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Sam said no.
It felt good, solid, something he could hold on to. He was proud of himself, his teeth drawn up in a cocky smile. He’d grown from the boy who said yes all those years ago, grown from being the boy who had been driven to even open the cage in the first place.
He wasn’t even the same boy that fell into hell with Lucifer and even the angel knew it. Sam wouldn’t fall prey to any of the devil’s tactics. There was nothing that Lucifer could say to change his mind. Dangling Amelia in front of him, throwing him not shutting the gates in his face wouldn’t work. He would not make the same mistakes.
The condescending smirk on the Devil’s face hardened and Sam expected his fear to grow in the silence after his declaration as they stood in this quasi-cage of Rowena’s making.
It wasn’t the dark, inescapable pit of the real cage, but lighting flashed around them, and Lucifer’s eyes glowed red in the shadows. It was cold and getting colder every second, Sam’s breath showing up in front of his face.
But the strange calm that descended on him from the moment he got in there was still there.
Maybe it was because he was still holding on to hope. He knew Dean was coming for him and Lucifer wasn’t the same terrifying monster he’d been ten years ago, ice-cold and certain in his destruction. Instead, everything he said in his little speech just made it sound like the angel was kind of desperate, as if he was on a time limit, needed Sam to agree as fast as possible. All those years ago, he had circled Sam, worn him down, and made promises so that Sam would say yes even as his vessel cracked and burned. But now, it was like Lucifer had expected Sam to come down there and say, “Lucifer, you’re my only hope,” and fall at the man’s feet, and that just wasn’t the case.
It hadn’t been God pushing him down here, just more manipulation, and sure the thought of Lucifer hearing his every prayer, laughing at his hopelessness played in his brain but the angel had tried to back them into a wall and it hadn’t worked. Sam laughed, his grin growing.
They would find another way to defeat Amara, they didn’t need the devil. And that feeling, that certainty, it felt so fucking good.
“Okay,” the Devil said, nodding his head. And here it was, Sam thought, the inevitable torture and threats as Lucifer kept him here for as long as he could. He expected immediate violence, all of his memories of the cage swelling inside of him. Lucifer had already done his worst to him. What he could do in this facade of the cage couldn’t compare. So Sam was terrified but at peace, knowing that he’d already suffered and survived and could do so again.
But then the Devil was leaning forward, closer to him, extending two fingers.
“Plan B,”
“Don’t,” Sam tried to say before he felt the angel’s fingers press gently against his forehead and then everything went black.
“I have to hand it to you, Sammy,” The Devil said, his voice echoing and reverberating around Sam. “This wouldn’t have worked if your memory wasn’t so good.”
They were in the cage, in the real cage, darkness so pervasive and consuming and heavy that Sam could hardly breathe and he shook, could feel himself coming apart at the seams. His heart beat wildly out of his chest.
(He didn’t know it, but outside his body was convulsing on the hard floor, thrashing as if he were caught in the thrall of a nightmare).
“Lucifer,” He tried to say, fear making the name come out alongside a choked-off scream. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything, was ceasing to exist.
“Where are the flames?” Lucifer asked him, Sam jerking his head towards the angel’s voice. “The torture?” A sound like the fluttering of wings. “What does it say about you, Sammy, that this is the worst part of the cage to you?” Sam was reaching out, trying to grasp onto the Archangel, but came away with nothing. The devil laughed at him. “You repressed this so far down I had to go digging for it. Who would have guessed the hunter would be afraid of being all alone in the dark?”
It felt like he was having a heart attack, and he seized, and bit down on his tongue so hard he tasted blood.
He heard the angel sigh, and then there was a snap.
“Don’t say I never do anything for you, kiddo.”
They were in a motel room, and the devil was on top of him.
Sam was on his back on an old bed, the room around them was nondescript, identical to thousands of rooms he and Dean had stayed in through the years. The devil gripped his wrists, keeping him pinned to the bed.
“Now this takes me back,” Lucifer said. He was in Ruby’s body, a sharp grin on his face.
“Lucifer, don’t,” Sam tried to say, and the angel shook his head. Sam fell silent from the ingrained habit more than anything else.
“I don’t think I want to hear you speak unless it’s to say yes.” It was Lucifer’s matter-of-fact tone, delivered in Ruby’s voice with a twist of her red lips, and Sam flinched. He never thought he would miss her voice (and they had killed her, but a part of him still missed her even as the thought of her filled him with fury).
“I’ll never say yes,” Sam snapped and then curled in on himself, waiting for the angel to strike him, reminded himself that his brother was coming, that he just had to hold on, that Lucifer wasn’t going to kill him because that would defeat the point of all this.
Ruby, Lucifer just tilted her head.
“You don’t have to say anything at all right now, Sam,” her lips traveled up the column of his neck and he strained against her hold against him. “Just feel.” They were kissing, and his body surged as he ground up into her body, and she was laughing even as their lips slid together. It was horrible (because Ruby manipulated him, used him, and promised him false things) and it was amazing because her stolen body molded perfectly to his. She was so warm compared to the ice of the darkness.
Lucifer had once said he liked Ruby and called her one of his most loyal. “She cared about you, you know?” He had said. His hand had been inside of Sam. He’d cut a hole in the same place that Dean had stabbed her, had plunged his entire hand inside, and lit up Sam’s body with pain as his fingers played with his guts. Sam’s blood had dripped down the devil’s arm as he choked with pain. “She might have even loved you. You know if demons could even feel something like that.”
Now, Sam tried to get away from her, from Lucifer’s insistent mouth, and crushed down any sounds that wanted to leak out of his mouth. He didn't want this, thought 'no, no, no,' even as he could hear the Devil's voice inside of him saying 'I never gave you anything you didn't want,', could hear him saying 'you feel so good, Sammy, you were made for me,'
“This is your memory. Do you remember what happens next?” The devil’s voice curled in his ears, in his mind.
Sam watched as the dark of Ruby’s hair gave way to blonde, and then Jess tilted her head up to smile at him. Pink lips, even the outfit changed, going from the black that Ruby had been in to sheer white. She was soft everywhere Ruby was hard. Her hand traveled down his broad chest, slipped under the fabric to rub against his skin, and dragged nails against his nipples. “I missed you, baby,” she said. “It’s been so long,”
Ten years ago, hundreds of years ago, if he included the cage and Jess was still this dull ache in his heart.
“No,” Sam said, and he had said that back then, too. Had begged Lucifer to stop, had wanted the angel to draw a line somewhere. “No, you promised you wouldn’t use her,” the Devil smirked, and it looked out of place on Jess’s face.
“Does that sound like me?” The devil asked, his voice still on that same conversational note. “Would I make promises I don’t keep? Would I lie to you, Sam?”
But the weight on top of him was gone and in the room’s corner, his mother stood. She was in white, just like Jess, but the frown on her face was all Lucifer. Sam scrambled back in the bed as Mary took steady steps towards him.
“Answer me,” the devil said in his mother’s voice. “Would I lie to you, Sam? Have I ever lied to you?”
“Lies by omission are still lies, Lucifer and you've manipulated me,” the Devil gripped his chin between his fingers and yanked him up. It hurt, but it was so tame considering the pain that Lucifer had inflicted on him. The Devil tilted his head to look at him.
“It’s a yes or no question, Sam.”
“No,” Sam spit out and the Devil smiled. Mary’s eyes crinkled with something that looked like love.
“Remember that,”
Darkness again.
Sam screamed as he felt his molecules collapse, as impossible weights of gravity pressed down on him, as memories melted out of his head.
“Be quiet,” The Morningstar said. And Sam can see him now, shining in the dark, so bright that it burns. Sam latched on to him, trying to remind himself that this was a memory, that it was not real. That Lucifer only ever let him suffer in the darkness of the cage when Sam really pissed him off. “Listen to me.”
“The Darkness will make the whole world like this, kiddo. She’s gonna blot out the stars and the sky. She won’t hesitate, and you can’t stop her, not without me.” Sam couldn’t breathe, could feel Lucifer’s wings (cold, burning, bright) brushing against his cheek. When did he start crying?
“Do you think that Dean will survive this? Will those humans that you’ve died for? Or the other angels?” And if it was anyone but Lucifer, Sam might have believed that they cared and Sam hated himself for even considering his words, tried to imagine Dean in the void with him and couldn’t, remembered that even Micheal, the sword of heaven had raged, had, according to Lucifer, broken as well. “They aren’t like us.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Sam tried to say through the blood filling his mouth and the devil hummed.
They’re back in the quasi-cage. Sam lay on his back, pressed against the bars. Lucifer was over him, his hand was on Sam’s face, burning cold.
“I still won’t say yes,” and words were always hard to come by after being dropped in the darkness.
“You’re speaking Enochian,” the devil said gently and Sam startled, dug deep into his brain for English. “And we both know that one day you will, because deep down, you know I’m right,” the Devil leaned back. “So here’s what’s going to happen next. I’m going to let you sit in that memory of yours in the dark, and you know what to say when you’re ready to come out.”
“No,” Sam said, reaching up to grab for the angel, gripping his wrist in his hand. “Lucifer, don’t,” and Lucifer smiled down at him.
“That’s not a yes, Sammy.” Sam couldn’t even take a breath in before the angel’s fingers were back on his head, plunging him into the darkness. He was screaming, there was rushing in his ears, blood filling his lungs and the Devil was holding his hand as his body shook as if Sam could find some comfort from him.
He needed his brother, needed Dean. Just had to hold on until he came for him. He had to.
It was just getting a little harder to hold on to that thought as it felt like he was melting to his foundations, ceasing to exist. The only thing grounding him was Lucifer’s hand in his, squeezing tight.
“The whole world is gonna be like this, Sammy, unless you say yes to me, so you better settle in and get used to it.”