Word Count: 992
Warnings: Spoilers for When the Levee Breaks from Season 4
Summary: Sam detoxing.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to the Supernatural television series. The song excerpts used are from the children's lullaby of the same title.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He was broken and knew that somehow things would never be the same. His skin felt too tight for his body. His bones felt heavy and sharp, and something inside of him feared that they would slide out of place and puncture his skin from the inside out.
rock-a-bye baby
on the treetop
The voices around him sounded both familiar and foreign. The voices were attached to faces. Some of the faces he knew couldn't be real. His mother was long dead and long gone, but it still felt good to be near her. It felt good to be told he was loved, even if the person telling him wasn't real and just a projection created by his fractured mind. As the hours passed, he became less and less able to differentiate between the truly real and the real tortures created by his mind. He also cared less and less.
These thoughts and faces were his companions.
It was as if everything that he'd known to be true in the past had somehow changed and shaped and morphed itself into this ugly, invisible thing that threatened to choke the life out of him. The air in the room became both freezing and stifling, and his lungs fought to tell the difference between burning from heat and burning from cold.
when the wind blows
the cradle will rock
Something hot and thick rose in Sam's throat, and he couldn't stop the violent round of heaving that was caused by swallowing the thick mucous back down. It tasted of copper and salt, and there was something almost fleshy about the feel of it. The thick mass stuck to the insides of his throat, and he'd never wished for just one swallow of water as much as he did in that very moment.
"Dean, please. Help me."
Sam's voice was nothing more than a harsh rasp by this point, and even if his voice had been able to carry through the thick, metal walls, his brother wouldn't have been unable to hear him from where he sat perched on the edge of Bobby's couch in the living room upstairs. Even though the distance separated them, Sam still felt connected to his brother as if they were in the same space. Even if his brother hated him and locked him in this metal room and left him alone to suffer through the withdrawals of the demon blood, Sam knew somewhere that that connection still existed. Even if he was a monster now, he knew that Dean was always just a call away.
"Dean, please. Help me."
His body raged hot with fever and sickness. Every breeze of air that would hit him from the vents in the ceiling would cause the sweet to rapidly cool on his skin and make it feel as if cold fingers were touching and groping him. Those same cold fingers ran up and down his body and pressed on all of the sore and aching spots on his body causing black spots to appear before his eyes as he fought to not drown in the hurt.
when the bough breaks
the cradle will fall
He felt sick. His stomach ached and cramped as if it hadn't had anything substantial in it in days, and some tiny voice in the back of his head may or may not have given whispers as to that being the case. He wrapped his arms around himself in an attempt to alleviate some of the pain, but it did nothing to help. He wished he could feel the same emptiness in his heart. The guilt and sense of failure he felt within himself felt like a growth spreading within him. It felt like a growth that was growing and moving and destroying everything, Sam included.
He needed help. He needed out of this prison. He needed something to fill and clean him. Above all else, he needed to feel like he wasn't alone in whatever hell he was trapped in. He needed his brother.
"Dean, please. Help me."
But Dean, his Dean, never came. It was always the other. The Dean with the cruel eyes and the hateful words and the manner of carrying himself that had to be something other than the brother he'd known his entire life. Dean loved him, even though he was a monster and even though he might not remember that love at the moment. Dean would never hurt him, not like this. Dean would never leave him to suffer, not like this. Dean would never call him the one thing that he would rather die than be, not like this.
The tiny remnants of the demon blood raced through his veins as it fought a dying battle. Sam's weakening body was fighting both tooth and nail to get rid of it, but the blood and its power could fight as good as it could give. The blood moved through his veins in an attempt to survive, and it did the only thing it could to force its host into doing its bidding.
Something dark and strong and invisible wrapped itself around Sam, lifting him from the bed.
One second he's lying on his back praying to a god that probably hates him to ease his suffering, and in the next he finds himself being picked up and slammed forcefully into the unyielding walls of his prison. As the air is forced from his lungs, his tired muscles lock up in an attempt to fight the pain. The back of his head makes a sickening thud as it slams against the wall, and the one thing that comes to Sam's mind is the only thing he feels at the moment to be true.
I deserve this.
and down will come baby
cradle and all