Puppet (SPN genfic, 800 words, T)
Title: Puppet
Fandom: SPN
Pairing: none
Characters: Sam, Dean, Lucifer
Warnings: implied/referenced past non-con, past torture.
Wordcount: c.800
Rating: T
AO3 // Tumblr
Summary: Sam thinks he needs to go back to Hell. Sam's scared.
Author's note: Not spoilers (beyond what's aired already): just speculation. Mid-season finale approaches...
Sam’s afraid like he’s never been afraid before. Over and over, he’s on the point of giving it up: of going to Dean and saying ‘I can’t do this’, curling up under the covers and waiting for his brother to take care of things like Sam used selfishly to hope that Dean might when they were both real small. Even then, Dean could only do so much. He couldn’t bring Dad home for Christmas. He couldn’t give Sam even half of a semester in school. And he couldn’t make them - not any of them - safe, not really. That was (mostly, partly, maybe) why Sam left. So. What exactly is Dean supposed to do against this great nebulous force of evil, the many-clawed cat that Sam so stupidly set free?
Nothing, that’s what, and anyway Sam’s never been good at opening up when he’s not coping. He’s always been too small: worried about being the weak link, the burden, the struggling scholarship kid.
So… he doesn’t do it; doesn’t let on, just lets Dean shut down every conversation about the Cage and underneath it carries on girding himself to go back. It’s not easy. He’s dreaming of it, every night; even though he’s not planning to send his physical body down there (too dangerous, too difficult; not the right first move, at least). No, what he has in mind is more of a projection - a mental tour. Thing is, Sam was in that place long enough that just the pattern of its sharp-edged bars is enough to send him spiralling. The thought of being back there, face-to-face…
He’s gotta. He’s gotta. He needs to fix it, the mess that he made.
It takes a nasty spell to do it; dark magic out of a book filed away right in the Bunker’s depths, warded carefully seven times over. Sam grits his teeth and casts the runes, gathers up ingredients whose origins he’d rather not think about, locks every door between himself and Dean’s bedroom and sits himself down on the concrete floor. He looks into the bowl, red liquid bubbling. He speaks the words.
The instant he’s back there he realises the magnitude of his mistake. Everything he’d thought or intended, every carefully constructed self-defence, dissipates like blown ash. “Sam,” says Lucifer, and smiles with pointed teeth, and Sam’s unravelling, he’s nothing, he’s peeled-back open flesh. “You need me,” Lucifer says.
Planning this, Sam had meant to say “You’re not the one in power, you know that. We’re the ones who have you trapped.”
He doesn’t say it. He can’t.
“I can mop it up for you,” says Lucifer. He looks down at the guts on the floor. “Not those,” he says. “The stain on the universe, your stain, Sam.”
There’s a little tiny scrabbling mouse inside Sam’s heart. That’s Sam. But there’s a great guilty breeze block crushing it, squeezing the air from its lungs.
“Sorry,” he says. He meant to say, 'fuck you’.
“Don’t worry,” Lucifer says. “There’s one condition. But you won’t mind.”
Sam feels it coming like a train; like a T-rex, footsteps shaking the glass.
“I’ll need to borrow that body,” Lucifer says. He sneers. “Of course, it’s a little more used than I like it. But seeing as I know it, inside out…” He looks at Sam, and Sam feels Lucifer’s long fingers inside him: unwelcome, horrifying. “Well, it’ll have to do.”
The concrete weight pressing down on him is splintering Sam’s thin bones. He gasps, cries out. He can’t give up his body, not again. But even while he thinks it, he’s already sliding helpless and headlong into the inevitability of what’s been said. Of course. All the careful work that he’s done since Gadreel, the eating and the crafting of muscle, the settling into his flesh, all of it so painstaking, is going to be torn away. What has he ever been but a puppet, meat-man, walking corpse? What has he ever been but a ghost in his own insides?
Around them, the souls are screaming. Lucifer laughs.
“No,” Sam says, “no. No. No.”
There’s a clatter, a splash, and Dean’s face looming. “What the fuck is this, Sam?” he says. His voice is rough but his eyes are worried and his hands are clutching at Sam’s face and shoulders.
“No,” Sam says, and he can’t stop saying it. Every word is a brick.
“Okay,” Dean says, “okay, Sam, you gotta talk to me, buddy.”
Sam curls up away from him, from his palms and his fingers. “No, no, no.”
“What is it?” Dean says. “You don’t have to, Sam, you don’t gotta, OK?”
Sam chokes on his own words, coughs right through them. “Lucifer needs. He wants to possess me.”
Dean’s face hardens. “No way.”
Giddy, hysterical, Sam starts to laugh. “I don’t. Dean. Dean. Please don’t let him in.”