The Glass Vial | Chapter One
Chapter One: The Beginning
Prologue
Masterpost
They get back to Bobby’s and Dean carries Sam from the car, all long limbs and limp body, and lays him on the bed in the spare room. It’s small and dark, but there’s enough room to get a camping bed set up so Dean can stay by him. He’s always come to Bobby’s when Sam has been ill, a danger, or detoxing from demon blood, and each time they’ve gone to the panic room. He doesn’t think the panic room is what Sam needs right now. There’s a swirling sensation in his gut that tells him that Sam is going be out for the long-haul.
He drinks. He paces and he screams.
Dean screams his throat raw for help, for a savior, redemption. He stares up into the inky sky, a bottle of whisky in one hand and the other rubbing the side of his face, salty tears clinging to his fingers.
“You assholes!” he screams, back on his round of insults, which will soon give way to pleas, and then apologies, until it turns full circle again. There’s no sound other than his feet pacing the chalky ground beneath him. He stumbles over some uneven ground and almost falls, but manages to brace himself just in time.
“You dicks with wings!”
He tries not to focus in on the one dick he’s talking about, the one angel that earned his trust and burnt it to the ground and left Sam with a gaping hole in his mind. He lets out an ugly sob and takes another swig from his bottle.
“Please!” he whispers, feeling himself crumble and weaken under the silence. “I just need some help. I can’t do this. Fix him!”
The only thing that answers him is silence. He throws the bottle to the ground and turns around. Silence suits him just fine.
***
It’s a Thursday when Sam finally returns. Dean is flipping through Alighieri’s Purgatorio, trying to make sense of the same words Sam had worked through three years ago before Dean’s descent into Hell, when there’s a murmur from the bed and a whisper of, “Please.”
Dean snaps his head up, takes another gulp of Jim Beam that’s his constant companion now and walks over to the bed.
He waits for Sam to speak again, and puts the bottle down on the floor. He kneels down beside Sam, and tucks a stray piece of hair behind his ear. Suddenly Sam’s eyes snap open and Dean breathes in a sharp intake of air.
“Sammy?” Dean asks, eyes already feeling like they’re beginning to get wet. Sam stares upwards, lips quivering, eyebrows furrowed, and then he’s jerking, limps flailing, eyes rolling into the back of his head, and Dean is struggling to catch him while he rolls off the side of the bed.
Bobby is out in town, and Dean is too shocked to do anything but stay there, kneeling with Sam in his arms, now unconscious again, legs making small stuttering movements in irregular bursts. Dean slowly lowers him to the ground and puts the pillow beneath his head. He stays there for a minute, listening to the start of Sam’s low whimpering, and goes over to the table, unscrews a bottle of water, and carefully pours some into Sam’s mouth.
Dean puts the bottle down once there’s no response, and Dean finally lets himself acknowledge that this is Sam, really Sam, all of him, and he wraps his arms around his brother and accepts, maybe, there’s nothing magical or supernatural that can cure this.
Sam is back. He has a soul. This is Sam, fully complete. He silences the thought at the back of his mind that screams that Sam isn’t complete. He’s broken.
He stands up and gently moves Sam back onto the bed. He moves the chair next to his bedside and grabs Sam’s limp hand in his, and watches as he sleeps.
“You come back to me Sammy, you hear me? I need you back here.”
There’s no response, and Dean isn’t expecting one. All he can do is wait.
***
It’s cold. Cold cold cold.
Hard, unforgiving, bright, screeching, slicing.
The light worms its way around his body, through his hair, over his skin, strips him bare, keeps on stripping him until the light is skinning him, a mixture of burning and stinging, and it flows through his blood, wraps around his bones, the pain cradling him and making him forget and squeezing. Squeezing so tight, the pressure making him feel like he’s going to burst.
He tries to scream out but everything clenches tighter, burning hotter, and there’s blood in his mouth, his eyes, running down his body from under his nail-beds and from the center of his chest.
Sometimes Lucifer likes to invade his body. Sometimes Lucifer likes to wrap himself around his soul, tear it to pieces and stick it together again. But the only thing that ever makes it stay is pain. Pain. He doesn’t think there’s a word that accurately describes what this really is.
He doesn’t think. A lot of the time. A lot of the time he can’t.
He can’t do much. He can’t do. Can’t.
Can’t can’t can’t.
Something bright, a different bright, a warm brightness, invades. A voice. Hearing that voice is like getting shot. Like a hypodermic needle into his veins, and the choking eases a little. He knows the voice. He knows the smell of him, his warmth, the bright eyes, and the body that holds the voice.
It’s a D. He knows that.
He’s vaguely aware of sound coming out of his mouth, and it’s not good sound, it’s the sound that makes the pain come worse, but he can’t help it, the screams, the pleas for help.
D. D.
Something flashes in front of his vision and his heart swells, and then Lucifer is peering down at him, outraged, angry, eyes flashing black and red and white, such a bright white. Then the features change, and there’s laughter, and cool, cruel laughter.
It’s D.
He’s saying something but it takes a little while for him to understand, but D likes that. D is enjoying that. Is this really D?
Then he finally gets it. The sound is him. D is calling his name. Sammy.
He’s Sammy. He’d forgotten.
Something is pinging in the back of his mind, but he can’t reach back there because there’s a wall stopping him, something so high and strong and burning like fire and he can’t break through it. Except it isn’t a wall, it’s just a huge pile of rubble, collapsed and broken. Something is wrong. Everything is wrong, but this right now, this is him, this is it.
Isn’t it?
***
There are two miserable days of silence. Sam lies still, body occasionally shaking, limbs stuttering, but he’s generally quiet. On the third night, the nightmares start. It’s a little after eight, and Dean and Bobby are sitting at a camping table in Sam’s room when the screams begin.
It’s just a long yell, with choked, garbled sounds. Dean almost throws the table over in his rush to get to Sam’s bedside.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Dean says, his own mantra to match Sam’s shouts. He starts thrashing in the bed, and sits bolt upright, staring straight ahead, eyes not seeing.
Bobby comes to the other side of Sam’s bed and gives Dean a look that is panicked, and it makes Dean feel even more uneasy. He’s aware this is something neither of them are used to. It’s something so much more alien and dark and frightening. The worst thing is that it isn’t real, except it is, but it’s Sam’s personal hell, and Dean can’t be there to fight it for him.
“It’s okay, Sammy. I’m here. I’m here,” Dean says, resting a hand on Sam’s shoulder. As soon as Dean makes contact Sam freezes and Dean shares a panicked glance with Bobby.
“Sam?” he asks quietly, giving his shoulder a small shake. “You with us?”
“Please,” Sam murmurs quietly, eyes still staring straight ahead. “Not Dean. Not Dean.”
The screaming starts again, this time a litany of not Dean, not Dean, and Dean flinches, retracting his hand like he’s been burned.
“Okay,” Dean says, strangled. “It’s okay. I won’t touch you. It’s okay.”
“It’s not that, you idjit,” Bobby says hastily, raising his voice over Sam’s yells, and Dean snaps his eyes to him, tries to ignore the constriction of his throat.
“What?” he asks, voice cracking.
“Not Dean. He still thinks he’s down there, and he don’t wanna see your face.”
“Bobby, if that’s suppose to be comforting in any way--”
“Your face, Dean. He doesn’t want them to use your face!”
Oh. Oh.
“Sam,” Dean says, voice cracking again. “You’re not there. It’s okay, it’s okay.”
Of course they would use his face. It’s the perfect torture.
“Listen to me, Sammy,” Dean says, leaning down to talk into his ear. “You’re out. You’re safe. I’m safe.”
Sam continues to shout, on and on, and a fierce surge of anger rushes through him. He walks away from the bed and kicks the wall.
“Hey,” Bobby shouts at him. “You can lose it or you can help your brother. Your choice.”
Dean steadies himself with a deep breath. “Fuck,” he says, and walks back to Sam’s side.
He glances at Bobby, who’s looking at him with a stern expression. He looks away and keeps his eyes away from Sam’s contorting face. He’s helpless. He can’t do this.
It takes a long time for Sam to stop. Far too fucking long. After an hour, an hour and a half, Sam wears himself out with the thrashing, and Dean manages to slide behind him on the bed, wrap his arms around his brother and pull him against his chest. It seems to stop the screams, easing into just a constant hum of distress, and Bobby gives him a blanket, and he wraps it around Sam to keep him warm. He subconsciously starts rocking him, and after another long hour of slowly rocking in the darkness and mindlessly talking to him, just to do something, the humming stops and Sam’s eyes open.
Dean feels a surge of something like happiness (it’s been too long to know what that feels like) but doesn’t let himself hope too hard. There’s silence for ten minutes, Sam staring straight ahead at the window, and Dean keeps up with the rocking, the gentle talking. Stories, anecdotes, anything that’s a safe topic, which is pretty fucking hard thanks to their entire lives being the dictionary definition of unsafe. He mainly talks about his year with Lisa and Ben, talks sometimes about dad and them as children, doesn’t cross any lines that are to do with hunting, but sometimes he finds himself skimming a fine line.
Bobby leaves them to it and cooks some dinner, and Dean is entirely grateful, more than he can say in words, that the old man has stuck around and hasn’t left him to deal with this alone.
He just keeps gently rocking, keeps talking, and closes his eyes.
***
Sometimes he forgets. He’s not sure. Maybe a lot of the time. He thinks he was something different once. This isn’t what he used to be.
He’s not sure, though. He’s not sure about a lot of things.
He’s in the room again, and he almost wants to sink back into himself, because he knows he can’t be in Room. That’s one of the things he really knows. He’s been with Lucifer forever and longer, and he’s always going to be with him. But he sees the room, the room with blue curtains - curtains, he remembers - a top and a bottom.
Floor. Ceiling.
The only thing that’s stopping him from falling, falling, falling--
he fell for the longest time
-- is that he’s warm. He lets himself feel something that isn’t usual, that isn’t the pain or the cold or the light because it’s not painful or cold or bright in Room. Something swells up in him, some feeling he likes, a not-sad feeling, because Room isn’t with Lucifer.
He’s moving forwards and backwards but he doesn’t feel sick. He can hear something, a someone, he knows who it is - it’s hard to remember - and it’s okay. Okay. Okay.
It’s D.
D is here? Dean shouldn’t be here. He’s about to start screaming again, feel himself begin to shake, and he lets out a small sound that he can’t keep in, but then he stops because he’s still warm. Dean.
It’s okay. He isn’t with Lucifer. He isn’t with Michael. He’s in Room. Dean’s in Room.
“...that’s... Sammy... city and library... dad...”
Those noises aren’t being shouted at him. They’re not even coming out of him. He thinks they belong to someone, and that someone might be Dean.
Blue curtains. Floor. Ceiling. Warm. Dean. Dean.
“Dean.”
He’s not moving anymore, but he’s still warm. The talking has stopped and then he’s being moved, twisted, and it’s not as nice as moving backwards and forwards, and he doesn’t like that.
“Dean,” he tries again. He hopes - hope - that will make the warm come back and wrap around him again and he can go back to listening to the noises that aren’t screams. He hasn’t hoped in the longest time.
Something is different, and he doesn’t like it. He knows that sound. He knows that sound very well. He thinks he made Dean cry.
He shuts his eyes tight, doesn’t want to see Room or the blue curtains anymore because Dean isn’t supposed to be sad. He keeps his eyes squeezed as tight as he can, can’t stop the little sounds that leave him, and tries to latch onto the darkness and warmth as hard as he can.
***
He stands and he watches. He isn’t known.
He watches over the humans and he sees the way the thin threads in Sam’s psyche are torn, frayed, with sections missing and sections burnt away, piles of ash with burning embers. The threads can never be whole and entire again, but, perhaps, they can be tied together.
Sam’s mind is a gloom, and he can see the hand of Lucifer has a mark in everything Sam does. He hopes, that in time, everything can be fixed. He knows that something has to be done. He follows Dean, has been following him all day, and watches as he takes a sip of his drink and talks to Bobby. They talk about Sam, of course. Dean is always thinking and talking about Sam.
Dean is a pool of sadness. There’s a glimmer of hope that sometimes rises to the surface - when Sam stops screaming, when Sam says he’s name, when Sam remembers - but it’s so small and weak, it’s only a matter of time before it sinks.
He keeps watching. And then he disappears.
He picks up a glass vial. He knows what he must do.
***
Water. Warm again. He knows that’s okay.
He’s in water. Michael liked water, slowly dripping, maddening, chilling. The thought comes at him like a sharp blade slicing through him -
Michael liked that, too
- and he feels himself tense, squeeze his eyes harder shut and he’s trying to swallow screams because that makes it worse, always, always.
“...hey... okay, it’s okay... son of a... Sam.”
Sam. Sam.
Dean. It’s Dean. Sam and Dean.
He slowly makes himself relax because if it’s Dean that means it’s not Lucifer and not Michael. He’s warm.
His eyes are open. He’s not sure why. There’s movement and it’s too fast to look at and too bright so he shuts his eyes again.
Dean is quiet, he thinks, and he feels warm drip down his back. Water.
Bath. Bath. Bathtub.
He’s remembering and that makes him feel that not-sad feeling again, because that means he’s out. He’s out. It’s okay. Remembering is nice.
He continues to stay in the water until he feels himself become heavy and it’s harder and harder to notice what’s happening. He’s moving, and now he isn’t and he’s warm still, and everything is soft.
He lets himself slip away and he hopes that he can be found again.
Next chapter | Masterpost