Crash (Gen, R) part 2
Title: Crash (part 2)
Author: monicawoe
Rating: R
Genre/pairing: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Word count: 2502
Summary: Sam had been fighting, but the crash changed him. (Chapter 2)
Written for the ohsam Sam-focused hurt/comfort fic challenge.
For this prompt :
Gen, s7. The breaking of the Wall let out a lot of things better left alone, memories not the greatest of them. Sam's powers come flooding back, more powerful and violent than ever, warped and twisted by his time in Hell. And with Satan vision playing on repeat overtop of everything he sees, he's having trouble discerning friend from foe, threat from civilian... and Lucifer used Dean's face a lot, in the Pit.
part 1 here...
Sam ran until the last traces of daylight were swallowed up by the dense forest. He stopped to catch his breath whenever the dizziness and nausea overtook him, and then pushed himself forward again as soon as he could see straight. He kept going, as quickly as he could, until his legs collapsed with exertion. Finally he fell by a large, ancient tree and landed in a blanket of pine needles, soft with age. He fell asleep to the sound of Lucifer laughing.
After a night blessedly free of dreams, Sam woke to the sound of leaves rustling near by. He sat up, eyes darting everywhere, but the only motion he could see was a trio of squirrels, chasing each other across the ground. He stood up and wished he'd taken water or some kind of food with him. He was so thirsty. His only thought had to been to get away from Dean as quickly as he could, and to make sure he couldn't be found. He hadn't taken anything with him -- no phone, no change of clothing, no water...
Sam started walking again, slightly downhill, and tried to figure out where he was. He was somewhere in the north -- the huge region of forest indicated in green he remembered seeing the last time he'd looked at a map of Idaho. That meant he'd be mostly alone, except for the occasional errant hiker. He'd have to make sure to stay away from any well traveled paths, but he had to find water, and he had to find food. If he followed the terrain carefully enough, he'd be able to find a stream, assuming there was one nearby. He stood perfectly still and listened, hoping he'd pick up the sound of trickling water.
"So...this is your plan then?" Lucifer asked. He was leaning against a tree ahead of Sam, and he was still wearing Sam's face."You're gonna what...stay out here and be one with nature? Something as unnatural as you?"
Sam ignored the Devil, and kept walking. The ground started angling downhill, which was a good sign. He stopped again, listened and turned a bit more to the north.
"You ever wonder how different your life would have been if you'd just let me fight Michael that day at Stull?" Lucifer asked.
"No." Sam muttered.
"We would've won, you know." Lucifer walked next to Sam, matching his steps. He was wearing what Sam had worn that day in Detroit -- the day he'd said 'yes'. "Michael didn't stand a chance. Not in that little half-breed brat."
"Adam was my brother too, you know." Sam snapped.
Lucifer scoffed, "He didn't feel that way about you. He didn't give a crap about you."
"Of course not. It doesn't matter, doesn't change anything." Sam looked up to his right. He thought he'd heard something -- something that sounded suspiciously like water dripping.
"The fight would have lasted a few minutes at most. We would have won Sam. Do you have any idea what that even means?"
"The destruction of the planet? The end of the human race?"
"No." Lucifer let out a weary sigh, "No, Sam. I would have given you whatever you wanted. I never lied to you, you know that. I would have kept my word."
The sound Sam had heard was getting more distinct. He walked faster, hoping he'd be able to get a drink of water soon.
"Well what do you know..." Lucifer said, voicing the surprise Sam felt.
The sound of dripping water was coming from a spigot attached to a small well. Sam rushed to the spigot, turned on the water and cupped his hands underneath. He drank in the cool water, and for a moment felt such relief that he forgot about his constant companion (real or not).
"You know, going without water wouldn't actually kill you. You just think it would."
Sam ground his teeth together in irritation before spitting out, "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean, you'd get dehydrated, and it'd be uncomfortable, but it wouldn't kill you." Lucifer laughed, "Sam. You really think I'd let you die from something as mundane as 'lack of water'?"
"Let me..." Sam stopped mid-sentence when he saw that about twenty feet away from him, partially hidden behind a few more trees, was a cabin -- an actual log-cabin. It looked abandoned from here, entrance overgrown and dark, but it would be excellent shelter.
"Plus, when you do die...you'll just end up back home with me." Lucifer crouched next to Sam and grinned at him. "That'll be nice. It's so boring down here without you."
Sam got up and started walking towards the door. "You're not-- you're in my head, you're not real." He walked through the cabin entrance to find Lucifer sitting in a chair by a small table.
"Right. You keep telling yourself that." Lucifer tilted his head and shifted back into Nick, "Is this better? Does it help if I don't keep reminding you that we're one and the same?"
Sam ignored Lucifer and walked through the cabin checking to see if there was anything of use inside. There was a bed with a very worn, very thin mattress and sheets that were covered in dust, fur and other things. Animals had been here, probably often. That didn't mean Sam wouldn't take advantage of the bed. He'd just have to clean off the mattress first.
The roof was intact mostly, except for one corner in the back. The floor had a few holes, but they could be easily avoided. Sam even found a pile of firewood in the back corner, and incredibly, a few other supplies that looked mostly untouched -- a huge, half-full box of matches, some rope, and a small camp stove. Sam smiled and crouched down to have a closer look at the stove.
"Now if you only had something to eat."
Sam's stomach growled in agreement.
------
"What else am I supposed to do, Bobby?" Dean yelled.
"Hell if I know, kid." Bobby sighed, "Guess you're right. We've tried everything else." He stood up and went over to the boxes he had stacked in the back of the living room. "It's probably somewhere in one of these three boxes. It'll go faster if you help me look."
Dean and Bobby spent the next hour digging through the boxes filled with various copies of spell-books Bobby had saved. They needed a tracking spell. Dean had been looking for Sam for nearly three days with no luck. Sam had left his cell-phone, he'd left everything behind and he'd knocked Dean out, mind-whammied him -- Dean remembered with a shudder, before running off.
"I think I found somethin'." Bobby said, holding up a page.
------
Sam sat in front of the cabin on the chair and stared out into the trees. From what he could tell, the waves of dizziness he'd been having after the crash seemed to have stopped. He hadn't had one all day at any rate, but his hallucinations were still weaving in and out of his mind -- faster than usual.
He stared at the trees and he knew they weren't burning, but that didn't make the flames he saw seem any less real. He focused desperately on the few logical arguments he had against what his crumbling mind was making him see. There were flames, but he felt no heat. The trees looked they were burning -- bark charring, leaves turning to ash -- but the air smelled clean. Sam closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, concentrating on the clean scent of the air. When he opened them again, the flames were gone.
"Goodie for you." said Lucifer, in Nick's voice, "Now what?"
"Now," Sam said, standing, "I'm going to try to find something edible before it gets too dark."
Lucifer's peals of laughter followed him into the trees.
------
Hours later, Sam trudged back to the cabin with a meager collection of berries and nuts. He was glad he'd learned what was edible and what wasn't when he was little. It was one of Dad's lessons that had come in handy more times than he could count.
"What a feast!" Lucifer snickered, "I'll go set the table."
Sam ate half of what he'd found and saved the rest. His stomach gurgled, unsatisfied and he frowned, trying to think of something he could do to take his mind off of his gnawing hunger. He built a fire and sat next to it, warming his hands. He thought about Dean -- tried not to think about Dean frantically searching for him and instead focused on the most important part -- Dean was safe. He still didn't quite understand what had happened back in the hotel room, but he knew he'd been the one who hurt Dean.
Lucifer sat down next to him, stuck his hand into the flames and said, "Go ahead, ask."
"What I did to Dean...I did that with..." Sam swallowed, "My powers were gone. I haven't had any blood, so how --"
"Sam," Lucifer sighed heavily, "It was never the blood. You know that, on some level, don't you?" Lucifer grabbed a twig from the fire and held it in front of Sam's eyes. The twig was smoldering, sending little puffs of smoke into the dusk. "The blood made your body stronger, so I wouldn't burn through you, but it's not where your power comes from."
Sam shook his head, "Even if that's true...I never did anything like that, I never --"
"Since your injury, you've felt different, right? A little more off, even for you?"
Sam nodded, bitterly.
"Your mind has what...two centuries worth of memories in it?" Lucifer smirked, "Most of them of the good times we had together." The twig in his hand started to flicker and a tiny flame licked at the top of it. "You don't have room to compartmentalize everything. Before Hell, you had everything you hated about yourself pushed down, buried deep -- where you didn't have to look at it, where you didn't have to deal with it." The flame on the tip of the twig grew and spread downward. "Then, you and I had a lot of quality time together, you came back up here with a tiny little filter in place that ruptured thanks to your idiot friend, and everything came pouring out. The crash bounced your brain around. It jumbled everything together and now..." The twig went up in flame and the fire reached out past it, wrapping itself around Lucifer's arm. "...now you don't have any room in there to bury anything. Everything that makes you you is just floating free. Your power, your gift is out in the open and there's nothing you can do to make it go away."
"Gift." Sam scoffed, "Hell of a gift."
Lucifer grinned, "Of course it is. It was my gift."
Sam stared at him, and started laughing -- loudly, hysterically.
Lucifer's grin faltered, "What's so funny?"
Sam's laughter turned into a growl and he snapped, "You're not real. I'm just -- I'm just talking to myself! I'm a goddamn lunatic, sitting out here in the woods, talking to myself!"
Lucifer stared at Sam, blinked, and nodded, "And this is news, somehow...?"
Sam stood up and stomped off towards the trees. He couldn't go far -- it was too dark to see, but he had to get away from...himself, even if it was all in his head.
Standing at the edge of the denser part of the forest behind the cabin, Sam's stomach started growling again. He scrunched his eyes closed and tried to will himself to stop thinking about food. He kept thinking about all the disgusting diner food, and the less disgusting but still heart-endangering non-diner food Dean had insisted on eating. Especially the meat. He kept thinking of hamburger, and steak...he didn't even usually want meat, but his body was in desperate need of protein. He took a deep breath and tried to think of something else. Turning back towards the cabin he considered eating a few more of the nuts he'd found. He'd wanted to save them for tomorrow morning, but maybe just a few more--
There was a sound behind him. A branch snapped, leaves rustled, and Sam turned to look for the cause of the sound. For a moment, he thought it was just his mind conjuring up something new and strangely fitting, but it was too awe-inspiring, too beautiful...he couldn't have made something like this up. An enormous stag was walking towards him, slowly. It was looking right at him, but didn't seem the least bit intimidated. Sam took a few steps back towards the fire, but the stag kept coming.
"See? Things are looking up." Lucifer said. He was leaning against the doorway of the cabin, watching Sam.
Sam shook his head, confused.
"Ask, and the universe will provide. It wants you to survive, Sam. It wants you to be happy. I want you to be happy."
Sam turned back towards the stag and watched, fascinated, as it walked past Sam and towards his fire. "No..." Sam said, shaking himself out of his daze, "No! Stop!"
The stag stopped. It stopped walking as soon as it reached the fire. Then it went down on its knees and laid on top of the flames.
on to part 3
Author: monicawoe
Rating: R
Genre/pairing: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby
Word count: 2502
Summary: Sam had been fighting, but the crash changed him. (Chapter 2)
Written for the ohsam Sam-focused hurt/comfort fic challenge.
For this prompt :
Gen, s7. The breaking of the Wall let out a lot of things better left alone, memories not the greatest of them. Sam's powers come flooding back, more powerful and violent than ever, warped and twisted by his time in Hell. And with Satan vision playing on repeat overtop of everything he sees, he's having trouble discerning friend from foe, threat from civilian... and Lucifer used Dean's face a lot, in the Pit.
part 1 here...
Sam ran until the last traces of daylight were swallowed up by the dense forest. He stopped to catch his breath whenever the dizziness and nausea overtook him, and then pushed himself forward again as soon as he could see straight. He kept going, as quickly as he could, until his legs collapsed with exertion. Finally he fell by a large, ancient tree and landed in a blanket of pine needles, soft with age. He fell asleep to the sound of Lucifer laughing.
After a night blessedly free of dreams, Sam woke to the sound of leaves rustling near by. He sat up, eyes darting everywhere, but the only motion he could see was a trio of squirrels, chasing each other across the ground. He stood up and wished he'd taken water or some kind of food with him. He was so thirsty. His only thought had to been to get away from Dean as quickly as he could, and to make sure he couldn't be found. He hadn't taken anything with him -- no phone, no change of clothing, no water...
Sam started walking again, slightly downhill, and tried to figure out where he was. He was somewhere in the north -- the huge region of forest indicated in green he remembered seeing the last time he'd looked at a map of Idaho. That meant he'd be mostly alone, except for the occasional errant hiker. He'd have to make sure to stay away from any well traveled paths, but he had to find water, and he had to find food. If he followed the terrain carefully enough, he'd be able to find a stream, assuming there was one nearby. He stood perfectly still and listened, hoping he'd pick up the sound of trickling water.
"So...this is your plan then?" Lucifer asked. He was leaning against a tree ahead of Sam, and he was still wearing Sam's face."You're gonna what...stay out here and be one with nature? Something as unnatural as you?"
Sam ignored the Devil, and kept walking. The ground started angling downhill, which was a good sign. He stopped again, listened and turned a bit more to the north.
"You ever wonder how different your life would have been if you'd just let me fight Michael that day at Stull?" Lucifer asked.
"No." Sam muttered.
"We would've won, you know." Lucifer walked next to Sam, matching his steps. He was wearing what Sam had worn that day in Detroit -- the day he'd said 'yes'. "Michael didn't stand a chance. Not in that little half-breed brat."
"Adam was my brother too, you know." Sam snapped.
Lucifer scoffed, "He didn't feel that way about you. He didn't give a crap about you."
"Of course not. It doesn't matter, doesn't change anything." Sam looked up to his right. He thought he'd heard something -- something that sounded suspiciously like water dripping.
"The fight would have lasted a few minutes at most. We would have won Sam. Do you have any idea what that even means?"
"The destruction of the planet? The end of the human race?"
"No." Lucifer let out a weary sigh, "No, Sam. I would have given you whatever you wanted. I never lied to you, you know that. I would have kept my word."
The sound Sam had heard was getting more distinct. He walked faster, hoping he'd be able to get a drink of water soon.
"Well what do you know..." Lucifer said, voicing the surprise Sam felt.
The sound of dripping water was coming from a spigot attached to a small well. Sam rushed to the spigot, turned on the water and cupped his hands underneath. He drank in the cool water, and for a moment felt such relief that he forgot about his constant companion (real or not).
"You know, going without water wouldn't actually kill you. You just think it would."
Sam ground his teeth together in irritation before spitting out, "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean, you'd get dehydrated, and it'd be uncomfortable, but it wouldn't kill you." Lucifer laughed, "Sam. You really think I'd let you die from something as mundane as 'lack of water'?"
"Let me..." Sam stopped mid-sentence when he saw that about twenty feet away from him, partially hidden behind a few more trees, was a cabin -- an actual log-cabin. It looked abandoned from here, entrance overgrown and dark, but it would be excellent shelter.
"Plus, when you do die...you'll just end up back home with me." Lucifer crouched next to Sam and grinned at him. "That'll be nice. It's so boring down here without you."
Sam got up and started walking towards the door. "You're not-- you're in my head, you're not real." He walked through the cabin entrance to find Lucifer sitting in a chair by a small table.
"Right. You keep telling yourself that." Lucifer tilted his head and shifted back into Nick, "Is this better? Does it help if I don't keep reminding you that we're one and the same?"
Sam ignored Lucifer and walked through the cabin checking to see if there was anything of use inside. There was a bed with a very worn, very thin mattress and sheets that were covered in dust, fur and other things. Animals had been here, probably often. That didn't mean Sam wouldn't take advantage of the bed. He'd just have to clean off the mattress first.
The roof was intact mostly, except for one corner in the back. The floor had a few holes, but they could be easily avoided. Sam even found a pile of firewood in the back corner, and incredibly, a few other supplies that looked mostly untouched -- a huge, half-full box of matches, some rope, and a small camp stove. Sam smiled and crouched down to have a closer look at the stove.
"Now if you only had something to eat."
Sam's stomach growled in agreement.
------
"What else am I supposed to do, Bobby?" Dean yelled.
"Hell if I know, kid." Bobby sighed, "Guess you're right. We've tried everything else." He stood up and went over to the boxes he had stacked in the back of the living room. "It's probably somewhere in one of these three boxes. It'll go faster if you help me look."
Dean and Bobby spent the next hour digging through the boxes filled with various copies of spell-books Bobby had saved. They needed a tracking spell. Dean had been looking for Sam for nearly three days with no luck. Sam had left his cell-phone, he'd left everything behind and he'd knocked Dean out, mind-whammied him -- Dean remembered with a shudder, before running off.
"I think I found somethin'." Bobby said, holding up a page.
------
Sam sat in front of the cabin on the chair and stared out into the trees. From what he could tell, the waves of dizziness he'd been having after the crash seemed to have stopped. He hadn't had one all day at any rate, but his hallucinations were still weaving in and out of his mind -- faster than usual.
He stared at the trees and he knew they weren't burning, but that didn't make the flames he saw seem any less real. He focused desperately on the few logical arguments he had against what his crumbling mind was making him see. There were flames, but he felt no heat. The trees looked they were burning -- bark charring, leaves turning to ash -- but the air smelled clean. Sam closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, concentrating on the clean scent of the air. When he opened them again, the flames were gone.
"Goodie for you." said Lucifer, in Nick's voice, "Now what?"
"Now," Sam said, standing, "I'm going to try to find something edible before it gets too dark."
Lucifer's peals of laughter followed him into the trees.
------
Hours later, Sam trudged back to the cabin with a meager collection of berries and nuts. He was glad he'd learned what was edible and what wasn't when he was little. It was one of Dad's lessons that had come in handy more times than he could count.
"What a feast!" Lucifer snickered, "I'll go set the table."
Sam ate half of what he'd found and saved the rest. His stomach gurgled, unsatisfied and he frowned, trying to think of something he could do to take his mind off of his gnawing hunger. He built a fire and sat next to it, warming his hands. He thought about Dean -- tried not to think about Dean frantically searching for him and instead focused on the most important part -- Dean was safe. He still didn't quite understand what had happened back in the hotel room, but he knew he'd been the one who hurt Dean.
Lucifer sat down next to him, stuck his hand into the flames and said, "Go ahead, ask."
"What I did to Dean...I did that with..." Sam swallowed, "My powers were gone. I haven't had any blood, so how --"
"Sam," Lucifer sighed heavily, "It was never the blood. You know that, on some level, don't you?" Lucifer grabbed a twig from the fire and held it in front of Sam's eyes. The twig was smoldering, sending little puffs of smoke into the dusk. "The blood made your body stronger, so I wouldn't burn through you, but it's not where your power comes from."
Sam shook his head, "Even if that's true...I never did anything like that, I never --"
"Since your injury, you've felt different, right? A little more off, even for you?"
Sam nodded, bitterly.
"Your mind has what...two centuries worth of memories in it?" Lucifer smirked, "Most of them of the good times we had together." The twig in his hand started to flicker and a tiny flame licked at the top of it. "You don't have room to compartmentalize everything. Before Hell, you had everything you hated about yourself pushed down, buried deep -- where you didn't have to look at it, where you didn't have to deal with it." The flame on the tip of the twig grew and spread downward. "Then, you and I had a lot of quality time together, you came back up here with a tiny little filter in place that ruptured thanks to your idiot friend, and everything came pouring out. The crash bounced your brain around. It jumbled everything together and now..." The twig went up in flame and the fire reached out past it, wrapping itself around Lucifer's arm. "...now you don't have any room in there to bury anything. Everything that makes you you is just floating free. Your power, your gift is out in the open and there's nothing you can do to make it go away."
"Gift." Sam scoffed, "Hell of a gift."
Lucifer grinned, "Of course it is. It was my gift."
Sam stared at him, and started laughing -- loudly, hysterically.
Lucifer's grin faltered, "What's so funny?"
Sam's laughter turned into a growl and he snapped, "You're not real. I'm just -- I'm just talking to myself! I'm a goddamn lunatic, sitting out here in the woods, talking to myself!"
Lucifer stared at Sam, blinked, and nodded, "And this is news, somehow...?"
Sam stood up and stomped off towards the trees. He couldn't go far -- it was too dark to see, but he had to get away from...himself, even if it was all in his head.
Standing at the edge of the denser part of the forest behind the cabin, Sam's stomach started growling again. He scrunched his eyes closed and tried to will himself to stop thinking about food. He kept thinking about all the disgusting diner food, and the less disgusting but still heart-endangering non-diner food Dean had insisted on eating. Especially the meat. He kept thinking of hamburger, and steak...he didn't even usually want meat, but his body was in desperate need of protein. He took a deep breath and tried to think of something else. Turning back towards the cabin he considered eating a few more of the nuts he'd found. He'd wanted to save them for tomorrow morning, but maybe just a few more--
There was a sound behind him. A branch snapped, leaves rustled, and Sam turned to look for the cause of the sound. For a moment, he thought it was just his mind conjuring up something new and strangely fitting, but it was too awe-inspiring, too beautiful...he couldn't have made something like this up. An enormous stag was walking towards him, slowly. It was looking right at him, but didn't seem the least bit intimidated. Sam took a few steps back towards the fire, but the stag kept coming.
"See? Things are looking up." Lucifer said. He was leaning against the doorway of the cabin, watching Sam.
Sam shook his head, confused.
"Ask, and the universe will provide. It wants you to survive, Sam. It wants you to be happy. I want you to be happy."
Sam turned back towards the stag and watched, fascinated, as it walked past Sam and towards his fire. "No..." Sam said, shaking himself out of his daze, "No! Stop!"
The stag stopped. It stopped walking as soon as it reached the fire. Then it went down on its knees and laid on top of the flames.
on to part 3