[Fic] The Most Cursed Name, pt 4
The Most Cursed Name
A Supernatural Story
Rating: R (Language, Violence), Gen
Betas: quakerhobbit, caladria
Warnings/Tags: Season 4, demon blood, discussions of hell, possession
Written for
spnaufestival
Part Four
"Found you, bro. Time for us to go back to the room."
"I don't think so."
Dean strolls around the half-full dining room, people playing on their phones waiting for their pizzas or chatting with friends. "Well I do. And I'm the big brother." He looks around the room suggestively. "You wouldn't wanna piss me off, would you?"
Sam chews a lip. He can't risk these people. He lets Dean drive him back to the hotel.
"Why?"
Dean pulls them into a parking space and turns to Sam. "That's all you have to say? Wow. You were supposed to be the smart one."
Sam frowns in confusion, but Dean's slamming out of the car, and Sam follows him, has to get a handle on this situation. He can't let Dean run around, he can't let a demon stay in him, and the demon seems to know that, because he doesn't even turn around to make sure Sam's still following him until he gets to the front door, where he turns with a light-hearted signature "Dean" smile - it makes him sick now how well this thing can imitate Dean, and just as sick to think anything could have fooled him into thinking it was Dean when it wasn't.
"Come on, Sammy. Pizza's getting cold."
Sam follows him in.
"It was at the farmhouse, right?"
Dean - the demon, anyway - smiles. "How'd you guess?"
"Witches get their power from demons. And that wound I stitched up for you, it was a lot worse at the house than it was by the time we were at the motel."
"Whoops."
"Whatever your plan is, you're blown. Your best bet is to just cut your losses. Leave Dean and regroup."
Dean smirked. "Like you'd kill your own brother."
"He'd prefer death to this, and you know it."
"Probably. Doesn't mean you can gank him."
Sam frowns. Fuck. "Dean!" Sam shouts, and it's desperate and he knows that even if Dean can hear him, he can't do anything about it, he can't do anything, and Sam is far too familiar with that sensation, of screaming inside himself, watching himself kill a man in cold blood, watching his own hands draw the blade across- "Dean!"
Dean laughs at him, cruel. It's not Dean's face at all, Sam can see now all the cruelties Dean could create and never does. Even when he's beating him down, telling him he doesn't know who Sam is anymore. Even through all of that, Dean had never been so happy about it. Now, now he is.
"Come on, Sammy," he says, arms spread. "I know you're just dying to gut me."
"I'm not afraid of you," Sam says, buying time, stepping backward. He can lead Dean to the devil's-
"Good. Smart," Dean says, sauntering across the room. Sam matches him, keeping space between them. "Except I know where every devil's trap is in this joint. Courtesy you."
"Yeah? Well I didn't tell you all of 'em."
Dean chuckles. "Right right. You didn't mention the ones Dean-o already knew about."
Sam's hope is dying. "That's right."
The demon taps Dean's temple. "I got it all right here, open access. You must remember, right?"
Sam frowns. "What do you even want? What was your plan here? Keep an eye on us? On me? Why?"
Dean laughs. "Why would I answer any of your questions? You ain't the one with leverage here, kiddo."
Sam bristles. At kiddo and at Dean's mouth saying it, and at the demon as it stalked toward him. Sam backs up, nodding. "That's what I thought. No plan, no nothing. Just another bottom feeder."
"Aw, that hurts."
"What, do you know us or something? Don't you have some Seals to break?" He quirked a lip. "Or no, I get it. You're on babysitting detail. That's gotta sting."
The demon tilts his head at Sam, grins malicious. "Trying to get me to spill my guts. Well if that isn't just like you, Sammy. Aren't you always trying to get dear old Dean to give up the deets on Hell?"
Sam frowns.
"I could tell you," the demon says, walks Dean's body around, circling Sam, watching him sly. "I got an all access pass. I know everything. How he screamed for you to save him, damned you for failing. Oh, yours is the most cursed name in all of hell, Sammy."
"Shut up."
"But the best is how he hated himself for picking up the blade himself-"
"Shut up-"
"I only wish it'd lasted longer, that self-hatred. Hatred turned into pleasure so fast-"
"Shut up!" It's too much, knowing Dean would never want these things talked about like this, never want this to get out of his head, so Sam launches himself at the demon in his brother's body, and they hurtle across the room. The demon laughs as Dean's head bounces off the wall behind him, And then he's bending Sam backward by the arms, demon strength easily overwhelming him. Sam feels his shoulder start to burn and he opens his mouth. "Exorcizamus te-"
The demon throws his head back and laughs. Sam watches in horror as it doesn't even begin to smoke out - even as he's thinking it must have locked itself in, like Meg did, he's taking advantage of the demon's glee, throws himself backward with the demon's twisting rather than fighting against it, and uses the momentum to kick up and out, breaking the demon's hold.
The knife. It's his only option now. Sam pulls it from his belt.
"Really?" the demon says. "Gonna kill big brother?"
Sam scrambles backward, knife held out in front of him like a ward. "Come and see," he spits back.
The demon leaps for him, cackling with glee. It sounds foreign coming from Dean. Not that Dean doesn't take great childish glee in simple pleasures, but it's different when it's really Dean. It's purer, honest. It's Dean, just a little mischievous, a little wrong, like the giddy grin on his face when the wind blows up some poor woman's skirt, and she's all embarrassed, looking around to see if anyone's noticed, and Dean pretends he hasn't seen, but he turns around to look at Sam like someone's just given him the world on a plate. That's Dean at 15 and Sam's 11. That's Dean at 26 and Sam's 22, rolling his eyes at how uncool it is to be happy at someone else's embarrassment. That's Dean at 29 and Sam's 25, desperately trying to figure out how to stop his brother from going to hell, while Dean is busy living his last moments as well as he can-
Sam's head hits the floor, the demon wields Dean's body like every part of it is a weapon, knees digging down into Sam's hipbones, one arm across Sam's windpipe, the other a fist in his face, twice before he can marshal himself.
The knife is still in his hand. Sam scrambles with the other hand against the arm pressing down on his throat, pushes up the arm, pulls at the sleeve, frantic - and locks eyes with the demon once Dean's forearm is bared.
"I knew you didn't have the stones," the demon says, glancing down and aside at the knife still clutched in Sam's hand.
"You know me so well," Sam spits, and the knife comes up. He can feel it slick through Dean's skin like it was nothing at all, the slide through tissue, quick. The demon hisses and rears up, arm to its chest.
"Bastard!" it whines, looking down at Dean's bleeding forearm, where the demonic lock is sliced in two.
Sam shoves backward, but the demon latches onto his leg before he can disengage fully. "Exorcizamus te," he says, kicking hard. He breaks free while the demon is trying to keep itself inside Dean. Sam flips over, tries to get up, but the demon catches his foot and yanks, and Sam comes down hard.
"-omnis immundus spiritus, omnis-"
"Shut the fuck up!" The demon drags Sam backward. Sam scrabbles at the wooden floor, pulls on the chair leg, the cord of the lamp, the edge of the desk. Paper flutters at the disturbance, the chair overturns, the lamp crashes, glass crunch. But he keeps his mouth moving, he can still talk, he can still save Dean.
"-satanica potesta-"
The demon crawls up Sam's body even as it hauls Sam backward, and it flips Sam by a firm grasp on Sam's arm. "No," it says, and it's terrifying to watch Dean watch him so casually, like he's reprimanding a bad dog, as his hand comes up to Sam's throat.
For a moment, Sam is afraid this demon is going to strangle him to keep him from exorcizing it, but then the thing smiles, smiles so wrong at him, and his hand moves up to just below his ears, strength in Dean's grip Dean does not have on his own, and the demon opens his mouth in a laugh as it squeezes and Sam feels the slow, inexorable burn of his jaw dislocating. With a pop Sam is sure is only in his head, it comes out of the hinge on either side of his face and his body jerks without his meaning it to, he screams without meaning to.
Dean sits up, breathing with exertion, but Sam thinks distantly it's all for show, there's no physical effort required to overpower Sam, not for a demon with the face of his brother, not for a demon Sam can't just kill. This demon gets off on the endorphins; Ruby always had.
"I don't wanna kill ya, Sammy," the demon says with Dean's voice. "But I will if I have to. So be a good boy, okay? We've got some work to do."
Like what, Sam wants to ask, but he tries to open his mouth and his stomach lurches. He tastes blood in his mouth from earlier blows and can't swallow it because he can't move his jaw and he's going to choke on it.
"Ex- exorcissaauss," he tries, but the demon just laughs at him.
"What was that? Can't quite hear ya, buddy." The demon is high off the fight, cocky, confident, too much like Dean in this moment, too much when Sam just wants Dean back, wants this to be over. Dean's hand goes to his pocket, flicks out his little pocketknife, honed to a precision edge. "You are just too persistent. Let's just stop trying altogether, okay?" It leans forward toward Sam again.
A moment later, Sam is screaming and near unconsciousness on the floor, blood is flooding his mouth where it's been pried open on a hinge that's out of joint, and his tongue is half gone.
"There now," Dean says, sitting back up. The demon wipes its hand across Dean's face, smears the blood spatter there.
Sam chokes, blinks at the ceiling. He doesn't know why the demon's kept him alive. Chances are, it hasn't really, it's just waiting for him to be boring, it's just waiting for him to bleed out. Dean will have this blood on his hands. Dean already has this blood on his hands, if by some miracle they make it out of this.
The knife is still in his hand. The demon is slapping his face lightly, trying to rouse him a bit, taunting him about giving up or being weak or taking a nap or whatever nonsense Sam doesn't intend to dignify with a response. But he blinks and squeezes the hilt of the knife still in his hand.
In a moment, the knife is at the demon's throat.
The demon blinks, grin vanishes for a moment before it's back, bigger. "Found the stones, eh?" it says. "I don't believe it for a moment."
Sam isn't paying attention. Dean, he thinks, eyes on Dean's, willing his brother to see and understand. Dean wouldn't want this. Dean wouldn't want to be the one who killed Sam. They had their rough spots when Dean first got back from Hell, Dean doesn't like Sam really, not anymore. Loves him, okay, but doesn't like him. He doesn't trust Sam's choices, he doesn't trust that Sam has stopped the demon blood, but it doesn't matter. Dean wouldn't want this. Dean, Dean.
The demon frowns, breathes hard. Dean's face crumples. And it's Dean, and he says "Sammy do it, do it. Don't you let me kill you goddammit. Sammy!" and that last word is choked with anguish and desperation and Sam mouths, much as it pains him:
I'm sorry.
"Sam Sam Sam-"
The demon stiffens up a moment later and Dean's eyes go black and mean. "Hope you got your fucking tearful goodbyes taken care of."
Sam presses in with the blade of the demon killing knife, just to remind the demon who has the leverage, but the demon just shakes its head.
"Think I didn't see that little show? Big bro told you to off him and you can't do it. You apologized. Pathetic."
Sam's hand shakes. A bead of blood wells up where he has cut superficially into Dean's neck. This is like Dad all over again. Dad and Yellow Eyes, and revenge and sacrifice and how Sam is never strong enough, how Dean always pays the price for Sam's weakness. How Sam can never ever save Dean. He coughs on blood again, the knife drops to his chest, then drags down to the floor as his body starts to give out on him.
"That's what I thought," the demon preens. It gets up then. Walks around the room, tidies up. Starts packing. Talking, about taking a trip, about having work to do but Sam can't hear anything useful because he's turned his head and he's staring at his own tongue laying on the floor in front of his face, and he's thinking through the haze of pain and blood loss that Dean does not want this. Dean explicitly does not want this.
But Sam can't kill him. There is a single option that allows for possibly both of them to survive, definitely one of them. And Dean is going to kill him for it if Sam survives, but that's okay, Sam thinks. That's okay, if Dean is alive to be pissed, it's okay. Dean doesn't want to live with some demon possessing him, making his body do things.
Sam remembers Meg, remembers blood on his hands he still dreams about, remembers the feeling of being invaded, used, and he doesn't want that for Dean. Sorry, he mouths again, even though Dean can't see it, Dean won't know how sorry Sam really is. But it doesn't matter.
If Dean is alive, it doesn't matter how sorry Sam is or whether Dean accepts his apology.
Sam closes his eyes. The feeling is still there, in the back of his head. It feels like a knot untangling when he focuses on it, a dark pulsing energy waiting to be tapped. But it's been long-deprived. Since Samhain, since the look on Dean's face, Sam has been careful. He's out of practice. He doesn't have the strength to hold out a hand to focus himself. Instead, he zeroes in on that voice that is Dean's but isn't, the voice still talking about how much fun they're going to have in that slick oily tone, and then the voice stops cold. The pacing footsteps halt, then turn toward him.
"What are you-"
Sam pushes, hard, and the voice cuts off with a choking sound. Sam still can't open his eyes. They feel too heavy, stuck together. He sinks deeper into the knotted power in his head. His arms and legs feel dead and warm, useless. Pressed down at every point. He allows that, his physical form is just that, but inside his head, he fights and pushes, he is strength embodied because if he isn't, Dean will kill him against his will, Dean will be a prisoner, Dean will go through what Sam went through, Meg and losing his brother to Hell (though Sam deserves it where Dean was a hero). He fights and he feels freer, sped up, high maybe, and somewhere someone is coughing, someone is hitting the floor, falling to all fours. Lights strobe behind Sam's eyelids, something bursts within him and someone is cursing, he hears his name, his is the most cursed name in all of hell.
Dean is cursing his name, it's Dean, but it's not, and he smells sulfur and blood and he feels nothing but heat and pain and dizzy euphoria he thinks might be what people feel just before they die.
← Part Three || Part Five →
A Supernatural Story
Rating: R (Language, Violence), Gen
Betas: quakerhobbit, caladria
Warnings/Tags: Season 4, demon blood, discussions of hell, possession
Written for
spnaufestival
Part Four
"Found you, bro. Time for us to go back to the room."
"I don't think so."
Dean strolls around the half-full dining room, people playing on their phones waiting for their pizzas or chatting with friends. "Well I do. And I'm the big brother." He looks around the room suggestively. "You wouldn't wanna piss me off, would you?"
Sam chews a lip. He can't risk these people. He lets Dean drive him back to the hotel.
"Why?"
Dean pulls them into a parking space and turns to Sam. "That's all you have to say? Wow. You were supposed to be the smart one."
Sam frowns in confusion, but Dean's slamming out of the car, and Sam follows him, has to get a handle on this situation. He can't let Dean run around, he can't let a demon stay in him, and the demon seems to know that, because he doesn't even turn around to make sure Sam's still following him until he gets to the front door, where he turns with a light-hearted signature "Dean" smile - it makes him sick now how well this thing can imitate Dean, and just as sick to think anything could have fooled him into thinking it was Dean when it wasn't.
"Come on, Sammy. Pizza's getting cold."
Sam follows him in.
"It was at the farmhouse, right?"
Dean - the demon, anyway - smiles. "How'd you guess?"
"Witches get their power from demons. And that wound I stitched up for you, it was a lot worse at the house than it was by the time we were at the motel."
"Whoops."
"Whatever your plan is, you're blown. Your best bet is to just cut your losses. Leave Dean and regroup."
Dean smirked. "Like you'd kill your own brother."
"He'd prefer death to this, and you know it."
"Probably. Doesn't mean you can gank him."
Sam frowns. Fuck. "Dean!" Sam shouts, and it's desperate and he knows that even if Dean can hear him, he can't do anything about it, he can't do anything, and Sam is far too familiar with that sensation, of screaming inside himself, watching himself kill a man in cold blood, watching his own hands draw the blade across- "Dean!"
Dean laughs at him, cruel. It's not Dean's face at all, Sam can see now all the cruelties Dean could create and never does. Even when he's beating him down, telling him he doesn't know who Sam is anymore. Even through all of that, Dean had never been so happy about it. Now, now he is.
"Come on, Sammy," he says, arms spread. "I know you're just dying to gut me."
"I'm not afraid of you," Sam says, buying time, stepping backward. He can lead Dean to the devil's-
"Good. Smart," Dean says, sauntering across the room. Sam matches him, keeping space between them. "Except I know where every devil's trap is in this joint. Courtesy you."
"Yeah? Well I didn't tell you all of 'em."
Dean chuckles. "Right right. You didn't mention the ones Dean-o already knew about."
Sam's hope is dying. "That's right."
The demon taps Dean's temple. "I got it all right here, open access. You must remember, right?"
Sam frowns. "What do you even want? What was your plan here? Keep an eye on us? On me? Why?"
Dean laughs. "Why would I answer any of your questions? You ain't the one with leverage here, kiddo."
Sam bristles. At kiddo and at Dean's mouth saying it, and at the demon as it stalked toward him. Sam backs up, nodding. "That's what I thought. No plan, no nothing. Just another bottom feeder."
"Aw, that hurts."
"What, do you know us or something? Don't you have some Seals to break?" He quirked a lip. "Or no, I get it. You're on babysitting detail. That's gotta sting."
The demon tilts his head at Sam, grins malicious. "Trying to get me to spill my guts. Well if that isn't just like you, Sammy. Aren't you always trying to get dear old Dean to give up the deets on Hell?"
Sam frowns.
"I could tell you," the demon says, walks Dean's body around, circling Sam, watching him sly. "I got an all access pass. I know everything. How he screamed for you to save him, damned you for failing. Oh, yours is the most cursed name in all of hell, Sammy."
"Shut up."
"But the best is how he hated himself for picking up the blade himself-"
"Shut up-"
"I only wish it'd lasted longer, that self-hatred. Hatred turned into pleasure so fast-"
"Shut up!" It's too much, knowing Dean would never want these things talked about like this, never want this to get out of his head, so Sam launches himself at the demon in his brother's body, and they hurtle across the room. The demon laughs as Dean's head bounces off the wall behind him, And then he's bending Sam backward by the arms, demon strength easily overwhelming him. Sam feels his shoulder start to burn and he opens his mouth. "Exorcizamus te-"
The demon throws his head back and laughs. Sam watches in horror as it doesn't even begin to smoke out - even as he's thinking it must have locked itself in, like Meg did, he's taking advantage of the demon's glee, throws himself backward with the demon's twisting rather than fighting against it, and uses the momentum to kick up and out, breaking the demon's hold.
The knife. It's his only option now. Sam pulls it from his belt.
"Really?" the demon says. "Gonna kill big brother?"
Sam scrambles backward, knife held out in front of him like a ward. "Come and see," he spits back.
The demon leaps for him, cackling with glee. It sounds foreign coming from Dean. Not that Dean doesn't take great childish glee in simple pleasures, but it's different when it's really Dean. It's purer, honest. It's Dean, just a little mischievous, a little wrong, like the giddy grin on his face when the wind blows up some poor woman's skirt, and she's all embarrassed, looking around to see if anyone's noticed, and Dean pretends he hasn't seen, but he turns around to look at Sam like someone's just given him the world on a plate. That's Dean at 15 and Sam's 11. That's Dean at 26 and Sam's 22, rolling his eyes at how uncool it is to be happy at someone else's embarrassment. That's Dean at 29 and Sam's 25, desperately trying to figure out how to stop his brother from going to hell, while Dean is busy living his last moments as well as he can-
Sam's head hits the floor, the demon wields Dean's body like every part of it is a weapon, knees digging down into Sam's hipbones, one arm across Sam's windpipe, the other a fist in his face, twice before he can marshal himself.
The knife is still in his hand. Sam scrambles with the other hand against the arm pressing down on his throat, pushes up the arm, pulls at the sleeve, frantic - and locks eyes with the demon once Dean's forearm is bared.
"I knew you didn't have the stones," the demon says, glancing down and aside at the knife still clutched in Sam's hand.
"You know me so well," Sam spits, and the knife comes up. He can feel it slick through Dean's skin like it was nothing at all, the slide through tissue, quick. The demon hisses and rears up, arm to its chest.
"Bastard!" it whines, looking down at Dean's bleeding forearm, where the demonic lock is sliced in two.
Sam shoves backward, but the demon latches onto his leg before he can disengage fully. "Exorcizamus te," he says, kicking hard. He breaks free while the demon is trying to keep itself inside Dean. Sam flips over, tries to get up, but the demon catches his foot and yanks, and Sam comes down hard.
"-omnis immundus spiritus, omnis-"
"Shut the fuck up!" The demon drags Sam backward. Sam scrabbles at the wooden floor, pulls on the chair leg, the cord of the lamp, the edge of the desk. Paper flutters at the disturbance, the chair overturns, the lamp crashes, glass crunch. But he keeps his mouth moving, he can still talk, he can still save Dean.
"-satanica potesta-"
The demon crawls up Sam's body even as it hauls Sam backward, and it flips Sam by a firm grasp on Sam's arm. "No," it says, and it's terrifying to watch Dean watch him so casually, like he's reprimanding a bad dog, as his hand comes up to Sam's throat.
For a moment, Sam is afraid this demon is going to strangle him to keep him from exorcizing it, but then the thing smiles, smiles so wrong at him, and his hand moves up to just below his ears, strength in Dean's grip Dean does not have on his own, and the demon opens his mouth in a laugh as it squeezes and Sam feels the slow, inexorable burn of his jaw dislocating. With a pop Sam is sure is only in his head, it comes out of the hinge on either side of his face and his body jerks without his meaning it to, he screams without meaning to.
Dean sits up, breathing with exertion, but Sam thinks distantly it's all for show, there's no physical effort required to overpower Sam, not for a demon with the face of his brother, not for a demon Sam can't just kill. This demon gets off on the endorphins; Ruby always had.
"I don't wanna kill ya, Sammy," the demon says with Dean's voice. "But I will if I have to. So be a good boy, okay? We've got some work to do."
Like what, Sam wants to ask, but he tries to open his mouth and his stomach lurches. He tastes blood in his mouth from earlier blows and can't swallow it because he can't move his jaw and he's going to choke on it.
"Ex- exorcissaauss," he tries, but the demon just laughs at him.
"What was that? Can't quite hear ya, buddy." The demon is high off the fight, cocky, confident, too much like Dean in this moment, too much when Sam just wants Dean back, wants this to be over. Dean's hand goes to his pocket, flicks out his little pocketknife, honed to a precision edge. "You are just too persistent. Let's just stop trying altogether, okay?" It leans forward toward Sam again.
A moment later, Sam is screaming and near unconsciousness on the floor, blood is flooding his mouth where it's been pried open on a hinge that's out of joint, and his tongue is half gone.
"There now," Dean says, sitting back up. The demon wipes its hand across Dean's face, smears the blood spatter there.
Sam chokes, blinks at the ceiling. He doesn't know why the demon's kept him alive. Chances are, it hasn't really, it's just waiting for him to be boring, it's just waiting for him to bleed out. Dean will have this blood on his hands. Dean already has this blood on his hands, if by some miracle they make it out of this.
The knife is still in his hand. The demon is slapping his face lightly, trying to rouse him a bit, taunting him about giving up or being weak or taking a nap or whatever nonsense Sam doesn't intend to dignify with a response. But he blinks and squeezes the hilt of the knife still in his hand.
In a moment, the knife is at the demon's throat.
The demon blinks, grin vanishes for a moment before it's back, bigger. "Found the stones, eh?" it says. "I don't believe it for a moment."
Sam isn't paying attention. Dean, he thinks, eyes on Dean's, willing his brother to see and understand. Dean wouldn't want this. Dean wouldn't want to be the one who killed Sam. They had their rough spots when Dean first got back from Hell, Dean doesn't like Sam really, not anymore. Loves him, okay, but doesn't like him. He doesn't trust Sam's choices, he doesn't trust that Sam has stopped the demon blood, but it doesn't matter. Dean wouldn't want this. Dean, Dean.
The demon frowns, breathes hard. Dean's face crumples. And it's Dean, and he says "Sammy do it, do it. Don't you let me kill you goddammit. Sammy!" and that last word is choked with anguish and desperation and Sam mouths, much as it pains him:
I'm sorry.
"Sam Sam Sam-"
The demon stiffens up a moment later and Dean's eyes go black and mean. "Hope you got your fucking tearful goodbyes taken care of."
Sam presses in with the blade of the demon killing knife, just to remind the demon who has the leverage, but the demon just shakes its head.
"Think I didn't see that little show? Big bro told you to off him and you can't do it. You apologized. Pathetic."
Sam's hand shakes. A bead of blood wells up where he has cut superficially into Dean's neck. This is like Dad all over again. Dad and Yellow Eyes, and revenge and sacrifice and how Sam is never strong enough, how Dean always pays the price for Sam's weakness. How Sam can never ever save Dean. He coughs on blood again, the knife drops to his chest, then drags down to the floor as his body starts to give out on him.
"That's what I thought," the demon preens. It gets up then. Walks around the room, tidies up. Starts packing. Talking, about taking a trip, about having work to do but Sam can't hear anything useful because he's turned his head and he's staring at his own tongue laying on the floor in front of his face, and he's thinking through the haze of pain and blood loss that Dean does not want this. Dean explicitly does not want this.
But Sam can't kill him. There is a single option that allows for possibly both of them to survive, definitely one of them. And Dean is going to kill him for it if Sam survives, but that's okay, Sam thinks. That's okay, if Dean is alive to be pissed, it's okay. Dean doesn't want to live with some demon possessing him, making his body do things.
Sam remembers Meg, remembers blood on his hands he still dreams about, remembers the feeling of being invaded, used, and he doesn't want that for Dean. Sorry, he mouths again, even though Dean can't see it, Dean won't know how sorry Sam really is. But it doesn't matter.
If Dean is alive, it doesn't matter how sorry Sam is or whether Dean accepts his apology.
Sam closes his eyes. The feeling is still there, in the back of his head. It feels like a knot untangling when he focuses on it, a dark pulsing energy waiting to be tapped. But it's been long-deprived. Since Samhain, since the look on Dean's face, Sam has been careful. He's out of practice. He doesn't have the strength to hold out a hand to focus himself. Instead, he zeroes in on that voice that is Dean's but isn't, the voice still talking about how much fun they're going to have in that slick oily tone, and then the voice stops cold. The pacing footsteps halt, then turn toward him.
"What are you-"
Sam pushes, hard, and the voice cuts off with a choking sound. Sam still can't open his eyes. They feel too heavy, stuck together. He sinks deeper into the knotted power in his head. His arms and legs feel dead and warm, useless. Pressed down at every point. He allows that, his physical form is just that, but inside his head, he fights and pushes, he is strength embodied because if he isn't, Dean will kill him against his will, Dean will be a prisoner, Dean will go through what Sam went through, Meg and losing his brother to Hell (though Sam deserves it where Dean was a hero). He fights and he feels freer, sped up, high maybe, and somewhere someone is coughing, someone is hitting the floor, falling to all fours. Lights strobe behind Sam's eyelids, something bursts within him and someone is cursing, he hears his name, his is the most cursed name in all of hell.
Dean is cursing his name, it's Dean, but it's not, and he smells sulfur and blood and he feels nothing but heat and pain and dizzy euphoria he thinks might be what people feel just before they die.
← Part Three || Part Five →