Monster
This was written to accompany this lovely piece of art and explain how Sam got his shoulder injured, but became more of an exploration of the ‘monstrous’ label that Show likes to throw around. Angsty, creepy Sam pov fic followed.
Summary: Sam will grieve Dean right, this time.
Warnings: Spoilers for 10.01: Black. Gore, violence, angst, creepiness.
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Monster
Sam wonders if he knows how to grieve.
He knows guilt, and he knows revenge-Jess still shows up on the ceilings of his nightmares sometimes, her burnt carcass still asking him why even as Lucifer whispers back, you know me; you know why. He knows anger, and he knows despair-he remembers the taste of Ruby’s blood on his tongue and the fire that unfurled through every vessel and every nerve, and thinking, these are my tools for this war. He knows the peculiar vacuum that Hell left in his soul, an exhaustion that crippled him in ways he hasn’t fully recovered from-he remembers existing in that non-space while Dean disintegrated before his eyes in the wake of Bobby’s death. He remembers when he didn’t even have that to motivate him to pick up a gun anymore. He remembers daring to think that there’s a world outside of the little dank room they call grief, filled with sunshine and hope, over-bright and horribly distorted.
Each time, Sam hasn’t grieved. Not like he’s meant to; like he’s supposed to.
Castiel arrives at the Bunker to help him. Dean wouldn’t want to see us like this, he says, and coughs and coughs and coughs. Crippled and afraid, unable to honour his memory like we should’ve. He walks through the Bunker and smiles at a memory, says, Dean would’ve wanted the ping-pong table here and this was his favourite item of clothing and he would punch holes through the veil if there was pie at stake, Sam, or you. Sam sees him sitting on Dean’s bed, stroking the covers reverently, and he feels a sudden pang of envy.
(that’s a creature that’s been human for less than a year, sammy. and he can still do this better than you.)
“Castiel,” Sam says, through a mouth that’s suddenly gone very, very dry, “we’ve got work to do.”
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No demon will answer Sam’s summoning, and all the boxes he buries at crossroads are of no use. Castiel-sickly, hurting Castiel-offers to pull one out of Hell, but Sam doubts he has enough grace to heal a papercut, leave alone harrow hell for the third time.
I’ve done far worse for far less, Castiel tells him, but falls asleep the moment Sam gently tips him over onto his bed.
They continue to hunt for even the slightest hints of demonic activity-omens, weather patterns, signs of possible crossroads deals. Sam chases a case in Detroit where dozens of young men and women were disappearing off the streets-possibly more, considering a lot of the disappearances went unreported. He slits a vein to perform an old scrying spell that Ruby’d taught him-and advised him against trying on his own-and tracks them to a gigantic abandoned factory a hundred miles away from the main city before he blacks out. When he wakes up, Castiel is cradling his newly-healed hand in his lap, looking sickly and stricken, but Sam can only smile.
He enters the factory to find hundreds of corpses hanging from the rafters, from rusted machinery and twisted hooks. Each of them has been completely drained of blood, and on the few with skin that’s not completely peeled away, Sam can find very distinctive tattoos.
Djinn, he thinks. Then: just djinn.
He calls Mike with the information, then turns and walks away, pretending he didn’t see every one of those dessicated heads turn to look at him.
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He still has to force himself out of the Bunker (grief-prison-grief) to shop for groceries in town. That’s where he meets Mrs. Candice Miller and her adorable seven-year-old, Jackson, by picking out a bag of peas from the top shelf of the freezer. Sam isn’t sure what it is about him that makes her take a shine to him (serial killing mountain man, Amelia called him once, and he’d laughed, though he was pretty sure she wasn’t entirely joking), but Mrs. Miller-call me Candice-is already inviting him over to dinner by his third visit to the store.
He visits often; he helps out with household chores and plays video games with Jackson, and is even able to impress Mr. Miller in the garage with whatever he’s learnt over the years on the road. Some days he can even forget why he’s there (he can’t no he shouldn’t). Candice is a woman of a great many opinions and an intense desire to broadcast them to the world in as intense a manner as possible. Feeling, she says to Sam, that’s what these new-fangled supernatural dystopias lack today. Real emotion, y’know?
Sam knows.
All I want to do, she says, is see ‘Across the Chasm in your Heart’ in print, Sam. Of course, Eddie says self-publishing is out of the question, and-and it’s been rejected everywhere else, Sam, what do I do?
You need belief, Candice, Sam says, carefully, oh-so-carefully, real belief. That absolutely nothing is impossible.
What’re you talking about?
Sam tells her about crossroad deals. At the gleam that enters her eyes, Lucifer reaches over and squeezes his thigh.
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Barely a week later, Sam is tailing Candice to the nearest crossroads in the middle of the night. Before she can seal her contract with a kiss, Sam ploughs into the demon, Ruby’s knife held at its throat. The demon laughs from where she’s pinned beneath him, laughs even when he screams, tell me where’s Crowley!, even when he deepens the pressure and cuts a thin line of fire across her neck.
Tell me, Sam, she says, and her eyes turn blood-red, did you spend so much time being tortured that you forgot how to torture?
Sam hears a distant, stomach-turningly familiar growl-he’s barely leaped to his feet and turned around, when Candice screams and invisible claws rip her throat out, showering Sam with her blood. No, he says, or at least, he thinks he says, but before he takes a step towards her twitching body, the demon grabs him, swings him around, and slams his shoulder into a tree so hard that he feels something give with a white-hot frisson of pain that travels through his entire body. The knife falls from his numb hand.
Too clever by half, Sammy, the demon says, quite pleasantly. She wraps one hand around his throat and grinds the palm of the other into his injured shoulder. Sam bucks and twists, gurgling underneath her hand as the bones in his shoulder grind under the pressure. He reaches up weakly with his other hand as his vision begins to fade; he thinks he hears a distant, “Stop!” before everything goes black.
He wakes up to Castiel leaning over him, pale and sweaty and coughing harder than ever. “Sam,” he says in between coughs, “Sam, can you hear me? Are you okay? Your shoulder-”
God, his shoulder. It’s stretched away from him at an unnatural angle, and he feels like it’s shattered into a hundred fragments just beneath his skin. He tries to move, then bites off a scream, awash with agony.
“I can heal you, Sam,” Castiel says, placing a gentle hand over his shoulder. “Just-just give me a minute-”
“N-no. Cas, no. ‘s fine, I’m okay.” He reaches up with his shaky left arm, clasps Castiel’s shoulder. “Really. It’s just-strained.” He grits his teeth and tries to move again. “Just-just help me up-”
He rises with Castiel’s faltering help, right arm hanging uselessly at his side. Candice’s body lies cooling in the middle of the crossroads, blood soaking into the ground.
“That poor woman,” Castiel says.
Sam closes his eyes for a second of some forgotten prayer, then begins to turn away.
He’ll just have to do better next time.
Finis