FIC: Through Me The Way Among The People Lost (Supernatural, Gen, R, 2/2)
Part One
Hell was a desert just before dawn, scrub and grey light and silence.
"There's nobody here," said Sam, his voice too loud in the quiet, looking at the vast wasteland stretching out in all directions. There was nothing, nothing at all, as far as he could see.
"Apparently your hell is being alone," said a whisper on the wind. Sam whirled around in a circle but no one was there.
He wasn't alone, not if this really was hell. Somewhere in this vastness, no matter how calmly he'd faced his fate, his brother was waiting for him to come. He wasn't alone if there were voices speaking to him from the air. But knowing that wasn't going to help him find them.
He hadn't gone more than five steps before that same voice came again. "You're going the wrong way."
He whirled around again, but when you expected to see nothing you weren't disappointed when you did. "What way should I be going?" he asked, looking up at the bleak sky.
"Are you going to believe me if I tell you?"
No, he wasn't, and Sam started off in the same direction he'd already been going. Hell didn't want him to take Dean away, no matter what Ruby said. They weren't going to make it easy.
"You're not going to get anywhere on foot."
Sam's resolve was firm, but he couldn't ignore the voice speaking to him. The only voice speaking to him. "Do you have a better idea?"
"Of course I do," she said, the voice coming from a different side this time, a real location in the space around him. "I know a lot of things."
"Who are you?" Sam still walked, still moved forward, or what he thought of as forward, towards a distant horizon. "What do you want?"
"It doesn't matter who I am," she said. "I want to help."
Sam would believe that one when hell froze over, and he was currently in a position to say it was showing no signs of doing that any time soon. "All right then," he scoffed. "Help. Tell me how to find other people." Other trapped souls, he meant, but they were people. Dean was still people.
"No one gets something for nothing," she said. This time Sam caught a glimpse of eyes, black and red eyes, fire and smoke. Only when she let that hang in the air between them did Sam actually believe that something more than aggravation was going to come of this meeting.
"What do you want?"
"What we all want," she said. "I want out of hell."
"I can't give you that."
"Of course you can," she said, her certainty making Sam uneasy. "You can get me out the same way you're getting yourself out, Sam Winchester. All it takes is a little... push. That shouldn't be difficult for someone like you."
If you pull someone out of there, Bobby had told him, make sure it's Dean. But Bobby didn't know what Sam was going to find down here, and what pieces he was going to have to sacrifice to get his brother back.
"Even if you get out of here," he said, "we'll hunt you down again."
"You can try. I'll have a head start."
She wasn't asking for protection. She wasn't asking for a promise. She was only asking for a chance at freedom. Sam knew they would track her down again, knew they would send her back to hell, and the fact that they would be able to do it together was what made him nod his head.
"Oh, I'm going to need more than that," she said. "I'm looking for a deal."
After this, thought Sam, closing his eyes for a moment, after this there would be no more deals. Not for any of them. Not ever.
"I'd kiss you," he said, "but I'd have to find you first."
"Your word will do," she said. "I show you how to get around hell, and you send me upstairs. Do we have a deal?"
Sam took two deep breaths then said, "In that order. First I see for myself that what you're telling me is true. Then I send you back up the pipe. And you don't touch my body, or Dean's body, or Bobby's. You go someplace else."
Her eyes looked like fire, and the way she said "deal" positively shook him, but that was his bed and Sam knew that sooner or later he had to lie in it.
They had another god damn deal.
"What would be worse than nothing?" she said, finally resolving into a body in front of him, a female form with fiery eyes. "Would you say that watching people suffer and being unable to do anything about it would be worse than nothing?"
"Yes," said Sam, but nothing happened.
"You have to believe it," she said. "Your hell is nothing because your hell is nothing. Your hell is not finding Dean. Think of children in front of you with boiling skin, and you unable to touch the thing that did it. People suffering and you can't do a damn thing about it."
"I can--"
"What are you going to do, send them all back up? Into what, Sam? Do you want to unleash a whole new pack of vengeful spirits on the world? Are you looking for more work?"
Sam pressed his lips together and started walking again, only to be stopped by a solid hand to his chest.
"This is hell," she said. "The form it takes is what you expect it to be. You can walk till the end of time and never get anywhere."
"How do I--?"
"There are worse things than being alone," she said again. "Picture them, Sam. Shape your hell into something worse."
His gut crawled at the idea of delving into his deepest fears, his darkest visions, but for Dean he did it. Hell wasn't being alone forever. Sam had already been there, and survived it. Hell was--
He opened his eyes again into darkness, the sounds of children screaming around him. He covered his ears with both hands but it didn't quiet anything.
"This isn't--"
"This is what you asked for," she said. "You wanted to find the other lost souls of hell, and here you are. It's not my fault if you can't handle it. If you want to unchain your brother from hell, this is what you have to go through to do it."
"I can handle it," said Sam, gritting his teeth against the horrors.
Her smile was chilling, but she didn't bait him and she didn't argue. "I held up my end of the bargain," she said. "Now hold up yours."
Sam hesitated. "How did you know where to find me?" he said. "Why you? If I can get people out of hell, why isn't there a line-up?"
"Hell's a big place," she said. "I guess I was in the right place at the right time. We had a deal, Sam Winchester."
That was all he was going to squeeze out of this deal, and given the terms it was more than he had any right to expect. "I'm not sure how to--"
"Just do it," she snapped. Sam closed eyes that weren't really there and dug deep to where he knew his powers lay and found the faint trail back out of hell. It really was like a push, choosing his target and sending her along that trail. What happened after that Sam couldn't be sure, but when he opened his eyes again she was gone.
She was gone and Sam was just as alone as he had been before, even if he was surrounded on all sides by tormented souls.
:::
After a while it was hard to remember a time before he heard screaming, thrashing, moaning, wailing, all around him. There were too many and they were too far gone, dotting the landscape, suspended in the air, buried beneath his feet.
He tried talking to them, he tried asking for help, but no one was home. It was like trying to hold a conversation with a corpse.
"Not getting anywhere, are we?"
This time the voice in his ear came with a body, just behind his shoulder and radiating intense heat, standing upon the skulls of strangers.
"I need more time," he muttered, not quite to him, not quite not to him either.
"Oh, you've got all the time in the world," he said, his voice smoky and slick. "But does your brother?" Sam whirled around. "You think I don't know who you are? You think we all don't know who Sam and Dean Winchester are?"
"So you're just the lucky demon who got here first?" Or second, as the case may be.
"Something like that," he said, tilting his chin up and meeting Sam's eyes without a flicker of hesitation. "Someone had to be first. Might was well be me."
Sam saw his future stretching before him, endless conversations with endless demons, constantly distracted and never reaching his goal. He could get caught doing this till the end of time.
"Is this how you get your kicks? Isn't there something more entertaining to do down here?" he said, veering off that road.
"This is hell, not Six Flags," he said. "There's very little more interesting down here than watching little Sammy Winchester try to unchain his brother from hell. Give it a little time and we can sell tickets. What do you think, two new twisted souls in return for a glimpse of the spectacle?"
"You're lying," he said, but there was a flicker of uncertainty, that maybe the real reason no one was trying to stop him because they knew he was doomed to failure. That all the demons of hell were just waiting for him to take his place next to his brother.
"Maybe," he said, "but you're going to ask for my help anyway."
"I think I've had just about enough of demons helping me," said Sam, but he couldn't say he didn't need it. It was funny how hell made the lies all the sharper. "It's never worth the price."
"Is there a price you wouldn't pay to save your brother?" he said. "I can help you find him."
"Show me."
"There's not exactly a new arrivals gate," he said. "I can't point out a waiting room."
"Then you're no use to me," he said, and started walking away.
"But I can tell you what signs to look for," the demon said to Sam's back. "You can tell when you get close."
Sam paused. "How?"
He just twisted his lips in a smile. "It's a precious bit of information," he said. "What price would you pay?"
Demons lie, demons lie, but what would this lie accomplish here, when Sam was already lost, alone, struggling to figure out his way to his brother's side? Leading him in the wrong direction would do nothing, it would be a waste of time, an idle bit of entertainment. And leading him in the right direction would....
"Tell me what you want, and I'll tell you if you'll get it."
"I know the deal you made with Scarlet," he said. "I want the same."
Of course he already knew that was a price Sam was willing to pay. He had a bad feeling about it, still, always, but much worse deals had been made in the past. Worse deals had been made by Winchesters in the past.
"Same deal, same conditions," said Sam. "It's a round-trip ticket. I let you out of here, but I hunt you back down again."
"You can try," he said. "Once I'm out of here, the future is unwritten."
Unwritten, unless Sam's visions returned with the rest of his abilities.
Sam knew what happened next, with the cold certainty that when this was all over this guy would be the first to make the return trip. He and Dean would be unstoppable.
"Deal," said Sam, and offered his hand.
"We don't need that down here," he said. "A deal's a deal, and the deal is made."
One day soon those deals were going to weigh heavily on Sam's shoulders, but not so heavily as the loss of his brother. People ran around saying they'd move heaven and earth for their loved ones. Sam wondered where hell factored into that promise.
"Tell me where to find him."
"Not where," he said. "How. Physical space is irrelevant, or haven't you figured that out yet?"
Physical space might have been irrelevant, but Sam was still using his five senses, or what his mind told him were his five senses, and he could see-hear-smell-taste-feel hell all around him. And what his senses were telling him was that it was a real, physical space filled with the tortured dead.
"He could be anyone."
"Those new to hell are afraid, they're fighting, they're still looking for a way out. They aren't resigned to the torture that awaits them here. You can sense their fight."
"You don't seem particularly tortured."
"I'm on fire as I speak to you," he said, in the same tone he might've used to discuss the weather. "My skin feels like it's cracking. My eyes feel like they're melting. But I've been feeling it for more years than you can count."
Sam closed his eyes as though it could block out the image of Dean going through the same hell.
"You can't tell me you've stopped fighting," said Sam. "None of you ever stop fighting to get out."
"No," he said, "we just find more clever ways to go about it."
"I'm not on fire."
"You don't belong here," he said, "and you're not under anyone else's dominion. Yet."
It was that yet that haunted him, Sam remembering every warning that had been given to him before he'd taken the trip down. Don't forget yourself. Don't trust anyone.
"How do I find Dean?" he said again.
"Look for the fight," he said. "No, not with your eyes. You're the man with the mojo, Sam, look with your head. You'll see what you need to see."
And when he put it that way, when Sam looked out at the vast landscape - yes, with his eyes wide open - he could see a pocket where the turmoil was greater, where the sound seemed louder, where there was still a fight going on.
He wondered how long it took before it stopped.
"There," he said, pointing needlessly, pointing at nothing. "There, that's where I need to go."
"If you say so," he said, "though it's not a where. That's just how you perceive it."
Sam didn't need a philosophy lesson in the geography of hell.
"Well, since my perception's all I have to go on, how about you tell me how to get from where I am to where he is."
"In your head," he said. "Close your eyes if keeping them open is too complicated for you."
It wasn't complicated, it was confusing, vast spaces and overlapping images of everything Sam ever imagined hell to be. He closed his eyes and pulled and imagined himself to be where he needed to be. And when he opened his eyes again he was there.
Sam had found someone, but it wasn't Dean. He looked at the demon accusingly.
"Your brother's not the only new arrival in hell," he said, looking up at Sam with no further explanation and no apology.
"Then how am I supposed to find him?"
"The hard way," he said. "You need to check them all."
Sam's hell was an eternity of burning flesh and boiling blood, looking for Dean's tortured face and never finding it. There was more than one way to be alone.
"You need to do better than that."
"No, I don't," he said. "I gave you what you asked for. A deal's a deal." But he met Sam's eyes and gave him one last smirk. "Look for an audience," he offered, and Sam knew it wasn't altruism. "A lot like yours."
"I don't have an audience."
"Oh, is that what you think?" he said. "You may not see them, Sam Winchester, but they're starting to see you. Not everyone's looking in the wrong place. Now fulfill your part of the deal."
It was easier this time but it still strained him, put stress on a brain and limbs that Sam knew weren't really there but hurt all the same. He'd gotten all he could out of him, he knew that, but it still hurt to let him go before he had everything he needed.
A deal was a deal. If Sam never heard that word again it would be too soon.
It was all too easy to turn his back on the poor soul in front of him, screaming in agonies that Sam couldn't even imagine. He wasn't Dean, and Sam had a goal, and no stranger was going to sway him from it now.
He looked out at hell again and saw other pockets of turmoil, other places his brother could be. He didn't care what the demon had told him, they were places, stretched out across a vast dimension, separated from him by gulfs of fear and despair. Hell was a place unlike all other places; Sam had just learned to travel it now.
You said once that you would know your brother anywhere, Sam reminded himself. It's time to put your money where your mouth is.
The one constant in all of hell was the sky, endless and grey like those pre-dawn mornings when Sam watched the world pass by from the back seat of the Impala and wondered what it would be like to get away from that life. It felt just as heavy, made searching for Dean feel even more like trying to spot that proverbial needle in a haystack. But Sam hadn't surrendered to it then, and he wouldn't now.
There was one place among all places where there was a gathering darkness, like a poisonous cloud smothering a volcano, and the more the volcano spewed, the larger the cloud became. An audience, the demon had said. This was an audience. This was the demons of hell clustering around his brother, watching his eternal torment.
A torment that would not be eternal, not if Sam had any say in it. He didn't even have to close his eyes to travel the distance this time.
He'd found Dean, and Dean was screaming.
:::
"Dean," he said, standing by his side, standing on nothing, watching as Dean tore himself apart and not knowing where he could even touch, how he could let him know he was there at all. "Dean!"
"He can't hear you."
The voice emerged from the general hum that Sam was hearing in the back of his mind, and Sam might've been getting very tired of voices in his ear but felt a ridiculous quiver of hope anyway that maybe all help wasn't gone after all.
"You must be the ghost of Christmas yet to come."
"You can call me whatever you like, as long as you get me out of the pit."
Sam was only half paying attention, calling out to his brother again, but Dean didn't even twitch at Sam's voice, his skin bubbling, his scream almost constant. Sam might as well not have been there at all.
"How do I get through to him?"
"Why should I tell you?" she said. "Once you do that, we lose the best thing to happen to hell in a century. This is even better than dear old dad."
"Shut up!" said Sam, and touched his brother's bloody skin.
"I guess you don't want the answer as badly as I thought you did," she said mildly, the voice melting back into the cloud again.
"Wait," said Sam. He could feel her waiting, and maybe he was getting the hang of this hell thing, just in time to get out again. "Do you know how I can get him out of here?"
"Yes."
"What do you want?"
"You know what I want," she said. "You gave it to Scarlet. You gave it to Amory. Now you can give it to me."
"I'm going to hunt you all down when I get back topside," he vowed through gritted teeth, feeling Dean's screams down to his non-existent bones.
"If it wasn't you, it would be someone else," she said. "Do we have a deal?"
"We have a deal," said Sam, and once again felt the bottom of his stomach fall out as the deal was sealed, more decisively than if it had been signed in blood. "Tell me."
"He can't hear you because he's chained to hell, Sam Winchester. He sees only what he thinks he'll see, hears only what he thinks he'll hear, experiences only the greatest torments his mind can imagine."
"Stop," said Sam, squeezing his eyes shut. But that didn't help anymore, it didn't change anything. Closing your eyes in hell didn't stop you from seeing. "Just stop."
"Don't need that much detail?" she said, her tone touched with malevolent amusement. "Let me give it to you in small words. You have the power to get inside people's minds, whether those minds are attached to bodies or not. You need to get inside his."
"How do I know you're telling me the truth?"
"You don't," she said, "but once you go in there, you're either both coming out, or you're not coming out at all."
This was it, do or die time, and Sam nodded his head. He didn't ask for more, didn't ask if she was ready, didn't ask for anything at all. He just met her eyes and pushed and she was gone, slipped out through the tiny crack he'd left and back on earth to do her worst. Sam wouldn’t think about what that was going to be until he had to.
Then he took Dean's face into his hands, ignoring the feel of charred flesh under his fingers, looked into his unseeing eyes and slipped inside.
If Sam thought his vision of hell was bad, Dean's was worse. He was alone, as alone as Sam had been, trapped in a turbulent vastness that outstripped even Sam's own imagination, suspended by chains in his skin. Dean's hell was straight out of Hellraiser, and Sam felt like throwing up.
"Dean," he said, right by his ear, Dean looking in the other direction, eyes frantic and calling Sam's name. "Dean it's me, it's Sam!"
"You aren't Sam--Sam's safe--Sam's not here--Sam wouldn't be here--Sam wouldn't come--I told Sam not to come--who are you--what do you want with me--Sam's not here--Sam's safe--"
"I came for you," he said. "I came for you, Dean."
"Sam's safe!" he shouted. "Shut up! Shut up! Sam's safe!"
Sam suddenly realized he hadn't been the only person whispering things in Dean's ear since he'd arrived in hell.
"Fuck you," he said. "Fuck you and look at me, Dean. Look at me!"
"Shut up shut up shut up," he said. "You can have me but you can't have Sam. Sam's safe, Sammy's safe, Sammy's safe."
And this was it, this was all that stood in his way now, this was his last chance. If he couldn't get through to Dean inside his own head, there was nothing left to try. Dean would stay in hell and Sam would stay with him, right here, for eternity. Sam would be chained in front of him and Dean would have to watch it, but at least they would be here together. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be here together, maybe they belonged here together.
Sam watched his fingers begin to smoke, his hand, his wrist, and suddenly words he hadn't meant to forget started running in an endless loop in his head, Remember who you are, you are Sam, this is Dean, you don't belong here, remember who you are--
He didn't belong here, and neither did Dean, and the oppressive hopelessness of hell was not going to make him forget that.
Unchain him, they all said, unchain him, over and over, every one of them, and there were chains, but like everything else in this godforsaken land they weren't real. Dean was bound to hell by a construct of his own mind, and that was what Sam needed to get through.
If Dean saw chains, real chains, then to Dean's mind those were what Sam was going to have to break before he could get free.
If there was one thing Sam had learned over the past couple of days, it was how to break through the unbreakable. "Brace yourself," he muttered, as if Dean was capable of doing any such thing, and one by one he touched the chains, made them wither and snap and melt under the force of his mind. And with each one, Dean grew quieter and quieter, right up to the last one which twisted and fought back until Sam finally defeated it with an audible groan and snap.
When Dean fell, it was into Sam's waiting arms.
For a moment there was nothing but wind and silence, then finally, finally, Dean gritted his teeth and turned his head and looked Sam in the eye.
"What took you so long?" he said, through lips that were cracked and blackened.
"I'm sorry," said Sam. "I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It took a couple days to--"
"A couple of days?" said Dean, and his laugh was terrifying. "A couple of days?"
Time's funny in hell, Ruby'd told him, and God, Sam hadn't wanted to believe it. One day he would ask, he wouldn't be able to help himself, but not now, not until they were safe. Until they were out of here, Sam didn't want to know.
"I came as fast as I could," he said. "I'm bringing you home, Dean."
"Home," he repeated, and it chilled Sam to see that expression on Dean's face, like he wasn't quite sure what that word meant anymore.
Sam had control now, it was his reality that was dominant, and with the slightest pull they were back outside of Dean's. Dean looked like he was dead in Sam's arms all over again, gashes to his chest and blood everywhere, and Sam didn't know if this was how Dean looked inside his head or if this was Dean's actual spiritual form, or if it even really mattered.
The murmur that he'd been hearing in the back of his head ever since arriving at Dean's side grew louder and louder, like the sound of a wave approaching shore. The audience. Everything had been happening inside Dean's mind, but now that they were back word was getting out what Sam had done, and if they didn't get out of here soon things were about to get a whole lot harder. Lilith's distraction, and Sam's emerging powers, could only take them so far.
"Whatever you do, don't let go," he said, wrapping both arms around Dean's tortured body and closing his eyes and using every ounce of the strength inside his head to take them up and out, following the breadcrumbs of his consciousness through the tiny opening he'd left behind.
:::
Bobby was already chanting over the bed of his truck when Sam sat straight up and took a deep gulp of breath, looking around wildly until he was sure he was where he was supposed to be. Where he'd used every last bit of his mental power to end up.
"You look like you've been through hell, Sam," Ruby drawled in Dean's voice.
"Is he in there?" said Sam frantically. "Is he in there?"
"Yeah, he's in here," said Ruby, rolling his eyes, "and he's pissed. Are you sure you don't want to stick with me a little longer?"
Bobby was still chanting in the background, the demon in Ruby's body - God, Sam had never even bothered to find out anything about it, but it was too late for that now - thrashing and swearing at him.
"Go home, Ruby," he said, struggling to focus on what he was doing, his head hurting so badly it was almost blinding. He'd opened the floodgates of his mind, but there were some things that were still too much to bear and apparently pulling Dean out of hell and closing the door behind them was one of them.
She waited till the demon was spilling from the mouth of her former body, and just enough longer than that to make Sam worry they were doing to have to exorcise her too, then she gave Sam one last smirk before Dean's head tilted back and thick black smoke started spilling from his mouth.
"Take your brother!" shouted Bobby, as Sam watched in horror as Dean's wounds started to bleed again. "Get him to the hospital, Sam, he's dying."
That was all it took to jar Sam into action, ripping off his shirt to bind the worst of Dean's wounds as fast as he could and getting him into the back of the Impala. He didn't think anyone had ever made the trip from Bobby's place to the nearest hospital faster, and they'd made that trip a lot of times over the years.
"Bear attack," he said, carrying Dean in his arms like he weighed nothing and rushing him past everyone else in the emergency room. He barely even noticed they were there. "You've got to help him."
After that it was all out of his hands, doors slamming in his face and strong hands urging him into a chair in the waiting room. Sam normally didn't wait well but the moment he was sitting in that chair he passed out before they could even ask for his information.
:::
When Sam woke up again he was on a bed in an examining room with a warm blanket over him.
"You made quite a spectacle of yourself," said someone on his left, and with some effort Sam turned his head and opened his eyes the rest of the way to see who it was, to see that it was a real person in a real place and he really had brought Dean home. "Feeling better?"
Sam just shook his head. "Dean?"
"The young man you came in with?"
"My brother," he got out, still struggling with his renewed consciousness.
"Still in surgery," she said, efficiently but not unkindly. "I need to check your vitals now that you're back with us."
"What--?" said Sam, shaking his head again, unsure of how he'd ended up in a hospital bed. "No, Dean...."
"Looks like your brother wasn't the only one who went through quite the ordeal," she said, reaching for his arm. "You passed out right in the middle of the waiting room, cracked your head on the floor."
Sam probably wouldn't even have noticed, the pain from their escape from hell still throbbing through the inside of his skull. It was a miracle he even made it to the hospital, but he wasn't going to have gone through all that just to wreck the car ten miles from help.
"Do you have any family you need to contact?"
Sam shook his head as she checked his pulse, his blood pressure, the pupils of his eyes. Bobby would be showing up when everything else was taken care of, and there was no one else to call.
"We'll need to get your information as soon as you're feeling up to it."
"Uncle Bobby's on his way," Sam told her, and hoped to God Bobby had it covered because Sam'd had other things on his mind. "He'll give you everything you need."
"Well, it looks like you're as fit as can be expected," she said a few moments later. "Do you think you can take a seat in the waiting room this time without falling over?"
Part of Sam wanted to curl up right there and sleep forever, but not until he knew Dean was going to be all right. He pushed the blanket off and nodded his head slowly, mindful of the pounding, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
She gave him her arm, but he was steady on his feet almost immediately and waved off the offer of a wheelchair. "When will I hear anything about Dean?"
"As soon as they're finished in surgery, someone will come talk to you," she promised him, but Sam had heard that before, in a dozen hospitals in a dozen different states under a dozen different names. If he'd had more energy than it took just to walk from an examining room back into the waiting room, he would've been poking around the minute someone's back was turned.
As it was, he did exactly what they asked him to do. He sat down and waited and was forced, now that he was conscious with nothing more pressing to do, to relive just what they'd been through over the past few days.
Sam looked at a coaster abandoned next to the magazines on the waiting room table, made it slide across the table to the opposite corner, and reluctantly admitted that there was no putting the genie back in the bottle again. That door would not be closed, but he'd worry about what that meant after he'd gotten some rest.
He had his head in his hands when the doctor finally came back out into the waiting room again. He wasn't covered in blood, but Sam didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad sign. He didn't know how many more times he could go through this, how many more times he could let Dean die, but somehow each time he kept on going.
He looked up and said nothing.
"It was touch and go there for a while," he said. "Your brother lost a lot of blood. But he's a fighter and it looks like he's going to pull through."
"He's okay?" said Sam. "He's okay?"
"He's not out of the woods yet," said the doctor, "but it looks promising. You can see him if you want, but we don't expect him to wake up for a while yet. He's pretty heavily drugged."
"I want to see him," said Sam. No, he needed to see him. The doctor couldn't know it, but Sam had seen Dean so, so much worse than this. Just seeing him breathing was all he asked.
"He looks pretty bad--"
"I brought him in," said Sam, already standing up. "It can't be any worse than that."
And it wasn't, though it was a close thing. Dean wasn't bleeding but he was pale and swollen and bruised, and Sam'd seen his brother close to death before but it had never seemed quite as close as this. He took a seat next to the bed and took Dean's hand and dared anyone to move him before he was ready.
It was quite a while before anyone even tried.
:::
By the time Bobby showed up, Sam had finally been ushered into a different waiting room. They said it was to let his brother rest, but Dean was resting just fine whether there was anyone in the room or not, and Sam would rest better if they just let him stick by his brother's side.
"I hear he pulled through," said Bobby, taking a seat in the hard plastic chair at Sam's side.
"If I never see my brother in a coma again, it'll be too soon," said Sam without looking up. "You've talked to the doctor?"
"Heard through administration when I took care of your paperwork," said Bobby, and right there was another reason for Sam to breathe a sigh of relief. "How is he?"
Sam shrugged a little, unsure of what to say, but Dean was alive and right now that was the most important thing. "He's going to hang in there," he said, then fell silent for a few more moments. "Thanks, Bobby."
Bobby just grunted, but Sam knew it for what it was. "You can thank me by not putting me through this ever again," he said.
"Not really planning to," said Sam. "How are things back at your place, Bobby? I didn't even really--"
"Nothing that can't be fixed," said Bobby, but he was shaking his head and looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye. "Why is it that every time one of you Winchesters gets out of hell, you bring half the place with you?"
"What are you--?" started Sam, but he knew what Bobby was talking about. He already knew.
"Three times someone came through that crack before you, Sam, and there was nothing I could do about it," said Bobby. "You wanna tell me what that was all about?"
"Not really," Sam admitted, looking down again. "We'll take care of it."
"Damn right you will," said Bobby. "Dammit, Sam, I know this isn't the time but I told you to be careful."
"I was careful," said Sam. "There were only three of them."
"Only three of them," said Bobby in disbelief. "You weren't ready. You weren't prepared for what they would trick you with."
"They didn't trick me, Bobby," said Sam. "I just did what I had to do." Bobby's silence was more telling than anything he could've said right then, and Sam knew he deserved it. But if he had it to do all over again he would've done the exact same thing. "I got Dean back."
The silence stretched for a few more moments. "One day you're going to have to tell me exactly what that entailed," he said finally. But that meant he was leaving it for now, and Sam was grateful.
"How long was I gone?" Sam asked him out of the blue, just after a woman in salmon scrubs rushed past them and through a set of doors that separated them from everything that was happening.
"About fifteen minutes, all told," said Bobby, looking at him like he knew exactly why Sam was asking. It felt like a hell of a lot more than fifteen minutes to Sam, that was for damn sure. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he felt Bobby's hand squeezing his shoulder.
"You know he's going to be different," said Bobby after a few more minutes had passed. "Hell changes a man, Sam."
"All kinds of things change a man," said Sam. Living without Dean had felt like hell, and Sam sure as hell knew it had changed him. "We can handle it."
"You boys always think you can handle everything," said Bobby. "You bring him back to my place when he gets out, you hear me? There's always a place there for you boys, no matter what damn fool shit you get yourselves into."
Sam wondered if Bobby knew how much the two of them counted on that, and promised himself right then and there that they'd never take it for granted again. Bobby'd really gone above and beyond on this one, which was saying a lot.
After about twenty minutes of weary, semi-comfortable silence between them, Bobby got up and talked to someone at the nurses' station for a few minutes.
When they next showed Sam into Dean's room, there was a more comfortable chair in the corner and a hospital-issue blanket and pillow on it. Sam wanted to thank Bobby but he didn't know how.
"You coming inside?" he asked instead, keeping his voice soft and looking back over his shoulder.
"Nah, you boys need some time to yourselves," he said, lingering just inside the doorway and taking a long look at Dean, "and I've got some cleaning up to do. I'll call you tomorrow, Sam."
"You know where to find me," said Sam, taking up his seat right next to Dean's bed again. The comfortable chair would be there when he needed it, and no one was sending him anywhere else this time.
:::
Dean woke up after two long days, disoriented and in a lot of pain but there. He recognized Sam and he recognized Bobby and most of the time he seemed to know where he was. The rest of the time, Sam could blame on the painkillers and only wonder a little bit if it was something else. And yeah, there was still a hell of a road ahead of them, but they would be on it together.
Only when Dean had slipped into a deep, natural, sleep did Sam finally leave the hospital, leaving Dean under Bobby's watchful eye, to shower and change and get together some things that Dean would be needing.
"You'll want to take care of that pet demon of yours," Bobby added before Sam left the hospital, and sure enough, when Sam arrived back at the salvage yard Ruby was there, sitting on top of one of the cars, legs stretched out in front of her and back in the body Sam recognized as hers.
"There's the man of the hour," she said dryly as Sam got out of the car, pausing by the open door to stare at her. "It's about time you remembered about me."
"I thought Bobby would've taken care of it," he admitted, though if he'd thought about it he should've known he wouldn't have. This was Sam's to take care of, no matter what he chose to do. "Dean pulled through, thanks for asking."
"Of course he did," she said, and looked pointedly at the giant sigil on the ground until Sam found one of the edges and smeared it with his toe, gave her a way out. Bobby wouldn't do it but Sam had no choice. She'd kept her word.
As she calmly and deliberately stepped outside the circle, Sam had the uneasy feeling that she could have broken the devil's trap any time she wanted.
"You sacrificed a lot to get him out of there, didn't you?" she said. "Bobby knows what you did, Sam. Does Dean?
"What are you--?"
"That's three more demons you've got to track down now," she said. "You've got a lot of work ahead of you."
"Nothing Dean and I can't handle."
"Are you sure about that?" she said. "Scarlet's got a bit of a vicious streak she has trouble keeping under control. Amory's a master of not being found when he doesn't want to be. And Regan... well, the less said about her the better. Hell hasn't been kind to her."
"What, do you subscribe to a demon newsletter I don't know about?" said Sam. "How do you know who they were?"
"You think I don't keep tabs on my old friends?" she said. "I know exactly who you let out of hell, Sam. Good work."
Sam suddenly felt very, very cold. Dean had told him all about who Ruby told him she was, how she'd ended up in hell. A witch, he'd said. A witch who sold her soul to a demon. Until that moment, until she smiled at the thought of her old friends, Sam hadn't given one single bit of thought to what happened to the rest of her coven.
"What's the matter, Sam? You got what you wanted. I got what I wanted. It all worked out in the end."
"What you wanted was to get demons out of hell."
"Only a few," she said. "The rest I still want to send back, just like you."
"You're nothing like me."
"Oh, I’m everything like you, Sam. We both wanted to get people out of hell that we didn't think belonged there. You're just pissed off because you know that I'm right."
"You never cared about your body, did you?"
"This old thing?" she said, looking down at it. "It's nice. I'm not sorry I have it back."
"You wanted me to think that's what you wanted."
"You believed what you wanted to believe," she said. "A meat suit in exchange for your brother's soul? Really, Sam?"
"You lied to me," he said. It shouldn't have been a surprise, it should never have been a surprise, and maybe he should've listened every time someone reminded him that above all else, no matter what else she did, Ruby was a demon.
"No," she said, "I've never lied to you, you just never asked the right questions. We still want the same thing, Sam. We still want to see Lilith back in hell."
"The next time I see you I'm going to kill you."
"No, you're not," she said. "Because the enemy of your enemy is your friend. You still need me."
"If I don't, then Dean will."
"We'll see," she said, and looked him up and down. "See you around, Sam."
Sam let her go, because this one time he didn't have a choice. Dean was back from hell and without her it wouldn't have happened. They had a deal.
But soon enough he and Dean would be back on the road again, and the next time they saw Ruby, all bets were off.
Hell was a desert just before dawn, scrub and grey light and silence.
"There's nobody here," said Sam, his voice too loud in the quiet, looking at the vast wasteland stretching out in all directions. There was nothing, nothing at all, as far as he could see.
"Apparently your hell is being alone," said a whisper on the wind. Sam whirled around in a circle but no one was there.
He wasn't alone, not if this really was hell. Somewhere in this vastness, no matter how calmly he'd faced his fate, his brother was waiting for him to come. He wasn't alone if there were voices speaking to him from the air. But knowing that wasn't going to help him find them.
He hadn't gone more than five steps before that same voice came again. "You're going the wrong way."
He whirled around again, but when you expected to see nothing you weren't disappointed when you did. "What way should I be going?" he asked, looking up at the bleak sky.
"Are you going to believe me if I tell you?"
No, he wasn't, and Sam started off in the same direction he'd already been going. Hell didn't want him to take Dean away, no matter what Ruby said. They weren't going to make it easy.
"You're not going to get anywhere on foot."
Sam's resolve was firm, but he couldn't ignore the voice speaking to him. The only voice speaking to him. "Do you have a better idea?"
"Of course I do," she said, the voice coming from a different side this time, a real location in the space around him. "I know a lot of things."
"Who are you?" Sam still walked, still moved forward, or what he thought of as forward, towards a distant horizon. "What do you want?"
"It doesn't matter who I am," she said. "I want to help."
Sam would believe that one when hell froze over, and he was currently in a position to say it was showing no signs of doing that any time soon. "All right then," he scoffed. "Help. Tell me how to find other people." Other trapped souls, he meant, but they were people. Dean was still people.
"No one gets something for nothing," she said. This time Sam caught a glimpse of eyes, black and red eyes, fire and smoke. Only when she let that hang in the air between them did Sam actually believe that something more than aggravation was going to come of this meeting.
"What do you want?"
"What we all want," she said. "I want out of hell."
"I can't give you that."
"Of course you can," she said, her certainty making Sam uneasy. "You can get me out the same way you're getting yourself out, Sam Winchester. All it takes is a little... push. That shouldn't be difficult for someone like you."
If you pull someone out of there, Bobby had told him, make sure it's Dean. But Bobby didn't know what Sam was going to find down here, and what pieces he was going to have to sacrifice to get his brother back.
"Even if you get out of here," he said, "we'll hunt you down again."
"You can try. I'll have a head start."
She wasn't asking for protection. She wasn't asking for a promise. She was only asking for a chance at freedom. Sam knew they would track her down again, knew they would send her back to hell, and the fact that they would be able to do it together was what made him nod his head.
"Oh, I'm going to need more than that," she said. "I'm looking for a deal."
After this, thought Sam, closing his eyes for a moment, after this there would be no more deals. Not for any of them. Not ever.
"I'd kiss you," he said, "but I'd have to find you first."
"Your word will do," she said. "I show you how to get around hell, and you send me upstairs. Do we have a deal?"
Sam took two deep breaths then said, "In that order. First I see for myself that what you're telling me is true. Then I send you back up the pipe. And you don't touch my body, or Dean's body, or Bobby's. You go someplace else."
Her eyes looked like fire, and the way she said "deal" positively shook him, but that was his bed and Sam knew that sooner or later he had to lie in it.
They had another god damn deal.
"What would be worse than nothing?" she said, finally resolving into a body in front of him, a female form with fiery eyes. "Would you say that watching people suffer and being unable to do anything about it would be worse than nothing?"
"Yes," said Sam, but nothing happened.
"You have to believe it," she said. "Your hell is nothing because your hell is nothing. Your hell is not finding Dean. Think of children in front of you with boiling skin, and you unable to touch the thing that did it. People suffering and you can't do a damn thing about it."
"I can--"
"What are you going to do, send them all back up? Into what, Sam? Do you want to unleash a whole new pack of vengeful spirits on the world? Are you looking for more work?"
Sam pressed his lips together and started walking again, only to be stopped by a solid hand to his chest.
"This is hell," she said. "The form it takes is what you expect it to be. You can walk till the end of time and never get anywhere."
"How do I--?"
"There are worse things than being alone," she said again. "Picture them, Sam. Shape your hell into something worse."
His gut crawled at the idea of delving into his deepest fears, his darkest visions, but for Dean he did it. Hell wasn't being alone forever. Sam had already been there, and survived it. Hell was--
He opened his eyes again into darkness, the sounds of children screaming around him. He covered his ears with both hands but it didn't quiet anything.
"This isn't--"
"This is what you asked for," she said. "You wanted to find the other lost souls of hell, and here you are. It's not my fault if you can't handle it. If you want to unchain your brother from hell, this is what you have to go through to do it."
"I can handle it," said Sam, gritting his teeth against the horrors.
Her smile was chilling, but she didn't bait him and she didn't argue. "I held up my end of the bargain," she said. "Now hold up yours."
Sam hesitated. "How did you know where to find me?" he said. "Why you? If I can get people out of hell, why isn't there a line-up?"
"Hell's a big place," she said. "I guess I was in the right place at the right time. We had a deal, Sam Winchester."
That was all he was going to squeeze out of this deal, and given the terms it was more than he had any right to expect. "I'm not sure how to--"
"Just do it," she snapped. Sam closed eyes that weren't really there and dug deep to where he knew his powers lay and found the faint trail back out of hell. It really was like a push, choosing his target and sending her along that trail. What happened after that Sam couldn't be sure, but when he opened his eyes again she was gone.
She was gone and Sam was just as alone as he had been before, even if he was surrounded on all sides by tormented souls.
:::
After a while it was hard to remember a time before he heard screaming, thrashing, moaning, wailing, all around him. There were too many and they were too far gone, dotting the landscape, suspended in the air, buried beneath his feet.
He tried talking to them, he tried asking for help, but no one was home. It was like trying to hold a conversation with a corpse.
"Not getting anywhere, are we?"
This time the voice in his ear came with a body, just behind his shoulder and radiating intense heat, standing upon the skulls of strangers.
"I need more time," he muttered, not quite to him, not quite not to him either.
"Oh, you've got all the time in the world," he said, his voice smoky and slick. "But does your brother?" Sam whirled around. "You think I don't know who you are? You think we all don't know who Sam and Dean Winchester are?"
"So you're just the lucky demon who got here first?" Or second, as the case may be.
"Something like that," he said, tilting his chin up and meeting Sam's eyes without a flicker of hesitation. "Someone had to be first. Might was well be me."
Sam saw his future stretching before him, endless conversations with endless demons, constantly distracted and never reaching his goal. He could get caught doing this till the end of time.
"Is this how you get your kicks? Isn't there something more entertaining to do down here?" he said, veering off that road.
"This is hell, not Six Flags," he said. "There's very little more interesting down here than watching little Sammy Winchester try to unchain his brother from hell. Give it a little time and we can sell tickets. What do you think, two new twisted souls in return for a glimpse of the spectacle?"
"You're lying," he said, but there was a flicker of uncertainty, that maybe the real reason no one was trying to stop him because they knew he was doomed to failure. That all the demons of hell were just waiting for him to take his place next to his brother.
"Maybe," he said, "but you're going to ask for my help anyway."
"I think I've had just about enough of demons helping me," said Sam, but he couldn't say he didn't need it. It was funny how hell made the lies all the sharper. "It's never worth the price."
"Is there a price you wouldn't pay to save your brother?" he said. "I can help you find him."
"Show me."
"There's not exactly a new arrivals gate," he said. "I can't point out a waiting room."
"Then you're no use to me," he said, and started walking away.
"But I can tell you what signs to look for," the demon said to Sam's back. "You can tell when you get close."
Sam paused. "How?"
He just twisted his lips in a smile. "It's a precious bit of information," he said. "What price would you pay?"
Demons lie, demons lie, but what would this lie accomplish here, when Sam was already lost, alone, struggling to figure out his way to his brother's side? Leading him in the wrong direction would do nothing, it would be a waste of time, an idle bit of entertainment. And leading him in the right direction would....
"Tell me what you want, and I'll tell you if you'll get it."
"I know the deal you made with Scarlet," he said. "I want the same."
Of course he already knew that was a price Sam was willing to pay. He had a bad feeling about it, still, always, but much worse deals had been made in the past. Worse deals had been made by Winchesters in the past.
"Same deal, same conditions," said Sam. "It's a round-trip ticket. I let you out of here, but I hunt you back down again."
"You can try," he said. "Once I'm out of here, the future is unwritten."
Unwritten, unless Sam's visions returned with the rest of his abilities.
Sam knew what happened next, with the cold certainty that when this was all over this guy would be the first to make the return trip. He and Dean would be unstoppable.
"Deal," said Sam, and offered his hand.
"We don't need that down here," he said. "A deal's a deal, and the deal is made."
One day soon those deals were going to weigh heavily on Sam's shoulders, but not so heavily as the loss of his brother. People ran around saying they'd move heaven and earth for their loved ones. Sam wondered where hell factored into that promise.
"Tell me where to find him."
"Not where," he said. "How. Physical space is irrelevant, or haven't you figured that out yet?"
Physical space might have been irrelevant, but Sam was still using his five senses, or what his mind told him were his five senses, and he could see-hear-smell-taste-feel hell all around him. And what his senses were telling him was that it was a real, physical space filled with the tortured dead.
"He could be anyone."
"Those new to hell are afraid, they're fighting, they're still looking for a way out. They aren't resigned to the torture that awaits them here. You can sense their fight."
"You don't seem particularly tortured."
"I'm on fire as I speak to you," he said, in the same tone he might've used to discuss the weather. "My skin feels like it's cracking. My eyes feel like they're melting. But I've been feeling it for more years than you can count."
Sam closed his eyes as though it could block out the image of Dean going through the same hell.
"You can't tell me you've stopped fighting," said Sam. "None of you ever stop fighting to get out."
"No," he said, "we just find more clever ways to go about it."
"I'm not on fire."
"You don't belong here," he said, "and you're not under anyone else's dominion. Yet."
It was that yet that haunted him, Sam remembering every warning that had been given to him before he'd taken the trip down. Don't forget yourself. Don't trust anyone.
"How do I find Dean?" he said again.
"Look for the fight," he said. "No, not with your eyes. You're the man with the mojo, Sam, look with your head. You'll see what you need to see."
And when he put it that way, when Sam looked out at the vast landscape - yes, with his eyes wide open - he could see a pocket where the turmoil was greater, where the sound seemed louder, where there was still a fight going on.
He wondered how long it took before it stopped.
"There," he said, pointing needlessly, pointing at nothing. "There, that's where I need to go."
"If you say so," he said, "though it's not a where. That's just how you perceive it."
Sam didn't need a philosophy lesson in the geography of hell.
"Well, since my perception's all I have to go on, how about you tell me how to get from where I am to where he is."
"In your head," he said. "Close your eyes if keeping them open is too complicated for you."
It wasn't complicated, it was confusing, vast spaces and overlapping images of everything Sam ever imagined hell to be. He closed his eyes and pulled and imagined himself to be where he needed to be. And when he opened his eyes again he was there.
Sam had found someone, but it wasn't Dean. He looked at the demon accusingly.
"Your brother's not the only new arrival in hell," he said, looking up at Sam with no further explanation and no apology.
"Then how am I supposed to find him?"
"The hard way," he said. "You need to check them all."
Sam's hell was an eternity of burning flesh and boiling blood, looking for Dean's tortured face and never finding it. There was more than one way to be alone.
"You need to do better than that."
"No, I don't," he said. "I gave you what you asked for. A deal's a deal." But he met Sam's eyes and gave him one last smirk. "Look for an audience," he offered, and Sam knew it wasn't altruism. "A lot like yours."
"I don't have an audience."
"Oh, is that what you think?" he said. "You may not see them, Sam Winchester, but they're starting to see you. Not everyone's looking in the wrong place. Now fulfill your part of the deal."
It was easier this time but it still strained him, put stress on a brain and limbs that Sam knew weren't really there but hurt all the same. He'd gotten all he could out of him, he knew that, but it still hurt to let him go before he had everything he needed.
A deal was a deal. If Sam never heard that word again it would be too soon.
It was all too easy to turn his back on the poor soul in front of him, screaming in agonies that Sam couldn't even imagine. He wasn't Dean, and Sam had a goal, and no stranger was going to sway him from it now.
He looked out at hell again and saw other pockets of turmoil, other places his brother could be. He didn't care what the demon had told him, they were places, stretched out across a vast dimension, separated from him by gulfs of fear and despair. Hell was a place unlike all other places; Sam had just learned to travel it now.
You said once that you would know your brother anywhere, Sam reminded himself. It's time to put your money where your mouth is.
The one constant in all of hell was the sky, endless and grey like those pre-dawn mornings when Sam watched the world pass by from the back seat of the Impala and wondered what it would be like to get away from that life. It felt just as heavy, made searching for Dean feel even more like trying to spot that proverbial needle in a haystack. But Sam hadn't surrendered to it then, and he wouldn't now.
There was one place among all places where there was a gathering darkness, like a poisonous cloud smothering a volcano, and the more the volcano spewed, the larger the cloud became. An audience, the demon had said. This was an audience. This was the demons of hell clustering around his brother, watching his eternal torment.
A torment that would not be eternal, not if Sam had any say in it. He didn't even have to close his eyes to travel the distance this time.
He'd found Dean, and Dean was screaming.
:::
"Dean," he said, standing by his side, standing on nothing, watching as Dean tore himself apart and not knowing where he could even touch, how he could let him know he was there at all. "Dean!"
"He can't hear you."
The voice emerged from the general hum that Sam was hearing in the back of his mind, and Sam might've been getting very tired of voices in his ear but felt a ridiculous quiver of hope anyway that maybe all help wasn't gone after all.
"You must be the ghost of Christmas yet to come."
"You can call me whatever you like, as long as you get me out of the pit."
Sam was only half paying attention, calling out to his brother again, but Dean didn't even twitch at Sam's voice, his skin bubbling, his scream almost constant. Sam might as well not have been there at all.
"How do I get through to him?"
"Why should I tell you?" she said. "Once you do that, we lose the best thing to happen to hell in a century. This is even better than dear old dad."
"Shut up!" said Sam, and touched his brother's bloody skin.
"I guess you don't want the answer as badly as I thought you did," she said mildly, the voice melting back into the cloud again.
"Wait," said Sam. He could feel her waiting, and maybe he was getting the hang of this hell thing, just in time to get out again. "Do you know how I can get him out of here?"
"Yes."
"What do you want?"
"You know what I want," she said. "You gave it to Scarlet. You gave it to Amory. Now you can give it to me."
"I'm going to hunt you all down when I get back topside," he vowed through gritted teeth, feeling Dean's screams down to his non-existent bones.
"If it wasn't you, it would be someone else," she said. "Do we have a deal?"
"We have a deal," said Sam, and once again felt the bottom of his stomach fall out as the deal was sealed, more decisively than if it had been signed in blood. "Tell me."
"He can't hear you because he's chained to hell, Sam Winchester. He sees only what he thinks he'll see, hears only what he thinks he'll hear, experiences only the greatest torments his mind can imagine."
"Stop," said Sam, squeezing his eyes shut. But that didn't help anymore, it didn't change anything. Closing your eyes in hell didn't stop you from seeing. "Just stop."
"Don't need that much detail?" she said, her tone touched with malevolent amusement. "Let me give it to you in small words. You have the power to get inside people's minds, whether those minds are attached to bodies or not. You need to get inside his."
"How do I know you're telling me the truth?"
"You don't," she said, "but once you go in there, you're either both coming out, or you're not coming out at all."
This was it, do or die time, and Sam nodded his head. He didn't ask for more, didn't ask if she was ready, didn't ask for anything at all. He just met her eyes and pushed and she was gone, slipped out through the tiny crack he'd left and back on earth to do her worst. Sam wouldn’t think about what that was going to be until he had to.
Then he took Dean's face into his hands, ignoring the feel of charred flesh under his fingers, looked into his unseeing eyes and slipped inside.
If Sam thought his vision of hell was bad, Dean's was worse. He was alone, as alone as Sam had been, trapped in a turbulent vastness that outstripped even Sam's own imagination, suspended by chains in his skin. Dean's hell was straight out of Hellraiser, and Sam felt like throwing up.
"Dean," he said, right by his ear, Dean looking in the other direction, eyes frantic and calling Sam's name. "Dean it's me, it's Sam!"
"You aren't Sam--Sam's safe--Sam's not here--Sam wouldn't be here--Sam wouldn't come--I told Sam not to come--who are you--what do you want with me--Sam's not here--Sam's safe--"
"I came for you," he said. "I came for you, Dean."
"Sam's safe!" he shouted. "Shut up! Shut up! Sam's safe!"
Sam suddenly realized he hadn't been the only person whispering things in Dean's ear since he'd arrived in hell.
"Fuck you," he said. "Fuck you and look at me, Dean. Look at me!"
"Shut up shut up shut up," he said. "You can have me but you can't have Sam. Sam's safe, Sammy's safe, Sammy's safe."
And this was it, this was all that stood in his way now, this was his last chance. If he couldn't get through to Dean inside his own head, there was nothing left to try. Dean would stay in hell and Sam would stay with him, right here, for eternity. Sam would be chained in front of him and Dean would have to watch it, but at least they would be here together. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be here together, maybe they belonged here together.
Sam watched his fingers begin to smoke, his hand, his wrist, and suddenly words he hadn't meant to forget started running in an endless loop in his head, Remember who you are, you are Sam, this is Dean, you don't belong here, remember who you are--
He didn't belong here, and neither did Dean, and the oppressive hopelessness of hell was not going to make him forget that.
Unchain him, they all said, unchain him, over and over, every one of them, and there were chains, but like everything else in this godforsaken land they weren't real. Dean was bound to hell by a construct of his own mind, and that was what Sam needed to get through.
If Dean saw chains, real chains, then to Dean's mind those were what Sam was going to have to break before he could get free.
If there was one thing Sam had learned over the past couple of days, it was how to break through the unbreakable. "Brace yourself," he muttered, as if Dean was capable of doing any such thing, and one by one he touched the chains, made them wither and snap and melt under the force of his mind. And with each one, Dean grew quieter and quieter, right up to the last one which twisted and fought back until Sam finally defeated it with an audible groan and snap.
When Dean fell, it was into Sam's waiting arms.
For a moment there was nothing but wind and silence, then finally, finally, Dean gritted his teeth and turned his head and looked Sam in the eye.
"What took you so long?" he said, through lips that were cracked and blackened.
"I'm sorry," said Sam. "I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It took a couple days to--"
"A couple of days?" said Dean, and his laugh was terrifying. "A couple of days?"
Time's funny in hell, Ruby'd told him, and God, Sam hadn't wanted to believe it. One day he would ask, he wouldn't be able to help himself, but not now, not until they were safe. Until they were out of here, Sam didn't want to know.
"I came as fast as I could," he said. "I'm bringing you home, Dean."
"Home," he repeated, and it chilled Sam to see that expression on Dean's face, like he wasn't quite sure what that word meant anymore.
Sam had control now, it was his reality that was dominant, and with the slightest pull they were back outside of Dean's. Dean looked like he was dead in Sam's arms all over again, gashes to his chest and blood everywhere, and Sam didn't know if this was how Dean looked inside his head or if this was Dean's actual spiritual form, or if it even really mattered.
The murmur that he'd been hearing in the back of his head ever since arriving at Dean's side grew louder and louder, like the sound of a wave approaching shore. The audience. Everything had been happening inside Dean's mind, but now that they were back word was getting out what Sam had done, and if they didn't get out of here soon things were about to get a whole lot harder. Lilith's distraction, and Sam's emerging powers, could only take them so far.
"Whatever you do, don't let go," he said, wrapping both arms around Dean's tortured body and closing his eyes and using every ounce of the strength inside his head to take them up and out, following the breadcrumbs of his consciousness through the tiny opening he'd left behind.
:::
Bobby was already chanting over the bed of his truck when Sam sat straight up and took a deep gulp of breath, looking around wildly until he was sure he was where he was supposed to be. Where he'd used every last bit of his mental power to end up.
"You look like you've been through hell, Sam," Ruby drawled in Dean's voice.
"Is he in there?" said Sam frantically. "Is he in there?"
"Yeah, he's in here," said Ruby, rolling his eyes, "and he's pissed. Are you sure you don't want to stick with me a little longer?"
Bobby was still chanting in the background, the demon in Ruby's body - God, Sam had never even bothered to find out anything about it, but it was too late for that now - thrashing and swearing at him.
"Go home, Ruby," he said, struggling to focus on what he was doing, his head hurting so badly it was almost blinding. He'd opened the floodgates of his mind, but there were some things that were still too much to bear and apparently pulling Dean out of hell and closing the door behind them was one of them.
She waited till the demon was spilling from the mouth of her former body, and just enough longer than that to make Sam worry they were doing to have to exorcise her too, then she gave Sam one last smirk before Dean's head tilted back and thick black smoke started spilling from his mouth.
"Take your brother!" shouted Bobby, as Sam watched in horror as Dean's wounds started to bleed again. "Get him to the hospital, Sam, he's dying."
That was all it took to jar Sam into action, ripping off his shirt to bind the worst of Dean's wounds as fast as he could and getting him into the back of the Impala. He didn't think anyone had ever made the trip from Bobby's place to the nearest hospital faster, and they'd made that trip a lot of times over the years.
"Bear attack," he said, carrying Dean in his arms like he weighed nothing and rushing him past everyone else in the emergency room. He barely even noticed they were there. "You've got to help him."
After that it was all out of his hands, doors slamming in his face and strong hands urging him into a chair in the waiting room. Sam normally didn't wait well but the moment he was sitting in that chair he passed out before they could even ask for his information.
:::
When Sam woke up again he was on a bed in an examining room with a warm blanket over him.
"You made quite a spectacle of yourself," said someone on his left, and with some effort Sam turned his head and opened his eyes the rest of the way to see who it was, to see that it was a real person in a real place and he really had brought Dean home. "Feeling better?"
Sam just shook his head. "Dean?"
"The young man you came in with?"
"My brother," he got out, still struggling with his renewed consciousness.
"Still in surgery," she said, efficiently but not unkindly. "I need to check your vitals now that you're back with us."
"What--?" said Sam, shaking his head again, unsure of how he'd ended up in a hospital bed. "No, Dean...."
"Looks like your brother wasn't the only one who went through quite the ordeal," she said, reaching for his arm. "You passed out right in the middle of the waiting room, cracked your head on the floor."
Sam probably wouldn't even have noticed, the pain from their escape from hell still throbbing through the inside of his skull. It was a miracle he even made it to the hospital, but he wasn't going to have gone through all that just to wreck the car ten miles from help.
"Do you have any family you need to contact?"
Sam shook his head as she checked his pulse, his blood pressure, the pupils of his eyes. Bobby would be showing up when everything else was taken care of, and there was no one else to call.
"We'll need to get your information as soon as you're feeling up to it."
"Uncle Bobby's on his way," Sam told her, and hoped to God Bobby had it covered because Sam'd had other things on his mind. "He'll give you everything you need."
"Well, it looks like you're as fit as can be expected," she said a few moments later. "Do you think you can take a seat in the waiting room this time without falling over?"
Part of Sam wanted to curl up right there and sleep forever, but not until he knew Dean was going to be all right. He pushed the blanket off and nodded his head slowly, mindful of the pounding, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
She gave him her arm, but he was steady on his feet almost immediately and waved off the offer of a wheelchair. "When will I hear anything about Dean?"
"As soon as they're finished in surgery, someone will come talk to you," she promised him, but Sam had heard that before, in a dozen hospitals in a dozen different states under a dozen different names. If he'd had more energy than it took just to walk from an examining room back into the waiting room, he would've been poking around the minute someone's back was turned.
As it was, he did exactly what they asked him to do. He sat down and waited and was forced, now that he was conscious with nothing more pressing to do, to relive just what they'd been through over the past few days.
Sam looked at a coaster abandoned next to the magazines on the waiting room table, made it slide across the table to the opposite corner, and reluctantly admitted that there was no putting the genie back in the bottle again. That door would not be closed, but he'd worry about what that meant after he'd gotten some rest.
He had his head in his hands when the doctor finally came back out into the waiting room again. He wasn't covered in blood, but Sam didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad sign. He didn't know how many more times he could go through this, how many more times he could let Dean die, but somehow each time he kept on going.
He looked up and said nothing.
"It was touch and go there for a while," he said. "Your brother lost a lot of blood. But he's a fighter and it looks like he's going to pull through."
"He's okay?" said Sam. "He's okay?"
"He's not out of the woods yet," said the doctor, "but it looks promising. You can see him if you want, but we don't expect him to wake up for a while yet. He's pretty heavily drugged."
"I want to see him," said Sam. No, he needed to see him. The doctor couldn't know it, but Sam had seen Dean so, so much worse than this. Just seeing him breathing was all he asked.
"He looks pretty bad--"
"I brought him in," said Sam, already standing up. "It can't be any worse than that."
And it wasn't, though it was a close thing. Dean wasn't bleeding but he was pale and swollen and bruised, and Sam'd seen his brother close to death before but it had never seemed quite as close as this. He took a seat next to the bed and took Dean's hand and dared anyone to move him before he was ready.
It was quite a while before anyone even tried.
:::
By the time Bobby showed up, Sam had finally been ushered into a different waiting room. They said it was to let his brother rest, but Dean was resting just fine whether there was anyone in the room or not, and Sam would rest better if they just let him stick by his brother's side.
"I hear he pulled through," said Bobby, taking a seat in the hard plastic chair at Sam's side.
"If I never see my brother in a coma again, it'll be too soon," said Sam without looking up. "You've talked to the doctor?"
"Heard through administration when I took care of your paperwork," said Bobby, and right there was another reason for Sam to breathe a sigh of relief. "How is he?"
Sam shrugged a little, unsure of what to say, but Dean was alive and right now that was the most important thing. "He's going to hang in there," he said, then fell silent for a few more moments. "Thanks, Bobby."
Bobby just grunted, but Sam knew it for what it was. "You can thank me by not putting me through this ever again," he said.
"Not really planning to," said Sam. "How are things back at your place, Bobby? I didn't even really--"
"Nothing that can't be fixed," said Bobby, but he was shaking his head and looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye. "Why is it that every time one of you Winchesters gets out of hell, you bring half the place with you?"
"What are you--?" started Sam, but he knew what Bobby was talking about. He already knew.
"Three times someone came through that crack before you, Sam, and there was nothing I could do about it," said Bobby. "You wanna tell me what that was all about?"
"Not really," Sam admitted, looking down again. "We'll take care of it."
"Damn right you will," said Bobby. "Dammit, Sam, I know this isn't the time but I told you to be careful."
"I was careful," said Sam. "There were only three of them."
"Only three of them," said Bobby in disbelief. "You weren't ready. You weren't prepared for what they would trick you with."
"They didn't trick me, Bobby," said Sam. "I just did what I had to do." Bobby's silence was more telling than anything he could've said right then, and Sam knew he deserved it. But if he had it to do all over again he would've done the exact same thing. "I got Dean back."
The silence stretched for a few more moments. "One day you're going to have to tell me exactly what that entailed," he said finally. But that meant he was leaving it for now, and Sam was grateful.
"How long was I gone?" Sam asked him out of the blue, just after a woman in salmon scrubs rushed past them and through a set of doors that separated them from everything that was happening.
"About fifteen minutes, all told," said Bobby, looking at him like he knew exactly why Sam was asking. It felt like a hell of a lot more than fifteen minutes to Sam, that was for damn sure. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he felt Bobby's hand squeezing his shoulder.
"You know he's going to be different," said Bobby after a few more minutes had passed. "Hell changes a man, Sam."
"All kinds of things change a man," said Sam. Living without Dean had felt like hell, and Sam sure as hell knew it had changed him. "We can handle it."
"You boys always think you can handle everything," said Bobby. "You bring him back to my place when he gets out, you hear me? There's always a place there for you boys, no matter what damn fool shit you get yourselves into."
Sam wondered if Bobby knew how much the two of them counted on that, and promised himself right then and there that they'd never take it for granted again. Bobby'd really gone above and beyond on this one, which was saying a lot.
After about twenty minutes of weary, semi-comfortable silence between them, Bobby got up and talked to someone at the nurses' station for a few minutes.
When they next showed Sam into Dean's room, there was a more comfortable chair in the corner and a hospital-issue blanket and pillow on it. Sam wanted to thank Bobby but he didn't know how.
"You coming inside?" he asked instead, keeping his voice soft and looking back over his shoulder.
"Nah, you boys need some time to yourselves," he said, lingering just inside the doorway and taking a long look at Dean, "and I've got some cleaning up to do. I'll call you tomorrow, Sam."
"You know where to find me," said Sam, taking up his seat right next to Dean's bed again. The comfortable chair would be there when he needed it, and no one was sending him anywhere else this time.
:::
Dean woke up after two long days, disoriented and in a lot of pain but there. He recognized Sam and he recognized Bobby and most of the time he seemed to know where he was. The rest of the time, Sam could blame on the painkillers and only wonder a little bit if it was something else. And yeah, there was still a hell of a road ahead of them, but they would be on it together.
Only when Dean had slipped into a deep, natural, sleep did Sam finally leave the hospital, leaving Dean under Bobby's watchful eye, to shower and change and get together some things that Dean would be needing.
"You'll want to take care of that pet demon of yours," Bobby added before Sam left the hospital, and sure enough, when Sam arrived back at the salvage yard Ruby was there, sitting on top of one of the cars, legs stretched out in front of her and back in the body Sam recognized as hers.
"There's the man of the hour," she said dryly as Sam got out of the car, pausing by the open door to stare at her. "It's about time you remembered about me."
"I thought Bobby would've taken care of it," he admitted, though if he'd thought about it he should've known he wouldn't have. This was Sam's to take care of, no matter what he chose to do. "Dean pulled through, thanks for asking."
"Of course he did," she said, and looked pointedly at the giant sigil on the ground until Sam found one of the edges and smeared it with his toe, gave her a way out. Bobby wouldn't do it but Sam had no choice. She'd kept her word.
As she calmly and deliberately stepped outside the circle, Sam had the uneasy feeling that she could have broken the devil's trap any time she wanted.
"You sacrificed a lot to get him out of there, didn't you?" she said. "Bobby knows what you did, Sam. Does Dean?
"What are you--?"
"That's three more demons you've got to track down now," she said. "You've got a lot of work ahead of you."
"Nothing Dean and I can't handle."
"Are you sure about that?" she said. "Scarlet's got a bit of a vicious streak she has trouble keeping under control. Amory's a master of not being found when he doesn't want to be. And Regan... well, the less said about her the better. Hell hasn't been kind to her."
"What, do you subscribe to a demon newsletter I don't know about?" said Sam. "How do you know who they were?"
"You think I don't keep tabs on my old friends?" she said. "I know exactly who you let out of hell, Sam. Good work."
Sam suddenly felt very, very cold. Dean had told him all about who Ruby told him she was, how she'd ended up in hell. A witch, he'd said. A witch who sold her soul to a demon. Until that moment, until she smiled at the thought of her old friends, Sam hadn't given one single bit of thought to what happened to the rest of her coven.
"What's the matter, Sam? You got what you wanted. I got what I wanted. It all worked out in the end."
"What you wanted was to get demons out of hell."
"Only a few," she said. "The rest I still want to send back, just like you."
"You're nothing like me."
"Oh, I’m everything like you, Sam. We both wanted to get people out of hell that we didn't think belonged there. You're just pissed off because you know that I'm right."
"You never cared about your body, did you?"
"This old thing?" she said, looking down at it. "It's nice. I'm not sorry I have it back."
"You wanted me to think that's what you wanted."
"You believed what you wanted to believe," she said. "A meat suit in exchange for your brother's soul? Really, Sam?"
"You lied to me," he said. It shouldn't have been a surprise, it should never have been a surprise, and maybe he should've listened every time someone reminded him that above all else, no matter what else she did, Ruby was a demon.
"No," she said, "I've never lied to you, you just never asked the right questions. We still want the same thing, Sam. We still want to see Lilith back in hell."
"The next time I see you I'm going to kill you."
"No, you're not," she said. "Because the enemy of your enemy is your friend. You still need me."
"If I don't, then Dean will."
"We'll see," she said, and looked him up and down. "See you around, Sam."
Sam let her go, because this one time he didn't have a choice. Dean was back from hell and without her it wouldn't have happened. They had a deal.
But soon enough he and Dean would be back on the road again, and the next time they saw Ruby, all bets were off.