Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Waking up in a dark room with his hands bound to a chair is not something new for Sam. But this is the first time he can’t recall what led to him being here. His hands are zip tied to the arms of the chair and thick rows of rope go around his chest keeping him upright. The ties are a bit on the tighter side, his fingers are beginning to feel tingly, but he is relatively sure he would be able to break out of them once he gets a bit more clarity. His head is fuzzy and aching, and he’s covered in blood.

The last thing he remembers is passing out drunk on the steering wheel of his stolen car after finishing up the case. The truck is warded with enough power to repel an army of demons and seraphs, so it can’t have been them. Did the werewolf have a pack? It looked like the work of a lone wolf, but it’s possible that he missed something and now his family wanted payback. Sam scoffs lightly. He knows a thing or two about revenge. It never ends well. This whole pack will (probably) be dying in his hands today because of it.

But it isn’t until much later, when he is biting his tongue to keep the screams inside his throat, does he realize just how, once again, cocky and wrong he was.

Tim and Reggie have made good on their promise and come back for him, only this time with a lot more backup than he can handle. It’s almost funny that they think they need more than a dozen people in the building just to keep Sam hostage, four guys holding him down every time he’s unchained. They mean business and they’re not leaving anything up to chance. Hunters must have lined up at the chance to take him down.

They all seemed to have their own beef with him, seeking their pound of flesh, and Sam couldn’t even begrudge them for it. The guy who breaks all his fingers and toes, one by one, not saying a word or giving him a second of reprieve, has that look on his face, haunted eyes that have seen death up close. Anything he tries to say gets completely ignored like he can’t hear him at all. Grief and the blankness it causes is something Sam knows all too well. He is left alone in the cold and empty room for a few hours to watch his fingers swell and feel everything, losing his mind with no distractions. When he reaches the verge of passing out, the door opens again, a blonde young woman with angry eyes that remind him too much of Jo works him over with a metal bat, breaking both his kneecaps and his right hip. An eternity later, when Sam couldn’t move an inch of his body and prayed for death, they finally put him out of his misery and killed him.

Sometime later, he wakes up whole. And then Tim enters the dark room Sam is kept in and turns on the lights. He isn’t surprised to see Sam alive; they must have tried to kill him before. Sam isn't surprised either; He has tried and failed too. It was frustrating and disappointing to wake up again. Tim places a glass of blood in front of Sam, without a word. The message is clear. To avoid torture, he has to drink it. He wonders if this is how it was for Dean in hell, the way to a blackened soul disguised as the way out. 

Sam tells Tim to go to hell.

Tim just chuckles and leaves. Sam soon finds out what that laugh meant, a bunch of guys come in and chain his hands to the ceiling until he is standing on the tip of his toes, a phantom pain from the fractures still fresh in his mind. His clothes are cut off except for his boxers, his struggles are easily overpowered, and a fearsome-looking whip comes into view.

“If you’re so stubborn about doing this the hard way, Sam, then I’m happy to do it. You took morning’s lessons like a champ”, he cracks the whip against the wall and the sound makes Sam flinch before he can stop it. “Let’s see how this one goes.”

Sam has never been whipped before. He gets the occasional beating, stabbing, or claw scratches, he’s even been shot a couple of times but never whipped. The little blades at the end of the whip scare him but he doesn’t give them the satisfaction of showing it.

His composure doesn’t last long.

By the thirty-third hit, he breaks his silence and tries to threaten them with a brother who had gone to hell and back for him, only to be laughed at and mocked; the knowledge of Dean washing his hands of him for good was old news to them. He changes tactics, pleading and trying to explain his side, only for them to point out every hole in his defense, seeing right through his weak excuses, just like Dean did.

Drinking demon blood looked like the best idea to Sam because deep inside he was fucked up and craved it subconsciously and went in the direction that suited him the most. It isn’t something normal humans who are in their right minds would choose.

It's not something you're doing, it's what you are. You're a monster.

Blood-sucking freak.

They are right. They must be right. There was no other explanation for it.

It doesn’t matter that he didn’t actually know what it was the first time Ruby got him to drink it. He was the one who chose to drink it again and again after that.

“If all you wanted was to help people, why not do it now? After all, it’s your fault the demons are running around rampant. Drink the blood and kill some of ‘em.”

Sam doesn’t tell them he’s an addict. He doesn’t tell them his eyes are capable of turning black. He doesn’t tell them the blood could irreparably change him into something inhuman, doesn’t tell them it already has.

“His buddy Satan probably wouldn’t like that”, one of the guys says.

All their eyes harden collectively at the statement as if they’re realising that Sam is the sole reason for all the evil in the world.

They aren't wrong. He is responsible for the oldest and biggest evil walking the earth. And he will be responsible for everything that happens because of that.

What you’ve done, what you still have to do... It’s too much for anyone to bear.

Sam wishes the weight on his shoulders was physical enough to crush him to death, but it isn’t.

The whip cracks again and Sam learns what it’s like to be a monster at the mercy of hunters.

They leave him alone for the rest of the night after he passes out from pain for the fourth time. Somewhere in between the darkness behind his eyelids and the darkness in front of him, Sam sleeps, hanging low from his wrists. He's been sleep-deprived for months and his bruised body gives into exhaustion far easier than usual. Lucifer waits for him in his dreams, healing his wounds and showing kindness, which is such a stark contrast to how his day had been.

Contrary to popular belief, Sam wasn’t a complete fool. He knows better than to fall for that act. Lucifer, patronizing as ever, tells him he will, sooner than he realizes.

He wakes up and wishes he hadn’t; wishes he had killed himself when he still had the chance.

Time moves funny, impossibly longer when he is awake, too short when he is not. Every day, Tim offers him the blood and every day he tells him, usually with the last reserves of his energy, to go to hell. Sam gets intimately acquainted with agony, his only constant companion in this shrouding darkness. He doesn’t remember a lot of what’s been done to him nor does he notice, but he knows the pain. He learned that the worse it got, the sooner they would kill him. And the longer the torture went on, in some messed up way, he began to find comfort in reaching his breaking point and looked forward to it, so he could have that few precious minutes of peace in death.

Lucifer heals him in his dreams with a feather-light caress on his cheek. Sam doesn’t like it, he doesn’t, but he would be lying to himself if he said it doesn’t feel good to have at least one being in the world who knows everything about him and still doesn’t hate him. Despite knowing better, the pain-induced fog he lives in doesn’t leave him enough cognitive space to acknowledge that Lucifer only acts kind because of his ulterior motive. He makes promises through Jessica’s lips to save him and Sam might’ve even taken the helping hand if he had known where he is. For all his defiance in the beginning, Lucifer’s grace shining through Jessica’s blue eyes is his only safe space now.

He doesn’t stop to think about what that says about him. He can’t afford to.

When they took too long to put a bullet through his heart, which was more than once, he knew just the right way to repeatedly bash his temple on the concrete to save them the trouble. Sadly, they kept his hands chained to the ceiling after they found out what he’d been doing.

Knowing he cannot die has changed Sam’s perception of survival completely, every instinct his father had carved into his nerves just doesn’t exist anymore. Once he realized there was no use in fighting back, no use in trying to reason with them, and no way to escape, all he cared about was getting through the pain and not breaking. It was surprisingly easy considering death and permanent injuries were out of the question.

His captors seem to know it too at some level, still, they never let up on the torture. Sam is merely a punching bag for them to take out their pain on and they make sure he knows that. They make sure he knows who he is, what he is, what he did, and what he deserves.

Sam never answers out loud to their rightful demands, and he doesn’t disagree with their accusations.

He screams Dean’s name sometimes, when he’s too out of it to care about his pride, truly believing his brother would come save him if he just called out his name loud enough.  

On the rare occasion when he’s given the luxury of a small lamp, he will look down at himself, torn and frayed and scarred in a plethora of places, all glowing badges showing off his sins to the world.

Lucifer always left him with scars when he healed him. Sam doesn’t understand the logic behind it, he doesn’t have much time to think about it anyway. He doesn’t think about anything at all.

One day, when he’s too hurt to resist, Tim shoves the vial of blood down his throat. The last inch of control he was holding onto gets snatched away from him. He has nothing left. The pain has receded to the back of his mind, evaporated by the roaring power surging in his veins. His body sings with pleasure for the first time in God knows how long and Sam has never hated himself more than that moment for loving this so much.

They don't force him to use his powers. He is kept locked up and only when the shivers start does he realize what they are doing. 

The hallucinations are particularly more cruel this time around and his seizures are strong enough to break both his wrists. Sam is not entirely sure if he didn't die sometime in between. He learns that staying upright while going through withdrawal makes it infinitely worse and by the time he reaches the end of it, he can’t feel his arms. He can’t feel much of anything. They hose him down to clean up the vomit and urine off of him and pour another vial of blood down his throat. 

The week that follows is his own customized piece of hell; he is pretty sure even Lilith would've been kinder.  

He lets himself cry his eyes out and blames it on the detox.

They dose him up and dry him out completely a few times just for shits and giggles, until his puke has more blood than bile, before coming to him with an offer. Sam doesn’t have to look up to smell the demon in the room with them.

“Come on, Sammy boy, you know what we want. Get on with it”, Reggie barks.

“Just kill this demon, Sam. There’s no need for you to go through all this”, Tim tells him kindly. They both seem to think that this good cop, bad cop routine was working for some reason. Sam will laugh if he can.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus-”

Reggie backhands him and clutches his jaw harshly, nails breaking Sam’s skin, and tuts. “Don’t get cheeky with us now. Use your powers.”

“I don’t remember how.”

“You hear that, Tim? He doesn’t remember. I bet lying in his own filth for another couple of days will make him remember”

The demon snorts. “You got some balls talking to Lucifer’s true vessel like that.”

Sam tries not to flinch at being called that and almost fails. He’d been trying so hard to hide the entire truth from them.

“What?”, Tim asks, taken aback. Or maybe he is realizing they are in over their heads, just as Sam had tried to tell them many times.

“He’s the most valuable thing in all of Hell and Earth right now. He could say yes in his sleep, and our father would come here to whisk his precious meat suit away. Oh, and he’ll feed you all a plate of your own guts on his way out the door.”

The demon is dragged out of the room abruptly after that and Sam hears screams, but can’t make out any words. He’s left alone for a long time before the door to his room opens.

No emotion in the world is more powerful than fear. Sam can see the priorities have already shifted in Tim and Reggie’s eyes. This is no longer for revenge. They’re going to make him pay, not for what he did, but for what he was capable of doing.

Chapter Text

He thinks of his brother sometimes. Surprisingly it’s not all about the sharp stabs of their recent conversations, but nice moments too. His cassette tapes and shitty jokes and gentle hazing; the love that could still be seen in his eyes for Sam, even if hate is all that’s left now. He is sick and in pain, and he can almost smell Dean’s Tomato rice soup and grilled cheese if he concentrates long enough. He clings to the memories of the good old days like a man hanging on to a thread in a thunderstorm, foolish and futile but he can’t help it nonetheless.

He longs for the way his brother would patch him up, rough yet soft, along with harmless insults that downplay the seriousness of the injury, making both of them feel better. Oh, what Sam would give to have that again. He misses Dean like never before.

Of course, the hunters never miss a chance to drag Dean’s name into conversation.

“Did you hear Dean Winchester’s got a new partner?”, the utility jacket guy says as he kicks Sam in the chin. Sam is chained to the floor by his neck like a dog but he still perks up at the mention of his brother’s name, barely registering the pain shooting through his face.

“Is that right?”

“Some dude in a trench coat. Kid seems much happier now.”

“Good for him. He’s been saddled with this demon filth long enough”, there’s a kick to his stomach and an ache in his heart.

You know, they’re telling the truth, Lucifer shrugs in his dreams that night. Your brother and my brother are out there re-enacting what you humans would call a buddy comedy. Dean does seem happier. Less burdened.

Sam doesn’t rise to the bait. I’m grateful he’s got someone to watch his back.

Lucifer chuckles. So, you’re not jealous?

No.

Is lying a sin if you’re only lying to yourself? Lucifer muses as he walks away.

He’s not jealous. And even if he was, it would be stupid because how could he ever measure up to an angel? Cas hasn’t even known Dean for a year and he’s already done more for him than Sam has done in his entire lifetime. Dean is clearly better off with him.

His eyes are wet when they open and Sam blames it on the plethora of wounds on his body.

.

The first time Sam truly feels calm in this dark reality is when he finally learns to disassociate at will.

It’s a boon and a curse, a high that shielded him for a time being, but a low that left him feeling worse and worse when he subsequently snapped out of it. Still, he welcomes it, too damn tired of the dread and fear of pain, of constantly being on edge not knowing when he’ll be tortured and killed next. His body doesn’t even experience the rush of adrenaline anymore, just takes the pain and tries to keep him alive when possible.

So, whenever he could he let himself go blank he did, curling up inside his mind, feeling substantially calmer on the outside.

But the hunters didn’t like that either.

“-freak got that poor waitress killed in Oklahoma.”

The haze fades from his mind like fog at dawn, terror taking its place quickly. He curls up further on the floor, chained by his feet this time, and tries to make sense of what he just heard.

They see him paying attention and smirk, happy to have found their newest way of torment.

“Lindsey’s dead?”, he asks, using his voice for the first time in weeks, vocal cords feeling like they’re filled with thorns.

“Yeah. She tried to protect you from us, threatening to call the cops. Had to shoot her down.”

“You heartless bastards, she was innocent!”, Sam cries, his heart racing in his chest from anger and grief.

The big guy presses his boot down on Sam’s cheek and leans his hand on his knee to increase the pressure. It pulls a reluctant grunt from Sam’s throat.

“Don’t talk to us about heart, bitch. You’re the reason she is dead. Not us. If you’d just done what Tim told you to, none of us would be here”, he kicks Sam’s temple with his heel making him black out for a second. “But Tim was wrong. He should’ve known you only listen to your own species.”

A few months ago, Sam would’ve felt humiliated for being treated like this, would’ve gotten angry at being talked to like this. It really stands to show how broken he is, that Sam couldn’t find a single word to defend himself with.

The guy who’s now kicking his teeth in is not wrong at all. Sam can only think of how right he was, as he did anytime the hunters decide to flag him with words.

He did not listen to anyone, except Ruby. And in the end, when Lilith was goading him on to kill her, he should’ve noticed that she wasn’t fighting back and thought about why. Every time he did as he was told, it was from the wrong person.

Maybe if he had listened to his father, he would have a better understanding of what’s right. But he chose to be rebellious, just like Lucifer. If he thinks about it isn’t that surprising that Sam is his true vessel. He is the darkness to Dean’s light, the evil to his righteousness, the gloomed curse to his wit and charm.

He killed Lindsay.

.

Sam doesn’t spend a lot of time present in his head in the following days. Lucifer tells him with growing confidence that it won’t be long now, he will give up and give in to him soon enough. Sam doesn’t argue and stares right through him, not seeing anything, while his vocal cords are torn with screams in the real world, his body carved and ripped apart, and the labels that have been drilled into his mind get inked into his torn and tainted skin, to show the world who he truly is. He could never again fool himself into thinking he was anything but a freak and a monster, the Antichrist himself.

If there’s one thing he’s learned in his time of captivity, it’s that he deserves every second of it. The numerous hands that have beaten the fight out of him along with his self-righteousness also taught him elaborately and irrefutably what he is paying for, so he wouldn’t have any illusions about being the victim in this scenario. The true victims are the ones whose names and faces have been etched forever in his almost-eidetic memory. They are the ones who didn’t deserve what they went through.

He was merely a sinner paying for his crimes.

There’s a sharp burn over his heart that drags him harshly out of the arctic warmth of his greyed mind. He looks down to see the cigarette ashes still sticking to the circular wound in his skin. This is one of their favorite methods to snap him out of his head. He becomes aware of all of the different bleeding and bruising in his body and makes a small disgruntled noise. He doesn’t like being aware.

A tough hand slaps him hard when he tries to close his eyes again.

“Wake up, You piece of shit! I asked you a question”, he yells, his mustache twitching with anger. Sam doesn’t remember his name, he just calls him Mustache Guy in his head, he joined the others a few days ago. He’s particularly more crude than the others with his torture. He likes to watch Sam break in all the different ways they can manage. Sam tries not to let him, but it doesn’t always work. He tries to tune him out most times but that doesn’t work either.

“I said, how does it feel to know the only point of your pathetic life is to be a sock puppet? What? No smart comeback this time? Guess the guys really broke you in, huh?”

He pokes Sam’s side with a cattle rod. Sam grits his teeth and tastes blood on his tongue. He always tries his best not to scream.

“Do you even realize how fucked up you are, freak? What am I even talking about, you’re probably drooling for the Devil to get up your ass like a bitch in heat, aren’t you?”

He jammed the rod into Sam’s neck this time and a pressure that had been building steadily without his knowledge in the back of his head explodes in a burst of energy, his hand breaking out of the cuff on its own and sending the guy flying across the room.

The room freezes in shock, none more than Sam.

“Mark!”, Tim runs to the mustache guy who was passed out against the wall and Reggie comes to tie him up again cautiously, discussing between themselves if this is some residual effects of the demon blood and ways to prevent it, while Sam struggles to breathe in his chains.

He has powers without any demon blood in his system. He remembers Ava saying how her powers manifested when she gave in to the evil inside her. Is this what Lucifer meant? He has changed permanently and like Dean said, there really is no going back this time. He is gasping, and panicking; Reggie does him a favor and knocks him out with the butt of his gun.

When Sam wakes up again, he is blindfolded and hanging from the ceiling, hands and legs spread-eagled as far as they would go. There’s a slight tingling sensation in his limbs from the lack of proper blood flow that he’s accustomed to by now, it’s the least of his worries.

He searches for his power, trying to reach out to it in the way he remembered, how Ruby taught him. The thought of her soft words and unwavering support brings up a whole array of buried pain and grief he doesn’t know how to process. He doesn’t want to unravel this tangled mess of emotions he has shoved down in a locked box with her name on top. But to figure out how to stop using his powers, he needs to know how to use them first. So, he sucks it up and tries to focus only on her instructions and nothing else, but comes up empty.

He breathes slowly and tries to center himself. Anger and the thirst for revenge used to be his go-to triggers. Sam hasn’t felt either of those emotions in a while. Guilt and shame are all he has left now and those two would only be useful in drowning him without water. Even thinking about Lucifer doesn’t help. After what felt like hours of trying, the only thing he managed to do was give himself a killing migraine. He finally relents and chalks it up to an isolated incident, snuffing out the brief sparks of hope for escape.

He’s made up his mind that he’s not leaving this place. Nobody’s coming to save him. Sam wants to fight, wants to get himself out of here, but he doesn’t have the energy or will for that anymore. Whatever happens, he will try his best to stay sane and keep Lucifer out.

He had been expecting a visit from the other residents of the building but they seemed to have left him alone in the company of his own thoughts, which was somehow worse than the non-stop torture they had dished out. He can’t see anything or hear anything, the utter silence is roaring in his ears, and nobody comes to see him. The sensory deprivation is killing him and he is well on the road to begging them to come back and just hurt him, slowly but surely losing his mind. Who knew solitary confinement was the perfect hell for Sam Winchester?

He develops a fever on the third day, probably an infection somewhere in his many untreated wounds. He grows delirious and laughs at the devil in his dreams who just looks at him quietly with pity in his pale blue eyes.

When they finally come for him, after what must have been months, he can’t hear anything except the still roar of the air he can’t breathe and his neck can’t support the weight of his head atop his deteriorated shoulders; he can’t feel his hands, they are merely another set of ropes holding him up at this point, and his legs have given up days before. He is just a pile of flesh and bone in a sack of skin. They let him down and he falls in a heap on the floor, his body convulsing and white hot pain bringing him back to reality. A needle is plunged into his neck and Sam exhales with relief, with pleasure, and hopes it’s a cyanide injection, so he won’t wake up. He catches a muddled glimpse of his dirtied blood lying in dripped dots all around him as they drag him away, a cynically beautiful tapestry to his eyes when he still had enough wits about him to appreciate it.

.

He gets more tattoos. Sigils, he overheard, so Lucifer wouldn’t be able to possess him. Sam doubts their effectiveness because if there had been some sigil that could prevent angelic possession Castiel would’ve given it to them already. They never told him anything they were doing to his body unless it could be used to degrade him.

They also pump with a cocktail of drugs to make him loopy and tame.  

Sam’s sky-high pain threshold is the closest thing he has to a family heirloom. Jess would look at him with knowing eyes and try to soothe his hidden aches without ever saying anything; one of the things that made Sam love her more. He was taught how to push through the pain before he was taught to shave. So, when the hunters start their sessions he can usually hold out for a very long time before he lets himself show any signs of pain.

But now, drugged to his gills with all his pain receptors still in working condition, he doesn’t have the self-control to hold in his screams anymore. It turns out to be something his captors greatly enjoy. The humiliation of it all is worse than the torture and Sam prays, not for the first time, that he can just die and be done with it.

.

Sadly for the hunters, the drugs route didn’t work as they expected. Being drugged lowered Sam’s defenses and made his powers lash out more uncontrollably. A sprained neck and two concussions could attest to that. Sam’s disgust for himself rises substantially.

His torturers seemed to be lost on what to do with him, too scared of his powers to push him too far and too angry at him to let him get away with it easily.

So, they stick to verbal abuse, mostly.

Murderer. Freak. Demon. Monster. Killer. Filth. Whore. Disgusting. Vampire. 

They found new words to curse him every day. They all formed an endless loop inside his head even if he wasn’t conscious enough to hear them and Sam has never been one to forget words that soon. So he sits in that echo chamber of a room and listens to them for hours, not in nearly enough pain to distract him. He pathetically wishes he could hug himself sometimes, the urge bordering on painful; it’s been too long since he’s been touched, even by his own hands.

They don’t give him demon blood anymore. It used to be a way for them to get him addicted (and tortured, two-for-one), but someone suggested it might be the reason his powers have grown. Even Sam theorized the same, but there’s no way to test it as his powers only show up when he just can’t take it anymore. He doesn’t know how many days he’s been stuck here, but he knows it’s been five whole days since his last withdrawal by the hunters visiting him in the morning and evening like clockwork.

Sam will forever hate himself for how he’s almost ready to give in and do everything the hunters want for a mere teaspoon full of blood. He should hate it, considering how the detox ravages his body more than any human could, but the truth is he wants it. He is ashamed of how much misses it, how his body shakes and shudders, jonesing for just one more dose. Sometimes he thinks he might die without it. Then he remembers he can’t, which only makes it worse.

Is Dean searching for him? Will he find Sam before he loses it completely?

Maybe he knows and just doesn’t care.

Sam tries not to think like that.

If there’s one thing Sam knows about Dean, he always saves the ones who are in need, even strangers. So of course he’d save Sam if he knew about this.

He didn’t exactly come to your help when you told him you were my vessel. Arguably, that’s when you needed him more than ever.

That’s different.

Is it?

Dean had his reasons.

Did he? I’m sure he’ll have reasons for leaving you here too.

He didn’t leave me here.

He probably thinks you deserve it. Big brothers are self-righteous like that. Michael’s the same.

Shut. Up.

As you wish.

Sam wakes as Lucifer leaves his dreamscape and his breath rattles out of his mouth in small gasps. His heart is a painful burden in his chest and he wishes he didn’t have it. Lucifer’s words circle around like vultures in his head, waiting to pick him apart piece by piece. Sam’s no stranger to seeing disappointment in the eyes of his loved ones, but hate wasn’t one he was familiar with. Now he’s felt enough hatred to last him a lifetime from anyone and everyone who knew what he did. He never realized before how much he’d been taking the unconditional love Dean used to show him for granted.

He wishes he didn’t have people in his life who knew him, wishes he had no one to let down.

Tears gather in his eyes, a boy raised by John Winchester wouldn’t let them fall, but Sam has never lived up to his father’s name, so he cries, hands stained by blood and tied up by his sins incapable of reaching far enough to wipe them off.

Chapter Text

Sam knows he is nearing the end of his rope. He can feel himself breaking, all mangled pieces and shattered parts, irreversibly damaged. More than he already was.

Physical and phantom hands touch him, hurt him, and push him around. Sam goes along with it all, slowly drifting away from his sanity.

Notwithstanding his imminent psychosis, his powers continue to grow, bubbling underneath the surface, more potent than ever. Only it isn’t a power-tripped high this time around. It’s quieter and more intense, like a malignant tumour spreading through his brain. It sure did hurt like one. He still isn’t sure if the constant demon blood consumption is the culprit that caused his powers to manifest on their own. Maybe Ruby wasn’t lying when she said the power was inside him all along. But nothing good can come from this, that he knows for sure.

He doesn’t waste his breath trying to figure it out. Things spiralled out of his control a while ago. There’s no point in pretending he can change anything that’s happening to him.

Every waking moment was a nightmare, and every sleeping hour was filled with night terrors. He cannot form continuous thoughts, his distractions involve staring at the ground catatonically or picking at his skin and wounds until fresh blood soaks through the previous red lines that have dried like paint on the dirty canvas he has as a body.

When he starts talking to himself, lost in his head, he gets witchcraft allegations and a broken jaw. He wails until his throat gives out, but doesn’t talk again.

Surprisingly, they get bored of him.

The distance between visits grows, getting longer and longer, and Sam settles, like furniture, still and inanimate, the cheap, plastic kind that’s good for nothing once it’s broken. The only way to fix it would be to melt and remold, which is kind of what these guys were doing to him. Sam would feel grateful if he didn’t already know this was all pointless.

He is whole now, finally succumbing to his many injuries yesterday. Their ignorance also meant a long and painful death because he wasn’t given the mercy of killing himself. He is clean, at least, a first in a long time. He didn’t know why they let him have a shower, maybe the smell just got too much. He has soiled himself a few times in the past, too weak to control his body and too proud to call out for help lest he gives them another thing to hold over his head, and in those instances, they only washed him with a garden hose strong enough to rattle his skull. But this time, his chains were slackened, and a bar of soap was thrown by his feet. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, Sam had scrubbed the gunk off himself as much as he could and rinsed under the moderately paced water until it ran clean down the drain on the floor that was usually used to scrape away his flowing blood.

Once again, Sam is grateful that it’s summer otherwise, he would be freezing in his half-dressed state, just a pair of boxer shorts to shield him from all the torture his skin has endured.

He doesn’t try to escape, it would be a pointless endeavour. He’s tired.

The tiredness has seeped into every one of his cells, drumming up the energy to function only when the action required can alleviate some of his sufferings. Sam doesn’t let that happen often because the things that would make his current life easier are also the things that would push him further into his darkness.

The vacant room he’s held in is mostly soundproof, but Sam, bored out of his mind, has picked up the pattern of people based on their footsteps on the floor above, singling them out solely by the faint patter of their feet. He can recognise the regulars and the newcomers, sometimes even puts a face to the gait when they come to rip him apart. However, the stairs that lead to him are inaudible, so he can never anticipate when his next tormentor will arrive. The waiting game is worse than the torture most times, but he doesn’t taunt them to come hurt him anymore after the threat of getting his tongue cut off. He didn’t know why this scared him so much after everything, but Sam hadn’t dared to set them off after that. He’s learned that their threats are rarely a bluff, no matter how grotesque and cruel they may sound.

It’s been quiet upstairs for the past couple of days. Sam likes to imagine it’s because his brother has found him and he’s taking them all out one by one. Maybe they’re in some big abandoned property, and it’s taking Dean some time to get to him.

He knows that’s not the case. Even though they tell him repeatedly that Dean has left him to die alone, the only times they’ve moved him had been when Dean was somewhere close by.

Someone comes inside his room. His face is barely visible to him, but Sam knows he’s the one who showed him the mercy of soap. Still, he plasters himself to the wall in a vain attempt to become invisible.

“Jesus, kid, they did a number on you”, the man says sympathetically. He kneels in front of Sam and lifts a hand towards him. Sam fails to hold in the flinch, but the guy simply pushes the hair that’s falling into Sam’s eyes away from his face. “Animals, all of them. I’m telling ya.”  

The first drop of kindness almost pushes him to tears. It’s been so long since someone has looked at him like a person. He pushes away the doubt and forces himself to relax, maybe he will not be hurt this time. Sam’s eyes are blurry from exhaustion and dehydration, but he tries to pay the guy attention. Maybe this is real or some kind of good cop strategy, either way Sam doesn’t want to piss him off too.

"Do you want some water?" 

Sam nods his head quickly. “Ple’se”

The guy hurries to his aid. A chilled water bottle is pressed to his lips, the guy cradles his head to help him take small sips. The water tastes like the elixir of life. He has to force himself not to just gulp it down.

“Th-thank you”, he says, once half the bottle is empty and his stomach is painfully stretching, having grown used to the emptiness. 

"Don't mention it", he waves it off. 

There’s a crinkle of paper, and Sam perks up a bit, his mouth watering involuntarily at the smell that follows.

“Now, I know some crackers might be better on your gut, but a PB&J is Soul-healing in my opinion, so you’ll be fine.”

Sam takes the offered piece of sandwich reverently and simply looks at it for a moment through the blur of tears. He hasn’t eaten anything in a long time. Nobody cared to feed the freak who couldn’t die.

He looks up at the man with grateful eyes. “Th-thank you, I…”

He trails off, unable to put what he is feeling into words.

The guy smiles and nods like he understands. “Eat up.”

The first bite is nothing short of a divine experience, the richness and sweetness of the spreads exploding in his tongue like a piece of heaven. Even demon blood didn’t taste this good. The tear he had barricaded in his eyelid slips past and down his cheek, and an embarrassing noise leaves his throat. 

He eats with small bites, savouring every crumb, and licks his dirty fingers to chase after the taste when it is gone all too soon. He’s sad to finish it, but he knows he can’t eat more than that. The man gives him the bottle again for a couple more sips. Sam doesn't remember feeling this content in a while. 

He spills a little while drinking, and the water trails down his chin. The man reaches up and wipes it with his hand, his thumb swiping across Sam’s lower lip.

Sam pushes back, feeling his stomach drop. “What- what are you doing?”

The man just grins and outlines Sam’s face with his fingertips. “Look at you, you’re too pretty to be going through all this. I can get you out of here. All you gotta do is be good for me.”

Sam is struck dumb for a minute. So stupid. Always so stupid. The sandwich rolls in his stomach.

“I’ll make you feel so good. You'll never be in pain again.”

He shakes away the hand touching him and pushes himself against the wall as much as his slackened cuffs allow.

“Stay away from me”, he whispers.

The man laughs, seemingly amused by Sam’s actions. “What, you’ll only whore yourself for demon blood? I can arrange that too if that’s what you want.”

Sam’s shoulders come up high, knees tucked in close to his chest. He’s a tight-knit ball of pain on the floor.  

The asshole reaches out his hand again. “Be a good slut, now, Come on, Sammy-”

Sam pulls himself out of reach, his muscles no longer tired. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”, he snarls like a rabid animal.  

The man sighs and backhands him, hard. It makes Sam’s vision white out for a second. When his eyes clear, the man is standing in front of the far wall near the door. 

“Fine, you want to do this the hard way? We’ll do it the hard way.”

He presses a button, and a mechanical pulley tightens the chains until it is pulling his limbs up, out, and apart. He fixes a heavy metal collar around Sam’s throat despite all his flailing and attaches that to a different joint that starts pulling his upper body down by his neck. When he is done, Sam can barely move, suspended from the ceiling, leaving him vulnerable in every way with just his feet touching the floor. Sam struggles, but there is no way to get out of this. He yells to be let go, but it falls on deaf ears. 

The man’s expression remains creepily soft throughout all this. Sam is freaked out more than he can ever remember being. Panic grips him like a demon’s invisible hold while adrenaline makes him go dizzy. Even in all these days of captivity, he has never felt this trapped before.

The man circles him like a vulture, his hands trailing over Sam’s skin, grabbing and petting like he had every right to do so. Sam would trade this touch for a blow torch in a heartbeat. He wants to take a blow torch to everywhere he’s been touched. 

“You look gorgeous all trussed up like this for me.”

Sam freezes when he hears the belt buckle. His panic mounts, and he can't breathe. 

The man pulls on the elastic of his boxers and lets it snap back sharply, taunting him. He laughs when Sam startles hard with his heart in his throat.

“You should thank me for letting you enjoy it too this time. I usually prefer it when you’re a dozen degrees lower”, he says, chuckling like it was supposed to be funny.  

Ice settles in his heart, and something snaps in Sam. The power that had eluded him all these days suddenly becomes a gun in his hands, familiar and habitual.

The hand pulling down his boxers gets broken in half with a nauseating crunch, and the man attached to it crashes onto the door before he can get out a scream.

Sam throws up on the ground.

He tries to disappear in his head, wants to forget this ever happened, wants to pretend what the guy said wasn’t real, wants to pretend all the weird pains and the sickly tastes in his mouth that he had written off as after effects of torture have been just that and nothing else.

He wants to cut his tongue off, rip his skin off; wants to not be alive at all.

The door opens again, someone is coming to check on the noise. Sam braves past the humiliation of his state and braces himself for the pain. There’s no movement for a minute, and then the pulleys start up. He expects to be ripped apart limb from limb, but he is slowly let down on the ground instead.

Sam looks up. The newcomer is someone he recognises. He was one of the few non-cruel punishers he had. A seasoned hunter with strict but kind eyes; almost reminds him of Bobby. Lost his brother because of Sam. It would’ve been understandable if he had flayed him alive and made shoes from his skin, but this man is not sadistic like the some of the hunters Sam has become personally acquainted with. He never calls him names, only angry questions about Sam’s motives, the motives that are never good enough, and his hits are way less painful than what Sam truly deserves; it almost reminds him of Dean.

Doesn’t mean Sam trusts him. In a second, he is a curled-up worm, tucked into a corner of the wall.  

The hunter’s eyes flit over his form, it makes Sam shrink with shame. He must look every bit like the whore they all so often accuse him off.

Sam would do anything to have a knife plunged into his throat right now.  

The man removes his overshirt and throws it towards Sam from a safe distance. Sam just stares at it, incapable of bringing himself to move.

Thankfully, his eyes don’t linger, hardening and turning towards the unconscious man on the ground. He kicks him in the broken arm, making him wake up screaming. 

He holds pity in his eyes when he looks at Sam. It must be a lie, no one has kindness for something like Sam. It’s impossible. Sam knows that now.

He probably expects something in return. Probably a thank you. Maybe he expects Sam to show his gratitude in some other way. He inches away from the shirt.

There’s a sigh. Sam cringes at the sound.

“Nobody will bother you again, I promise.”

He says it like a vow. Sam might’ve laughed if he had the brain capacity to do so.

The hunter lifts the man off the ground by his broken arm. His screams should be satisfying, but Sam can barely feel anything at all.

“If anybody asks, you fell down the stairs and broke your arm. Is that clear?”, the hunter threatens the man he’s dragging out.

The door clangs shut behind them.

Sam slams his head against the wall hard, again and again, until he’s no longer awake.

Chapter Text

The hunter keeps his promise. He is left completely alone.

He is sitting in the corner of the room and staring blankly at his torn-up knees, a position he has held religiously since that day. He hasn’t moved much, hasn’t moved at all, and he doesn’t have a clue what to do with himself. He doesn’t have anything to distract him, not books, bourbon, or a brother. He can’t even die. He is forced to stew in the memories, the torture, and the what-ifs. He still doesn’t know if it is better or worse that he wasn’t awake for what was done to him.

He skirts the edge of shutting down completely, but the devil in his head wouldn’t let him.

Lucifer is angry, doesn’t like that someone defiled his perfect vessel. It pisses Sam off. It’s not like he was a virgin or anything, to talk about purity. He’s been dirtied and tainted since he was six months old, what’s one more to the tally? Besides, he’s been groped and touched without consent before, this is nothing different. It’s not a big deal. 

It is, Lucifer insists. He didn’t have the right.

Why, only you do?

Lucifer sighs. You know I’ll always respect your wishes, Sam. That’s why we’re still talking.

Fuck off, Lucifer.

Lucifer only shakes his head at his hostility. Come to me. I’m the only one who can protect you and keep you safe.

Sam ignores him. He’ll never be safe.

You’re my vessel, Sam. You should be spending the rest of eternity living your most blissful dreams. You belong with me. You don’t deserve this.

That’s where Lucifer is wrong. He deserves everything that comes his way, even what that man did to his dead body. He has earned every bit of this pain. So many lives lost, or possessed and killed, all because of him. Especially, if Lucifer thinks he doesn’t, then he definitely does.

Lucifer tries to lay a hand on his head, but Sam harshly flinches away. He’s afraid he might fall apart if he is ever touched again.

Don’t worry, I will kill those vermin for you.  

He sounds so much like Dean, it’s scary. Maybe this is how Lucifer will win, by trying to channel his brother’s protectiveness to get to him. 

Before he could tell him no again, Lucifer was gone.

Sam startles awake, and his heart starts racing at the sound of someone opening the door. His body stiffens and begins shivering involuntarily, broadcasting how broken he has become.

The hunter, the one whose shirt was still on the floor in front of him, comes inside in panicked steps and locks the door behind him, covered in blood and soot, his usual baseball cap askew on his head.

He gets too close, too fast, and Sam curls into himself further, shivers progressing into full-body vibrations.

The hunter holds up both his hands when he sees him. “I’m not here to hurt you.”   

Sam eyes him with naked distrust, takes in his tall and wide stature, and wonders if this is a different ploy to get him to play along in some other sick game. “Get away from me”, his yell is barely a whisper, but the hunter still stops in his tracks, visibly contemplating the best way to approach him. 

“Look, I've got no right asking this, but I need your help. Demons are flooding this property like ants on candy. They’ve come for you. My buddies are getting slaughtered and I need you to fight with us, okay?”

Sam just looks at him. Doesn’t he know that he is being kept here because he wouldn’t fight demons for them?  

The hunter avoids his eyes and the question in them. “Yeah, I know it’s the last thing you wanna do now, hell, I don’t even know how badly this is gonna blow up in my face. But Antichrist or not, you’re kinda our Hail Mary right now”, he chuckles to himself at the irony in that statement. “I do know this, if even an ounce of that demon blood in you is John Winchester’s, you’d do this.”

Maybe it’s his father’s name, or the inkling of hope for escape, but Sam wants to reconsider. He can see the desperation in the hunter’s eyes, and it doesn’t seem fake to him. Also, he had heard the commotion upstairs when the door opened briefly. If the demons truly came for him, then it’s his responsibility to fight; he cannot let anybody else die because of him. And, he needs to get out. In his current state, he doesn’t trust himself to hold on to his will much longer. Lucifer’s temptations have been getting too close to his heart, and it’s been getting harder and harder to resist giving up. There’ll be no other opportunity, this is it. So, he nods.

The hunter sighs with relief. “I’m Bruce, by the way. You double-cross me, I’ll shoot you in the face, alright?” He unlocks Sam’s locks with a weird little key and shoves a small water bottle filled with blood into his hands. Sam, newly reintroduced with the ability to use his hands and jumping out of his skin with paranoia, almost lets it crash to the floor. Bruce holds the bottom and keeps it steady for him.

Sam stares at it, wants to tell him no. Or that he can do it without the blood. That he doesn’t need to taint himself any more than he already has. But then he remembers the slimy hands that touched him when he was helpless and tied up.

He doesn’t hesitate after that, just closes his eyes and chugs the nauseatingly coagulated blood with the fervour of a true junkie getting his first hit in a long while. It’s flipping on a light switch in a dark room, eyes and ears coming back into sharp focus. The blood spills down his chin and chest, but he doesn’t care; he is soaring through the sky in ecstasy. The hunters have never given him this much; it’s usually only a vial or two at most, so either Bruce doesn’t know the dosage or the situation upstairs is dire enough for him to risk it.

He slowly gets to his feet, the weak muscles getting an instant boost as the rush of demon blood fills up all the cracks and breaks in him. Pain fades into the background, making his head clearer than it has been in weeks. His crippling panic is almost non-existent. The unstable and scattered beam of his power, which he’d had to wrangle to control before, now becomes a precise laser. It’s no longer volatile, but sits obediently like a dog at his fingertip, awaiting his command.   

Bruce holds out another bottle filled with blood. Sam holds it in his hands and sighs deeply. He apologizes to Dean in his head and drinks. With every gulp, he grows stronger, stands taller, and without the manacles around his limbs, feels invincible. It’s the most blood he’s ever drunk outside of the day he killed Lilith. He swallows roughly, his guts twisting up at the thought of detoxing from this.

Bruce eyes him warily. “Don’t throw me across the room,” he says, shoving a bundle of clothes into his hands. Sam looks at the clothes with disbelief for a second before haphazardly putting them on. The simple shirt and track pants sit on his skin like a physical touch, making him feel the beginnings of warmth for the first time in so long. He tamps down the rush of emotions that comes up with finally not having to be exposed and humiliated. He wraps his arms around himself.  

“You’ve got the most puppy dog looking face I’ve ever seen, kid. Anyone ever tell you that?”

Sam doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry. Dean used to complain about puppy eyes all the time, with that fake-annoyed tone of his, saying it wasn’t fair, but now, when Dean's eyes find his, he only sees the black eyes of a blood-sucking monster, one that cannot be forgiven. Knowing he was the devil’s vessel must have reinforced that, considering how unfazed Dean was at hearing the news. They learned he was Satan-incarnate, and his brother wasn’t surprised. What does that say about Sam? 

How could this stranger look at him and see anything but the evil that Sam finds in mirrors? 

Bruce isn’t waiting for him to answer, already working on opening the complicated locks of the room. They creep out the door slowly, Sam’s bare feet following the hunter’s barely audible footsteps. Sam stops at just a couple of steps with a wince, the daylight spilling through the staircase stabbing his eyes after months of near darkness, along with the yells, buck shots, and explosions that overwhelm his ears.

“You good?”

Sam blinks hard until he’s used to it, then they are off.

The building they’re in looks like an abandoned property with brittle floorboards and mold-laden walls, paint peeled off and long gone. It’s a maze, just a series of hallways, designed to keep anyone from finding the way out. Even if Sam had made it out of the room somehow, he never would’ve gotten away before someone caught up to him. He doesn’t bother memorizing the way out, he doesn’t plan on coming back here.

The brutal torture and repeated exposure have honed his powers more than Ruby’s careful guidance ever did. He doesn’t break a sweat as he finishes off the first demon near the staircase, barely gives him time to see Sam coming, and moves on to the next one, starting a trail of bodies to be left in his wake.

Sam is glad to see an immediate lack of dead hunters, and many are still shooting and throwing punches rather than just taking hits. But it's a losing fight; the demons will overpower as soon as the humans grow tired. Bruce points out where he should channel his powers to help the ones who are trapped the worst, significantly helping his overwhelmed senses. He ignores their yells of surprise and animosity at seeing him outside, and just focuses on saving people and moving on. He takes a hit or two, too used to them at this point to be incapacitated, but doesn’t strike back. He is here to attack demons, and that’s what he is going to do. Bruce must have noticed, because he suddenly becomes his shield against the hunters, for reasons Sam doesn’t understand, and stops them before they could get him.

“Check if the vessels are alive,” he surprises himself with the coherence of his syllables, unused as they were. “We might be able to save some of them.”

The hunter gives him a look before following the instruction, adding it to his duty of finding Sam’s next target.

One of the demons is a girl barely out of middle school, and Sam’s heart breaks for her. He pulls the demon out of her first before smoking it to increase her odds of survival, something about her blue eyes and blond curls reminding him of Jessica. She comes to it with full consciousness, eyes haunted by the things the demon must have done using her body. It’s a trauma Sam knows well, so he gets to his knees and wraps a hand around her shellshocked frame, whispering she’s okay and she’s safe, until Bruce takes her away from him. 

“Are they lying about you?” the hunter asks, the question making past the ringing in his ears, the doubt in them causing Sam to look up. “’Cause, you don’t seem like an evil mastermind to me.”

He turns away from him, swallowing back the tears that were pushing to the surface. He wants to say he only ever wanted to do the right thing, but it wouldn’t be true. He is a selfish man, reaping the aftermath of his selfish acts.

The demons realize he is there, and they all flock to him, running over each other to get to him first. Sam, growing furious after the reminder of the lives that these demons are stealing and ruining, grips all of the black-tar smoke slithering inside the hosts with one outstretched hand, freezing them in their step. The hunters freeze too, intimidated by the true extent of his powers, not expecting him to have the juice to handle so many demons at once. No order or visible hierarchy meant no heavy hitters, so Sam curls his fingers confidently, focusing on snuffing them out one by one, the warped souls flickering out as quickly as candlelight between fingertips. His head might be exploding, his ears ringing and blood dripping like a faucet out of his nose, but he keeps going with everything he has until the last demon is dead. Bruce barks orders at the gawking hunters to help the liberated victims, while Sam squeezes his burning eyes and catches his breath with his hands on his knees.

“This place is compromised. We gotta split before the cavalry arrives.”

He can feel the priority shifting again as the target went back on his head.  

“Grab the freak and tie him up.”

The past months of torture flash before his eyes, making the simmering rage in him rise to the surface. Sam stands to his full height. “I’m not going back.” He says slowly, lifting his hand back up again. "Anyone moves a finger and I'll break it." 

The hunters look at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move. Tim and Reggie are noticeably missing from the crowd. Seems like the demons have scoped them out well and hit them when the traffic's really low. They are all already tired and banged up from the demons, with broken bones and open wounds everywhere, their numbers are nowhere near strong enough to take on a feral demon hybrid with telekinetic powers who's going to fight for his life. 

Sam can recognize almost everyone in the crowd, and he can recall exactly what each one of them did to him. He is not the quivering mess locked up in that room; technically, he's the strongest demon in the world. He wants to laugh. He would like to see them try to touch him now. A voice that sounds a lot like Lucifer whispers in his ears to have some fun and kill them all. In this moment, Sam can’t think of one reason why he shouldn’t.

“Sam”

Sam startles hard. It’s the first time he is hearing his name from someone other than Lucifer in a long time. He turns to Bruce, caught off guard. 

“Just go, okay? You don’t need to hurt anybody.”

And just like that, this man is also looking at him like he’s a monster. Just like the rest of them.  

Sam starts backing away towards the door.

“They’re right about me. If you ever figure out how, find me and put me down.”

He runs out, fresh air and sunlight touching his skin like heaven, and gets in the first car he can reach. There’s commotion and gunshots behind him, but he doesn’t waste time turning to look. He steps on the pedal and drives out as fast as he can. With a hand outside the window, he pushes the last reserves of his power towards the woods lining the single mud road. When the trees obey his will, he drags them down on the road behind him, two huge trees falling with loud booms. The squealing of tires with no crash lets him take heaving breaths of relief.

He's finally out.