Chapter Text
He went by Samuel, because he was the only one among them who didn’t give a damn what anyone called him. Not that it mattered. Dean called him something else entirely.
Green eyes flicked up at him, then back down at the phone in his hand. “Soulless,” he muttered with a tone of disgust.
“Asshole,” Samuel responded in a similar fashion. He sat and helped himself to two pieces of bacon from the communal dish at the center of the table. Even this seemed to annoy Dean as much as if he had eaten from Dean’s own plate. But the man didn’t say anything. Dean rarely spoke to Samuel if he didn’t have to.
On the other hand, his eyes widened and softened when that little bitch Sammy walked in. “Hey. Hey, you okay?”
Sammy cringed. It was like the lights were always too bright and voices were always too loud for Sammy. Samuel found it exhausting trying to be considerate to the guy, so he generally didn’t bother. “I’m okay,” the enormous baby murmured. He tried a shaky smile. “I’m okay,” he said again in a stronger voice.
Dean didn’t look convinced. “Right. Well, look, there’s bacon. And I can make whatever else you want.” He stood to approach Sammy, who was still standing in the door as if he weren’t quite sure what to do next.
Samuel popped another piece into his own mouth. “Didn’t offer me anything,” he pointed out, only because he enjoyed annoying Dean. Mostly because of that.
“You can feed yourself,” Dean hissed at him on his way past. He reached for Sammy, and again his tone changed completely. “Hey. Think you can eat something? You didn’t eat much yesterday.”
Sammy smiled at him nervously. “Sorry, man. I don’t mean to worry you.”
Samuel rolled his eyes at this, and at the way he knew Dean was smiling up at the moron like he was sunshine incarnate instead of a complete waste of oxygen and brains. This time, he did take a piece of bacon straight from Dean’s plate. Just for spite.
It wasn’t that Sammy didn’t have brains. He did. Samuel suspected that if the guy could keep it together for one whole day in a row, Sammy could out-think them all. There was nothing that annoyed Samuel more than the suspicion deep in his mind that Sammy was somehow smarter than he was. Not intellectually, obviously. They had the same intellect. And when it came to academics, there was no one like the other Sam for that, for analyzing information and retaining it and utilizing it. Of course, Samuel’s specialty was ruthless quick wit. But Sammy was something on another level, something ethereal and creepy and always right, like he had some sort of sense about things before they happened.
Sammy was where their powers had collected.
Listening to Dean baby the only thing more dangerous than Samuel just made his stomach turn. “I got some fruit, okay? Your favorites. How about I make some apples tonight, huh? Cook some with cinnamon for you?”
Sammy must have smiled at this, because Dean’s voice behind Samuel brightened.
“Yeah? Thought you’d like that. I’ve been wracking my brain-“
“What little of that there is,” Samuel snarled.
Dean ignored him. “You know, to think of things you used to like when we were kids. Thought it might help you eat a little better on days you don’t feel like it. What do you say? I can do some eggs for you now, then I’ll make sure there’s some sweet apples for you with dinner. Even if you can’t manage anything else, I bet you’d eat some of those for me, right? After I went to all the trouble?”
Samuel couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder to see Sammy give Dean that ridiculous look of adoration. It made him sick.
“Yeah, okay. That would be nice. You don’t have to go to any trouble, but…but if you do…”
He pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m sick of playing house,” he announced suddenly. “I want to hunt something.”
Dean’s glare slid toward him from the side. “We are. Settle down. You know as well as I do-“
“I know better than you do,” he snapped. “But we can still accomplish something even while we’re…” He waved his hands around in irritation. “Like this! We can still be doing something!”
“Soulless,” Dean began.
But he cut off the same argument he had heard for weeks. “Dean, I don’t sleep!” he roared. “I can’t just sit around and do nothing for twenty-four fucking hours of the day, just to do it again the next twenty-four!”
“Twenty,” a low voice growled at him.
Dean and Samuel turned to the door to find Sam walking in. Sammy dropped his gaze to the floor instead, and took a small step away from Dean.
“What?” Samuel snarled.
Cool hazel eyes locked onto his own. “You said twenty-four, but we both know that’s not true.”
Samuel closed his mouth.
Sam lifted an eyebrow at him, then pushed past him to get to the coffee machine. “You’re only awake about twenty hours a day.”
Dean was frowning when Samuel allowed himself to glance. “Wait, what? I thought…” He turned on Samuel. “I thought you didn’t sleep at all! The whole year, you didn’t sleep.”
Samuel’s nostrils flared with irritation. “Yeah. Well, that was last year.” He swallowed hard. “You know, while I had something worthwhile to do! Hunting things!”
“Saving people,” Sam corrected in an accusatory hiss.
He glowered at the man wearing his face. “Yeah. I read the bumper sticker.”
But Dean couldn’t let this new information go. “Wait, go back. You sleep? Since when? What does that mean?”
Sam was watching him from over a mug of black coffee now.
Black coffee. Samuel hadn’t needed such a thing in a very long time. Not since he was still trying to make people call him Sam.
The fourth in the room spoke up softly. “We don’t have to be so angry,” he murmured. “I understand why we are. But we don’t have to be.”
Samuel rolled his glare to Sammy. “Shut up. Nobody asked you, Hell Boy.”
Sammy frowned with hurt. But he spoke again. “We’re tired. We can’t deny that.”
There was nothing-nothing!-on this plane that Samuel loathed more than the inexplicable way Sammy insisted on speaking in the plural when he was talking about Samuel instead of himself. He did it to Sam too at times, but always with Samuel. He hated it. It made him want to press a knife into the guy’s chest. “You don’t know anything about how I feel, Hell Boy.”
Dean put his hands up. “That’s enough! Back off, you soulless creep!”
He let out a sardonic chuckle that he was afraid might not entirely hide the complexity of his emotions. “Well. We all know where I rank with big brother. Too bad you don’t get to keep the other two unless you also keep me.” He couldn’t help staring into Dean’s eyes for another instant, before looking back at Sam instead. “And I’m getting out of here. Tomorrow. I’ve sat around for twenty hours a day for weeks while every day, people are getting slaughtered by monsters and demons. So you can lecture me about prioritizing saving people, or you can put your money where your self-righteousness is and help me do something about it.”
For once, Sam didn’t snap back. He just lowered his gaze at the coffee in his cup.
“That’s right. Because I saved more people last year than you did in every other year of our lives combined.”
“How many did we kill?” Sammy murmured, almost to himself.
Samuel snorted in frustration. “I’m finding a hunt, and I’m leaving tomorrow. So unless you two want to glitch off the grid, you better plan on coming with me.” He stared hard at Dean. “That is…unless you’re ready to do what we both know you don’t have the balls to do.”
Dean flinched, but said nothing.
“I thought so. Let me know when you grow a pair. It’ll be a fun fight, now that you’re back in shape from your little suburban hiatus.”
“I kicked your ass before, and I can do it again.”
Samuel sneered at him. “If I remember right, you had a slight advantage at the time. Fighting fair was never your strongest suit.”
“Or yours,” Dean shot back, “if I remember right.”
Sammy’s pale, shaking hands slid up to cover his ears, and he began swaying slightly on his feet, back and forth. A tuneless hum sounded from his throat.
Samuel gave another snort, this time softer. “Like I said, big brother. Let me know when you’re finally ready to do the right thing. Or better yet, let me know if you can’t stomach it, and I’ll do it for you.” He nodded sidelong at Sammy, smirked at Dean, and then stormed from the room.
He could hear Dean’s deep voice growling behind him, and Sam’s voice obviously trying to soothe Sammy. But he didn’t care what they had to say. For that matter, he already knew what they had to say.
The three people who were Sam Winchester couldn’t separate by more than a few lousy miles. They couldn’t even get more than a few hundred feet from one another before they each suffered disturbing pain and frightening phenomena they had all begun referring to as “glitching out.”
“What happens to a non-player character in a video game when the player moves to a different location in the game?” Sammy had giggled in that weird way of his.
Sam had frowned. “They stop existing for that time.”
Sammy had kept right on giggling, even as he also began rocking a little. Samuel wanted to break his neck. “Which of us is the player?” he had laughed. “I think we better not find out.”
Samuel had stared at him in horror. “What does that mean? Does that mean I’m stuck with you psychos? For how long?”
The biggest psycho of them all, the only thing that actually scared Samuel, had just giggled at him. “How long do you want to play?”
He and Sam had turned to one another and stared. “What if…what if one of us…dies?”
Sammy had put his hand over his mouth to hide his laughter. “Hm. What do you have that I don’t have? What do we have that we don’t need? Are my eyes grayer than yours? Did you lose gray or did I gain it? Do we really need so much of our anger? Or can we survive without it?”
“You’re not making any fucking sense,” he accused in a too-shrill voice. Fear. This was new. This was…familiar. He remembered it. But it had been a long time. Fear. Not just the drive for survival that all animals had. Real, bleeding in the stomach, sour in the throat, hot under the tongue fear. That was new.
“Do you think there’s anything left of us if we take away our anger?” This time, he directed the question at Sam. “Can we stand without that to support us? Demon blood in our veins and anger in our bones. It’s what keeps us alive. Isn’t it?”
Samuel didn’t always think before he spoke. Not anymore, not since Dean figured out the soulless thing. And this time, the words came off his tongue before he thought them. “It’s not in our bones. It’s in our nerves. It’s not what keeps us standing. It’s what keeps us fighting. I could stand without you two. You couldn’t fight without me.”
And now it was weeks later, and all Samuel wanted in the world was a fight. If those two bastards ever wanted to be able to fight again, they had better step up and help him find one.
Samuel didn’t need them. He didn’t need anyone. He was willing to risk glitching out himself by walking away from the others, rather than sit there and rot. They could cease to exist when he walked away. He was willing to bet that, of the three of them, he was the real player in the game.