Chapter Text
Since the night he’d turned fifteen, Sam had suffered the worst sleep he’d ever had.
It was barely noticeable at first. He would wake up in the morning, freshly rested, but troubled—a sense of unease that lasted a second, then minutes, then eventually stayed with him for the rest of the day. Sometimes he would wake up at odd hours, drenched in sweat, his heart beating so hard it hurt. Sometimes he wouldn’t even sleep at all—staring at the ceiling for hours, his eyes counting the cracks, the loose chips of paint. Desperately tired, but vigilantly awake.
It wasn’t until a few weeks before the nightmares started.
They were nothing he could decipher at first, just blurred images and unintelligible whispers. Enough to leave him unsettled, but little else. Eventually, the blurs faded, and faces were formed in the dark. The whispers became louder, and louder, their garbled messages a warning for something he couldn’t understand. He bared witness to them, these people inside his head, forever praying that he would wake up soon.
He sat there now, staring blankly across the room from his place at the kitchen table, his breakfast laying cold and untouched in front of him. His brother sat across from him, his face, too, vacant and distracted. He had a scrap of paper on him, an old envelope. He had been doodling mindlessly for ten minutes, the pen almost faded from use. Sam’s mind rushed back to reality, and his eyes focused. He took a look at the paper, and frowned.
“You’re doing it again,” he said dully.
Dean blinked, taking in a quick inhale, as if in his fugue state he’d forgotten to breathe.
“What?” he asked Sam distractedly.
Sam nodded towards the envelope.
“Those mazes… those… labyrinths. You’ve been drawing them everywhere lately.”
Dean took a look at the drawings. Dozens of them adorned the paper; identical in every single way. They all carried on from one another, their loop reaching the middle to unveil some secret, empty prize. He blinked again, but his face was as blank as stone.
“Have I?” he said, almost to himself, putting the pen down slowly. “Guess I hadn’t noticed.”
Sam rolled his eyes. Dean had been living with them for two weeks now, since around the time Sam’s nightmares had started. His father had told him Dean was back to help at the garage, and staying here was easier than commuting—but Sam knew it was because he’d lost his other job, and Lisa had thrown him out.
Dean had been acting so strange; they had barely said more than two words to each other the entire time he’d been back. On the nights Sam was too scared to close his eyes, he would lie awake, listening to the sounds coming from the next room. It was Dean doing… something. Sam couldn’t tell, but whatever it was, it kept them both awake all night. Sam didn’t think either of them had had a proper night’s rest since Dean had moved back in. He wanted to ask him about it, to beg Dean to tell him what he was doing, alone in his old room, but something kept stopping him.
The bleary face of his father appeared from the doorway, yawning and rubbing his eyes wildly. Perhaps he had not been sleeping either.
He came behind Sam and roughed up his hair—something he knew Sam hated. He shrugged off his father and stared resentfully at his dried-up toast.
John sat in the chair next to him, oblivious of his sons’ icy silence.
“Morning all,” he greeted warmly, then, turned to Sam. “You gonna help your old dad at the garage later, kiddo?”
Sam looked up from his plate.
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
John laughed.
“Come on,” he pleaded. “I could do with the extra help.”
Sam scowled, feeling his jaw beginning to tighten.
“Why doesn’t Dean help you? That’s why he’s back, isn’t it?”
His father and Dean shared a glance, too quick for Sam to discern the look in both their eyes. John merely shrugged.
“Suit yourself.”
It was the nightmares’ fault. Sam hadn’t slept in two weeks. He could feel himself becoming unravelled. Hostile. He couldn’t take it out on John.
Sam forced himself to smile.
“I’m just kidding, Dad. I’ll swing by later.”
He had started to become obsessed these last few weeks. Sam didn’t know if it was just because he was getting older, or if there was something he’d seen or heard that had triggered it. It was his mother, or, more appropriately, the memory of her. There was a photograph his dad kept hidden in one of his bedside drawers that Sam had found one night, when he had awoken from one of his troubled dreams. John had fallen asleep downstairs, the television still lulling a re-run of some ancient show as he snored softly from the armchair. Sam had gotten out of bed, desperate for something to fill him, to help him forget. He knew John hid cigarettes in his room, would smoke them occasionally after a stressful day at the garage. Sam had tried one once, almost choking up a lung in the process, but in that moment he wanted to do it again, to feel the heat blaze into him, to breathe in until he was calm.
He had found that photo of Mary, and everything changed.
He knew that she had died when he was a baby, perished in a fire that that destroyed their home. John had never divulged anything more about her, and neither had Dean. As a child, he had barely thought of her, for how could he miss someone he didn’t even know? But looking at the photograph, now, at fifteen-years-old, Sam was overcome with realisation. A realisation that he had seen her before, but in a dream, in a dream that plagued him every night, screaming at him, begging him for something he could not translate.
He had stolen the picture from his father’s drawer and studied it for hours. She was no longer a blur; she was beautiful, with her golden blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and an even brighter smile. How could he have been so apathetic before? She was his mother, the woman who birthed him—and some how, some way, she had appeared to him.
Sam passed his father the wrench, John’s face concealed beneath the car he was working on.
“What was Mom like?” he asked, as casually as he could.
John’s voice was muffled from beneath the car.
“Huh?” he asked distractedly.
“Mom,” repeated Sam louder. “What was she like?”
John stopped what he was doing, slowly wheeling himself from under the bumper. He looked at Sam pointedly.
“Where did that come from?”
Sam shrugged nonchalantly, ignoring the way his heart was speeding inside his chest.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you want to talk about her?”
John sighed, but not unkindly.
“I’m a bit busy at the moment, Sam.”
He kicked his leg out from beneath him, preparing to go back under. Anger boiled inside Sam, and he stopped his father with a boot to the wheel.
“I don’t just mean now,” he said carefully, forcing himself not to break his father’s gaze. “You never talk about her. Neither does Dean.”
John dithered, sighing again.
“Losing your mother was hard on both of us,” he started uncomfortably. “It’s not… it’s not something we like to remember.”
Sam scoffed.
“On both of you?” he said back to John unkindly, his anger rising. “You don’t think it’s ever hard on me? I never even knew her, Dad. I wouldn’t even know what she looked like if it weren’t for that one photo you keep hidden away!” With this, John’s eyes widened, as if Sam had just uncovered an awful secret, his father’s private shame. Perhaps he had.
Sam sighed.
“I don’t know the sound of her voice,” he said sadly, “how she smelt, what her favourite song was. I know nothing about her because you won’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Sam,” John said finally.
He waited for his dad to continue, to explain why it was he treated Mary like a shameful secret, but there was only silence. He felt it again: the anger, the resentment, the hostility.
“Is that all you can say—” Sam exploded, “you’re sorry? My whole life, I’ve felt like an outsider. Dean had eighteen years with her. I had six months! How is that fair? How is it fair to keep her from me?”
John looked up at him, tears welling in his eyes.
“I can’t talk about your mother,” he said quietly. “I just can’t. Those were… dark times, Sam, for all of us.” He shook his head then, tearing his gaze away.
“If you really want to know about Mary,” he said finally, “ask your brother. If he’s ready, he’ll tell you.”
When Sam went to bed that night, he had a different kind of nightmare.
It started the same. Mary was in his head, her face as clear as the photograph. She was… frantic, screaming at him, begging him for something. Whatever it was, beyond recognition. He screamed back, put his hands on her beautiful face, desperate for the truth, for answers.
Only, it wasn’t his mother he was staring at.
It was a man. A man with blue eyes, and he was smiling at Sam in a curious, knowing way.
He opened his mouth to tell Sam something, and then the dream ended.
Sam awoke with a start, his chest drenched in a sweat that had become so familiar to him during those past few weeks. His eyes blinked rapidly, trying to get used to the darkness. That’s when he saw it—him—the man with blue eyes. He was standing in the corner of his room, smiling at Sam. Sam bolted upright, screaming.
He opened his eyes, immediately darting them to the corner the man had just been standing in. There was nobody there, of course. Sam had been asleep the whole time.
Still, Sam’s throat felt raw—as if he had been screaming.
He didn’t dare go back to sleep the rest of the night. Instead, he browsed his phone for hours. He’d had the Stanford University website bookmarked for months. Three years. Three years, and he could be rid of this place. He figured he would like California. The weather, the beaches. Sam had never been to the beach. Perhaps he would apply for law school eventually, maybe even meet a nice girl.
It was a fantasy he allowed himself to get lost in. He wasn’t going to become a mechanic like his father, like Dean. He would be so much more than that.
A noise from the next room interrupted his thoughts. It was Dean doing… whatever it was he did all night. He checked the time; it had just passed six-thirty. He yawned, stretched, and got out of bed.
He went out into the hallway, and knocked three times on Dean’s door.
He heard a scuffling coming from behind it, a shuffling of what sounded like dozens of papers. Dean eventually opened the door a crack, and peeked his head out.
“You’re up early,” he said to Sam.
Sam raised his brows.
“Same could be said for you.”
He tried to take a look at the surrounding area behind his brother’s head, but he could see nothing but Dean’s disheveled appearance, yesterday’s outfit still hanging off him.
“Have you been in those clothes all night?”
“Uh…” started Dean, opening the door as quick as lightning and pouring himself out of it, “don’t worry about it. What’s up?”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure,” Dean nodded, turning around quickly to lock his bedroom door. “You okay? You look exhausted.”
Sam’s jaw tensed, annoyed at how suspicious Dean was acting. Why couldn’t he leave his bedroom like a normal person?
“I haven’t been sleeping well these past few weeks,” Sam said finally. “Since you moved back in, actually.”
Dean nodded conversationally, though it looked like he was barely listening.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I’ve been dreaming of Mom.”
Dean’s face fell.
“Really?” he said, his teeth gritting.
“Yeah,” continued Sam, testing the waters, “only now there’s this man with her. A man with blue eyes.”
Dean’s face changed, so quick Sam almost missed it. What was it? Alarm? Anger? Before Sam could figure it out, Dean’s face fell to one of blankness and simply shrugged.
“It’s just a dream, Sam. Don’t worry about it.”
Sam had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Of course, he’d been stupid enough to hope Dean would have anything interesting to say, anything remotely profound.
“Right. Sure. You know, Dad told me I should ask you about her.”
“About Mom?”
Sam nodded.
“Why would he say that?"
“He said he couldn’t talk about her, that you would, if you were ready. I don’t know what’s wrong with him; I already know how she died. I just want to know what kind of person she was.”
Dean dithered where he stood, surely he wouldn’t refuse Sam a request as simple as the one’d he asked? He wasn’t asking for much. He just wanted more than the face in the photograph.
Finally, Dean spoke.
“Well…” he started slowly, “she was… really great, actually. Smart, witty, didn’t take Dad’s shit. Didn’t take mine. Beautiful as hell. Just… she was awesome.”
Dean was smiling now. So was Sam. For the first time, Dean had actually answered a question of his honestly.
“I wish I’d known her,” Sam said then. “I wish you guys talked about her more. Sometimes I think you both treat her like a dirty secret.”
Dean closed his eyes, sighing.
“It’s complicated, Sammy.”
And with that, the moment was gone.
“I don’t care,” argued Sam, his anger suddenly forming. “I’m so sick of being treated like a kid.”
“We just wanna protect you,” countered Dean.
“From what?”
Dean had moved out when Sam was only four years old. He visited enough times, sure, but he didn’t know Sam, not really. He hadn’t been there to see him grow up. To Dean, Sam was still a baby, a pathetic, whining baby, incapable of looking after himself. John had always loved having Dean around. Sam didn’t think he’d seen his dad so happy since Dean had moved back in.
Dean was the favourite; of course he was. He and John dressed the same, talked the same, liked the same music, did the same job. Sam was quiet, preferred his computer to cars, salad to steak. They were little things, but they were enough. They barred him from the special Men’s Club that John and Dean were a part of, had been a part of since Mary was still alive. How much had they been through that Sam wasn’t aware of? How many secrets were they keeping from him?
“Things,” finally answered Dean bluntly. “Look, you want breakfast?”
“I don’t want breakfast, I want you to be straight with me, for once in your life!”
Dean looked at him then, curiously. For one hopeful second, Sam thought his brother might finally take him seriously.
“Wait,” he said. “Sam, where’s your amulet?”
It was not the question he was expecting, and it caught him off guard.
“What?” he asked dumbly.
“Your amulet,” Dean said. “The thing you’ve had since you were a baby?”
“That? Um, it’s probably in my room,” answered Sam submissively.
Dean marched past him.
“Well, let’s go get it, then.”
Sam followed after him, trying to get in front.
“Stop changing the subject,” he said, but Dean had already opened his bedroom door and gone inside.
“Hey,” Sam shouted, “do you mind? This is my room!”
Dean started opening drawers, checked his windowsill, under his bed. If Sam wasn’t so annoyed, he would have laughed at the ridiculousness of it.
“Dean, stop it,” he tried.
“Where is it?” was all his brother said.
Dean continued looking for several minutes, sometimes in places he’d already checked. Finally he gave up, staring down at Sam like a father would a disappointing son.
“You lost it,” he said, so resentfully it almost scared him. “I can’t believe you lost it.”
“I didn’t!” Sam defended, completely flustered. “I—it’s somewhere!”
“Jesus Christ, Sam.”
“Who cares?” he retaliated. “It’s just a stupid necklace, anyway!”
Dean looked at him begrudgingly a second longer, but said nothing. He walked out of Sam’s room and closed the door behind him.
Sam was panting with rage. What the hell had just happened? They had started to have the first real conversation they’d had since Dean moved in, only for it to end in the most bizarre, volatile way possible.
Who cared about a stupid necklace? He hadn’t thought about in weeks.
Come to think of it, Sam realised, he hadn’t seen it since his fifteenth birthday.
Dean had been avoiding Sam since their argument, staying out all day and only returning once Sam had gone to his room for the night. Every day, Dean’s bedroom door remained locked, an impenetrable fortress to which only his brother had the key. There was something in his room he didn’t want Sam to see, an answer to his questions finally, perhaps of Mary, perhaps more. John was clueless, going about his days like a man without a care in the world. He hated both of them, Sam realised guiltily one day.
He still saw the blue-eyed man, more now than his own mother. The most troubling thing of all, was sometimes he was awake during the times he appeared. So fast—quicker than a second—he would see a figure in the corner of his eye, a reflection in the edge of a mirror. Dare he admit it, but the figure was becoming a comfort rather than a phantom. He understood him, this man, Sam’s frustrations, Sam’s resentment. He would try so hard to catch him, so he would have someone to talk to.
He was so desperate for someone to talk to.
One morning he found himself flicking through his contacts until it fell on a familiar name. Sam put the phone to his ear and heard it ring four times before a woman answered.
“Hello?”
“Lisa?” he said in a timid voice. “It’s Sam.”
“Oh…” she started, surprised. “Hi, Sam. How are you?”
She spoke to him politely, friendly, even. He was grateful for that.
“I’m fine, thanks. Look. I need to talk to you about Dean.”
Lisa sighed.
“Did he…” she started, “did he ask you to call me?” She sounded almost hopeful.
“No,” replied Sam, perhaps a little too tactlessly, but at that moment he was too concerned with getting answers than making her feel better. “Lisa, why’d you kick him out?”
“Kick him out?” she repeated back to him indignantly. “Is that what he told you?”
Sam frowned.
“Well, isn’t that why he’s here?”
Lisa sighed again, unable to speak for several moments.
“Sam,” she finally said, her voice tired, “your brother left me six months ago.”
Sam stared at the phone, his eyes wide.
“What?” he demanded into it.
“Look,” she said, “I don’t know what he told you, but the last time I saw Dean he told me he didn’t love me anymore, and that he was moving out. That was in January. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. I called your dad, and John said he was living with you now.”
“Yeah,” flabbergasted Sam, “but only for like… six weeks, if that. What was he doing the other four months?”
“Beats me, Sam. I’m sorry, but he’s not my responsibility anymore.”
He was so confused. Everything she was saying, completely contradicted everything Sam thought he knew.
“Lisa…” he struggled, trying to find the words, “you were the best thing that ever happened to him. He’s a mess without you; please don’t give up on him.”
“He gave up on me, Sam,” Lisa replied sadly. “I’m sorry. I sent the divorce papers to your house two weeks ago, and he’s yet to return them. If you want to do me a favour, you’ll make him sign.”
A memory flashed in Sam’s head, then, of Thanksgiving two years ago. He and his father had gone to visit Dean and Lisa in their home, and Lisa had cooked the most amazing meal Sam had ever eaten. He never even cared that much about food, but that night he had left their house feeling full and happy. Lisa had been pregnant at the time; they had announced it during dinner.
Of course, three months later she had miscarried, but that day had been wonderful, for all of them.
Now look where they all were.
“Lisa,” he said, forcing himself back to the present, “can I ask you one more thing?”
“Yeah, Sam?”
“Did he start drawing mazes when he was still with you?”
“Oh, God,” Lisa laughed humourlessly, “he’s still doing that? My therapist seems to think it’s his subconscious’s way of ‘trying to escape his reality.’ If his idea of freedom is moving back in with his dad and teenage brother at thirty-three, then I guess he got his wish.”
She was bitter, of course she was. She had every right to be.
“Lisa… I’m sorry,” said Sam then, “I just don’t understand. What changed? He loved you so much.”
“I loved him too, Sam,” Lisa replied, the bitterness gone from her voice. “I guess I still do.” She said nothing for a few moments, as if deliberating her next words.
“You want my honest opinion?” she said finally, not expecting an answer. “I think he’s in love with someone else. I think he always has been, since before we were even married. I don’t know who it is. I don’t know if they’re still around, even. I just know there’s someone, and it’s taken until now to ruin him completely.”
He said goodbye to Lisa, then, and hung up the phone.
He felt sick. Their conversation had made his brother sound like a stranger, an imposter that had settled itself inside his home. Six months, she said. Six months since he had left her, and he had only been living with them for less than two.
He scared him, Sam realised suddenly. Dean scared him, because he didn’t seem like him anymore.
He marched to his brother’s room, and pounded on the door.
“Dean? Let me in.”
“Not now, Sam,” he heard his brother’s irritable voice from inside.
Sam continued knocking.
“I really need to talk to you.”
Dean ignored him for a minute longer. Sam did not stop knocking, and eventually, his brother came to the door and marched out of it. Again, too quick for Sam to take a peek inside.
“What is it?” he asked impatiently.
Suddenly, Sam didn’t want to admit what he was about to say.
“I rang Lisa,” he said finally, forcing himself to speak before he lost his nerve.
Dean’s jaw tensed, but he spoke softly.
“You did what?”
He needed to get through to his brother; he just had to.
“I’m worried about you, Dean,” Sam said desperately. “I rang Lisa to see if she’d take you back, and she told me you were the one who ended things, not her.”
“Sam,” said Dean, shaking his head. “You don’t have the right to be playing Cupid behind my back. What happened with me and Lisa is none of your business.”
“And she said something else, too,” continued Sam, getting bolder. “That it didn’t happen six weeks ago, that you’ve been moved out for half a year. What have you been doing, Dean? Where were you before you came here?”
Dean only sighed.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said finally.
The last shred of love Sam had for him disappeared in that moment.
“What is up with you, Dean?” he asked cruelly, tauntingly. “What happened? What do those mazes you draw mean? Lisa had her theories, but I wanna hear yours.”
“Sam…”
“And I hear you, at night,” he went on. “You’re not sleeping, that’s for sure. What are you doing in there?”
“Forget it, Sammy,” Dean fought back tiredly. “I’m just going through a hard time, that’s all.”
“Can you stop treating me like I’m a child?” exploded Sam, his fists clenching at his sides. “Something’s going on that you’re not telling me!”
“Leave it, Sam.”
His brother turned to walk away, but Sam grabbed his shoulder and forced him back violently.
“No!” he screamed. “Tell me the truth!”
“Theres’s nothing to tell, Sam!” Dean screamed back. “Go to your room!”
“You’re not Dad,” panted Sam, “you can’t tell me what to do.”
“I am your big brother; that’s good enough for me!”
Sam laughed then, right in Dean’s face.
“I won’t take orders from a loser,” he said, settling.
Dean blinked, as if he hadn’t heard him.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me,” mocked Sam, letting himself get closer. “You’re a loser. You are thirty-three years old, and what have you got to show for it? A failed marriage, and a job you only got because you’re related to the boss?”
“Sam,” Dean said softly. “Stop.”
He wanted to hit Dean, to have Dean hit him. Something.
“I just… I can’t stand this family!” he cried. “You’re pathetic. Both of you. How can you just go on and accept such a pointless, boring existence?!”
With that, Dean took a step forward, almost making Sam shrink back. He got in his face, spoke so quietly Sam had to stop himself from breathing just to hear.
“You have no idea the kinds of sacrifices I have had to make for this family,” Dean said slowly. “What I have done for you, Sam. What I have protected you from.”
He pulled away, turned around and started to walk away. Sam shouted after him.
“What have you done for me? What have you protected me from, exactly?”
“Just leave it, Sammy,” Dean replied, still walking.
“Don’t call me that! I am not a little boy any more!”
“I know,” said Dean, stopping, the anger in his eyes suddenly gone. “That’s what scares me.”
John and Dean left early the next morning. Sam heard the door closing about seven, but he had no intention of getting up; he was just going to lie there. It was a Saturday, after all, and Sam had no one to make plans with.
The blue-eyed man was standing over the far side of his room. Sam blinked, expecting the figure to disappear just as quickly—but this time, he remained. He smiled at Sam as he sat up slowly from his bed. The man said nothing, instead, he pointed his head towards Sam’s bedroom door. Sam turned to look, only for a second, but when he turned his eyes back to the man, the room was empty.
Sam sighed, almost burst out laughing. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in almost two months. Surely he was crazy by now. Regardless, he got out of bed and got dressed. He opened his door, preparing to go downstairs and make a breakfast he probably wouldn’t touch, when something stopped him.
Dean had forgotten to lock his door.
Sam’s heartbeat quickened. The man knew, that’s why he’d appeared to him a moment ago.
He could do it. Go into Dean’s room, find the answers he was looking for. There must be something in there, surely.
He crept towards it, as if Dean was still in the house and could catch him at any moment. He pushed open the door, and walked inside.
His room was covered in drawings, stuck to the walls, laid on the floor, covering the worktops, the bed, every possible surface. It was of a labyrinth, that same goddamned labyrinth he’d already drawn a thousand times before. Sam’s heart quickened in his chest. This was… insane. Dean would have to be insane to do this. He walked through the drawings, towards the bed.
He’d left his car keys on top of the blanket. Sam picked them up, and without thinking, put them in his pocket. He turned around, and that’s when he saw it, the amulet, resting on the bedside table. He picked it up, staring at the sullen face of the horned man. Dean must have stolen it from him, the day he’d moved back in. Then he’d had the audacity to accuse Sam of losing it.
“He’s crazy…”
Sam wanted to leave this room, and never go inside it again. His brother was truly unhinged. No wonder he’d lost his job, his home, his wife. Sam turned to leave, an overwhelming urge to not only escape the room, but the entire house and never look back—but something caught his eye.
Across the room, underneath more drawings of the labyrinth, was another page filled with something he couldn’t quite decipher. They were words, that much was obvious, but what they said, he’d have to get closer to tell. He walked over to it, and picked it up.
Castiel.
It was written a hundred times on the page, over and over again in a hasty scribble. He turned the page around, and it was printed a hundred times more. Sam dug through more pages underneath. Castiel was written again, and again, and again, a million times over.
Castiel and the labyrinth. The labyrinth and Castiel. The whole room had been consumed by them until it no longer resembled a room at all. Sam felt sick, dizzy. He clutched at his head as a pounding started behind his eye. He stumbled out of the room, barely conscious, his nose starting to bleed.
He wasn’t thinking, he just knew he had to leave. Sam staggered down the stairs, clutching at the banister, blood dripping down his face. He yanked open the door and fled from the house without bothering to look back.
Dean’s beloved Impala was parked at the end of the drive, John’s truck having taken them both down to the garage. He opened the car and sat down in the driver’s seat heavily. Dean would kill him if he knew he had driven his car—well, ‘stolen’ would be the better word for it. Sam didn’t even have his license, but none of these thoughts even crossed his mind. The only thing he was sure of was that he had to get away.
He turned the keys into the ignition, stepped on the gas, and sped away. He just drove in whatever direction he could. Maybe if he was lucky, he would drive straight to California. Become a lawyer, and marry a pretty girl.
He drove faster and faster, the road signs, the other cars, all becoming a blur—like faces in a dream. He could feel his eyes beginning to droop, the pounding in his head so sharp he felt like he might be dying. Neither of these things stopped him, instead, he put his foot down harder on the pedal.
He drove like this, free and reckless, until there was no more road to drive down. There was a sharp bend, a skidding of brakes—a head-on collision with a telephone wire.
And then, darkness.
Darkness, then light.
He opened his eyes, his nose feeling blocked, his eyes fuzzy. His face was planted in the airbag that had exploded from the steering wheel. He blinked, his head feeling foggy, but somehow free of pain.
He opened the door of Dean’s Impala, almost falling out of it. Its front had been completely decimated by the crash, the windshield shattered, the interior destroyed. It didn’t look like a car at all, anymore. By rights, Sam shouldn’t have even survived.
“Hello, Sam,” a voice said from behind him.
Sam yelled, whirling around so fast he could have broken his own neck. There, stood before him, was the man from his dreams, the man he saw everywhere. The smiling man with blue eyes, who was always trying to tell him something but could never quite get the words out.
He was talking to him now, though, that same smile painted on him like a tireless mask.
Sam could barely breathe.
“Am I dead?” he asked him in a hoarse whisper.
The man shook his head.
“No,” he said calmly.
“Am I dreaming?”
The man shook his head again.
“What do you want from me?” Sam said then, suddenly desperate.
“Many things,” the man replied. “With your permission.”
“What… what kinds of things?”
The man waved a hand at Sam.
“Oh, I won’t bore you with the details,” he said conversationally. “I only want to concern you with one thing—an answer to a question.”
Sam blinked.
“What question is that?”
The man’s eyes seemed to darken then, to a deep jewelled blue, like Sam was staring at the bottom of the ocean.
“Have you ever had the feeling,” the man said slowly, “that your brother was lying to you?”
Sam’s heart skipped a beat, his legs feeling like jelly.
“Yes,” he answered tensely, “and he always made me feel crazy for it.”
The man nodded sympathetically, his eyes shining now.
“Understandable. He couldn’t have you getting smart; it would make things too complicated.”
“You know his secrets?” Sam dared himself to ask.
The man grinned.
“I know everything.”
“Prove it.”
“Well,” the man started surely, letting out a heavy breath, “your mother, Mary, she didn’t just die in a house fire. She was murdered. She was murdered by a man named Castiel.”
Nausea sledgehammered itself into the pit of Sam’s stomach, almost making him hunch over. He grit his teeth, willed himself not to break the man’s gaze.
“Castiel…” he said, excruciatingly slowly. “I know that name. I’ve seen it written.”
“Yes,” said the man bluntly, crossing his arms, “among your brother’s things. Another lie he has kept from you.”
A thousand thoughts, questions, filled Sam’s head, but he forced himself to focus on just one.
“Does… does my dad know? Is that why he refuses to talk about her?”
“Oh, no,” dismissed the man, “of that he’s very much ignorant. No, he doesn’t talk about her because he’s ashamed.”
“Ashamed of what?” Sam asked.
“Have you ever seen your brother’s scars, his burns?”
“He said he got them working at the garage.”
The man shook his head smugly, satisfied he had the answer yet again.
“Your father used to beat him, Sam. Burn cigarette ends on his skin.”
Tears welled in Sam’s eyes at this. Not his dad, surely. Despite all his forthcomings, John Winchester was a good man; he just had to be.
“No…” Sam said, feeling dizzy again.
“He blamed Dean for what happened to Mary,” the man continued without empathy, “said the fire was his fault. He had no idea just how right he really was.”
“I don’t understand,” Sam begged. “I don’t understand any of this. Who is Castiel? Why would he murder my mother?”
“He wanted to upset the natural order,” answered the blue-eyed man, “to change your family’s destiny. You know you’re special, don’t you? You honestly didn’t just think you were a mechanic’s son from Kansas? You’re royalty. You were meant to rule. But not this place, not even this world. But a land beyond this one. That is where you belong. That is what your brother has been keeping from you all these years. You visited this place when you were small, too young to remember. Dean stole you back from it, so you would live a life of banality. He doesn’t want you to live up to your true potential. Neither does your father. The only person who knows what you’re capable of is me, and I’m the only one who can take you back. Sam. Do you want to fulfil your destiny? Do you want to rebuild what Castiel, what your brother destroyed? Do you want revenge?”
The world felt like it had stopped turning, as if nothing else mattered now but Sam’s answer. The strange man who knew everything stood smiling at him, as he had done so many times before.
His life had been a lie, Sam realised; his family monsters. Dean had known the man that had murdered their mother, kept him a secret all these years, written his name over and over again in worship, like he loved him.
And John; he had hurt Dean for it. The scars of his beatings forever inlaid into his brother’s body, of abuse both ignorant and aware. It made Sam sick. Who were these people, these people who proclaimed they loved him, that they only had his best interests at heart? They were liars, the both of them. They truly were despicable.
The smiling man stood patiently, as if reading his thoughts, and relishing them. Could he be trusted? He had been more honest with Sam in the last five minutes than his family had been his entire life, but still, he didn’t like the way he was looking at him, like a starving lion presented with fresh meat. There was silence for a few moments more. Sam realised, then, that he had already made up his mind the second the question had left the blue-eyed man’s lips.
He continued smiling at Sam, he, too, already knowing his answer.
“Yes,” the boy said finally, his voice barely a whisper.
The man bowed slightly, raising his arm.
“Then take my hand.”
His fingers twitched to take it—they almost did, but something made Sam falter.
“Wait a minute,” he said slowly, watching the way the man’s smile fell ever so slightly. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me your name.”
The man said nothing for a moment, the sick feeling returning in Sam’s stomach. Then, as if Sam had just told a joke, the man tilted his head back and laughed heartily.
“Of course,” he said between chuckles, “how rude of me.
My name,” he said, “is Lucifer.”
The End