OOC; what is a Samsquatch?
Character: Samuel Winchester
Series/Fandom: Supernatural
Original or Anomaly version: Anomaly
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Sexuality: Reluctant bisexual. Sam consciously identifies as straight only because he is very concerned with what is Right and Normal, but he has selective bi tendencies.
Appearance: When Dean is in an irritated mood, he calls Sam “Sasquatch”. This is a pretty good summation of Sam's build. He's a little bit over six-foot-four, a gangly assortment of long limbs and muscle. His dark hair is shaggy, curling over his ears, collar, and hazel eyes in a sheepdog-like manner. Though he prefers jeans, button-down shirts, and a broken-in canvas jacket, he can wear a suit just as easily. He was a runner in high school and there are still vestiges of that in his build: he's lean and long, fast when he wants to be despite his height, and has the strong core muscles necessary for long distance running. There is an air of careful relaxation around Sam, as if comfortable dishevelment is in his nature, but he has been trained to be sharp and cutting at any given moment.
Personality: Sam is a kind of a goober. He's gentle and compassionate, almost absurdly so given the way he grew up, and he has a way with people. Dean was always a con man and manipulator, but Sam's soft-soulful eyes and goofy, eager smile won people over just as easily as his brother's setups. The puppydog look is his trump card, almost unbeknown to him, and when he turns on the wattage of his straight white smile, it's difficult for even Dean to say no to him. This is the kid who was constantly saving kittens from trees, nose stuck firmly between the pages of some big book or another, and it's almost like he comes from a different world than his father and brother---a world of study dates and highlighters, annotated texts and Indie music. Rebelling against the Family Business in the only way he knows possible, Sam has mentally categorized everything by Supernatural and Normal, and he's always leaned into the latter as a way of rebelling against the former. He does things because they're what he sees as normal: he went to a normal college, started a normal degree, and had a normal girlfriend. This has stopped him from being too introspective on matters not classified under normal, such as the liquidity of his sexuality or how abnormal and desperate his relationship with his brother is. He's detail-oriented and very conscious of the people around him; he walks like he's used to making room for another body next to him. Sam is intelligent but a little scatterbrained and oblivious, normally pretty relaxed but edging towards anal-retentive on some things. He takes a lot of notes and is really, really fond of organizing his books and research materials.
Abilities/Strengths: Sam is physically strong, thoroughly schooled in the Don't Get Your Ass Kicked style of martial arts, passed down from father to son. He is smart, computer-savvy, research-oriented, though hopelessly possessed with trying to get his brother back. He has a wide spectrum of seemingly useless knowledge and is fluent in Latin, Spanish, and English (and proficient enough in Greek for rudimentary translations), and is something of a geek. His shot is good, and he has limited experience with spellwork.
Weaknesses: He's stubborn as an ox---interestingly apt for a Taurus---and kind to a fault at times. His biggest weakness, though, is not a character flaw but a person: Dean, his older brother and best friend cum hero. When Sam says that he'd do anything for Dean, he means it. Research and an aborted mourning process have eaten Sam's life whole.
History: Samuel Winchester was born to John and Mary Winchester in May 1983, their beloved second child. He had a normal start to life by all accounts, moving from newborn to infant healthily and happily, adored by his mechanic father and homemaker mother, and mostly tolerated by his four-years-older brother, Dean.
On June 24th 1984, when Sam was just over a year old and Dean was exactly five and a half, Mary was killed by a demon known as Azazel; the only witness to her murder was Dean, as she had been pinned to the wall above his bed and set on fire. Both boys had survived, but they'd ended up scarred---there is no way to unsee the burning, screaming body of your mother writhing on the ceiling. John, Dean, and Sam had escaped the flames themselves, but it was a real case of out of the frying pan and into the fire---Mary's death was only the beginning.
The rest of the story falls into a certain rut: John became a hunter, Dean became his golden child little warrior, Sam became the rebel, and his childhood became a long series of diners with menus blooming with grease spots, cheap motels with chintz bedcovers, and salt, blood, and shotguns. As he grew up, his hair was a little too long and he liked to read a little too much; he was, in short, a little too normal for the surreal survivalist lifestyle his brother and father boasted. An A student and track star almost in spite of everything, Sam earned himself a full-ride scholarship to Stanford University, and he took it. He met a nice girl named Jessica, and could almost see a normal life laying itself out neat as a highway before him: a degree in law, a nice wife, a nice white-picket fence, 2.5 nice little kids, and a nice retirement and peaceful death. Maybe he'd die of old age, in his sleep. This was the most comforting thought Sam had ever encountered, so he was excited by all this normalcy dropping into his lap; maybe he wasn't as damaged as he thought he was.
His first year in the university system passed unremarkably, and he almost made it through without a single hitch---but then, a month before finals, he was kidnapped. When he came to, he was slouched over in the Impala's passenger seat, a cupcake smooshed against the side of his face, his hands zip-tied in front of him. Dean grinned at him from the driver's seat, saying, “Happy Birthday, Sammy. You kinda fell over on your cake. Good to see you, by the way,” as if he hadn't cuffed and kidnapped his brother in the dead of night.
It was a Winchester thing, taken in stride. It was just like the good old days. Only not. Sam was furious at first, since Dean was ruining his chance at ever getting that perfect normal life, but his brother was absolutely relentless; he kept Sam in his sight twenty four-seven, not giving him the room to run away to college again. It was backwards, since John had very explicitly told Sam that he was, under no circumstances, to come running back home, but John wasn't around, either. It was just him and Dean, moving from town to town without rhyme or reason. At first, Sam thought that he had some big hunt in mind, a kill that he wanted to keep under their father's radar, but, as the days passed, he realized that Dean was moving aimlessly, without pattern or meaning. He was jittery and sick from lack of sleep and too much stress, and he seemed, above all, lost.
Apparently, something was wrong with Dean. Something was very, very wrong with Dean, because he wouldn't say what was wrong and he didn't sleep; Sam counted up the weird things bit by bit, noting the facts that Dean was chugging caffeine like it was going out of style, refused to talk about why he'd kidnapped him and what was wrong, and would not, under any circumstance, sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time.
The first time Dean fell asleep, Sam figured out what was wrong. Nightmares. Visions. Dean woke up screaming his name, and the truth came out in stutters: every time he fell asleep, he dreamt of Sam dying, pinned to the ceiling, a flaming sacrifice with one leg crooked up like the Hanged Man. Saying Dean was superstitious was putting it lightly, but this superseded superstition: this was too real, too painful, and too clear to be anything but the exact truth. So Dean, being Dean, had roadtripped to Palo Alto and hijacked his baby brother from school to protect him from the fiery visions that haunted his dreams. If he kept on eye on Sam, he'd justified, there'd be no way for the demon to claim him.
It goes without saying that Sam never did make it to his finals. They began hunting together again, hunting for the prey, the Yellow-Eyed Demon that had started everything, and Dean's visions became stronger, meaner, and clearer as each mile stretched out. He was Chosen, he was demon-tainted, he was going to be the center of something very dark and very big, someday, and Azazel wanted Sam out of the way because he was the main obstacle between Dean and the darkness. He was self-destructive by nature, and Sam was one of the few grounding influences he had. Without Sam, he'd be a loose canon, perfectly capable of razing humanity with fire until it was nothing more than ashes and bones riddled with gnaw-marks.
The Winchesters weren't the type of men that rolled over and took orders from any old demon, though, so the end didn't happen as Azazel had envisioned: the demon tried to claim Sam, but John sold his soul in recompense; the demon tried to change Dean, but Sam wouldn't let it happen; they kept each other sure and sane through hunt after hunt for five years, until May 2007, when Dean disappeared, taken into the sickest reality show known to mankind---psychic versus psychic, five demon blood-tainted twenty-eight year olds playing a game of Last Man Standing.
He wasn't the only psychic kid, as it turned out. He wasn't the only one, and he wasn't the strongest one. A leader---the leader Azazel wanted, a sooty bedraggled soul who would sink oh-so-easily into hell---but how does a man with visions fight against a man with super strength?
Dean was stabbed in the back, and Sam arrived just in time to hold his brother in his arms as he died.
Dean was dead within seconds, spine nearly severed. Dean was dead, and when he tried conjuring up the Crossroads Demon for a deal---the deal, his soul for his brother's---he'd been laughed at. Apparently, hell wouldn't take his soul in exchange for Dean's simply because hell already had everything it wanted. Dean Winchester's soul was of lower quality than Sam's, but higher demand. Supply and demand, honey, the Demon had purred before she'd curled into a long streak of sulphuric smoke.
For three days, he buried himself in studies. There had to be something he'd missed, someone who could help, some way of bringing Dean back. Bobby was patient at first, but fanaticism can only be tolerated for so long: after five days, Bobby burned Dean's body, and then withstood the outpouring of pain and anger from Sam when he found out what he'd done. He'd screamed, he'd cursed, he'd broken down; the look of pity on Bobby's craggy face had been painful in its own way, since the man was just as good as family to him but even he hadn't been able to touch the level of loss Sam had experienced, so he just listened to him yell until his words lost coherency and fell into sobs.
After that, Sam got in the car---the Impala, his brother's car, his baby---and started driving. He took the dog-eared cardboard box that held what remained of Dean Winchester and left. Fistful by fistful, he tossed out Dean's ashes out the window, painful specks of his brother catching in his mouth and eyes as he scattered him out on the highway at ninety miles per hour.
If Bobby didn't have the answers and the Crossroads Demon wouldn't let him burn for Dean, he'd either find an answer or combust, ashes still stinging in his eyes. He was falling apart mile by mile, unable to cope, finally alone in the world but not by choice. The Impala ran out of gas after nine hours, stuttering to a pained stop in the middle of an anonymous city's dusky limits just before dawn, and he had to take a deep breath and stop running.
It's one of those things that Sam will never, ever forget. He'd hunched against the Impala's steering wheel, unable to breathe past his sick heaving sobs, Simon and Garfunkel's “Bridge Over Troubled Water” playing on the radio as the sun rose over Lawrence, Kansas. He would never be quite sure how he'd gotten back home, but it was a new start on an old life.
Ending up back at the start wasn't a miracle, but it was enough to keep him from eating the muzzle of his Berreta. Sam hadn't given up on finding a way back to Dean, so most of his first days were spent hunched over texts in book-crammed hotel rooms, but he hadn't given up on himself, either.
A week passed. A month passed. Sam kept moving. He dropped his cellphone into the Wakarusa river on his way out of town, losing all of the contacts that could tie him back to his old life and to Dean. Bobby still called him almost daily, no matter how many cell phones he burned through, but Sam didn't answer. He started driving and didn't stop until the Impala choked on her own fumes or he got so deep-twisted-hungry he had to eat something or risk passing out. Things got better with time and distance. He brushed his teeth three times a day. Tried to eat that many times, too. Slept at least four hours at a time.
Hunted.
That yellow-eyed son of a bitch had taken the last thing that mattered to him, and Sam literally could not rest until he'd put one of Colt's bullets straight through the demon's skull. Finding leads was nigh impossible; getting close to the demon was even harder.
But Sam had help.
In every town he stopped in, he met two women. As soon as summer broke across the continental US, the fauna of men and women behind the counters of any motel he walked into had cornflower blue eyes, rimmed with a tiredness beyond lineal time. Every night, they gave him the same key number---301---and told him to have a good night. Even if he didn't spread out salt lines, he was safe in these room 301s.
The blue-eyed innkeeper's name was Cadmiel. She---it---Sam didn't have a correct pronoun for it because it was above sex, holy---it was an angel. Straight from heaven and sent down to watch over his travels and herd him towards Azazel, the Yellow-Eyed demon---he had the gun, he had the motive; apparently, this execution was God's will.
It was a damn pity that he'd stopped praying months ago. Instead of jumping on board with Cadmiel and all its promises of safety so long as he fought the good fight and kept what remained of his soul squeaky clean, he played the field. The second woman he found in every city, Ruby, prowled her way into the booths he'd claim at diners and bars, the backseat of the Impala; she had empty dark eyes, smooth and dark as tar, and she'd wear a curvier, younger, and softer body every time she found Sam. She whispered incentives, told him of what the other side had planned and what she'd do for him if he'd help her prevent what was coming. She'd square herself over his hips, long blond hair that smelled of peppermint and menthol cigarettes, and tell him prophesies and call him all kinds of motherfucker as she ground sticky wet spots into the bulging crotch of his old jeans.
Sam wasn't stupid. He knew what was coming. On bathroom stall walls and spray-painted on the sides of dilapidated buildings, the Mark of the Beast started showing up everywhere---three downward pointing pentagrams. A new breed of demonic possession followed the Mark rearing its ugly head: followers of the Beast, stupid normal people who'd accepted the Mark and now couldn't even commit suicide. These everyday shmoes, these high schoolers and cubicle workers with their pagers and neckties, they suddenly would go into work and demand that everyone follow the Beast. Anyone who refused or stammered, not understanding what kind of crap their former bosses or debate team captains were spewing, was beheaded. Instantly. Messily. One after another.
This was happening all over the world.
Sure, his world had fallen to shit after Dean's death, but now everyone else's world was following suit. By the looks of it---demons slipping into bodies, angels saving buses full of children, a third of the stars blotting out one October evening without any kind of astronomical explanation---it was coming fast and hard, the birthing pains of the Revelations.
Sam finally started answering Bobby's calls again.
Series/Fandom: Supernatural
Original or Anomaly version: Anomaly
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Sexuality: Reluctant bisexual. Sam consciously identifies as straight only because he is very concerned with what is Right and Normal, but he has selective bi tendencies.
Appearance: When Dean is in an irritated mood, he calls Sam “Sasquatch”. This is a pretty good summation of Sam's build. He's a little bit over six-foot-four, a gangly assortment of long limbs and muscle. His dark hair is shaggy, curling over his ears, collar, and hazel eyes in a sheepdog-like manner. Though he prefers jeans, button-down shirts, and a broken-in canvas jacket, he can wear a suit just as easily. He was a runner in high school and there are still vestiges of that in his build: he's lean and long, fast when he wants to be despite his height, and has the strong core muscles necessary for long distance running. There is an air of careful relaxation around Sam, as if comfortable dishevelment is in his nature, but he has been trained to be sharp and cutting at any given moment.
Personality: Sam is a kind of a goober. He's gentle and compassionate, almost absurdly so given the way he grew up, and he has a way with people. Dean was always a con man and manipulator, but Sam's soft-soulful eyes and goofy, eager smile won people over just as easily as his brother's setups. The puppydog look is his trump card, almost unbeknown to him, and when he turns on the wattage of his straight white smile, it's difficult for even Dean to say no to him. This is the kid who was constantly saving kittens from trees, nose stuck firmly between the pages of some big book or another, and it's almost like he comes from a different world than his father and brother---a world of study dates and highlighters, annotated texts and Indie music. Rebelling against the Family Business in the only way he knows possible, Sam has mentally categorized everything by Supernatural and Normal, and he's always leaned into the latter as a way of rebelling against the former. He does things because they're what he sees as normal: he went to a normal college, started a normal degree, and had a normal girlfriend. This has stopped him from being too introspective on matters not classified under normal, such as the liquidity of his sexuality or how abnormal and desperate his relationship with his brother is. He's detail-oriented and very conscious of the people around him; he walks like he's used to making room for another body next to him. Sam is intelligent but a little scatterbrained and oblivious, normally pretty relaxed but edging towards anal-retentive on some things. He takes a lot of notes and is really, really fond of organizing his books and research materials.
Abilities/Strengths: Sam is physically strong, thoroughly schooled in the Don't Get Your Ass Kicked style of martial arts, passed down from father to son. He is smart, computer-savvy, research-oriented, though hopelessly possessed with trying to get his brother back. He has a wide spectrum of seemingly useless knowledge and is fluent in Latin, Spanish, and English (and proficient enough in Greek for rudimentary translations), and is something of a geek. His shot is good, and he has limited experience with spellwork.
Weaknesses: He's stubborn as an ox---interestingly apt for a Taurus---and kind to a fault at times. His biggest weakness, though, is not a character flaw but a person: Dean, his older brother and best friend cum hero. When Sam says that he'd do anything for Dean, he means it. Research and an aborted mourning process have eaten Sam's life whole.
History: Samuel Winchester was born to John and Mary Winchester in May 1983, their beloved second child. He had a normal start to life by all accounts, moving from newborn to infant healthily and happily, adored by his mechanic father and homemaker mother, and mostly tolerated by his four-years-older brother, Dean.
On June 24th 1984, when Sam was just over a year old and Dean was exactly five and a half, Mary was killed by a demon known as Azazel; the only witness to her murder was Dean, as she had been pinned to the wall above his bed and set on fire. Both boys had survived, but they'd ended up scarred---there is no way to unsee the burning, screaming body of your mother writhing on the ceiling. John, Dean, and Sam had escaped the flames themselves, but it was a real case of out of the frying pan and into the fire---Mary's death was only the beginning.
The rest of the story falls into a certain rut: John became a hunter, Dean became his golden child little warrior, Sam became the rebel, and his childhood became a long series of diners with menus blooming with grease spots, cheap motels with chintz bedcovers, and salt, blood, and shotguns. As he grew up, his hair was a little too long and he liked to read a little too much; he was, in short, a little too normal for the surreal survivalist lifestyle his brother and father boasted. An A student and track star almost in spite of everything, Sam earned himself a full-ride scholarship to Stanford University, and he took it. He met a nice girl named Jessica, and could almost see a normal life laying itself out neat as a highway before him: a degree in law, a nice wife, a nice white-picket fence, 2.5 nice little kids, and a nice retirement and peaceful death. Maybe he'd die of old age, in his sleep. This was the most comforting thought Sam had ever encountered, so he was excited by all this normalcy dropping into his lap; maybe he wasn't as damaged as he thought he was.
His first year in the university system passed unremarkably, and he almost made it through without a single hitch---but then, a month before finals, he was kidnapped. When he came to, he was slouched over in the Impala's passenger seat, a cupcake smooshed against the side of his face, his hands zip-tied in front of him. Dean grinned at him from the driver's seat, saying, “Happy Birthday, Sammy. You kinda fell over on your cake. Good to see you, by the way,” as if he hadn't cuffed and kidnapped his brother in the dead of night.
It was a Winchester thing, taken in stride. It was just like the good old days. Only not. Sam was furious at first, since Dean was ruining his chance at ever getting that perfect normal life, but his brother was absolutely relentless; he kept Sam in his sight twenty four-seven, not giving him the room to run away to college again. It was backwards, since John had very explicitly told Sam that he was, under no circumstances, to come running back home, but John wasn't around, either. It was just him and Dean, moving from town to town without rhyme or reason. At first, Sam thought that he had some big hunt in mind, a kill that he wanted to keep under their father's radar, but, as the days passed, he realized that Dean was moving aimlessly, without pattern or meaning. He was jittery and sick from lack of sleep and too much stress, and he seemed, above all, lost.
Apparently, something was wrong with Dean. Something was very, very wrong with Dean, because he wouldn't say what was wrong and he didn't sleep; Sam counted up the weird things bit by bit, noting the facts that Dean was chugging caffeine like it was going out of style, refused to talk about why he'd kidnapped him and what was wrong, and would not, under any circumstance, sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time.
The first time Dean fell asleep, Sam figured out what was wrong. Nightmares. Visions. Dean woke up screaming his name, and the truth came out in stutters: every time he fell asleep, he dreamt of Sam dying, pinned to the ceiling, a flaming sacrifice with one leg crooked up like the Hanged Man. Saying Dean was superstitious was putting it lightly, but this superseded superstition: this was too real, too painful, and too clear to be anything but the exact truth. So Dean, being Dean, had roadtripped to Palo Alto and hijacked his baby brother from school to protect him from the fiery visions that haunted his dreams. If he kept on eye on Sam, he'd justified, there'd be no way for the demon to claim him.
It goes without saying that Sam never did make it to his finals. They began hunting together again, hunting for the prey, the Yellow-Eyed Demon that had started everything, and Dean's visions became stronger, meaner, and clearer as each mile stretched out. He was Chosen, he was demon-tainted, he was going to be the center of something very dark and very big, someday, and Azazel wanted Sam out of the way because he was the main obstacle between Dean and the darkness. He was self-destructive by nature, and Sam was one of the few grounding influences he had. Without Sam, he'd be a loose canon, perfectly capable of razing humanity with fire until it was nothing more than ashes and bones riddled with gnaw-marks.
The Winchesters weren't the type of men that rolled over and took orders from any old demon, though, so the end didn't happen as Azazel had envisioned: the demon tried to claim Sam, but John sold his soul in recompense; the demon tried to change Dean, but Sam wouldn't let it happen; they kept each other sure and sane through hunt after hunt for five years, until May 2007, when Dean disappeared, taken into the sickest reality show known to mankind---psychic versus psychic, five demon blood-tainted twenty-eight year olds playing a game of Last Man Standing.
He wasn't the only psychic kid, as it turned out. He wasn't the only one, and he wasn't the strongest one. A leader---the leader Azazel wanted, a sooty bedraggled soul who would sink oh-so-easily into hell---but how does a man with visions fight against a man with super strength?
Dean was stabbed in the back, and Sam arrived just in time to hold his brother in his arms as he died.
Dean was dead within seconds, spine nearly severed. Dean was dead, and when he tried conjuring up the Crossroads Demon for a deal---the deal, his soul for his brother's---he'd been laughed at. Apparently, hell wouldn't take his soul in exchange for Dean's simply because hell already had everything it wanted. Dean Winchester's soul was of lower quality than Sam's, but higher demand. Supply and demand, honey, the Demon had purred before she'd curled into a long streak of sulphuric smoke.
For three days, he buried himself in studies. There had to be something he'd missed, someone who could help, some way of bringing Dean back. Bobby was patient at first, but fanaticism can only be tolerated for so long: after five days, Bobby burned Dean's body, and then withstood the outpouring of pain and anger from Sam when he found out what he'd done. He'd screamed, he'd cursed, he'd broken down; the look of pity on Bobby's craggy face had been painful in its own way, since the man was just as good as family to him but even he hadn't been able to touch the level of loss Sam had experienced, so he just listened to him yell until his words lost coherency and fell into sobs.
After that, Sam got in the car---the Impala, his brother's car, his baby---and started driving. He took the dog-eared cardboard box that held what remained of Dean Winchester and left. Fistful by fistful, he tossed out Dean's ashes out the window, painful specks of his brother catching in his mouth and eyes as he scattered him out on the highway at ninety miles per hour.
If Bobby didn't have the answers and the Crossroads Demon wouldn't let him burn for Dean, he'd either find an answer or combust, ashes still stinging in his eyes. He was falling apart mile by mile, unable to cope, finally alone in the world but not by choice. The Impala ran out of gas after nine hours, stuttering to a pained stop in the middle of an anonymous city's dusky limits just before dawn, and he had to take a deep breath and stop running.
It's one of those things that Sam will never, ever forget. He'd hunched against the Impala's steering wheel, unable to breathe past his sick heaving sobs, Simon and Garfunkel's “Bridge Over Troubled Water” playing on the radio as the sun rose over Lawrence, Kansas. He would never be quite sure how he'd gotten back home, but it was a new start on an old life.
Ending up back at the start wasn't a miracle, but it was enough to keep him from eating the muzzle of his Berreta. Sam hadn't given up on finding a way back to Dean, so most of his first days were spent hunched over texts in book-crammed hotel rooms, but he hadn't given up on himself, either.
A week passed. A month passed. Sam kept moving. He dropped his cellphone into the Wakarusa river on his way out of town, losing all of the contacts that could tie him back to his old life and to Dean. Bobby still called him almost daily, no matter how many cell phones he burned through, but Sam didn't answer. He started driving and didn't stop until the Impala choked on her own fumes or he got so deep-twisted-hungry he had to eat something or risk passing out. Things got better with time and distance. He brushed his teeth three times a day. Tried to eat that many times, too. Slept at least four hours at a time.
Hunted.
That yellow-eyed son of a bitch had taken the last thing that mattered to him, and Sam literally could not rest until he'd put one of Colt's bullets straight through the demon's skull. Finding leads was nigh impossible; getting close to the demon was even harder.
But Sam had help.
In every town he stopped in, he met two women. As soon as summer broke across the continental US, the fauna of men and women behind the counters of any motel he walked into had cornflower blue eyes, rimmed with a tiredness beyond lineal time. Every night, they gave him the same key number---301---and told him to have a good night. Even if he didn't spread out salt lines, he was safe in these room 301s.
The blue-eyed innkeeper's name was Cadmiel. She---it---Sam didn't have a correct pronoun for it because it was above sex, holy---it was an angel. Straight from heaven and sent down to watch over his travels and herd him towards Azazel, the Yellow-Eyed demon---he had the gun, he had the motive; apparently, this execution was God's will.
It was a damn pity that he'd stopped praying months ago. Instead of jumping on board with Cadmiel and all its promises of safety so long as he fought the good fight and kept what remained of his soul squeaky clean, he played the field. The second woman he found in every city, Ruby, prowled her way into the booths he'd claim at diners and bars, the backseat of the Impala; she had empty dark eyes, smooth and dark as tar, and she'd wear a curvier, younger, and softer body every time she found Sam. She whispered incentives, told him of what the other side had planned and what she'd do for him if he'd help her prevent what was coming. She'd square herself over his hips, long blond hair that smelled of peppermint and menthol cigarettes, and tell him prophesies and call him all kinds of motherfucker as she ground sticky wet spots into the bulging crotch of his old jeans.
Sam wasn't stupid. He knew what was coming. On bathroom stall walls and spray-painted on the sides of dilapidated buildings, the Mark of the Beast started showing up everywhere---three downward pointing pentagrams. A new breed of demonic possession followed the Mark rearing its ugly head: followers of the Beast, stupid normal people who'd accepted the Mark and now couldn't even commit suicide. These everyday shmoes, these high schoolers and cubicle workers with their pagers and neckties, they suddenly would go into work and demand that everyone follow the Beast. Anyone who refused or stammered, not understanding what kind of crap their former bosses or debate team captains were spewing, was beheaded. Instantly. Messily. One after another.
This was happening all over the world.
Sure, his world had fallen to shit after Dean's death, but now everyone else's world was following suit. By the looks of it---demons slipping into bodies, angels saving buses full of children, a third of the stars blotting out one October evening without any kind of astronomical explanation---it was coming fast and hard, the birthing pains of the Revelations.
Sam finally started answering Bobby's calls again.