world upside down if he had known.
And that was the problem. Dean was right. How is he any different than a werewolf that kills humans to save its pack, Or any other monster for that matter. They’re only trying to save themselves and their families and what gives Sam the right sit there and play judge, jury, executioner when he’s in no way different than them?
How is he not evil?
Even after all these years of pain and redemption, he is still something that should be hunted, still no better than a monster.
Dean doesn’t see it yet, but Sam wasn’t kidding when he said they’ve lost sight of what they set out to do. They haven’t really been doing the “saving” part of the family business lately. They’ve been selfish, choosing each other over innocent lives and they’ve caused too much damage already. Sam would rather die than be the reason for another innocent’s death. Maybe the solution is just that, to put only his life on the line and nobody else’s; to jump into the fire headfirst before the flames could get out.
Sometimes in the dark corners of his mind, Sam misses Lucifer. Misses the certainty of the cage. Misses the penance of it. He doesn’t have to think or make choices, doesn’t have to figure out what’s right or wrong. No problems for him to solve, just punishment. He can pay for all the lives lost because of him and the walls of his cage know how much Lucifer likes to make him pay. No possibility of him fucking up anything more.
It’s really saying something that he needs to be in a cage with Lucifer to stop ruining other lives, how is he any better than the Devil? Maybe that’s where he was destined to be. Maybe that’s why God didn’t save him even after he prayed for a century, but now he is showing him visions of the cage.
Just one pull of the trigger, Sam, and we can be together again. Forever. Easy-peasy.
Sam shudders and shakes his head as if he can get these thoughts out that easily. At moments like this, when his mind plays dark tricks on him, Billie’s promise is a morbid comfort because when he loses the battle with his voices someday, at least he won’t ever end up in hell again. As long as he makes sure he dies before Dean he can negotiate some deal to get Dean to heaven. If Sam is not alive who else’s gonna try to bring him back? Cas can just visit him in heaven.
It’s interesting that Sam walking away with his life intact always seems to be the common denominator for the end of the world.
If only John Winchester would have had the balls to follow his own orders and killed Sam when he still had the chance. If someone had said this is how he would turn out, he would’ve gladly did it himself.
But now it was too late. They’re at war and every hand is crucial for a slightest chance of winning. There’s no easy way out of this.
With that thought comes the urge to put his head through a wall just to escape the suffocation of being trapped with the weight of billions of lives on his bare shoulders. Again.
So he does the next best thing, he goes to the gym.
Whiskey and workouts are becoming a habit for him. He maybe a reasonably health conscious guy, but everyone had their vices. And Sam, well, he is both an addict and a Winchester. There’s nothing more familiar than the smell of cheap Bourbon and the ache of exhausted muscles.
Fours hours later, he’s panting, sweating, his body shaking from being pushed past its breaking point, but Sam doesn’t stop. He’s gotten thinner, weaker, and it’s pathetic how much he has let himself go with no discipline.
Ever since the trials, and Gadreel, Sam hasn’t been in the best physical state. When you are worried that you’re going crazy again, losing time while awake, exercise doesn’t exactly fall in the list of top priorities. He used to spend countless hours watching clock tick by trying in vain to figure out if it was really him in his body and not another angel or demon hiding inside without his knowledge. Hell, he still doesn’t know sometimes. Maybe that’s why he’s not up to his game, he must have gotten used to angels taking over his brain and doing all the heavy lifting for him. He scoffs bitterly.
When he drops the dumbbell for the third time, barely two inches saving him from breaking his toes, he accepts defeat and stumbles back into his room, every inch of his body hurting enough to make him forget about himself for a while.
He falls asleep right away.
.
He jerks awake from a nightmare, as always, and flinches back on his bed when he sees the shadow saving his sensitive eyes from the hallway light spilling through the open door. The familiar silhouette doesn’t bring him peace, but heightens the intense paranoia caused by his dreams.
What is that in Dean’s hand, a hammer or a scythe?
It’s a shotgun. He falls back on his stomach and hides his face in the pillow. He’s not ready to face it, a nightmare where Dean with a burning mark and vacant eyes has come to shoot him down, or a reality where Sam screamed so loud in his sleep that Dean came looking for danger.
“You want a drink?”, Dean asks, after taking in his sorry state of affairs for a few minutes.
It would be nice, to sit with Dean in silence and share a glass of whiskey to soothe his frayed nerves, but it would be cruel to force Dean into enacting a facsimile of what they used to be. He shouldn’t be bothering Dean at all.
“Thank you, but I think I’m just gonna go back to sleep”
He’s full of shit, they both know it. Never in his history of nightmares has Sam been able to fall asleep after. He wanted to give Dean an out from the obligatory emotional support.
Dean takes it. He walks out of the room, leaving him in all his post-nightmare glory. Sam tries not to feel hurt and listens to the fading footsteps with a heavy heart. He leaves the door open, which makes Sam sigh, he really doesn’t possess the energy to get out of his bed to close it. Every part of him is aching, his psychotic gym session has come back to bite him in the ass.
He hugs his pillow close and turns away from the door, choosing to leave it open until he can get up again.
He flinches when a hand settles on his shoulder, only the familiarity of the touch stopping him from pulling out his knife. Dean nudges at him gently to sit up and Sam follows the unspoken order without a question, barely concealing his grunts.
Dean pushes a steaming cup into his hand, the smell of chamomile slowly wafting up to his nose. Sam takes it without protest, he’ll take anything Dean puts in the effort to bring him at this point. It feels comfortably hot in Sam’s cold hands, the warmth spreading through him like soft wave. He takes a sip, Dean’s lack of tea making skills is blatantly obvious in every drop, but it still tastes great to him.
Sam used to keep a box of tea for nights exactly like this but he ran out a while ago and never found the time to replenish his stash. Bourbon works better anyway. Did Dean go out and buy this for him?
Dean has a mug of his own as he climbs into Sam’s bed and settles against the headboard next to him.
“Since when do you drink tea?”, Sam asks, masking the gratitude he felt for his brother’s company.
Dean’s face scrunches up in disgust. "Oh hell no! This is Rum. I’m not a weirdo”
Sam huffs a laugh at that. Dean smiles too.
They drink in silence for a while and for once Sam’s glad Dean ignored his wishes to be left alone. The cold is slowly leaving him, replaced by something warm and unexplainable.
“You want to talk about it?”, Dean prompts gently as if he himself wasn’t dealing with the fallout of being mind controlled by a bloodthirsty murder mark for a year. Sam can only imagine how that must have messed him up, and here he is worrying about Sam as if he has anything to complain about after getting his big brother back in one piece.
And anything he does have to say is nothing good, would bring back nothing but painful memories for Dean and remind him of the reasons why Sam was the worst thing that ever happened to him.
“When do I not get nightmares? It’s nothing new”, He shrugs. Technically he wasn’t lying. And he hasn’t told the subject matter of his recent dreams to Dean yet, and he plans on doing that never.
Dean shoots him a disbelieving look, but pushing Sam to talk is not something that Dean does. That’s how Sam always got away with not having to put any more on his shoulders than already he has to. He certainly wasn’t going to start now.
So he turns the question around. “How are you? You know, without the mark?”
Dean’s hand unconsciously moves to stroke his forearm, where the mark had been. Sam fully expects him to deflect.
“It’s just quiet, I guess. Nothing screaming in my head to go stab something all the time, so that’s good”, Dean grins, trying hard to play it down. But Sam has seen the trigger-happy fingers and the angry red scratches on his forearm enough times to know Dean wasn’t adjusting as well as he believed. But it isn’t fair to expect him to just bounce back the next day, after everything the mark had put him through. So Sam has been trying to make life as comfortable as possible for him. It’s all he can do.
“So, you don’t want to kill me anymore?”, Sam jokes, as if he hadn’t been thinking about that obsessively for months.
He must not have sounded as funny as he intended, because Dean’s forehead furrows lightly.
“No, Sammy, ‘cause then I’ll have to kill myself and that’s just counterproductive after everything we’ve done.”
Sam freezes, trying hard not to show his disbelief, and Dean just stares at him, looking mildly offended that Sam doesn’t know this already. His throat closes up. If this room was any more lit Dean would be able to see the light film of tears in his eyes.
And truly, how was he supposed to believe? After what happened with Charlie and Death, and Dean’s complete silence about it all reaffirming Sam’s own twisted opinions about himself, Sam wasn’t wrong to assume that those were Dean’s true thoughts coming out through lesser inhibitions.
Dean says something like this and then turns around and starts stabbing Sam with words when he inevitably screws up, how is he supposed to know how long he’ll be in Dean’s good graces this time? Because knowing Sam’s track record, it won’t take him too long to fuck up again. What then?
He thought they had resolved this specific brand of insecurities when he was standing in a church with Crowley tied up behind him, but then Dean blew it all up to hell, saying saving Sam that day was a mistake, leaving Sam wounded on the floor to pick through the pieces again.
Honestly, the frequent whiplash he gets between Dean wants to kill me and Dean cannot live without me is worse than some of Lucifer’s best tortures. Being forced to continue living is not any better than dreading an execution at his brother’s hand. And Sam has been going back and forth with this for years now. He really doesn’t give his body enough credit for dealing with such diverse range of anxieties so well.
But no matter how many times it turns out wrong to trust these words, Sam can’t help but keep them close to his heart, just wretched enough to grasp on to any straws to believe his only family still loves him.
“Hey Dean, are you, I mean, are we-”
Dean shakes his head. “Clean slate, Sammy. Let’s just focus on fighting the darkness, okay?”
Sam knows he thinks that he truly means this, but he doesn’t. Clean slate almost never means clean slate to Dean. Somewhere along the road, something will happen to trigger him and then he will lash out again. Break right through Sam’s carefully constructed peace of mind and rescind all his previous reassurances with a flick of a hand. But for now, Sam will take whatever he can get and force himself to be okay. There is really nothing he can about it except hope that future-Sam will have the stomach to take it the next time Dean throws all his past mistakes in his face. Sam’s not sure how many more times he can go through this vicious cycle. But he will, because he’s got no other option. He needs his brother and he can’t live without him. It’s as simple as that.
Dean doesn’t wait around for Sam to respond. He grabs the remote from the nightstand and turns on the TV, snagging half the comforter for himself. He puts on something random and starts watching it. Dean is banishing the tension between them through the art of not-talking-about-it-anymore and Sam’s not protesting by any means. He lies back down after few minutes, too tired to sit upright any longer. He stares at the screen mindlessly until his eyes start to close.
Dean pats his shoulder softly. “Go back to sleep, kid. I’ll keep the bad dreams away.”
Not a kid, is what Sam wants to say, but he just mumbles, “Yeah, okay” and drifts off, feeling grounded for the first time in a while with a hand on his arm to hold him back from getting too lost in his own head.