Split
This was written for rokhal's prompt in the latest sharp_teeth comment-fic meme: "If Sam hallucinates being possessed, then for all practical purposes, he actually is possessed. Just a little more difficult to trap or exorcise."
... I ended up doing weird things with it.
Warnings: SPOILERS for s7 in general, violence, blood and gore, insanity, weirdness, metaphor-abuse, present-tense.
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Split
Sam's on his back on the grass, looking up at a blue, blue sky.
"Do you know what you are, Sam?" Lucifer asks.
Sam's floating. He's on the ground and he's not, and nothing and everything makes sense. It gets this way when he's not concentrating-the world sliding and crumbling, flaking away like aging wallpaper, and it's only hell, hell, him, everywhere.
"I'm Sam Winchester," he says.
Lucifer appears before him, an imposing silhouette against the midday sun. "And what is Sam Winchester?"
The world crumbles a little more, and little tendrils of black smoke sneak their way out of the ground. Sam licks his lips. He feels so thirsty. "I," he says, "I don't-know."
"Of course you don't," Lucifer says, shaking his head, and there is so much sad resignation in his voice that Sam wants to cry. "You've never been you, Sam. You always were-a tool, a means, a body." He reaches down, touches Sam's cheek. "And that is what you will always be."
Sam is now surrounded by a veritable forest of the black tendrils, each of them growing like tumours into the sky, blocking out the sun. Sam thinks he should maybe get up, run, fight, but Lucifer is there, and Lucifer is right.
(he's always right)
The forest of black tendrils is now a cyclone where he is the eye, swirling and swirling until it's cut out Lucifer, the sun, and the blue, blue sky.
I am a means, a tool, a body, he opens his mouth to say, and the smoke rushes into his body, burning and soothing and pushing pushing pushing.
Sam yields without protest, disappears under the forest-cyclone-flood, and all thoughts of the grass and the sky and the sun and the universe disappear with him.
After some time, it wakes him.
Look, Sammy, it says. Look at what you are now.
Sam looks. He's staring into a mirror-his hair is tousled, greasy, and there are flecks of blood on his cheeks. He smiles, slow and smug and calculating, but Sam's not smiling, not really. It's the smoke, the forest-cyclone-flood, the thing that's now taken over him, making him do things he has no control over.
"Oh, don't fool yourself, Sam," he hears himself say. "Always have an excuse for everything you've ever done, haven't you?" His voice rises. "Oh, but that was Meg! The demon-blood! Lucifer! Azazel! I was without a soul!" It-he-it laughs. "Why do you think your head is so wide-open to supernatural influence? When have you ever been you, Sam?"
Sam doesn't know. He recognises the feeling of being split at the most fundamental level-of body and mind and soul-all too well; the suffocation of being trapped in his own head is familiar enough to feel like an embrace.
What he also knows, however, is how to re-emerge and patch over that split in the body-mind-soul. He's done it so many times-he's pieced himself together after demons, after the devil, after having his soul ripped apart for two centuries, and he'll do it again.
I will, he says.
"Oh, I know," it says and laughs, and he's drowning again.
His hands are covered in blood.
He-it, it, he knows this-wipes them against his jacket. The squelch of the jellied-over gore is disconcertingly familiar. Sam doesn't know where he is-they are, they are, he's better than this-or when he woke up again or why. All he thinks-all that he prays for-is that he, it, they haven't found Dean yet.
"You think you're so strong," it says. "Think you can survive anything-put a band-aid where your guts are hanging out of your body and everything's A-OK." It turns its body around, lets his eyes sweep over a dozen bodies lying strewn across a field in pools of blood. "You did this. This is you, Sam. This."
Sam wants to feel the churning at the pit of his stomach, his eyes fill with helpless tears and his head spin. He can't, however, because none of those things are his anymore, so he settles for screaming in his mental cage, giving expression to anger and an inchoate fear. This isn't me, he shouts. This isn't me!
"It isn't?" It cocks his head thoughtfully. "There you go again, denying yourself so that you can be something somebody else wants you to be." It begins to walk through the carnage, the corpses pushed out of its path by invisible forces. "Right now you're pretending to be Dean's Brave Little Trooper, although you've spent two hundred years as the devil's pet. Too big a split for just a band-aid this time, eh?"
Sam snarls incoherently.
It laughs. "You're so many different things, Sam," it says, and taps his head. "They're all in here. They're all fake. They're all real."
I am none of them.
"You are all of them."
It kills and it talks. Sam stops listening (even if he can't stop hearing seeing feeling oh god oh god) and starts praying that Dean will find him, it, them.
There are times when Sam wakes up to find himself covered in blood, other times when it's doing something more innocuous, like ordering breakfast. Each time, he only finds himself wanting Dean more and more. It's probably silly, but every time Sam pushed himself back into control before, Dean was the one doing the pulling.
"Right," it snorts, shoving a potato fry into his mouth. "Dean will make everything better. He only makes you what he wants you to be, and damn isn't he successful at that."
Shut up, Sam says. Shut up and get out.
"No can do, Sammy," it says, and he's lost in the dark once again.
It's Dean, it's Dean, and Sam feels about the closest to happiness he can feel without a body to express it.
"Christo," Dean says, Ruby's knife in one hand and a flask of holy water in the other. "Christo" again but it doesn't react, only advances slowly, flexing and unflexing Sam's hands while pulling Sam's lips into a sneer.
Dean throws the holy water at him but his flesh doesn't burn, and Dean looks terrible-gaunt and helpless and so goddamned tired. "Look," he says. "Do you see that, Sam? You're not possessed."
It laughs, and the sound is as grating as ever. "Oh, right, because no demon fails to respond to the holy water test. Thought you were a professional, Dean."
"Sam, Sam please," Dean says, his voice shaking, "it's not-I know, okay? It's just you. It's all Sam. Trust me, man."
It isn't all me, Sam wants to scream. Get it out of me-get it out!
"Y'know," it drawls, "you can either stop waffling around and get to the fighting part, or I just kill you and go along my merry way."
Dean doesn't relent, however. "No!" he says, fuelled by alcohol and grief and an innate stubbornness. "You've got to snap out of this, Sammy, c'mon-"
It lifts Sam's hand, calls upon the power singing through Sam's veins, and sends Dean flying back to crash against the far wall. Dean still doesn't fight back however, and when the screams start, Sam voluntarily sinks into the forest-cyclone-flood-cage, and doesn't emerge again.
Sam's on his back on the grass, staring up at the blue, blue sky.
Lucifer's sitting beside him, gently stroking his hair. "Poor Sammy," he says. "Poor, poor Sammy."
Sam closes his eyes.
Finis
... I ended up doing weird things with it.
Warnings: SPOILERS for s7 in general, violence, blood and gore, insanity, weirdness, metaphor-abuse, present-tense.
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Split
Sam's on his back on the grass, looking up at a blue, blue sky.
"Do you know what you are, Sam?" Lucifer asks.
Sam's floating. He's on the ground and he's not, and nothing and everything makes sense. It gets this way when he's not concentrating-the world sliding and crumbling, flaking away like aging wallpaper, and it's only hell, hell, him, everywhere.
"I'm Sam Winchester," he says.
Lucifer appears before him, an imposing silhouette against the midday sun. "And what is Sam Winchester?"
The world crumbles a little more, and little tendrils of black smoke sneak their way out of the ground. Sam licks his lips. He feels so thirsty. "I," he says, "I don't-know."
"Of course you don't," Lucifer says, shaking his head, and there is so much sad resignation in his voice that Sam wants to cry. "You've never been you, Sam. You always were-a tool, a means, a body." He reaches down, touches Sam's cheek. "And that is what you will always be."
Sam is now surrounded by a veritable forest of the black tendrils, each of them growing like tumours into the sky, blocking out the sun. Sam thinks he should maybe get up, run, fight, but Lucifer is there, and Lucifer is right.
(he's always right)
The forest of black tendrils is now a cyclone where he is the eye, swirling and swirling until it's cut out Lucifer, the sun, and the blue, blue sky.
I am a means, a tool, a body, he opens his mouth to say, and the smoke rushes into his body, burning and soothing and pushing pushing pushing.
Sam yields without protest, disappears under the forest-cyclone-flood, and all thoughts of the grass and the sky and the sun and the universe disappear with him.
After some time, it wakes him.
Look, Sammy, it says. Look at what you are now.
Sam looks. He's staring into a mirror-his hair is tousled, greasy, and there are flecks of blood on his cheeks. He smiles, slow and smug and calculating, but Sam's not smiling, not really. It's the smoke, the forest-cyclone-flood, the thing that's now taken over him, making him do things he has no control over.
"Oh, don't fool yourself, Sam," he hears himself say. "Always have an excuse for everything you've ever done, haven't you?" His voice rises. "Oh, but that was Meg! The demon-blood! Lucifer! Azazel! I was without a soul!" It-he-it laughs. "Why do you think your head is so wide-open to supernatural influence? When have you ever been you, Sam?"
Sam doesn't know. He recognises the feeling of being split at the most fundamental level-of body and mind and soul-all too well; the suffocation of being trapped in his own head is familiar enough to feel like an embrace.
What he also knows, however, is how to re-emerge and patch over that split in the body-mind-soul. He's done it so many times-he's pieced himself together after demons, after the devil, after having his soul ripped apart for two centuries, and he'll do it again.
I will, he says.
"Oh, I know," it says and laughs, and he's drowning again.
His hands are covered in blood.
He-it, it, he knows this-wipes them against his jacket. The squelch of the jellied-over gore is disconcertingly familiar. Sam doesn't know where he is-they are, they are, he's better than this-or when he woke up again or why. All he thinks-all that he prays for-is that he, it, they haven't found Dean yet.
"You think you're so strong," it says. "Think you can survive anything-put a band-aid where your guts are hanging out of your body and everything's A-OK." It turns its body around, lets his eyes sweep over a dozen bodies lying strewn across a field in pools of blood. "You did this. This is you, Sam. This."
Sam wants to feel the churning at the pit of his stomach, his eyes fill with helpless tears and his head spin. He can't, however, because none of those things are his anymore, so he settles for screaming in his mental cage, giving expression to anger and an inchoate fear. This isn't me, he shouts. This isn't me!
"It isn't?" It cocks his head thoughtfully. "There you go again, denying yourself so that you can be something somebody else wants you to be." It begins to walk through the carnage, the corpses pushed out of its path by invisible forces. "Right now you're pretending to be Dean's Brave Little Trooper, although you've spent two hundred years as the devil's pet. Too big a split for just a band-aid this time, eh?"
Sam snarls incoherently.
It laughs. "You're so many different things, Sam," it says, and taps his head. "They're all in here. They're all fake. They're all real."
I am none of them.
"You are all of them."
It kills and it talks. Sam stops listening (even if he can't stop hearing seeing feeling oh god oh god) and starts praying that Dean will find him, it, them.
There are times when Sam wakes up to find himself covered in blood, other times when it's doing something more innocuous, like ordering breakfast. Each time, he only finds himself wanting Dean more and more. It's probably silly, but every time Sam pushed himself back into control before, Dean was the one doing the pulling.
"Right," it snorts, shoving a potato fry into his mouth. "Dean will make everything better. He only makes you what he wants you to be, and damn isn't he successful at that."
Shut up, Sam says. Shut up and get out.
"No can do, Sammy," it says, and he's lost in the dark once again.
It's Dean, it's Dean, and Sam feels about the closest to happiness he can feel without a body to express it.
"Christo," Dean says, Ruby's knife in one hand and a flask of holy water in the other. "Christo" again but it doesn't react, only advances slowly, flexing and unflexing Sam's hands while pulling Sam's lips into a sneer.
Dean throws the holy water at him but his flesh doesn't burn, and Dean looks terrible-gaunt and helpless and so goddamned tired. "Look," he says. "Do you see that, Sam? You're not possessed."
It laughs, and the sound is as grating as ever. "Oh, right, because no demon fails to respond to the holy water test. Thought you were a professional, Dean."
"Sam, Sam please," Dean says, his voice shaking, "it's not-I know, okay? It's just you. It's all Sam. Trust me, man."
It isn't all me, Sam wants to scream. Get it out of me-get it out!
"Y'know," it drawls, "you can either stop waffling around and get to the fighting part, or I just kill you and go along my merry way."
Dean doesn't relent, however. "No!" he says, fuelled by alcohol and grief and an innate stubbornness. "You've got to snap out of this, Sammy, c'mon-"
It lifts Sam's hand, calls upon the power singing through Sam's veins, and sends Dean flying back to crash against the far wall. Dean still doesn't fight back however, and when the screams start, Sam voluntarily sinks into the forest-cyclone-flood-cage, and doesn't emerge again.
Sam's on his back on the grass, staring up at the blue, blue sky.
Lucifer's sitting beside him, gently stroking his hair. "Poor Sammy," he says. "Poor, poor Sammy."
Sam closes his eyes.
Finis