Each Our Own Devil - Part One
This is my third - and final - submission to the Sam-centric h/c challenge at ohsam. It's not complete yet, but given it's turning out to be one of the more challenging things I've written, I'm putting the first part up to motivate me into finishing the thing. Given exams are approaching, this fic's giving me near-panic-attacks every time I think about it.
Written for rainylemons' crazy-awesome prompt: "Not all demons are so jazzed about Crowley being King of Hell and, so, they believe that if they could communicate with Lucifer (whom Crowley knows not to give a shit about demons) that they'd be doing things in a better fashion. To that end, one group of demons comes across an old bit of angelic/demon lore stating that communication with Lucifer in the cage is possible via parts of a host he's inhabited. Specifically Sam. Specifically Sam's eye. Said demons take one of Sam's eyes with a melon baller and off they go to get their orders. Ew.
Soulless Sam is in pain, but he can't feel anything about it emotionally. Pain hurts, sure as hell it does, but our emotional reaction to pain is what makes it so damned bad. He reasons that if there's a war in Heaven and now a civil war about to start up in Hell as well, that they'll need to be on the inside track. He wants to use the same bit of lore, pluck out his other eye, and keep them all informed about what the Devil is ordering this anti-Crowley faction to do.
He doesn't feel, he doesn't need comfort (wait for it!) and Dean's understandably freaked out, tries to tie him down, hold him down, keep him sedated, knocked out, whatever because he knows when Sammy's Sammy again, when he's got his soul, that he isn't going to want to be blind. Figures he's given enough of himself to the Devil.
Dean goes to Crowley, tells him he's about to go to war, tells him that the demons are plotting against him, but tries not to mention "hey they're talking to Lucifer with Sam's eye" in case Crowley thinks it's a nifty idea and decides to go for the other. He gets Sam's soul back, deals, steals, you name it.
And Sam, feeling, terrified, been suffering Sam is slammed back into his body now with one eye. Thing is? Sam's been through so much, that he's not thinking straight. This isn't soulless Sam dispassionately saying "hey, it'd give us an advantage", this is shell shocked, post-traumatic Sam, half-blind, in pain, and not knowing what is the right thing to do. Can Dean talk him down? Can he help him adjust? Can he convince him that he'd still see the Devil and Michael in his dreams, even if he did try to gouge out his remaining eye and, so, he shouldn't do himself any more harm?"
As the story progresses, you will see I haven't followed the prompt to the letter, but the essentials remain. I would love feedback on this, because I've really laboured over this thing, and I'm always looking to improve my writing.
Also, this is specially dedicated to ratherastory, who asked a one-eyed Sam for her birthday. :) Hope you like, dear!
Warnings: SPOILERS upto and for 6.10: Caged Heat, AU after 6.09, swearing, aaaangst, lots of blood and gore, violence, disturbing imagery, metaphor-abuse, the sheer surreal-ness of writing from Robo!Sam's point-of-view. I also apologise in advance for all the factual/medical inaccuracies you may find in this story.
Summary: In a bid to communicate with Lucifer, demons attack Sam and Dean and take one of Sam's eyes. Truths are revealed and the civil wars in Heaven and Hell come to a head as the brothers struggle to cope.
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Each Our Own Devil
This is how he thinks the world will end.
He's walking down an empty street, the gravel crunching loudly under his boots. The sunshine's bouncing off the windows of houses and windshields of cars, sharp and blinding. There's a thick silent haze over everything - too quiet, too neat, too much like a Sunday afternoon and nobody wants to get out of bed - and he walks through it all, searching, searching.
He turns abruptly and pulls open the nearest door. There's blood in the hallway, he notes, large pools of it, dark and congealing. It squelches as he walks, the rhythm strangely reassuring. Bodies are strewn everywhere, draped over couches, hanging from the ceiling, wrapped around banisters - bleeding from their eyes, lips, slashed throats, in a slow, viscous flow, although they should've been drained of all blood a long time ago. Their eyes open as he passes, tracking his every movement.
He stops in front of a large mirror, the edges of which is bare, jagged, dripping blood and decorated with strips of flesh. He reaches out, strokes his reflection.
"Sam," he says, and smiles.
The world will end in a shower of its own blood.
"Just for the record," Dean says, waving his second burger at Sam, "I did not eat this."
Sam looks up from his meal, eyebrow raised. "And that matters why?"
Dean actually looks taken aback for a second, before setting his half-eaten burger down. "No, I guess it doesn't," he says, deflating, and Sam just manages to stop himself from rolling his eyes (it's a very, very close thing). Dean was expecting dewy-eyed souled-Sam's answer. Of course. Probably some oft-repeated crap about 'healthy' food. That's just so much bullshit. How is he supposed to maintain a hunter's physique on rabbit-food?
"Sometimes I wonder how we managed with you going Bipolar all the time," he says. He gestures at the remains of Dean's meal. "You gonna finish that?"
Dean glares at him and takes a deliberate bite out of the burger. "So," he says around a mouthful of meat, "you spent all of last night on a lead, right? What's the story?"
"Well," he says, shrugging, "the omens are all over the place - any random supernatural fugly could fit the bill. Electrical storms, freaky weather patterns, the usual. But - there've been scattered reports of strange behaviour, an abrupt increase in the crime rate where these omens have occurred, so -"
"Sounds like a demon," Dean says, and his eyes glitter with anticipation.
"Yeah. Sure it does." Sam sighs and takes a sip of his coffee. "This is gonna take a lot of investigation, man, and it's not like serious damage has occurred. I mean, most of this is petty shit, a couple of murders, random assault, a few break-ins... it shouldn't figure high on our priority list right now, you know what I mean?"
"Unfortunately," Dean mutters before he gets that look on his face again, squaring his jaw, lifting his chin, eyebrows pulling together ever-so-slightly - he's about to slip into lecture-mode, and while Sam hasn't felt exhausted in a long, long while, he feels annoyed enough to think he has every right to fake it now. "Dean -"
"No, Sam!" Dean brings his fist on the table in the first of what Sam is sure will be a long succession of dramatic overtures. "We're not going back for the skinwalker alpha right now, and we sure as hell are not going to hunt down Lucky!"
Sam frowns. "Last I checked, our first priority was still getting back my soul."
"Our first priority isn't -" Dean sputters, and finally throws his hands in the air. "Look. This isn't about priorities, all right? We are not going to torture Lucky for information -"
Sam pushes his empty plate aside. "Fine. I get it. This isn't what Sam would want to do, I know. But if you'd just let me, well, question Lucky properly, I'm telling you, I can figure out the Alpha's location."
He counts the moment of hesitation that follows as a small victory. "Let's not sugarcoat anything here, Sam, all right?" Dean says. "You're gonna torture the poor guy - and for what? We already got all we could out of him. There's no point."
"That's not true," Sam says. "We got something out of him last time, yeah. But given how the Alphas that we've seen so far communicate to their children through some freaky telepathy, maybe there's a lot more hidden inside Lucky's head than we know. Maybe it needs to be scooped out." He smiles. "And as you must know, Dean, pain is an excellent tool in that respect."
To his surprise, Dean laughs. "You're kidding, right?" Dean taps his forehead, still smiling. "You know, I was connected to the Vampire Alpha once, too. You gonna torture me?"
Huh. Well, since he's asking, with all the insistence on straight-up honesty... "It's crossed my mind before, yeah," Sam says, shrugging. "But there isn't much use to that now, is there? Given the Alpha Vamp's already with Crowley."
Dean shakes his head and looks away. A long moment later, he seems to come to a decision. "We're checking this demon thing out." He gets up, pulls out his wallet and throws a couple of bills on the table. "Come on. Where did it start, again?"
Well, if this isn't just typical. "Buchanan, Wisconsin," Sam says, getting up. "A murder and a spate of armed robberies, right after an unseasonal snowstorm - their worst yet."
"Great. If we leave now, we should make it by tomorrow morning." With that, Dean's already stalking to the door, all intent and swagger. Sam sighs - just when he thinks Dean's a pretty uncomplicated person, the man swings between the ends of the mood spectrum faster than a chick on PMS. There's got to be a better way to drive Dean out of distraction - Sam can't quite explain his own urgency to get his soul back, but he does know that they aren't going about it the right way. He needs to -
A sudden, sharp pain flares inside his head, just behind his right eye. He hisses, smacks the heel of his hand against his eye, waiting for the pain to subside. It intensifies, reaches a peak that has him stumbling, but disappears just as abruptly, leaving him blinking and breathing hard.
"Sam?" Dean's calling, wiggling his eyebrows in a way that Sam supposes is his way of showing concern while not actually appearing to.
Well, screw that.
"Coming," he says, and follows his brother out the door.
Sam's crying.
Dean can hardly believe it, but - he steals another look out of the corner of his eye - and there, definitely there's a tear running down Sam's face, although the giant's just sitting there, looking straight ahead, acting completely oblivious. For a strange moment, Dean - Dean hopes that, maybe, just maybe -
"You might want to pay more attention to the road," Sam tells him dryly.
- yeah. Well, he ought to know by now that fooling himself isn't going to keep him sane, so he can't make any excuses. "Dude," he says. "What are you crying about?"
Sam reaches up to touch the moisture on his cheek, almost surprised. "My eye," he says. "I think something got into it - it's been annoying me all day."
"You, uh," Dean frowns, wonders if he's doing the right thing here, but finally says a big screw you to his doubts because it's still Sam's body and he needs to keep it in good shape for Sam to get back into, "want me to look? I mean, if -"
"No, I got this." Sam fishes a handkerchief out of his pocket and presses it to his leaking eye. "How long before we're there?"
Dean sighs. Of course. I don't give a damn about you and I don't want you giving a damn about me. Right. "Twelve hours, maybe? We're stopping at a motel before we start, you know," he gestures expansively, "investigating tomorrow morning."
Sam snorts, and Dean thinks he might have even shot him a fond smile, but Dean probably just dreamed it. He's been dreaming a lot lately, and some crazy part of him thinks he's dreaming for both of them, given Sam doesn't even sleep anymore.
Several hours and a warm, surprisingly decent motel room later, Sam's eye gets worse. It's red and congested and watering copiously. Sam stubbornly continues to press his already-soaked handkerchief to his eye as he maoeuvers his laptop with one hand. "This isn't normal," he says at long last, pulling the handkerchief away and squinting at it. "I think my eye's bleeding."
Matter-of-fact tone be damned, the words carry too many unpleasant memories (it's my secret in the mirror dean it's sam) and Dean's off his bed in seconds and peering into Sam's face. Sam protests, giant hands batting at Dean, but Dean's seen enough: Sam's eye is messed up. It's so shot through with red that he can hardly make out the colour of the iris anymore; half-crusted yellow gunk rims the eyelids, and, of course, the kicker: the trickle of blood making its way from the corner and down the side of Sam's nose.
"What the hell, Sam?" Dean exclaims, and oh yeah, Sam can sigh and look exasperated about it but Dean's the one who has to see his brother's eye self-destructing. "Is this some kind of infection? Conjuncti-whatever? Can you see? What -"
"Dean." Sam puts the goddamned handkerchief back to his eye again and isn't that supposed to be unhygienic or something? "If it's conjunctivitis, both of my eyes would be affected, and you would've got it by now. And of course I can't see through all of this gunk, can I?"
Soulless or not, the patronising attitude certainly hasn't changed. "This is definitely not normal, Sam, maybe we need to -"
"I'll deal with it."
"I'm just saying, if this is some sort of supernatural shit -"
"Dean, I'll deal with it." Sam's clenched his teeth, his face suffused with blood, and he's giving Dean a one-eyed bitchface, if that were at all possible.
Dean wants to scream, wants to rip that sodden handkerchief aside, wants to get out and slam the door behind him like a teenager throwing a tantrum, but says instead, "Fine. If you're doing so well dealing with it, maybe you can figure out where we should start tomorrow," even as he flops back onto his bed and flicks on the TV.
Sam turns to the laptop. "We're starting off by playing meet-the-victim, figure out who's likely to be possessed - if it's a demon at all - and maybe figure out a pattern." He throws his head back, screwing his eyes shut. "Oughta be productive."
It turns out to be not quite as Sam predicted - by the morning, Sam's right eye is completely swollen shut, half his face covered in streaks of dried blood, more blood continuing to trickle out from under his eyelids. Sam still wants to come interrogate (I'll just wear shades or something and tell them it's conjunctivitis, he says. Ha. That's just so much bullshit), but Dean puts his foot down and refuses. He figures it's bad enough that a perfectly healthy but soulless Sam creeps the hell out of everybody around him, but a soulless Sam whose eyes are leaking blood? Yeah, not exactly an ideal partner when you're trying to meet already-traumatised people.
So Sam sits in the car while Dean goes and does the questioning; it's a little astonishing to think that it's actually been years since the last time he did this alone. They're barely through the first two on their list - storeowners, victims of armed robbery - before Sam says, "We need to visit the murder site."
Dean pauses halfway through inserting the key in the ignition. "Random," he says. "Why?"
"This is a trap," Sam tells him bluntly. "We've come this far; we might as well walk into it."
Dean blinks. "What?"
"Well," Sam says, his mouth twisting thoughtfully even as he replaces his bloody towel with a cleaner one (shit that thing's gushing this can't be good oh god), "I've been thinking about it. Demons do random shit, but have you noticed that over the past year that they haven't been so random? I think it's because Crowley's in charge. I don't know. So this sudden spate of omens, completely random attacks? Kind of suspicious."
"That's enlightening, Sam, but what makes you think -"
"My eye, Dean." Sam smiles at him. "Whatever's happening to it? Definitely a curse, maybe a spell. It started off as headaches and flashing pains a couple of days back, but the closer we got to Buchanan, the worse the, uh, symptoms have, too."
Dean exhales heavily, shaking his head. "You know what? That's just great." He slams his palms against the steering wheel. "And why did you think this wasn't important enough to, I don't know, at least mention until now?"
Sam shrugs. "You were freaking out already," he says. "And I just, you know, finished figuring it out." He hisses suddenly, pressing the towel harder against his eye.
"You could be wrong."
"I could be," Sam says (but I'm not). "There's one way to find out."
But Dean's already shaking his head; if this is a demon-trap like Sam says, then the rational thing to do would be to turn around and hightail the hell out of there. "Have you even looked in a mirror recently, Sam? Screw this shit, man - going ahead with this case is only going to make it worse."
Sam snorts. "I don't know if you've forgotten, Dean, but spells are usually reversed by destroying the source. We aren't going to get much out of running away - and I'd probably just end up as a half-blind liability."
"But -" Aw, shit. "Demons, Sam."
"Demons, Crowley, spell, soul." Sam grins widely. "There's nothing to think about."
Turns out there's no arguing instinct with a man who doesn't have any, so fifteen minutes later they're walking into a large abandoned warehouse (and Dean thinks he's had enough of large abandoned warehouses to last a lifetime, but no), past the police tapes, with Sam nearly doubled over, both hands on his face, and Dean nearly vibrating with tension.
"You know, I'd feel better if we're doing this after we scouted the place properly," he says.
"Wouldn't have made a difference," Sam says, his voice muffled and finally beginning to show some signs of strain. "They want us to be here."
"And you know that so well because?"
"Because he's one of us, silly," comes a new female voice, and Dean barely has time to turn and see the dark hair and the glittering eyes and the leather jacket and think it's Meg what the hell and bring up his shotgun before something heavy connects with the back of his head, and white pain gives way to black nothingness.
When he hears her voice, the familiar sound of metal against skull and Dean's grunt, Sam knows he should be reacting; he half-twists his body in the direction of the sounds, but the pain in his eye ramps up until it blasts through whatever self-control he has left and everything is pain-pain-pain makeitstop makeitstop-
Distantly, he feels fingers in his hair, clutching and pulling, and he staggers to his feet. There's a voice in his ear, low and hot and malicious, and he wants to respond, he wants to fight, he wants - but the pain is taking on a will of its own, shutting down his reflexes and rendering him completely useless. His one functioning eye is watering with the pain - which makes him, effectively, blind, incapacitated and without backup in enemy territory.
Sam's beginning to think Dean's luck is contagious.
"Glad you could make it, Sammy," Meg hisses into his ear. Her hands tighten their hold on his hair, invisible ropes are holding his arms to his sides and her lips ghost along the curve of his cheek, whispering something that Sam can only vaguely make out as a form of Latin. Or a mixture of Latin and Enochian? He can't - he can't tell, and dammit, he's better than this, he has to be -
He can hear more voices in the background - several males, maybe, but Dean's not among them (Dean's dead) and the pain is rising, rising, taking - but, Meg still - he thinks -
- and the voices fade and the darkness that was until now tinted with blood and specks of light becomes more complete, more -
"Sam!" He's startled into full consciousness as he feels hot, thick liquid sprayed on his face and Meg's voice rise in pitch and intensity until she's screaming into his ear. A finger traces patterns (symbols, symbols, he should - he should - be able to - tell -) on his face, harsh, short strokes along his cheekbones and forehead and around his eyes, and finally - the finger jabs into his ailing right eye.
Sam can't stop it now; he screams. The finger digs underneath the eyeball, crushing soft flesh and tearing into tissue. It bends, the pressure now in the opposite direction and oh god they're actually scooping the eyeball out they're - he screams and screams and can feel the blood gushing can feel the pain can feel the horror of what they're doing to him can feel can feel can feel -
Everything stops.
He's on a dirt lane, green fields extending as far as he can see on either side. It's calm, a kind of peace he remembers once wanting in a different lifetime. He stands absolutely still, breathes in, until he thinks - knows - that he is the absolute centre of the universe and it revolves around the axis that he's become. Everything is... sharper, somehow, the contrast of the blue skies against greens and reds and browns of the soil acute and almost artificial. In this, in this simulacrum of a universe that contains him and Creation and peace all so intertwined one is no different from the other, he forgets. He forgets pain, he forgets betrayal. He just is.
The silence is broken by the sound of several voices, all screaming at once.
This is when the spectacle usually begins.
The ground shifts, rumbling and shaking like it's tearing itself apart. Fissure lines weave their way through, shaking and widening as the screams intensify. Blood - red and dark and eternal - bubbles its way out like lava through those cracks, and as the fissures grow into valleys and the valleys into sheer abysses, the blood becomes a roiling sea, churning out the mutilated bodies of the billions of humans who've ever been condemned to Hell.
He stands in the middle of it all on the sole piece of untouched ground, and feels the rage return to him.
(these who are so easily destroyed were the cause of my destruction)
And so they will die... forever.
Suddenly he smiles, looks up, and speaks.
"I see you, Sam."
He raises his hand and snaps his fingers, and the world turns inside-out.
Sam wakes up to Dean's voice. It's gonna be okay, I'm gonna get out you out of here, I'm gonna fix this -
Dean's crying.
Sam wonders if he should, too, discovers that he can't, that he doesn't even want to (that he wants to go back and swim in the sea of the blood of his enemies), before finally giving in to a dreamless darkness.
Dean's almost sure it's another nightmare when he hears Sam screaming (an eternity and more in fire and pain and torture and) but when a dozen other voices join it in laughter, he jolts back into awareness.
The pain in his head is the first thing that greets him: a dull throb in the back of his head that gets worse with every movement. But Sam's still screaming, the demons are still laughing, and even though his vision's swimming and a friggin railroad spike's being driven through the back of his head, Dean says a giant screw you to all of it, and gets up.
The world shifts and blurs but he's already moving past the pain and the vertigo, blinking furiously, and there - right there, Sammy, almost on his knees, Meg wrapped around his shoulders whispering into his ear, his eyes open and wide, mouth open in a pained keening. There's another demon in front of Sam, friggin' finger-painting on his face with what looks like blood. Dean's just about gotten a hold on Ruby's knife and fished out a flask of holy water from his jacket when Sam stops keening and starts honest-to-god screaming, an agony of the like Dean has never heard from his brother before, soulless or not. He looks up - and holy shit, Sammy!
Then he's rushing forward, yelling, ready to plunge his knife into the demon, but Meg looks up. "Just a little longer, Dean-o," she says, before he's being pushed back by invisible hands, slammed against the opposite wall, unable to move a muscle. Meg smiles. "Aw, don't look so angry, baby. After all, this isn't even really Sam, is it?"
Suddenly the screaming stops; Sam goes alarmingly limp in Meg's arms, and there's a sickening wet pop before the other demon turns, hand extended, palm open and -
- there's a - a - (Sam's) eyeball - and it looks like a bloody lump of flesh trailing - trailing nerves and coils of membrane - but it's - it's -
Dean struggles against the invisible hold even as bile rises up the back of his throat. "Stop it - Sam! You bitch - I'm going to kill you, you hear me? I'm going to frickin' rip you apart!"
Meg lets Sam fall to the ground and walks up to Dean, her smile dripping with smug contempt. "Your empty threats stopped being turn-ons a long time ago, Dean." She tilts her head. "You see, when our master comes back? You can try all you want, but you won't be able to do jack-squat to any of us. Because we're his, and we alone of all his creation, dared to think of a way to get him back!" She turns and gestures to the demon holding Sam's eye. "Now!"
The demon grins and slaps its palm against its forehead. Instead of the crushed bloody goo that Dean expected to see (and damn if the mental image doesn't make him want to puke again), the eye melds into the bastard's forehead and its jaw drops and its eyes go wide in an expression of pure rapture. "I see it," it says, and its eyes, the eyes that aren't sunk into its head like friggin' supernatural implants, are moving rapidly. "I see him!"
Meg smiles at Dean. "Let's see you stop this one, angel-boy," she says, and Dean feels her hold on him loosen. He collapses to the floor and he's barely scrambled to his feet, knife at the ready, only to face a mostly empty warehouse and an unconscious brother.
"Sam!" He's at Sam's side before he's even really aware of what he's doing, turning Sam onto his back, carding his fingers through Sam's hair. There's blood everywhere, smeared down his face, dripping into his hair, oozing from the bloody hole that was once his eye... this time, Dean can't help it. He stumbles off to the side and pukes his guts out.
He sits on his haunches for a long moment, trembling and sweating - just trying to get a grip on a world that's suddenly gone out of whack, just a moment, just a moment - his body awash with pain and his mind spinning with horror. That's when he hears Sam moan - a quiet, almost breathless sound that he might've missed over the sound of his own breathing, but Sam's awake and Dean needs to be there (just like he never has been).
"Hey - hey, whoa, Sammy." Sam's stirring slightly, eyelid fluttering, gaze glassy and unfocussed. Dean bends over him and says whatever shitty reassurances he can conjure up even as his own eyes fill with moisture. He presses the towel Sam dropped during the ambush against Sam's leaking socket, and Sam bucks slightly, mouth open in a silent shriek before his lone eye closes, and he goes completely limp. Sam feels cold, sweat slicking his skin, and when Dean presses his fingers against Sam's wrist, he feels a pulse that's way too rapid to be good. Shock? Dean's not sure (he's never sure) but further triage can wait until he's hauled both of their asses to somewhere that's... less exposed.
So he ties the bloody towel around Sam's eyes, tries not to feel like he's in a slasher flick's version of a Halloween-party-gone-wrong, and hauls Sam upright. The giant's already listing towards the floor though, and it takes Dean a further three tries to get Sam leaning against him, one of his arms flopping around Dean's shoulders and Dean's arm around his waist, fingers through his belt loops. Dean's shaking and panting with the effort, and the pain in his head is getting intense enough that he's seeing white flashes at the edges of his vision - "Sammy? Sammy, c'mon, man, I'm not in any shape to be carrying your gigantor ass outta here..."
Dean shakes Sam slightly, and Sam's startled whimper as he's jolted back into consciousness makes Dean's guts twist painfully. There's a sound he thought he'd never hear from his uber-Hunter brother ever again, and as they slowly, painfully shuffle out of the warehouse to the Impala, it's like they've rewound six years and Dean's helping a Sam whose eyes are leaking blood and whose biggest issues are his girlfriend's death, a missing father, and vague precognitive dreams. How screwed-up are they that those issues sound like non-entities now?
He bundles Sam into the back of the Impala, his jacket under Sam's head, legs propped awkwardly against the door. Sam doesn't move or make a sound through the whole drive, but that could be because Dean can't hear a single thing over the rush of blood in his own ears. He doesn't know how they make it back to the room - there's instinct and habit, and then there's several lifetimes' worth of functioning while barely hanging off the edge, and Dean has no doubt which of those got them through to where they are right now: Sam, still knocked-out on the far bed, and Dean just a touch away from following him into oblivion.
Dean stumbles into the bathroom and dunks his head under the running tap in the sink. Blood (his and Sam's and demons' and angels' blood all mixed and the same and unnatural) flakes off his face and hands and swirls in the dirty sink and Dean - Dean just doesn't what to do anymore. It's up to him, always up to him to make the decions, to step back and take stock (kill sam save sam let him die a monster human revive soul michael hell war -) and this? This is where he thinks he's finally crossed his limits. He feels it in the way his body trembles, aches for the comfort of Lisa's arms where he just is, and nothing more is expected of him.
Sam moans and shifts on the bed behind him, and Dean tucks all the longing and fear away; Sam's in pain, Sam needs him, and he falls into the John Winchester line of thinking as easily as breathing. He wipes the blood off Sam with a wet washcloth and replaces the blood-crusted towel around Sam's eyes with a fresh one; his brother remains unconscious all the while, shifting and sweating and grunting.
Sam's empty socket has finally stopped bleeding; cleared of blood and gunk that Dean really doesn't want to think about, it's somehow even more frightening to see the hole in his brother's face, the eyelid folded and depressed. Dean's stomach roils once more.
Sam's eye. Meg. Demons. I can see him - master - Lucifer.
It's all starting again.
No. Dean clutches at Sam's jacket, shakes his head. No. He is going to get them - he's going to get Sam through this. He's going to get his brother back - soul, eye, and everything, he's going to put Sam back together again, because that's just what he does.
He will.
( Part Two )
Written for rainylemons' crazy-awesome prompt: "Not all demons are so jazzed about Crowley being King of Hell and, so, they believe that if they could communicate with Lucifer (whom Crowley knows not to give a shit about demons) that they'd be doing things in a better fashion. To that end, one group of demons comes across an old bit of angelic/demon lore stating that communication with Lucifer in the cage is possible via parts of a host he's inhabited. Specifically Sam. Specifically Sam's eye. Said demons take one of Sam's eyes with a melon baller and off they go to get their orders. Ew.
Soulless Sam is in pain, but he can't feel anything about it emotionally. Pain hurts, sure as hell it does, but our emotional reaction to pain is what makes it so damned bad. He reasons that if there's a war in Heaven and now a civil war about to start up in Hell as well, that they'll need to be on the inside track. He wants to use the same bit of lore, pluck out his other eye, and keep them all informed about what the Devil is ordering this anti-Crowley faction to do.
He doesn't feel, he doesn't need comfort (wait for it!) and Dean's understandably freaked out, tries to tie him down, hold him down, keep him sedated, knocked out, whatever because he knows when Sammy's Sammy again, when he's got his soul, that he isn't going to want to be blind. Figures he's given enough of himself to the Devil.
Dean goes to Crowley, tells him he's about to go to war, tells him that the demons are plotting against him, but tries not to mention "hey they're talking to Lucifer with Sam's eye" in case Crowley thinks it's a nifty idea and decides to go for the other. He gets Sam's soul back, deals, steals, you name it.
And Sam, feeling, terrified, been suffering Sam is slammed back into his body now with one eye. Thing is? Sam's been through so much, that he's not thinking straight. This isn't soulless Sam dispassionately saying "hey, it'd give us an advantage", this is shell shocked, post-traumatic Sam, half-blind, in pain, and not knowing what is the right thing to do. Can Dean talk him down? Can he help him adjust? Can he convince him that he'd still see the Devil and Michael in his dreams, even if he did try to gouge out his remaining eye and, so, he shouldn't do himself any more harm?"
As the story progresses, you will see I haven't followed the prompt to the letter, but the essentials remain. I would love feedback on this, because I've really laboured over this thing, and I'm always looking to improve my writing.
Also, this is specially dedicated to ratherastory, who asked a one-eyed Sam for her birthday. :) Hope you like, dear!
Warnings: SPOILERS upto and for 6.10: Caged Heat, AU after 6.09, swearing, aaaangst, lots of blood and gore, violence, disturbing imagery, metaphor-abuse, the sheer surreal-ness of writing from Robo!Sam's point-of-view. I also apologise in advance for all the factual/medical inaccuracies you may find in this story.
Summary: In a bid to communicate with Lucifer, demons attack Sam and Dean and take one of Sam's eyes. Truths are revealed and the civil wars in Heaven and Hell come to a head as the brothers struggle to cope.
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Each Our Own Devil
This is how he thinks the world will end.
He's walking down an empty street, the gravel crunching loudly under his boots. The sunshine's bouncing off the windows of houses and windshields of cars, sharp and blinding. There's a thick silent haze over everything - too quiet, too neat, too much like a Sunday afternoon and nobody wants to get out of bed - and he walks through it all, searching, searching.
He turns abruptly and pulls open the nearest door. There's blood in the hallway, he notes, large pools of it, dark and congealing. It squelches as he walks, the rhythm strangely reassuring. Bodies are strewn everywhere, draped over couches, hanging from the ceiling, wrapped around banisters - bleeding from their eyes, lips, slashed throats, in a slow, viscous flow, although they should've been drained of all blood a long time ago. Their eyes open as he passes, tracking his every movement.
He stops in front of a large mirror, the edges of which is bare, jagged, dripping blood and decorated with strips of flesh. He reaches out, strokes his reflection.
"Sam," he says, and smiles.
The world will end in a shower of its own blood.
"Just for the record," Dean says, waving his second burger at Sam, "I did not eat this."
Sam looks up from his meal, eyebrow raised. "And that matters why?"
Dean actually looks taken aback for a second, before setting his half-eaten burger down. "No, I guess it doesn't," he says, deflating, and Sam just manages to stop himself from rolling his eyes (it's a very, very close thing). Dean was expecting dewy-eyed souled-Sam's answer. Of course. Probably some oft-repeated crap about 'healthy' food. That's just so much bullshit. How is he supposed to maintain a hunter's physique on rabbit-food?
"Sometimes I wonder how we managed with you going Bipolar all the time," he says. He gestures at the remains of Dean's meal. "You gonna finish that?"
Dean glares at him and takes a deliberate bite out of the burger. "So," he says around a mouthful of meat, "you spent all of last night on a lead, right? What's the story?"
"Well," he says, shrugging, "the omens are all over the place - any random supernatural fugly could fit the bill. Electrical storms, freaky weather patterns, the usual. But - there've been scattered reports of strange behaviour, an abrupt increase in the crime rate where these omens have occurred, so -"
"Sounds like a demon," Dean says, and his eyes glitter with anticipation.
"Yeah. Sure it does." Sam sighs and takes a sip of his coffee. "This is gonna take a lot of investigation, man, and it's not like serious damage has occurred. I mean, most of this is petty shit, a couple of murders, random assault, a few break-ins... it shouldn't figure high on our priority list right now, you know what I mean?"
"Unfortunately," Dean mutters before he gets that look on his face again, squaring his jaw, lifting his chin, eyebrows pulling together ever-so-slightly - he's about to slip into lecture-mode, and while Sam hasn't felt exhausted in a long, long while, he feels annoyed enough to think he has every right to fake it now. "Dean -"
"No, Sam!" Dean brings his fist on the table in the first of what Sam is sure will be a long succession of dramatic overtures. "We're not going back for the skinwalker alpha right now, and we sure as hell are not going to hunt down Lucky!"
Sam frowns. "Last I checked, our first priority was still getting back my soul."
"Our first priority isn't -" Dean sputters, and finally throws his hands in the air. "Look. This isn't about priorities, all right? We are not going to torture Lucky for information -"
Sam pushes his empty plate aside. "Fine. I get it. This isn't what Sam would want to do, I know. But if you'd just let me, well, question Lucky properly, I'm telling you, I can figure out the Alpha's location."
He counts the moment of hesitation that follows as a small victory. "Let's not sugarcoat anything here, Sam, all right?" Dean says. "You're gonna torture the poor guy - and for what? We already got all we could out of him. There's no point."
"That's not true," Sam says. "We got something out of him last time, yeah. But given how the Alphas that we've seen so far communicate to their children through some freaky telepathy, maybe there's a lot more hidden inside Lucky's head than we know. Maybe it needs to be scooped out." He smiles. "And as you must know, Dean, pain is an excellent tool in that respect."
To his surprise, Dean laughs. "You're kidding, right?" Dean taps his forehead, still smiling. "You know, I was connected to the Vampire Alpha once, too. You gonna torture me?"
Huh. Well, since he's asking, with all the insistence on straight-up honesty... "It's crossed my mind before, yeah," Sam says, shrugging. "But there isn't much use to that now, is there? Given the Alpha Vamp's already with Crowley."
Dean shakes his head and looks away. A long moment later, he seems to come to a decision. "We're checking this demon thing out." He gets up, pulls out his wallet and throws a couple of bills on the table. "Come on. Where did it start, again?"
Well, if this isn't just typical. "Buchanan, Wisconsin," Sam says, getting up. "A murder and a spate of armed robberies, right after an unseasonal snowstorm - their worst yet."
"Great. If we leave now, we should make it by tomorrow morning." With that, Dean's already stalking to the door, all intent and swagger. Sam sighs - just when he thinks Dean's a pretty uncomplicated person, the man swings between the ends of the mood spectrum faster than a chick on PMS. There's got to be a better way to drive Dean out of distraction - Sam can't quite explain his own urgency to get his soul back, but he does know that they aren't going about it the right way. He needs to -
A sudden, sharp pain flares inside his head, just behind his right eye. He hisses, smacks the heel of his hand against his eye, waiting for the pain to subside. It intensifies, reaches a peak that has him stumbling, but disappears just as abruptly, leaving him blinking and breathing hard.
"Sam?" Dean's calling, wiggling his eyebrows in a way that Sam supposes is his way of showing concern while not actually appearing to.
Well, screw that.
"Coming," he says, and follows his brother out the door.
Sam's crying.
Dean can hardly believe it, but - he steals another look out of the corner of his eye - and there, definitely there's a tear running down Sam's face, although the giant's just sitting there, looking straight ahead, acting completely oblivious. For a strange moment, Dean - Dean hopes that, maybe, just maybe -
"You might want to pay more attention to the road," Sam tells him dryly.
- yeah. Well, he ought to know by now that fooling himself isn't going to keep him sane, so he can't make any excuses. "Dude," he says. "What are you crying about?"
Sam reaches up to touch the moisture on his cheek, almost surprised. "My eye," he says. "I think something got into it - it's been annoying me all day."
"You, uh," Dean frowns, wonders if he's doing the right thing here, but finally says a big screw you to his doubts because it's still Sam's body and he needs to keep it in good shape for Sam to get back into, "want me to look? I mean, if -"
"No, I got this." Sam fishes a handkerchief out of his pocket and presses it to his leaking eye. "How long before we're there?"
Dean sighs. Of course. I don't give a damn about you and I don't want you giving a damn about me. Right. "Twelve hours, maybe? We're stopping at a motel before we start, you know," he gestures expansively, "investigating tomorrow morning."
Sam snorts, and Dean thinks he might have even shot him a fond smile, but Dean probably just dreamed it. He's been dreaming a lot lately, and some crazy part of him thinks he's dreaming for both of them, given Sam doesn't even sleep anymore.
Several hours and a warm, surprisingly decent motel room later, Sam's eye gets worse. It's red and congested and watering copiously. Sam stubbornly continues to press his already-soaked handkerchief to his eye as he maoeuvers his laptop with one hand. "This isn't normal," he says at long last, pulling the handkerchief away and squinting at it. "I think my eye's bleeding."
Matter-of-fact tone be damned, the words carry too many unpleasant memories (it's my secret in the mirror dean it's sam) and Dean's off his bed in seconds and peering into Sam's face. Sam protests, giant hands batting at Dean, but Dean's seen enough: Sam's eye is messed up. It's so shot through with red that he can hardly make out the colour of the iris anymore; half-crusted yellow gunk rims the eyelids, and, of course, the kicker: the trickle of blood making its way from the corner and down the side of Sam's nose.
"What the hell, Sam?" Dean exclaims, and oh yeah, Sam can sigh and look exasperated about it but Dean's the one who has to see his brother's eye self-destructing. "Is this some kind of infection? Conjuncti-whatever? Can you see? What -"
"Dean." Sam puts the goddamned handkerchief back to his eye again and isn't that supposed to be unhygienic or something? "If it's conjunctivitis, both of my eyes would be affected, and you would've got it by now. And of course I can't see through all of this gunk, can I?"
Soulless or not, the patronising attitude certainly hasn't changed. "This is definitely not normal, Sam, maybe we need to -"
"I'll deal with it."
"I'm just saying, if this is some sort of supernatural shit -"
"Dean, I'll deal with it." Sam's clenched his teeth, his face suffused with blood, and he's giving Dean a one-eyed bitchface, if that were at all possible.
Dean wants to scream, wants to rip that sodden handkerchief aside, wants to get out and slam the door behind him like a teenager throwing a tantrum, but says instead, "Fine. If you're doing so well dealing with it, maybe you can figure out where we should start tomorrow," even as he flops back onto his bed and flicks on the TV.
Sam turns to the laptop. "We're starting off by playing meet-the-victim, figure out who's likely to be possessed - if it's a demon at all - and maybe figure out a pattern." He throws his head back, screwing his eyes shut. "Oughta be productive."
It turns out to be not quite as Sam predicted - by the morning, Sam's right eye is completely swollen shut, half his face covered in streaks of dried blood, more blood continuing to trickle out from under his eyelids. Sam still wants to come interrogate (I'll just wear shades or something and tell them it's conjunctivitis, he says. Ha. That's just so much bullshit), but Dean puts his foot down and refuses. He figures it's bad enough that a perfectly healthy but soulless Sam creeps the hell out of everybody around him, but a soulless Sam whose eyes are leaking blood? Yeah, not exactly an ideal partner when you're trying to meet already-traumatised people.
So Sam sits in the car while Dean goes and does the questioning; it's a little astonishing to think that it's actually been years since the last time he did this alone. They're barely through the first two on their list - storeowners, victims of armed robbery - before Sam says, "We need to visit the murder site."
Dean pauses halfway through inserting the key in the ignition. "Random," he says. "Why?"
"This is a trap," Sam tells him bluntly. "We've come this far; we might as well walk into it."
Dean blinks. "What?"
"Well," Sam says, his mouth twisting thoughtfully even as he replaces his bloody towel with a cleaner one (shit that thing's gushing this can't be good oh god), "I've been thinking about it. Demons do random shit, but have you noticed that over the past year that they haven't been so random? I think it's because Crowley's in charge. I don't know. So this sudden spate of omens, completely random attacks? Kind of suspicious."
"That's enlightening, Sam, but what makes you think -"
"My eye, Dean." Sam smiles at him. "Whatever's happening to it? Definitely a curse, maybe a spell. It started off as headaches and flashing pains a couple of days back, but the closer we got to Buchanan, the worse the, uh, symptoms have, too."
Dean exhales heavily, shaking his head. "You know what? That's just great." He slams his palms against the steering wheel. "And why did you think this wasn't important enough to, I don't know, at least mention until now?"
Sam shrugs. "You were freaking out already," he says. "And I just, you know, finished figuring it out." He hisses suddenly, pressing the towel harder against his eye.
"You could be wrong."
"I could be," Sam says (but I'm not). "There's one way to find out."
But Dean's already shaking his head; if this is a demon-trap like Sam says, then the rational thing to do would be to turn around and hightail the hell out of there. "Have you even looked in a mirror recently, Sam? Screw this shit, man - going ahead with this case is only going to make it worse."
Sam snorts. "I don't know if you've forgotten, Dean, but spells are usually reversed by destroying the source. We aren't going to get much out of running away - and I'd probably just end up as a half-blind liability."
"But -" Aw, shit. "Demons, Sam."
"Demons, Crowley, spell, soul." Sam grins widely. "There's nothing to think about."
Turns out there's no arguing instinct with a man who doesn't have any, so fifteen minutes later they're walking into a large abandoned warehouse (and Dean thinks he's had enough of large abandoned warehouses to last a lifetime, but no), past the police tapes, with Sam nearly doubled over, both hands on his face, and Dean nearly vibrating with tension.
"You know, I'd feel better if we're doing this after we scouted the place properly," he says.
"Wouldn't have made a difference," Sam says, his voice muffled and finally beginning to show some signs of strain. "They want us to be here."
"And you know that so well because?"
"Because he's one of us, silly," comes a new female voice, and Dean barely has time to turn and see the dark hair and the glittering eyes and the leather jacket and think it's Meg what the hell and bring up his shotgun before something heavy connects with the back of his head, and white pain gives way to black nothingness.
When he hears her voice, the familiar sound of metal against skull and Dean's grunt, Sam knows he should be reacting; he half-twists his body in the direction of the sounds, but the pain in his eye ramps up until it blasts through whatever self-control he has left and everything is pain-pain-pain makeitstop makeitstop-
Distantly, he feels fingers in his hair, clutching and pulling, and he staggers to his feet. There's a voice in his ear, low and hot and malicious, and he wants to respond, he wants to fight, he wants - but the pain is taking on a will of its own, shutting down his reflexes and rendering him completely useless. His one functioning eye is watering with the pain - which makes him, effectively, blind, incapacitated and without backup in enemy territory.
Sam's beginning to think Dean's luck is contagious.
"Glad you could make it, Sammy," Meg hisses into his ear. Her hands tighten their hold on his hair, invisible ropes are holding his arms to his sides and her lips ghost along the curve of his cheek, whispering something that Sam can only vaguely make out as a form of Latin. Or a mixture of Latin and Enochian? He can't - he can't tell, and dammit, he's better than this, he has to be -
He can hear more voices in the background - several males, maybe, but Dean's not among them (Dean's dead) and the pain is rising, rising, taking - but, Meg still - he thinks -
- and the voices fade and the darkness that was until now tinted with blood and specks of light becomes more complete, more -
"Sam!" He's startled into full consciousness as he feels hot, thick liquid sprayed on his face and Meg's voice rise in pitch and intensity until she's screaming into his ear. A finger traces patterns (symbols, symbols, he should - he should - be able to - tell -) on his face, harsh, short strokes along his cheekbones and forehead and around his eyes, and finally - the finger jabs into his ailing right eye.
Sam can't stop it now; he screams. The finger digs underneath the eyeball, crushing soft flesh and tearing into tissue. It bends, the pressure now in the opposite direction and oh god they're actually scooping the eyeball out they're - he screams and screams and can feel the blood gushing can feel the pain can feel the horror of what they're doing to him can feel can feel can feel -
Everything stops.
He's on a dirt lane, green fields extending as far as he can see on either side. It's calm, a kind of peace he remembers once wanting in a different lifetime. He stands absolutely still, breathes in, until he thinks - knows - that he is the absolute centre of the universe and it revolves around the axis that he's become. Everything is... sharper, somehow, the contrast of the blue skies against greens and reds and browns of the soil acute and almost artificial. In this, in this simulacrum of a universe that contains him and Creation and peace all so intertwined one is no different from the other, he forgets. He forgets pain, he forgets betrayal. He just is.
The silence is broken by the sound of several voices, all screaming at once.
This is when the spectacle usually begins.
The ground shifts, rumbling and shaking like it's tearing itself apart. Fissure lines weave their way through, shaking and widening as the screams intensify. Blood - red and dark and eternal - bubbles its way out like lava through those cracks, and as the fissures grow into valleys and the valleys into sheer abysses, the blood becomes a roiling sea, churning out the mutilated bodies of the billions of humans who've ever been condemned to Hell.
He stands in the middle of it all on the sole piece of untouched ground, and feels the rage return to him.
(these who are so easily destroyed were the cause of my destruction)
And so they will die... forever.
Suddenly he smiles, looks up, and speaks.
"I see you, Sam."
He raises his hand and snaps his fingers, and the world turns inside-out.
Sam wakes up to Dean's voice. It's gonna be okay, I'm gonna get out you out of here, I'm gonna fix this -
Dean's crying.
Sam wonders if he should, too, discovers that he can't, that he doesn't even want to (that he wants to go back and swim in the sea of the blood of his enemies), before finally giving in to a dreamless darkness.
Dean's almost sure it's another nightmare when he hears Sam screaming (an eternity and more in fire and pain and torture and) but when a dozen other voices join it in laughter, he jolts back into awareness.
The pain in his head is the first thing that greets him: a dull throb in the back of his head that gets worse with every movement. But Sam's still screaming, the demons are still laughing, and even though his vision's swimming and a friggin railroad spike's being driven through the back of his head, Dean says a giant screw you to all of it, and gets up.
The world shifts and blurs but he's already moving past the pain and the vertigo, blinking furiously, and there - right there, Sammy, almost on his knees, Meg wrapped around his shoulders whispering into his ear, his eyes open and wide, mouth open in a pained keening. There's another demon in front of Sam, friggin' finger-painting on his face with what looks like blood. Dean's just about gotten a hold on Ruby's knife and fished out a flask of holy water from his jacket when Sam stops keening and starts honest-to-god screaming, an agony of the like Dean has never heard from his brother before, soulless or not. He looks up - and holy shit, Sammy!
Then he's rushing forward, yelling, ready to plunge his knife into the demon, but Meg looks up. "Just a little longer, Dean-o," she says, before he's being pushed back by invisible hands, slammed against the opposite wall, unable to move a muscle. Meg smiles. "Aw, don't look so angry, baby. After all, this isn't even really Sam, is it?"
Suddenly the screaming stops; Sam goes alarmingly limp in Meg's arms, and there's a sickening wet pop before the other demon turns, hand extended, palm open and -
- there's a - a - (Sam's) eyeball - and it looks like a bloody lump of flesh trailing - trailing nerves and coils of membrane - but it's - it's -
Dean struggles against the invisible hold even as bile rises up the back of his throat. "Stop it - Sam! You bitch - I'm going to kill you, you hear me? I'm going to frickin' rip you apart!"
Meg lets Sam fall to the ground and walks up to Dean, her smile dripping with smug contempt. "Your empty threats stopped being turn-ons a long time ago, Dean." She tilts her head. "You see, when our master comes back? You can try all you want, but you won't be able to do jack-squat to any of us. Because we're his, and we alone of all his creation, dared to think of a way to get him back!" She turns and gestures to the demon holding Sam's eye. "Now!"
The demon grins and slaps its palm against its forehead. Instead of the crushed bloody goo that Dean expected to see (and damn if the mental image doesn't make him want to puke again), the eye melds into the bastard's forehead and its jaw drops and its eyes go wide in an expression of pure rapture. "I see it," it says, and its eyes, the eyes that aren't sunk into its head like friggin' supernatural implants, are moving rapidly. "I see him!"
Meg smiles at Dean. "Let's see you stop this one, angel-boy," she says, and Dean feels her hold on him loosen. He collapses to the floor and he's barely scrambled to his feet, knife at the ready, only to face a mostly empty warehouse and an unconscious brother.
"Sam!" He's at Sam's side before he's even really aware of what he's doing, turning Sam onto his back, carding his fingers through Sam's hair. There's blood everywhere, smeared down his face, dripping into his hair, oozing from the bloody hole that was once his eye... this time, Dean can't help it. He stumbles off to the side and pukes his guts out.
He sits on his haunches for a long moment, trembling and sweating - just trying to get a grip on a world that's suddenly gone out of whack, just a moment, just a moment - his body awash with pain and his mind spinning with horror. That's when he hears Sam moan - a quiet, almost breathless sound that he might've missed over the sound of his own breathing, but Sam's awake and Dean needs to be there (just like he never has been).
"Hey - hey, whoa, Sammy." Sam's stirring slightly, eyelid fluttering, gaze glassy and unfocussed. Dean bends over him and says whatever shitty reassurances he can conjure up even as his own eyes fill with moisture. He presses the towel Sam dropped during the ambush against Sam's leaking socket, and Sam bucks slightly, mouth open in a silent shriek before his lone eye closes, and he goes completely limp. Sam feels cold, sweat slicking his skin, and when Dean presses his fingers against Sam's wrist, he feels a pulse that's way too rapid to be good. Shock? Dean's not sure (he's never sure) but further triage can wait until he's hauled both of their asses to somewhere that's... less exposed.
So he ties the bloody towel around Sam's eyes, tries not to feel like he's in a slasher flick's version of a Halloween-party-gone-wrong, and hauls Sam upright. The giant's already listing towards the floor though, and it takes Dean a further three tries to get Sam leaning against him, one of his arms flopping around Dean's shoulders and Dean's arm around his waist, fingers through his belt loops. Dean's shaking and panting with the effort, and the pain in his head is getting intense enough that he's seeing white flashes at the edges of his vision - "Sammy? Sammy, c'mon, man, I'm not in any shape to be carrying your gigantor ass outta here..."
Dean shakes Sam slightly, and Sam's startled whimper as he's jolted back into consciousness makes Dean's guts twist painfully. There's a sound he thought he'd never hear from his uber-Hunter brother ever again, and as they slowly, painfully shuffle out of the warehouse to the Impala, it's like they've rewound six years and Dean's helping a Sam whose eyes are leaking blood and whose biggest issues are his girlfriend's death, a missing father, and vague precognitive dreams. How screwed-up are they that those issues sound like non-entities now?
He bundles Sam into the back of the Impala, his jacket under Sam's head, legs propped awkwardly against the door. Sam doesn't move or make a sound through the whole drive, but that could be because Dean can't hear a single thing over the rush of blood in his own ears. He doesn't know how they make it back to the room - there's instinct and habit, and then there's several lifetimes' worth of functioning while barely hanging off the edge, and Dean has no doubt which of those got them through to where they are right now: Sam, still knocked-out on the far bed, and Dean just a touch away from following him into oblivion.
Dean stumbles into the bathroom and dunks his head under the running tap in the sink. Blood (his and Sam's and demons' and angels' blood all mixed and the same and unnatural) flakes off his face and hands and swirls in the dirty sink and Dean - Dean just doesn't what to do anymore. It's up to him, always up to him to make the decions, to step back and take stock (kill sam save sam let him die a monster human revive soul michael hell war -) and this? This is where he thinks he's finally crossed his limits. He feels it in the way his body trembles, aches for the comfort of Lisa's arms where he just is, and nothing more is expected of him.
Sam moans and shifts on the bed behind him, and Dean tucks all the longing and fear away; Sam's in pain, Sam needs him, and he falls into the John Winchester line of thinking as easily as breathing. He wipes the blood off Sam with a wet washcloth and replaces the blood-crusted towel around Sam's eyes with a fresh one; his brother remains unconscious all the while, shifting and sweating and grunting.
Sam's empty socket has finally stopped bleeding; cleared of blood and gunk that Dean really doesn't want to think about, it's somehow even more frightening to see the hole in his brother's face, the eyelid folded and depressed. Dean's stomach roils once more.
Sam's eye. Meg. Demons. I can see him - master - Lucifer.
It's all starting again.
No. Dean clutches at Sam's jacket, shakes his head. No. He is going to get them - he's going to get Sam through this. He's going to get his brother back - soul, eye, and everything, he's going to put Sam back together again, because that's just what he does.
He will.
( Part Two )