FIC: Through Me The Way Among The People Lost (Supernatural, Gen, R, 1/2)
I honestly didn't expect to be writing this story until I had already started it. I had other things on the go and figured that there would be dozens of post-3.16 stories in the first few weeks after the finale anyway. And I definitely wasn't wrong about that, but apparently I had a story in me I wanted to tell too.
Through Me The Way Among The People Lost
Supernatural. 15,300 words. R-rated gen. Sam, Bobby, Ruby, Dean. Post 3.16; spoilers for all aired episodes.
When Dean looked up at him and blinked, Sam's eyes were still shut too tightly to see.
In those first few quiet moments it wasn't a stretch yet to imagine Dean's heart was still beating, pumping blood through his veins and keeping him warm in Sam's arms. Sam couldn't open his eyes, he couldn't, or he'd lose that last brittle illusion. His world had scaled down to just him and Dean, nothing outside of that mattered, and if he did more than just clutch him and breathe he was going to lose it. Even breathing was almost too much.
How could Sam breathe anymore when his brother wasn't?
Then Dean moved, not a fluke of gravity but a twitch, and Sam's eyes snapped open.
"Dean?" he said, staring as the light came back into those eyes before clutching him, dragging him into his lap and gripping him to his chest. "Dean!"
"Damn, this would probably be more fun if you'd done it when I was in my other meat suit," he drawled.
At first there was too much fear and rage and relief and confusion for that to trickle in, and it was a few long, still moments before Sam realized that whatever was talking to him, it wasn't Dean. He pushed the broken body away from him, scrambled to his feet, but he couldn't stop looking at Dean's wicked grin as whatever it was pushed himself up onto his elbows.
"What, don't you recognize me?" he said. "I'm hurt, Sam, I really am."
"Get the fuck out of my brother."
He was bone-tired but adrenaline made him sharp again, spotting the knife that he'd dropped on the floor and snatching it up before Dean could do more than smirk. It couldn't be Lilith, Sam had watched her flee, but he didn't know who else it could be. It didn't even matter. He already had an exorcism on his lips when Dean pushed himself to his feet.
"What are you going to do, kick me out?" he said. "Send me straight to hell like the last person who hung out in here? And here I thought you'd thank me for keeping your brother's body fresh while you went after him."
Sam hesitated. "Ruby?"
"You've got another demon friend who'd be sticking around for a chat?"
"You can't be Ruby," he said, knife clutched into his fist and pointed at Dean's chest. "Lilith sent you to hell."
"Oh, she tried," said Ruby, "but you stopped her from doing that, too. It was sweet, Sam. I didn't know you cared."
"I don't," said Sam, but the truth was he didn't understand what he'd done or what had just happened. It had all gone by so fast and Sam hadn't been thinking about anything other than Dean. "And you can't... that's Dean, you can't just...."
"You'd better get used to it pretty quickly, Sam, if you want your brother to have a body to come back to," she said with Dean's mouth. "You think these things hold up very long on their own? A couple of days in hell and this body'll be pretty ripe."
Sam closed his eyes again and wiped his cheeks with the heels of his hands. Dean was gone, Lilith was still out there somewhere, and Ruby was walking around with Dean's face. Nothing the Trickster had put him through had prepared him for this, not enduring Dean's death a hundred times, not all those months without him. None of that was this, this moment, this disaster.
Sam trembled where he stood, full of rage and grief and unchecked desperation, and he couldn't have been ready for this, not if he'd had a decade to prepare.
The next thing he knew Dean was saying, "You're off your game, Sam," and dangling the knife from his fingertips before tucking it away where Sam couldn't reach it. No, not Dean. Ruby. "And your day's not over yet, not by a long shot."
"Fuck you," he said, spitting the words at her feet. If she hadn't been wearing Dean's battered face his fist would've already been tearing into her cheek. "What do you want?
"The same thing I always wanted. Which, if the two of you would ever listen to me, I would already have."
"Lilith is gone."
"Lilith has gone to ground after that little stunt you pulled," she said, "but you're fooling yourself if you think she's gone. And if you want to get Dean back without anyone trying to keep you from the prize, now's the time. You don't want to leave him down there too long. Hell changes a guy."
Sam tried not to think about the ticking clock in the back of his head, counting the minutes Dean has already been there. He tried not to think about the promise he'd made, that Dean would never go to hell. He tried not to think about just how long his father had endured it before they'd opened the Devil's Gate and he'd clawed his way back out.
"Why should I trust you?"
"Because every time you don't, you fuck things up," she said. "But hey, if you want to spend the rest of your life without your brother, that's your choice to make. The only one who can take care of this is you, Sam."
She was talking to him like nothing was wrong, and all the while Dean's body still dripped blood from a dozen wounds. Sam couldn't tear his eyes from them, not even when Ruby finally noticed his horrified stare.
"Let's make a deal," she said. "I take care of this little issue, and you help me out with a little problem of my own."
"So you do want something." Something concrete, not the nebulous possibility of tracking Lilith down at some point in the future.
Ruby looked pointedly at the spot where her own body had been lying just a few minutes earlier; all that remained to show she'd been there at all was a faint smear of blood on the hardwood, next to the much larger smear of Dean.
"Can't leave anything unattended for even a minute around here," she said, crossing Dean's arms over his chest. "One of Lilith's friends probably wanted an easy way out of town. I want it back."
It might actually have been relief he felt, in the midst of the horror, hearing that she wasn't even going to try to claim to have taken over Dean's body for altruistic reasons. It almost made him trust her. And it was a deal that Sam could make without feeling like he was giving up something irreplaceable. They wanted the same thing in the end. She wanted her body back; Sam wanted her to have someplace else to go when Dean reclaimed his.
"And getting me into hell? Is that part of this package?"
"I've never known a family so damn eager to go to hell," she said. "It's not going to be easy."
"I didn't ask if it was going to be easy. I asked if you could do it."
"No," she said, and Sam felt cold all over. "But you can. Now come on, we need to get out of here. We've got a long way to go before dawn."
:::
"Jesus Christ," said Bobby, staring at the pair of them like they'd just walked out of a flaming building without so much as a scorch mark. With the sprinklers off and the street deserted, the only sounds were Bobby's voice and a laugh track on a distant television, turned up far too loud. "I know the hellhounds came for you, Dean. Haven't you boys made enough deals?"
"I didn't--" started Sam, but Ruby interrupted.
"Nobody made any deals this time, and your boy Dean is still safe and sound in hell."
Sam couldn't get a word in edgewise before there was holy water splashing in Dean's face. Dean's eyes flashed an ugly black, and in all the years he'd known him Sam'd never seen quite that much hate in Bobby's face.
"Not this one," he said. "You can't have this one."
"Bobby, wait!" Sam got out finally. "Stop!"
Bobby looked at him in disbelief but he did stop. They all stopped, froze in place right there on the street, waiting for someone else to make the first move.
"I already know it's Ruby," Sam said finally, and even to him his voice sounded tired. Tired but not defeated. Dean was in hell and Sam knew damn well he was still fighting, so Sam was still fighting too. "Dean's gone."
Bobby nodded tightly, and grief flashed in his eyes only for a moment. There would be time enough for that later, that's what he'd always said. "It's over, then."
"It's not over," said Sam. "I'm going after him."
"Like hell you are, boy," said Bobby. "It's hell. You can't go after him. Do you think he would have wanted that? Do you think your father would have wanted it?"
"Well, it's a Winchester tradition, isn't it?" said Sam. "We all go to hell sooner or later."
"And all of you seem to think sooner's better than later," said Bobby, looking away in disgust. "Is that why you let this demon take over Dean's body?"
Sam hadn't exactly let her, but he hadn't exactly stopped her either. "She's helped us before," he said. "She's offering to help me now."
"Help doesn't come without a price," he said, meeting Ruby's eyes. And unlike Sam, he didn't seem to see anything other than demon when he looked there. "I have no idea what you think you're going to do, but you're not doing it here and you're not doing it now."
"We don't have any time--"
"What are you doing to do, Sam? Stand in the middle of this street and wish yourself to hell? And what about when you get there? I've already lost two of you and I'm damn well not going to let go of the third that easily."
"Ruby and I will--"
"Not be doing a damn thing until we get out of here. We'll go back to my place until we can figure this whole thing out. There's nothing left for us here."
While the neighborhood was still eerily deserted, Sam began to make out the sound of sirens in the distance, and the fragile peace they'd been taking advantage of couldn't last much longer.
"If we're heading for South Dakota then one of you'd better work some mojo and let me ride in one of your vehicles," said Ruby, "or Dean's body's getting left behind."
"You're sure as hell not getting in mine," said Bobby. Maybe he knew they needed Ruby, but when it came to demons Bobby had his limits, and taking a road trip with one seemed to be beyond them.
She just rolled Dean's eyes at him and turned to Sam. "You know you want to."
"You know I don't," he said, but he knew he'd be making a scratch in the sigil on the inside of the passenger side door when they reached the car, and he knew he'd be letting her ride, because that was Dean's body and everything was for Dean.
"We need her," he said to Bobby. "I'm getting him back."
"Sam...."
"I'm getting him back, Bobby, and either you're going to help me or you're not."
"You don't have a plan. You have no idea what you're getting into."
"Not yet," said Sam, his heart clenching so hard he thought for a moment it might burst. Hell might've been so close he could reach out and touch it, and Dean still felt a million miles away. "I don't know I'm doing it yet but I'll find a way."
"I know how to get you there," said Ruby.
"Your way would have him never coming back," spat Bobby. "Sam, come on, we can talk about this when we get back home."
"We can talk about it all you like," said Sam, stalking off towards the cars and trusting the others would be right behind him, "but Dean's coming back."
And if it had to be Ruby's way, Sam was just that desperate now and nothing was stopping him this time.
:::
By the time they reached the outskirts of Sioux Falls it was almost noon, and Sam's body was telling him he could sleep for a week. He wasn't even sure he had the energy to get out of the car, but he still looked over at Dean's silent body and said, "We need to start right away."
"You're an idiot," said Ruby, and Sam's heart clenched again when he heard those words in Dean's voice, just like he had a hundred times before. "You can barely even remember your own name right now."
"I'm never going to forget who I am," said Sam, then yawned so wide he could've swallowed the steering wheel whole. It took Bobby rapping on the driver's side window to even motivate him to get his damn seatbelt off.
"Get your behind to bed," said Bobby when Sam opened the door. "You look like you haven't slept in a week."
"No," said Sam, his voice barely more than a mumble. "There's no time, we need to keep going."
"The only thing you need to be doing right now is getting some sleep before you kill yourself," said Bobby. "Get in the house, Sam. We'll sort things out after you get some rest."
"Dean's in hell."
"You think I don't know that?" said Bobby. "You think I don't care? But you can hardly stand up right now. You can't help him like this."
It killed Sam to agree, killed him, but when he stumbled just getting out of the car he knew something had to give. "You don't have something I can take to--?"
"Get in the house," Bobby ordered him, "before I carry you in over my shoulder, and don't you think I can't do it."
Could and would, Sam had no doubt about that, and so with some effort he managed to drag his weary body up onto the porch and follow Bobby in the front door.
"So are you going to let me inside," said Ruby, "or do I get to spend the night with the dog?"
"The dog gets to come inside," said Bobby, and let the door slam shut behind Sam.
"Bobby, you can't--" said Sam, looking back over his shoulder. "She could leave. She could take Dean's body and we might never see it again."
"You think I didn't take care of that while I was waiting for you guys to show up?" said Bobby, flipping on the light and drawing back the dusty curtains so Sam could look outside. Sam didn't know what he was looking at at first until he saw the faint white line out past where he'd parked the Impala. Jesus, the whole damn place was one big devil's trap. "She won't be leaving the yard."
"She's going to be pissed off."
"She doesn't need to be happy," said Bobby, "she just needs to keep her word."
Bobby obviously didn't trust her to, but Sam knew they had a deal. And despite his deep-seated fears he knew she wouldn’t have taken off, devil's trap or none. They'd do something for her, and she'd do something for them, and long, painful experience had taught him that that was just how these things worked. There was no getting out of it now, for either of them.
"Bobby."
"Get to bed, Sam, and let me worry about what happens on my own property. I let her come this far, didn't I?"
Sam didn't have the energy to argue. He didn't even have the energy for stairs. He stumbled into the living room, brushed some books off the couch, and that was it, he was out until long past dark.
:::
Sam dreamed of fire and brimstone, black eyes and blacker smoke, and an endless road ahead of him on which he'd have to travel alone. He woke up furious, slamming his fist into a thrift store lamp that Bobby kept beside the sofa.
Bobby bandaged his bloody, trembling knuckles silently but Sam could feel the weight of his judgment. He just as silently accepted it and carried it with him as he stalked outside onto the porch. It was long past nightfall, the moon reflecting off the roof of the Impala, and there Dean stood, leaning against the driver's side door.
Sam opened his mouth to shout at him before he remembered it was Ruby.
"Go ahead, Sam," she said, reading it all over his face. "Say all the things to this face that you've been dying to."
Sam grit his teeth and clenched his fists by his sides, but the words were already coming. "You don't get to decide that my life is more important than yours!" he shouted at his brother's now-silent body. "You don't get to decide that! You're so god damn selfish, Dean! Did you think you were doing me a favor? You brought me back because you wanted me and then you didn't stick around to enjoy it! You know what this feels like and you did it to me anyway. You jerk. You jackass. You unbelievable pussy."
"Are you finished?"
"No," said Sam, then slammed his sore fist into one of the pillars of Bobby's porch. It was followed a moment later by his forehead, resting gently against the cool wood, the splinters and the chipping paint. "Yes."
"Feel better?"
"No," he said, and choked on the word.
He didn't look at her again as he turned tail and headed back into the house, letting the door slam behind him.
Bobby didn't say anything as Sam stalked by him, just narrowed his eyes and tracked his progress right until Sam was out of sight again. He showered, too hot, letting the water scald his back and shoulders, then put on the first clothes he found, the first clothes that weren't covered in something unspeakable. Every moment of it felt like wasted time and when he was finished, wet hair slicked back against his head, he set out for the front yard with a single-minded determination.
"A minute, Sam," said Bobby, stepping out in to the hallway and stopping Sam in his tracks.
"I need to do this," said Sam, trying to push past him. "You're not going to talk me out of it."
"You're as pig-headed as your father." Bobby shook his head in disgust and yanked Sam back with one fist. "I know I'm not going to talk you out of it, Sam," he said, and from the look in his eyes he knew he wasn't going to be able stop him in any other way either, "so I'd damn well better watch your back. Don't trust her with anything."
"She's helping me."
"If she's helping you, it's because she gets something out of it."
"Of course she does," said Sam. "She wants out of Dean and back into her own body again."
"You sure about that?" said Bobby. "Or is that just what she told you?"
"Look, I know you don't get something for nothing," said Sam, "especially something like this. I'm pretty sure as soon as we have Dean back she's going to be demanding we go after Lilith again. I know what's at stake. It's a deal I was ready to make, Bobby."
Bobby didn't like that, not one bit, but he didn't have to. Sam was going to do what Sam was going to do and all Bobby needed to do was help.
"I've been doing some research of my own," he said finally, "and I'm pretty sure I know what ritual we're going to need to use to get you there. You'll be on your own, Sam. You're asking me to send you to hell on a one-way ticket."
"I'll get back," said Sam. "I'll get us both back."
"Because you're psychic boy?" said Bobby. "You think that's enough?"
"Lilith was afraid of me," said Sam. "She tried to kill me, Bobby. She tried to kill me and she failed, and then she ran."
Lilith wasn't the only one who looked a little afraid of him but Bobby masked it quickly. It didn't even hurt; Sam needed that power to get Dean back again, and he wasn't sorry it was showing.
"You know Dean wanted you to go on hunting without him," Bobby said after a moment. "You know he wanted you to get on with your life."
Sam didn't even know how that was possible. He'd watched hellhounds tear his brother apart on the floor of a god damn breakfast room and he was supposed to leave that behind and just go on without him? If it took the rest of his life, Sam was going to do something about it, and at the pace he was going it was going to take a lot less time than that.
"This is hunting," he said. "This is probably the biggest damn hunt I've ever been on, and I'm not throwing in the towel before I've given it an honest shot."
It wasn't what Dean had meant but it was also true, and it looked like Bobby was having a hard time arguing the point. Sam even thought he knew exactly what was going on in his head. Bobby was a practical man. He didn't want to lose Dean either, but he didn't want to get him back at the cost of Sam. It just wasn't his choice to make.
"You watch your back, Sam. You don't trust anyone."
Sam wasn't trusting her because he wanted to, he was trusting her because the clock had already run long past midnight and he wasn't seeing any other way. So he just nodded and trusted Bobby to understand.
"Go," said Bobby, finally unfisting Sam's shirt but leaving it wrinkled and askew. "If you're going to do this, let's get this done."
Sam accepted the uneasy truce for what it was. "Get some sleep, Bobby," he said. "I'll be fine for a few hours."
He would be fine for more than a few hours, but he knew a few hours were all Bobby would give himself. Bobby finally nodded and pushed past Sam's shoulder down towards his bedroom, and Sam paused only for a moment before heading back outside to put himself in Ruby's rough hands.
"Do you think you could toss me a pillow and blankets before you abandon me for the day again?" she said, once again lounging against the Impala. She'd changed her clothes, and it was on Sam's tongue to tell her to keep her god damn hands off Dean's stuff but the clothes she was wearing now weren't bloody. Which meant Dean's body wasn't bleeding. Which meant Sam kept his mouth shut. "You do want to keep this body in good shape, don't you?"
"Sure, fine, whatever," said Sam, pausing long enough to stretch his body to its full height, reaching up for the night sky. "Let's do this."
"Pushy, aren't you?" she said. "If you'd been this eager a couple of days ago, maybe you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with."
Sam wanted to throw a punch, even though that was Dean's face. Maybe especially with that face, because that should've been Dean he was talking to, Dean he was on the road with, Dean at his side as he faced down the gates of hell.
"We don't time for this," he said tightly. "Tell me how to do it."
"Easy there, tiger, I can't just tell you what to do any more than I could last night. It's going to take a while."
"No longer than it has to," said Sam. "I'm ready to do whatever it takes."
"Are you?" she said, crossing her arms over her chest and pushing off the car to stalk forward. "Are you really?"
Sam didn't answer, putting his resolve in his face and footing. Whatever it took this time. Whatever it took. Whatever lesson Dean had learned from making his deal, Sam had carried on without Dean once before and he'd taken his own lesson from that: never again. Whatever it took this time, Dean was coming back.
"Well, let's see you put your money where your mouth is," she said. "Bring it on, Sam. I can take whatever you can throw at me."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's all there inside your head, all you have to do is let it out again. So come on. Bring it."
Sam clutched at the hair at the nape of his neck and tilted his head down and tried to do what he was asking her, but nothing came. Just the beginnings of a headache and a pinch where he was gripping his hair too tightly. He shook his head and looked up and she was supposed to be helping, not making it all seem impossible.
"You really don't get it, do you? You can't do this if you don't admit you have a little demon in you, Sam. That's where it all comes from, and if you can't admit it then it's all over before we've even started." He pressed his lips tightly together, remained stoically silent, but there were cracks in his resolve and sooner or later he'd say anything. He'd do anything. "Aw, come on, if there's anyone you could admit it to it would be little old me right? Dean's got a little demon inside him right now too."
"Is it the only way?
"Well, I’m sure Dean might find his own way out if that works better for you," she said. "It'll only take a few centuries."
Sam twisted his lips to match the twist in his gut, then turned away from her. He could do this, he could be the thing that they hunted if he had to, but he couldn't do it to Dean's face.
"There's demon inside me," he said to the faded blue siding of Bobby's house.
"Kinky," said Ruby dryly.
Sam clenched and unclenched fists at his sides but he didn't rise to her bait. He stared at the wall until the urge to hurt her passed, following long gouges with his eyes, making out a decades-old set of initials scratched into the paint. The rage came easily these days, but it wouldn't get him what he wanted right now.
"So what now?" he said, finally turning around. "I admit it. I admit it all. The thing I've spent my life hunting was a part of me all along. What now?"
"Now you use it, Sam. You used to know how."
"I never had to try before."
"Liar," she said easily. "Knock me over, Sam. Do your worst. Or maybe you don't want it enough."
He did knock her over, with a hard shove to Dean's shoulder right in what Sam knew was his weak spot, a scar that still hurt him when you hit it just right. She twisted as she fell and there was a sickening little splash of blood, and Sam remembered there were a whole lot of other weak spots now.
"That's great, Sam, but how about you try it with you mind next time."
"I don't know how."
"It's your head," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist, split lip cracked open again. "Nobody knows what's inside your head better than you do. Do whatever you need to do to figure it out. Meditate, go for a run, get high, I don't care. Once you're open to the possibilities... well, you can go to hell, and I'll happily help you get there."
"If you're yanking my chain, so help me God I will end you," said Sam.
"I don't think God's going to help too much, but you're welcome to ask," said Ruby. "What's it going to be?"
There was no way in hell Sam was going to meditate, or do anything that required him to be calm and still for that long, but he did turn back to the wall again, press both palms to it and bow his head and breathe. It was his head. It was his head and if he didn't know it inside out then he was going to lose Dean forever. It was his head. And if she told him to look inside it then he was going to look inside it as hard as he could, even if he didn't think he was going to like what he found in there.
"All right," he said, turning back a few minutes later, as calm as he was capable of being, "but we need to do this faster. Every day we're working on this is another day for Dean in hell."
"Actually, it's probably another month," said Ruby blithely, to Sam's ever-paling face. "Time's funny like that in hell. But that's not for you to worry your pretty little head about. If you want this to go faster then you have to stop fighting it."
"I'm not fighting it," said Sam. "I've never been fighting it."
"You've always been fighting it," she said. "You've been fighting it since you were six months old. Hell, you humans are wired to fight it, you don't even have to think about it. But if you want this to work, you have to give in to it."
"If I give in to it, I become just like--"
"Me?" finished Ruby. "You wish. You're still human, Sam, you're just special."
"I'm tired of being special."
"Fine," she said. "Then Dean can just stay in hell and you can go on with your not-special life."
"Damn you," he growled. "Damn you."
"I was damned centuries before you were a glint in your daddy's eye," she said, meeting Sam's glare without flinching. "You've got demon blood in you, Sam, and if you can't face that and use it, then we're done. Because there is no other way."
"I can't become that."
"You can, and you will," she said. "After that, it's up to you what you do with it. You closed the door on it once."
But Sam didn't know how he'd done that, and he didn't know if he would have the strength to do it again this time. The things he could do with that kind of power... he'd never lose Dean again. Never.
"It's your choice, Sam," she said, "but you need to make it. The longer you wait, the longer your brother burns."
He looked at Dean's body in front of him and he could suddenly see it, see his skin blackening, see his mouth open in a silent scream, still hoping help would come. Pain bloomed across the back of Sam's head and then Ruby was skidding across the ground away from him on her heels.
When she came to a stop she gave him a slow, frightening smile. "Well," she said. "It's a start."
:::
"She really put you through the wringer, didn't she?" said Bobby, giving a low whistle as he got a good look at Sam, stumbling out of the spare bedroom at dawn with just a couple of hours of sleep under his belt.
He dreamed of setting the world on fire, of unleashing earthquakes and tsunamis and erupting volcanoes, and when he woke up every book on the bookshelf had been scattered on the floor of the bedroom. He didn't remember doing it, and his head didn't hurt one bit.
"I need to get back at it," he said, bracing himself against the wall and rubbing his face with one hand. There was no time. No spare moments to sleep or eat or do anything but train his mind to get Dean back again.
The fact was that Sam could do things if he tried hard enough, if he let the pressure in his brain build up until it had to get out. But no matter how much Ruby goaded him he wouldn't use it on his brother, didn't want to leave one single more mark on that body. Not that he was leaving many marks on anything else, or doing much more than make Bobby's shingles tremble like there was a light breeze. Even that little bit of progress was leaving him on his knees, holding his throbbing head.
It was mid-morning when he just got it, when exhaustion was starting to take hold again and Ruby was baiting him and he felt the pain spreading, and he finally got it that it was hurting because somewhere in his head he was trying to hold the door shut at the same time as he was trying to let something out. Something snapped and he stopped holding it back, and all at once the half-crushed Camaro behind Ruby not only trembled but flipped right over and crashed into the blue sedan behind it.
Ruby looked at the car, then at him, then smiled a smile that had no business being on Dean's face.
"Now we can finally get started," she said, "because telekinesis isn't exactly the ability we want to be developing here."
"Then why were we--?"
"Because it was something you knew," she said, "and you needed to find the path back to your abilities before you could try something else. What you need to learn now is a whole new ball game."
Sam didn't think he was going to like it, and he wasn't wrong. Because it wasn't just like giving in and admitting he had the power to do things, which in retrospect was the easy part. It was making the decision to draw himself closer to the demon world, to understand how it worked and understand why he was maybe the one living person who could go down there and then come back again under his own power.
He could do things Ruby couldn't. He could do things he wasn't sure anyone else could. And after a while he believed he could do this, he could survive hell on the strength of his own mind, but he also realized that no one could do it unscathed, not even him.
As far as Sam was concerned, though, there was no turning back. There never had been.
It became a lot more like training after that and a lot less like a battle of wills, hour after hour, repeating the same exercises over and over until he was sure he could do them in his sleep, and probably would be. It became a lot like all those evenings and weekends when he was a teenager, Dad off on a hunt and he and Dean practicing till they dropped so maybe they'd be useful to him on the next one.
It slipped out only once.
"Dean, wait," he said, leaning forward onto his knees to catch his breath. As soon as the words were out he looked up in horror and wished he could take them back.
Ruby tsked at him and threw him a bottle of water. "How quickly they forget."
Sam fled into the house and pressed his back against the front door and just breathed until he could get his shit together. Dean's soul was at stake, and Sam couldn't afford to forget that for one moment. This wasn't a training exercise, this was everything.
Bobby left a couple of hours after dawn while Sam and Ruby were hard at it, said he had to hit his supplier for things they needed for the ritual, and when he came back at dusk he had Ruby - no, Ruby's former body - caught in a devil's trap in the bed of his truck.
"How--?" said Sam, abandoning Ruby by the shell of vehicle and staring at Bobby's cargo.
"Ruby told me where to find her while you were sleeping," said Bobby, though Sam figured there was more to it than that. Bobby wouldn't take Ruby's word that the sun was shining even if he was standing right outside beneath it. It hadn't been easy, Sam could see that for himself. Bobby had a black eye and Ruby's body didn't look so hot either. "That's your part of the deal, Sam. You'd better hope she keeps hers."
Sam didn't know how to thank him, but Bobby didn't look like he wanted thanks. He looked like he wanted some kind of reassurance that he already knew was never coming, reassurance that Sam was doing the right thing.
"You know getting you to hell's the easy part, right?" he added finally. "Getting into hell's a breeze. They want you in hell. It's getting out that's going to be a problem."
"I'm working on it," said Sam. "You keep that crack in the world open and I'll claw my way back out. I have to."
"If you can't get out, there's no one going in after you, Sam. Do you get that?" said Bobby. "If you can't get out, we lose both of you."
"Better both than one," said Sam, and Bobby grabbed his shoulders, shook him hard.
"No, it's not," he said. "Why are all you Winchesters so hell-bent on self-destruction? It's not better to lose all of you."
"You don't know what it was like, Bobby. You don't know what this world was like without him, you don't remember."
"I don't remember what exactly?"
"I lost him, Bobby. Dean died and six months - six months - I went on in the world without him. Six months I was on the road after Dean died, taking out everything in my path, turning into something I never want to be again."
Turning into something he was already becoming.
"Sam, that never happened--"
"It happened to me," he said. "It happened to me and I remember every minute of it, Bobby. And yeah, I got him back but I still remember it, it only un-happened for everybody but me. I remember what it did to me and I can't go through that again. I won't survive it."
And now that Sam knew what he was capable of, the world might not survive it either.
Bobby didn't know, but slowly he nodded and looked like he trusted what Sam was telling him even if he had no memory of any of it. "Just remember what you're getting into," he said, "and remember you've got people topside who're waiting for you."
Sam nodded and looked at Ruby. "I need to get back at it," he said. "There's no time... there's no time for anything else right now."
"I know, Sam," said Bobby with a heavy sigh. "I know."
:::
"I'm ready," said Sam the next time he woke up. He didn't know when that was, his sense of day and night and the passage of time skewed ever since the hellhounds had taken Dean, but he opened his eyes and dragged himself outside into some kind of daylight and knew it was time.
He didn't know if he was having visions again now that his abilities weren't dormant anymore, or if his nightmares had just been getting progressively worse, but he woke up vomiting and gasping for breath before he managed to get another couple of hours of uneasy sleep, and he couldn't wait anymore. He couldn't make Dean wait any longer.
"You're not ready."
"I have to be ready," he said. "Another day isn't going to make me stronger, it's just going to make both of us weaker. I need to be ready now."
Ruby lifted her chin, Dean's chin, and studied him. He didn't care what she saw, and he didn't care what she did. He had what he needed from her now, all she needed to do was stay put and wait for Dean to reclaim what was his.
"You have no idea what you're getting into," she said finally. "The only way you and anyone else is going to get back out is because you're not supposed to be there, Sam. That's the only thing you'll have going for you. If you forget that, if you forget that the power to get you and your brother back out again is in your head, then you're both lost."
"I won't forget," he said. He could never forget.
"Hell makes you forget a lot of things," she said. "Hell makes you forget who you are."
"I won't. Forget."
"We'll see," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Sam licked his lips and watched her, studied Dean's body and tilted his head to the side. "You have something you want to ask me?"
"How do I keep them from stopping me?" he said. "Lilith's not going to want to let him go."
"If you do it right, they won't notice you to stop you," said Ruby, "They're expecting you to go after the Colt, Sam. They think you want to reopen the Devil's Gate and hope that Dean's got the strength left to crawl back out himself once the door's open to him. By the time they realize you've gone straight to the source you'll already be there and gone."
"Would that have worked?"
"The Devil's Gate? It worked once before. You might remember; you were there."
"You said there was no other way," he blurted out. Finding the Colt, opening the Devil's Gate, that was another way.
"You couldn't even get the Colt back when Bela had it," she said. "It might've taken you years to track it and Lilith down, with no guarantee that you'd ever get it back. Years that Dean would be spending in hell. Does that sound like a better option to you?"
It didn't sound like any kind of option at all, so maybe it hadn't been a lie, not really. Waiting more than a few days wasn't really a way. The only way to do this was the path he was already on, and it was time Sam followed it down.
"Is that it?" Sam nodded and stared at his feet and didn't look up again. He'd be seeing the real Dean again soon; he didn't need to stare at this facsimile anymore, Dean's body but not Dean's soul. "Go get Bobby then, if it's time. He's insisting on doing the ritual himself."
Sam wasn't surprised, and couldn't say he blamed him. Bobby was just watching Sam's back, like he said he would. Making sure Ruby didn't pull anything on his watch. Sam found him in the kitchen, like he'd been anticipating Sam's arrival, and everything they needed was already laid out in front of him.
"I don't like this," he said.
"You perform rituals all the time," said Sam. "This isn't any different."
"Do you even know what we're doing, Sam?" said Bobby. "It's practically an exorcism. We're targeting the demon in you and sending you to hell."
Sam had never cared enough to ask how it was going to be done; no matter what it was, it wasn't going to change his mind.
"If I didn't think you'd just go find someone who'd botch the whole thing, I wouldn't have any part of this," he said. "But remember this, Sam: if you don't come back I won't ever be able to forgive myself."
"We're coming back," said Sam. It was pointless for him to believe anything else.
"He's still going to be dying when you get him back," Bobby said after a minute, words they'd both been avoiding up till now. But at least he'd said 'when', and that was what Sam focused on. "That body's broken, Sam."
"Dying, but not dead," said Sam. "At least then we've got a chance. And if he doesn't make it--" Sam stopped, barred his thoughts from going down that road.
"If he doesn't make it, at least he'll be going to the other place," finished Bobby. "I think, after all these years and all those lives, Dean's life's balance pretty much tips to the side of good."
One day it was going to matter to Sam whether his own balance swung that way after all this or not, but right now he was beyond caring.
"Is this where we're doing it?"
"Outside," said Bobby, gathering up his things. "Ruby's not coming in this house again, Dean's body or not."
"All right," said Sam. "Let's go outside."
Bobby stopped him just for one more moment, one hand pressed against his chest. "I hope to hell you know what you're doing."
"It doesn't matter," said Sam. "I don't have a choice anymore."
"There's always a choice," he said, but he dropped his hand and nodded. He was never going to agree that this was a good idea, just like Sam was never going to agree that he was right.
"You watch her, Bobby," he said. "You watch her like a hawk."
"I don't need you to tell me to watch her, Sam, she's a god damn demon. I'd be crazy to let her out of my sight, especially when she's walking around looking like Dean."
"And keep her in there," said Sam, even though it physically hurt to say, a tight clench around his heart. "Without that body none of this is going to matter."
"I know that," said Bobby. "If you can trust anyone right now, Sam, you can trust me."
Sam closed his eyes and nodded his head and now he was ready. He was as ready as anyone could be when they were about to go to hell and expected to be able to come back up again.
"We'll be right here waiting when you get back," said Bobby, and that above all else was what Sam had to count on. The road ahead wasn't going to end when he got Dean back. "And Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"Never, ever, forget that they're demons. Never forget that they're all demons down there. Don't trust anyone."
"I know, Bobby."
"And when you pull someone outta there, make sure it's Dean."
Sam would know Dean when he saw him, he would just know, no matter what hell had done to him. No one wearing Dean's face would fool him, and he'd know Dean with any face.
There were four of them outside now but Sam only paid attention to one. There was the scent of copper and smoke in his nose, an eerie prickling in his skin, and the last thing Sam saw was the look on Bobby's face, spitting out that Latin that he never in a million years thought he'd be using on Sam.
Part Two
Through Me The Way Among The People Lost
Supernatural. 15,300 words. R-rated gen. Sam, Bobby, Ruby, Dean. Post 3.16; spoilers for all aired episodes.
When Dean looked up at him and blinked, Sam's eyes were still shut too tightly to see.
In those first few quiet moments it wasn't a stretch yet to imagine Dean's heart was still beating, pumping blood through his veins and keeping him warm in Sam's arms. Sam couldn't open his eyes, he couldn't, or he'd lose that last brittle illusion. His world had scaled down to just him and Dean, nothing outside of that mattered, and if he did more than just clutch him and breathe he was going to lose it. Even breathing was almost too much.
How could Sam breathe anymore when his brother wasn't?
Then Dean moved, not a fluke of gravity but a twitch, and Sam's eyes snapped open.
"Dean?" he said, staring as the light came back into those eyes before clutching him, dragging him into his lap and gripping him to his chest. "Dean!"
"Damn, this would probably be more fun if you'd done it when I was in my other meat suit," he drawled.
At first there was too much fear and rage and relief and confusion for that to trickle in, and it was a few long, still moments before Sam realized that whatever was talking to him, it wasn't Dean. He pushed the broken body away from him, scrambled to his feet, but he couldn't stop looking at Dean's wicked grin as whatever it was pushed himself up onto his elbows.
"What, don't you recognize me?" he said. "I'm hurt, Sam, I really am."
"Get the fuck out of my brother."
He was bone-tired but adrenaline made him sharp again, spotting the knife that he'd dropped on the floor and snatching it up before Dean could do more than smirk. It couldn't be Lilith, Sam had watched her flee, but he didn't know who else it could be. It didn't even matter. He already had an exorcism on his lips when Dean pushed himself to his feet.
"What are you going to do, kick me out?" he said. "Send me straight to hell like the last person who hung out in here? And here I thought you'd thank me for keeping your brother's body fresh while you went after him."
Sam hesitated. "Ruby?"
"You've got another demon friend who'd be sticking around for a chat?"
"You can't be Ruby," he said, knife clutched into his fist and pointed at Dean's chest. "Lilith sent you to hell."
"Oh, she tried," said Ruby, "but you stopped her from doing that, too. It was sweet, Sam. I didn't know you cared."
"I don't," said Sam, but the truth was he didn't understand what he'd done or what had just happened. It had all gone by so fast and Sam hadn't been thinking about anything other than Dean. "And you can't... that's Dean, you can't just...."
"You'd better get used to it pretty quickly, Sam, if you want your brother to have a body to come back to," she said with Dean's mouth. "You think these things hold up very long on their own? A couple of days in hell and this body'll be pretty ripe."
Sam closed his eyes again and wiped his cheeks with the heels of his hands. Dean was gone, Lilith was still out there somewhere, and Ruby was walking around with Dean's face. Nothing the Trickster had put him through had prepared him for this, not enduring Dean's death a hundred times, not all those months without him. None of that was this, this moment, this disaster.
Sam trembled where he stood, full of rage and grief and unchecked desperation, and he couldn't have been ready for this, not if he'd had a decade to prepare.
The next thing he knew Dean was saying, "You're off your game, Sam," and dangling the knife from his fingertips before tucking it away where Sam couldn't reach it. No, not Dean. Ruby. "And your day's not over yet, not by a long shot."
"Fuck you," he said, spitting the words at her feet. If she hadn't been wearing Dean's battered face his fist would've already been tearing into her cheek. "What do you want?
"The same thing I always wanted. Which, if the two of you would ever listen to me, I would already have."
"Lilith is gone."
"Lilith has gone to ground after that little stunt you pulled," she said, "but you're fooling yourself if you think she's gone. And if you want to get Dean back without anyone trying to keep you from the prize, now's the time. You don't want to leave him down there too long. Hell changes a guy."
Sam tried not to think about the ticking clock in the back of his head, counting the minutes Dean has already been there. He tried not to think about the promise he'd made, that Dean would never go to hell. He tried not to think about just how long his father had endured it before they'd opened the Devil's Gate and he'd clawed his way back out.
"Why should I trust you?"
"Because every time you don't, you fuck things up," she said. "But hey, if you want to spend the rest of your life without your brother, that's your choice to make. The only one who can take care of this is you, Sam."
She was talking to him like nothing was wrong, and all the while Dean's body still dripped blood from a dozen wounds. Sam couldn't tear his eyes from them, not even when Ruby finally noticed his horrified stare.
"Let's make a deal," she said. "I take care of this little issue, and you help me out with a little problem of my own."
"So you do want something." Something concrete, not the nebulous possibility of tracking Lilith down at some point in the future.
Ruby looked pointedly at the spot where her own body had been lying just a few minutes earlier; all that remained to show she'd been there at all was a faint smear of blood on the hardwood, next to the much larger smear of Dean.
"Can't leave anything unattended for even a minute around here," she said, crossing Dean's arms over his chest. "One of Lilith's friends probably wanted an easy way out of town. I want it back."
It might actually have been relief he felt, in the midst of the horror, hearing that she wasn't even going to try to claim to have taken over Dean's body for altruistic reasons. It almost made him trust her. And it was a deal that Sam could make without feeling like he was giving up something irreplaceable. They wanted the same thing in the end. She wanted her body back; Sam wanted her to have someplace else to go when Dean reclaimed his.
"And getting me into hell? Is that part of this package?"
"I've never known a family so damn eager to go to hell," she said. "It's not going to be easy."
"I didn't ask if it was going to be easy. I asked if you could do it."
"No," she said, and Sam felt cold all over. "But you can. Now come on, we need to get out of here. We've got a long way to go before dawn."
:::
"Jesus Christ," said Bobby, staring at the pair of them like they'd just walked out of a flaming building without so much as a scorch mark. With the sprinklers off and the street deserted, the only sounds were Bobby's voice and a laugh track on a distant television, turned up far too loud. "I know the hellhounds came for you, Dean. Haven't you boys made enough deals?"
"I didn't--" started Sam, but Ruby interrupted.
"Nobody made any deals this time, and your boy Dean is still safe and sound in hell."
Sam couldn't get a word in edgewise before there was holy water splashing in Dean's face. Dean's eyes flashed an ugly black, and in all the years he'd known him Sam'd never seen quite that much hate in Bobby's face.
"Not this one," he said. "You can't have this one."
"Bobby, wait!" Sam got out finally. "Stop!"
Bobby looked at him in disbelief but he did stop. They all stopped, froze in place right there on the street, waiting for someone else to make the first move.
"I already know it's Ruby," Sam said finally, and even to him his voice sounded tired. Tired but not defeated. Dean was in hell and Sam knew damn well he was still fighting, so Sam was still fighting too. "Dean's gone."
Bobby nodded tightly, and grief flashed in his eyes only for a moment. There would be time enough for that later, that's what he'd always said. "It's over, then."
"It's not over," said Sam. "I'm going after him."
"Like hell you are, boy," said Bobby. "It's hell. You can't go after him. Do you think he would have wanted that? Do you think your father would have wanted it?"
"Well, it's a Winchester tradition, isn't it?" said Sam. "We all go to hell sooner or later."
"And all of you seem to think sooner's better than later," said Bobby, looking away in disgust. "Is that why you let this demon take over Dean's body?"
Sam hadn't exactly let her, but he hadn't exactly stopped her either. "She's helped us before," he said. "She's offering to help me now."
"Help doesn't come without a price," he said, meeting Ruby's eyes. And unlike Sam, he didn't seem to see anything other than demon when he looked there. "I have no idea what you think you're going to do, but you're not doing it here and you're not doing it now."
"We don't have any time--"
"What are you doing to do, Sam? Stand in the middle of this street and wish yourself to hell? And what about when you get there? I've already lost two of you and I'm damn well not going to let go of the third that easily."
"Ruby and I will--"
"Not be doing a damn thing until we get out of here. We'll go back to my place until we can figure this whole thing out. There's nothing left for us here."
While the neighborhood was still eerily deserted, Sam began to make out the sound of sirens in the distance, and the fragile peace they'd been taking advantage of couldn't last much longer.
"If we're heading for South Dakota then one of you'd better work some mojo and let me ride in one of your vehicles," said Ruby, "or Dean's body's getting left behind."
"You're sure as hell not getting in mine," said Bobby. Maybe he knew they needed Ruby, but when it came to demons Bobby had his limits, and taking a road trip with one seemed to be beyond them.
She just rolled Dean's eyes at him and turned to Sam. "You know you want to."
"You know I don't," he said, but he knew he'd be making a scratch in the sigil on the inside of the passenger side door when they reached the car, and he knew he'd be letting her ride, because that was Dean's body and everything was for Dean.
"We need her," he said to Bobby. "I'm getting him back."
"Sam...."
"I'm getting him back, Bobby, and either you're going to help me or you're not."
"You don't have a plan. You have no idea what you're getting into."
"Not yet," said Sam, his heart clenching so hard he thought for a moment it might burst. Hell might've been so close he could reach out and touch it, and Dean still felt a million miles away. "I don't know I'm doing it yet but I'll find a way."
"I know how to get you there," said Ruby.
"Your way would have him never coming back," spat Bobby. "Sam, come on, we can talk about this when we get back home."
"We can talk about it all you like," said Sam, stalking off towards the cars and trusting the others would be right behind him, "but Dean's coming back."
And if it had to be Ruby's way, Sam was just that desperate now and nothing was stopping him this time.
:::
By the time they reached the outskirts of Sioux Falls it was almost noon, and Sam's body was telling him he could sleep for a week. He wasn't even sure he had the energy to get out of the car, but he still looked over at Dean's silent body and said, "We need to start right away."
"You're an idiot," said Ruby, and Sam's heart clenched again when he heard those words in Dean's voice, just like he had a hundred times before. "You can barely even remember your own name right now."
"I'm never going to forget who I am," said Sam, then yawned so wide he could've swallowed the steering wheel whole. It took Bobby rapping on the driver's side window to even motivate him to get his damn seatbelt off.
"Get your behind to bed," said Bobby when Sam opened the door. "You look like you haven't slept in a week."
"No," said Sam, his voice barely more than a mumble. "There's no time, we need to keep going."
"The only thing you need to be doing right now is getting some sleep before you kill yourself," said Bobby. "Get in the house, Sam. We'll sort things out after you get some rest."
"Dean's in hell."
"You think I don't know that?" said Bobby. "You think I don't care? But you can hardly stand up right now. You can't help him like this."
It killed Sam to agree, killed him, but when he stumbled just getting out of the car he knew something had to give. "You don't have something I can take to--?"
"Get in the house," Bobby ordered him, "before I carry you in over my shoulder, and don't you think I can't do it."
Could and would, Sam had no doubt about that, and so with some effort he managed to drag his weary body up onto the porch and follow Bobby in the front door.
"So are you going to let me inside," said Ruby, "or do I get to spend the night with the dog?"
"The dog gets to come inside," said Bobby, and let the door slam shut behind Sam.
"Bobby, you can't--" said Sam, looking back over his shoulder. "She could leave. She could take Dean's body and we might never see it again."
"You think I didn't take care of that while I was waiting for you guys to show up?" said Bobby, flipping on the light and drawing back the dusty curtains so Sam could look outside. Sam didn't know what he was looking at at first until he saw the faint white line out past where he'd parked the Impala. Jesus, the whole damn place was one big devil's trap. "She won't be leaving the yard."
"She's going to be pissed off."
"She doesn't need to be happy," said Bobby, "she just needs to keep her word."
Bobby obviously didn't trust her to, but Sam knew they had a deal. And despite his deep-seated fears he knew she wouldn’t have taken off, devil's trap or none. They'd do something for her, and she'd do something for them, and long, painful experience had taught him that that was just how these things worked. There was no getting out of it now, for either of them.
"Bobby."
"Get to bed, Sam, and let me worry about what happens on my own property. I let her come this far, didn't I?"
Sam didn't have the energy to argue. He didn't even have the energy for stairs. He stumbled into the living room, brushed some books off the couch, and that was it, he was out until long past dark.
:::
Sam dreamed of fire and brimstone, black eyes and blacker smoke, and an endless road ahead of him on which he'd have to travel alone. He woke up furious, slamming his fist into a thrift store lamp that Bobby kept beside the sofa.
Bobby bandaged his bloody, trembling knuckles silently but Sam could feel the weight of his judgment. He just as silently accepted it and carried it with him as he stalked outside onto the porch. It was long past nightfall, the moon reflecting off the roof of the Impala, and there Dean stood, leaning against the driver's side door.
Sam opened his mouth to shout at him before he remembered it was Ruby.
"Go ahead, Sam," she said, reading it all over his face. "Say all the things to this face that you've been dying to."
Sam grit his teeth and clenched his fists by his sides, but the words were already coming. "You don't get to decide that my life is more important than yours!" he shouted at his brother's now-silent body. "You don't get to decide that! You're so god damn selfish, Dean! Did you think you were doing me a favor? You brought me back because you wanted me and then you didn't stick around to enjoy it! You know what this feels like and you did it to me anyway. You jerk. You jackass. You unbelievable pussy."
"Are you finished?"
"No," said Sam, then slammed his sore fist into one of the pillars of Bobby's porch. It was followed a moment later by his forehead, resting gently against the cool wood, the splinters and the chipping paint. "Yes."
"Feel better?"
"No," he said, and choked on the word.
He didn't look at her again as he turned tail and headed back into the house, letting the door slam behind him.
Bobby didn't say anything as Sam stalked by him, just narrowed his eyes and tracked his progress right until Sam was out of sight again. He showered, too hot, letting the water scald his back and shoulders, then put on the first clothes he found, the first clothes that weren't covered in something unspeakable. Every moment of it felt like wasted time and when he was finished, wet hair slicked back against his head, he set out for the front yard with a single-minded determination.
"A minute, Sam," said Bobby, stepping out in to the hallway and stopping Sam in his tracks.
"I need to do this," said Sam, trying to push past him. "You're not going to talk me out of it."
"You're as pig-headed as your father." Bobby shook his head in disgust and yanked Sam back with one fist. "I know I'm not going to talk you out of it, Sam," he said, and from the look in his eyes he knew he wasn't going to be able stop him in any other way either, "so I'd damn well better watch your back. Don't trust her with anything."
"She's helping me."
"If she's helping you, it's because she gets something out of it."
"Of course she does," said Sam. "She wants out of Dean and back into her own body again."
"You sure about that?" said Bobby. "Or is that just what she told you?"
"Look, I know you don't get something for nothing," said Sam, "especially something like this. I'm pretty sure as soon as we have Dean back she's going to be demanding we go after Lilith again. I know what's at stake. It's a deal I was ready to make, Bobby."
Bobby didn't like that, not one bit, but he didn't have to. Sam was going to do what Sam was going to do and all Bobby needed to do was help.
"I've been doing some research of my own," he said finally, "and I'm pretty sure I know what ritual we're going to need to use to get you there. You'll be on your own, Sam. You're asking me to send you to hell on a one-way ticket."
"I'll get back," said Sam. "I'll get us both back."
"Because you're psychic boy?" said Bobby. "You think that's enough?"
"Lilith was afraid of me," said Sam. "She tried to kill me, Bobby. She tried to kill me and she failed, and then she ran."
Lilith wasn't the only one who looked a little afraid of him but Bobby masked it quickly. It didn't even hurt; Sam needed that power to get Dean back again, and he wasn't sorry it was showing.
"You know Dean wanted you to go on hunting without him," Bobby said after a moment. "You know he wanted you to get on with your life."
Sam didn't even know how that was possible. He'd watched hellhounds tear his brother apart on the floor of a god damn breakfast room and he was supposed to leave that behind and just go on without him? If it took the rest of his life, Sam was going to do something about it, and at the pace he was going it was going to take a lot less time than that.
"This is hunting," he said. "This is probably the biggest damn hunt I've ever been on, and I'm not throwing in the towel before I've given it an honest shot."
It wasn't what Dean had meant but it was also true, and it looked like Bobby was having a hard time arguing the point. Sam even thought he knew exactly what was going on in his head. Bobby was a practical man. He didn't want to lose Dean either, but he didn't want to get him back at the cost of Sam. It just wasn't his choice to make.
"You watch your back, Sam. You don't trust anyone."
Sam wasn't trusting her because he wanted to, he was trusting her because the clock had already run long past midnight and he wasn't seeing any other way. So he just nodded and trusted Bobby to understand.
"Go," said Bobby, finally unfisting Sam's shirt but leaving it wrinkled and askew. "If you're going to do this, let's get this done."
Sam accepted the uneasy truce for what it was. "Get some sleep, Bobby," he said. "I'll be fine for a few hours."
He would be fine for more than a few hours, but he knew a few hours were all Bobby would give himself. Bobby finally nodded and pushed past Sam's shoulder down towards his bedroom, and Sam paused only for a moment before heading back outside to put himself in Ruby's rough hands.
"Do you think you could toss me a pillow and blankets before you abandon me for the day again?" she said, once again lounging against the Impala. She'd changed her clothes, and it was on Sam's tongue to tell her to keep her god damn hands off Dean's stuff but the clothes she was wearing now weren't bloody. Which meant Dean's body wasn't bleeding. Which meant Sam kept his mouth shut. "You do want to keep this body in good shape, don't you?"
"Sure, fine, whatever," said Sam, pausing long enough to stretch his body to its full height, reaching up for the night sky. "Let's do this."
"Pushy, aren't you?" she said. "If you'd been this eager a couple of days ago, maybe you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with."
Sam wanted to throw a punch, even though that was Dean's face. Maybe especially with that face, because that should've been Dean he was talking to, Dean he was on the road with, Dean at his side as he faced down the gates of hell.
"We don't time for this," he said tightly. "Tell me how to do it."
"Easy there, tiger, I can't just tell you what to do any more than I could last night. It's going to take a while."
"No longer than it has to," said Sam. "I'm ready to do whatever it takes."
"Are you?" she said, crossing her arms over her chest and pushing off the car to stalk forward. "Are you really?"
Sam didn't answer, putting his resolve in his face and footing. Whatever it took this time. Whatever it took. Whatever lesson Dean had learned from making his deal, Sam had carried on without Dean once before and he'd taken his own lesson from that: never again. Whatever it took this time, Dean was coming back.
"Well, let's see you put your money where your mouth is," she said. "Bring it on, Sam. I can take whatever you can throw at me."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's all there inside your head, all you have to do is let it out again. So come on. Bring it."
Sam clutched at the hair at the nape of his neck and tilted his head down and tried to do what he was asking her, but nothing came. Just the beginnings of a headache and a pinch where he was gripping his hair too tightly. He shook his head and looked up and she was supposed to be helping, not making it all seem impossible.
"You really don't get it, do you? You can't do this if you don't admit you have a little demon in you, Sam. That's where it all comes from, and if you can't admit it then it's all over before we've even started." He pressed his lips tightly together, remained stoically silent, but there were cracks in his resolve and sooner or later he'd say anything. He'd do anything. "Aw, come on, if there's anyone you could admit it to it would be little old me right? Dean's got a little demon inside him right now too."
"Is it the only way?
"Well, I’m sure Dean might find his own way out if that works better for you," she said. "It'll only take a few centuries."
Sam twisted his lips to match the twist in his gut, then turned away from her. He could do this, he could be the thing that they hunted if he had to, but he couldn't do it to Dean's face.
"There's demon inside me," he said to the faded blue siding of Bobby's house.
"Kinky," said Ruby dryly.
Sam clenched and unclenched fists at his sides but he didn't rise to her bait. He stared at the wall until the urge to hurt her passed, following long gouges with his eyes, making out a decades-old set of initials scratched into the paint. The rage came easily these days, but it wouldn't get him what he wanted right now.
"So what now?" he said, finally turning around. "I admit it. I admit it all. The thing I've spent my life hunting was a part of me all along. What now?"
"Now you use it, Sam. You used to know how."
"I never had to try before."
"Liar," she said easily. "Knock me over, Sam. Do your worst. Or maybe you don't want it enough."
He did knock her over, with a hard shove to Dean's shoulder right in what Sam knew was his weak spot, a scar that still hurt him when you hit it just right. She twisted as she fell and there was a sickening little splash of blood, and Sam remembered there were a whole lot of other weak spots now.
"That's great, Sam, but how about you try it with you mind next time."
"I don't know how."
"It's your head," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist, split lip cracked open again. "Nobody knows what's inside your head better than you do. Do whatever you need to do to figure it out. Meditate, go for a run, get high, I don't care. Once you're open to the possibilities... well, you can go to hell, and I'll happily help you get there."
"If you're yanking my chain, so help me God I will end you," said Sam.
"I don't think God's going to help too much, but you're welcome to ask," said Ruby. "What's it going to be?"
There was no way in hell Sam was going to meditate, or do anything that required him to be calm and still for that long, but he did turn back to the wall again, press both palms to it and bow his head and breathe. It was his head. It was his head and if he didn't know it inside out then he was going to lose Dean forever. It was his head. And if she told him to look inside it then he was going to look inside it as hard as he could, even if he didn't think he was going to like what he found in there.
"All right," he said, turning back a few minutes later, as calm as he was capable of being, "but we need to do this faster. Every day we're working on this is another day for Dean in hell."
"Actually, it's probably another month," said Ruby blithely, to Sam's ever-paling face. "Time's funny like that in hell. But that's not for you to worry your pretty little head about. If you want this to go faster then you have to stop fighting it."
"I'm not fighting it," said Sam. "I've never been fighting it."
"You've always been fighting it," she said. "You've been fighting it since you were six months old. Hell, you humans are wired to fight it, you don't even have to think about it. But if you want this to work, you have to give in to it."
"If I give in to it, I become just like--"
"Me?" finished Ruby. "You wish. You're still human, Sam, you're just special."
"I'm tired of being special."
"Fine," she said. "Then Dean can just stay in hell and you can go on with your not-special life."
"Damn you," he growled. "Damn you."
"I was damned centuries before you were a glint in your daddy's eye," she said, meeting Sam's glare without flinching. "You've got demon blood in you, Sam, and if you can't face that and use it, then we're done. Because there is no other way."
"I can't become that."
"You can, and you will," she said. "After that, it's up to you what you do with it. You closed the door on it once."
But Sam didn't know how he'd done that, and he didn't know if he would have the strength to do it again this time. The things he could do with that kind of power... he'd never lose Dean again. Never.
"It's your choice, Sam," she said, "but you need to make it. The longer you wait, the longer your brother burns."
He looked at Dean's body in front of him and he could suddenly see it, see his skin blackening, see his mouth open in a silent scream, still hoping help would come. Pain bloomed across the back of Sam's head and then Ruby was skidding across the ground away from him on her heels.
When she came to a stop she gave him a slow, frightening smile. "Well," she said. "It's a start."
:::
"She really put you through the wringer, didn't she?" said Bobby, giving a low whistle as he got a good look at Sam, stumbling out of the spare bedroom at dawn with just a couple of hours of sleep under his belt.
He dreamed of setting the world on fire, of unleashing earthquakes and tsunamis and erupting volcanoes, and when he woke up every book on the bookshelf had been scattered on the floor of the bedroom. He didn't remember doing it, and his head didn't hurt one bit.
"I need to get back at it," he said, bracing himself against the wall and rubbing his face with one hand. There was no time. No spare moments to sleep or eat or do anything but train his mind to get Dean back again.
The fact was that Sam could do things if he tried hard enough, if he let the pressure in his brain build up until it had to get out. But no matter how much Ruby goaded him he wouldn't use it on his brother, didn't want to leave one single more mark on that body. Not that he was leaving many marks on anything else, or doing much more than make Bobby's shingles tremble like there was a light breeze. Even that little bit of progress was leaving him on his knees, holding his throbbing head.
It was mid-morning when he just got it, when exhaustion was starting to take hold again and Ruby was baiting him and he felt the pain spreading, and he finally got it that it was hurting because somewhere in his head he was trying to hold the door shut at the same time as he was trying to let something out. Something snapped and he stopped holding it back, and all at once the half-crushed Camaro behind Ruby not only trembled but flipped right over and crashed into the blue sedan behind it.
Ruby looked at the car, then at him, then smiled a smile that had no business being on Dean's face.
"Now we can finally get started," she said, "because telekinesis isn't exactly the ability we want to be developing here."
"Then why were we--?"
"Because it was something you knew," she said, "and you needed to find the path back to your abilities before you could try something else. What you need to learn now is a whole new ball game."
Sam didn't think he was going to like it, and he wasn't wrong. Because it wasn't just like giving in and admitting he had the power to do things, which in retrospect was the easy part. It was making the decision to draw himself closer to the demon world, to understand how it worked and understand why he was maybe the one living person who could go down there and then come back again under his own power.
He could do things Ruby couldn't. He could do things he wasn't sure anyone else could. And after a while he believed he could do this, he could survive hell on the strength of his own mind, but he also realized that no one could do it unscathed, not even him.
As far as Sam was concerned, though, there was no turning back. There never had been.
It became a lot more like training after that and a lot less like a battle of wills, hour after hour, repeating the same exercises over and over until he was sure he could do them in his sleep, and probably would be. It became a lot like all those evenings and weekends when he was a teenager, Dad off on a hunt and he and Dean practicing till they dropped so maybe they'd be useful to him on the next one.
It slipped out only once.
"Dean, wait," he said, leaning forward onto his knees to catch his breath. As soon as the words were out he looked up in horror and wished he could take them back.
Ruby tsked at him and threw him a bottle of water. "How quickly they forget."
Sam fled into the house and pressed his back against the front door and just breathed until he could get his shit together. Dean's soul was at stake, and Sam couldn't afford to forget that for one moment. This wasn't a training exercise, this was everything.
Bobby left a couple of hours after dawn while Sam and Ruby were hard at it, said he had to hit his supplier for things they needed for the ritual, and when he came back at dusk he had Ruby - no, Ruby's former body - caught in a devil's trap in the bed of his truck.
"How--?" said Sam, abandoning Ruby by the shell of vehicle and staring at Bobby's cargo.
"Ruby told me where to find her while you were sleeping," said Bobby, though Sam figured there was more to it than that. Bobby wouldn't take Ruby's word that the sun was shining even if he was standing right outside beneath it. It hadn't been easy, Sam could see that for himself. Bobby had a black eye and Ruby's body didn't look so hot either. "That's your part of the deal, Sam. You'd better hope she keeps hers."
Sam didn't know how to thank him, but Bobby didn't look like he wanted thanks. He looked like he wanted some kind of reassurance that he already knew was never coming, reassurance that Sam was doing the right thing.
"You know getting you to hell's the easy part, right?" he added finally. "Getting into hell's a breeze. They want you in hell. It's getting out that's going to be a problem."
"I'm working on it," said Sam. "You keep that crack in the world open and I'll claw my way back out. I have to."
"If you can't get out, there's no one going in after you, Sam. Do you get that?" said Bobby. "If you can't get out, we lose both of you."
"Better both than one," said Sam, and Bobby grabbed his shoulders, shook him hard.
"No, it's not," he said. "Why are all you Winchesters so hell-bent on self-destruction? It's not better to lose all of you."
"You don't know what it was like, Bobby. You don't know what this world was like without him, you don't remember."
"I don't remember what exactly?"
"I lost him, Bobby. Dean died and six months - six months - I went on in the world without him. Six months I was on the road after Dean died, taking out everything in my path, turning into something I never want to be again."
Turning into something he was already becoming.
"Sam, that never happened--"
"It happened to me," he said. "It happened to me and I remember every minute of it, Bobby. And yeah, I got him back but I still remember it, it only un-happened for everybody but me. I remember what it did to me and I can't go through that again. I won't survive it."
And now that Sam knew what he was capable of, the world might not survive it either.
Bobby didn't know, but slowly he nodded and looked like he trusted what Sam was telling him even if he had no memory of any of it. "Just remember what you're getting into," he said, "and remember you've got people topside who're waiting for you."
Sam nodded and looked at Ruby. "I need to get back at it," he said. "There's no time... there's no time for anything else right now."
"I know, Sam," said Bobby with a heavy sigh. "I know."
:::
"I'm ready," said Sam the next time he woke up. He didn't know when that was, his sense of day and night and the passage of time skewed ever since the hellhounds had taken Dean, but he opened his eyes and dragged himself outside into some kind of daylight and knew it was time.
He didn't know if he was having visions again now that his abilities weren't dormant anymore, or if his nightmares had just been getting progressively worse, but he woke up vomiting and gasping for breath before he managed to get another couple of hours of uneasy sleep, and he couldn't wait anymore. He couldn't make Dean wait any longer.
"You're not ready."
"I have to be ready," he said. "Another day isn't going to make me stronger, it's just going to make both of us weaker. I need to be ready now."
Ruby lifted her chin, Dean's chin, and studied him. He didn't care what she saw, and he didn't care what she did. He had what he needed from her now, all she needed to do was stay put and wait for Dean to reclaim what was his.
"You have no idea what you're getting into," she said finally. "The only way you and anyone else is going to get back out is because you're not supposed to be there, Sam. That's the only thing you'll have going for you. If you forget that, if you forget that the power to get you and your brother back out again is in your head, then you're both lost."
"I won't forget," he said. He could never forget.
"Hell makes you forget a lot of things," she said. "Hell makes you forget who you are."
"I won't. Forget."
"We'll see," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Sam licked his lips and watched her, studied Dean's body and tilted his head to the side. "You have something you want to ask me?"
"How do I keep them from stopping me?" he said. "Lilith's not going to want to let him go."
"If you do it right, they won't notice you to stop you," said Ruby, "They're expecting you to go after the Colt, Sam. They think you want to reopen the Devil's Gate and hope that Dean's got the strength left to crawl back out himself once the door's open to him. By the time they realize you've gone straight to the source you'll already be there and gone."
"Would that have worked?"
"The Devil's Gate? It worked once before. You might remember; you were there."
"You said there was no other way," he blurted out. Finding the Colt, opening the Devil's Gate, that was another way.
"You couldn't even get the Colt back when Bela had it," she said. "It might've taken you years to track it and Lilith down, with no guarantee that you'd ever get it back. Years that Dean would be spending in hell. Does that sound like a better option to you?"
It didn't sound like any kind of option at all, so maybe it hadn't been a lie, not really. Waiting more than a few days wasn't really a way. The only way to do this was the path he was already on, and it was time Sam followed it down.
"Is that it?" Sam nodded and stared at his feet and didn't look up again. He'd be seeing the real Dean again soon; he didn't need to stare at this facsimile anymore, Dean's body but not Dean's soul. "Go get Bobby then, if it's time. He's insisting on doing the ritual himself."
Sam wasn't surprised, and couldn't say he blamed him. Bobby was just watching Sam's back, like he said he would. Making sure Ruby didn't pull anything on his watch. Sam found him in the kitchen, like he'd been anticipating Sam's arrival, and everything they needed was already laid out in front of him.
"I don't like this," he said.
"You perform rituals all the time," said Sam. "This isn't any different."
"Do you even know what we're doing, Sam?" said Bobby. "It's practically an exorcism. We're targeting the demon in you and sending you to hell."
Sam had never cared enough to ask how it was going to be done; no matter what it was, it wasn't going to change his mind.
"If I didn't think you'd just go find someone who'd botch the whole thing, I wouldn't have any part of this," he said. "But remember this, Sam: if you don't come back I won't ever be able to forgive myself."
"We're coming back," said Sam. It was pointless for him to believe anything else.
"He's still going to be dying when you get him back," Bobby said after a minute, words they'd both been avoiding up till now. But at least he'd said 'when', and that was what Sam focused on. "That body's broken, Sam."
"Dying, but not dead," said Sam. "At least then we've got a chance. And if he doesn't make it--" Sam stopped, barred his thoughts from going down that road.
"If he doesn't make it, at least he'll be going to the other place," finished Bobby. "I think, after all these years and all those lives, Dean's life's balance pretty much tips to the side of good."
One day it was going to matter to Sam whether his own balance swung that way after all this or not, but right now he was beyond caring.
"Is this where we're doing it?"
"Outside," said Bobby, gathering up his things. "Ruby's not coming in this house again, Dean's body or not."
"All right," said Sam. "Let's go outside."
Bobby stopped him just for one more moment, one hand pressed against his chest. "I hope to hell you know what you're doing."
"It doesn't matter," said Sam. "I don't have a choice anymore."
"There's always a choice," he said, but he dropped his hand and nodded. He was never going to agree that this was a good idea, just like Sam was never going to agree that he was right.
"You watch her, Bobby," he said. "You watch her like a hawk."
"I don't need you to tell me to watch her, Sam, she's a god damn demon. I'd be crazy to let her out of my sight, especially when she's walking around looking like Dean."
"And keep her in there," said Sam, even though it physically hurt to say, a tight clench around his heart. "Without that body none of this is going to matter."
"I know that," said Bobby. "If you can trust anyone right now, Sam, you can trust me."
Sam closed his eyes and nodded his head and now he was ready. He was as ready as anyone could be when they were about to go to hell and expected to be able to come back up again.
"We'll be right here waiting when you get back," said Bobby, and that above all else was what Sam had to count on. The road ahead wasn't going to end when he got Dean back. "And Sam?"
"Yeah?"
"Never, ever, forget that they're demons. Never forget that they're all demons down there. Don't trust anyone."
"I know, Bobby."
"And when you pull someone outta there, make sure it's Dean."
Sam would know Dean when he saw him, he would just know, no matter what hell had done to him. No one wearing Dean's face would fool him, and he'd know Dean with any face.
There were four of them outside now but Sam only paid attention to one. There was the scent of copper and smoke in his nose, an eerie prickling in his skin, and the last thing Sam saw was the look on Bobby's face, spitting out that Latin that he never in a million years thought he'd be using on Sam.
Part Two