do you hear a voice from my side?
He wakes to the sound of her crying. Hitched, sobbing breaths. She's sitting on the end of his bed, hair falling over her face, hands knotted at her mouth. Her shoulders are hunched over, shaking.
Sam sits up.
The motel room is dark, and he's the only one in it.
:::
It's a different motel. There's salt at the door and at the windows. There's a devil's trap marked out in chalk on the grubby carpet.
She's at the end of his bed again. Distraught. Rocking backwards and forwards as she weeps.
Sam considers the gun lying in reach. Then he sits forward and says, "Who are you?"
She stops. Still. Frozen. Dead. The hair falls away from her face as she looks up at him, a slow unveiling, and Sam blinks, surprised, at who he sees revealed.
He doesn't have chance to say her name before she's gone.
Bela.
:::
Six days, he stays awake. Driving empty roads and saying no more than three words together. On the sixth day, he's sitting in a motel room, watching the static on the tv screen, when a shadow moves. It slides away from the wall, slinks across the floor, disappears into the gloom by the door.
Sam waits.
"Bela?" he says.
She's not there.
:::
He sleeps. He dreams of Dean.
:::
He wakes and she's there.
"Bela," he says.
She doesn't stop crying. Doesn't stop rocking herself. She sounds like an animal the way she whimpers. Sam says her name again, louder, and then she looks at him. She's still sane, he thinks, looking at the light of intelligence in her eyes. Still human. Demons don't break, they simply snap.
"He screams," she says. Her voice is a child's whisper. "He won't stop screaming. I thought he'd stop when they took his tongue. But he doesn't. He screams. It gets inside my head and won't come out."
Sam lets her go back to her crying.
:::
He mouths his way up the inside of Dean's thigh, where the skin is soft and sweet. Turns him over to lathe the secret dip of Dean's spine at the small of his back with his tongue. Tastes sweat. He works his way up his body, riding the lazy grind of Dean's hips, until he can gnaw at the ridge of Dean's shoulder blade, his hands planted on the warm, firm curves of Dean's biceps.
This isn't real.
Sam kisses Dean and finds nothing but blood.
:::
Bela's silent. No sobs, no hitched breaths. Just that crazy-woman backwards and forwards swinging through her body. Almost mesmerising.
Sam watches her for a long moment. Lights from a truck outside slide in above the drawn drapes at the window and arc across through the gloom. Highlights the glimpses of Bela's face visible through the mess of her hair.
Just like before, Sam says her name, and she stops. Becomes aware of him. Slowly, tentatively, she holds her cupped hands out, like she's offering him a gift. Sam looks down at the two green glass marbles sitting in her palm.
Pretty.
Looks down at the bloody red optical nerve that snakes out from each of them.
:::
Days go by in dust and motels and diners. Sam sleeps, dreams, wakes with the sun. He tidies the blankets on his single bed, eats alone, drives without music.
:::
"Bela?" he says, because she's silent and still. A shadow at the end of his bed.
He sits up and she's still there.
He says her name again and she's still there.
He reaches towards her and - still there.
He lays his hand on her shoulder and she looks at him.
Bela's not there anymore.
~end