Chapter Text
Bye, Sam.
He supposes he had this coming. His own actions are what led to everything he ever treasured and knew and loved crumbling around him. Every bridge burned, every thread cut, and he has no one but himself to blame.
That doesn’t stop the little brother in him from feeling like the rug has been yanked out from under him, and he knows - he knows - without Dean, he’ll never again find his feet.
Never.
Bye, Sam.
He stares at the phone in his hand, sleek edges battered and scratched with wear and tear, gleaming faintly in the dull light of the hole-in-the-wall motel. He can hear the roaches scratching against the wall, the faint gurgle of the water shifting in the bathroom pipes. A car drives by in the parking lot outside, and a mourning dove calls softly, to be answered by silence.
It never bothered him before. He’s used to skeezy motel rooms, and Sam is nothing if not adaptable. But now he feels like he’s going to choke on the faint scent of cigarette smoke, get caught and strangled in the scratchy, threadbare bedsheets, trip and fall and get swallowed up by the cheap linoleum floor, sink down, down, down, until his head goes under, until there’s nothing left -
Dean is his anchor in this life. And now, he’s gone. Cut him loose, a battered, cursed plague ship drifting hopelessly out at sea.
He deserves it - every condemnation, every stilted word. He deserves worse. But it still hurts. It’s like he’s caught outside his body, watching himself fall off the edge of a cliff, and it feels like he’ll never reach the bottom. Just an endless, downward spiral.
Maybe…maybe there was a small part of him that still hoped. Maybe there was a part of him that thought Dean hadn’t meant what he said in that voicemail, that Sam could prove to him he wasn’t tainted beyond belief, that Dad was wrong, that he wasn’t a monster, that he could still be -
What? Good?
How can he be good? How can anybody abhorred by their own fucking family be worth anything? His mother sold him to a demon before he was even born, his father had ordered his brother to kill him, and his brother -
His brother was done. It reverberated in every stilted word, every shaky exhale. Dean wanted nothing to do with him anymore, him and his - how had Dean put it? His psychic crap, his freaky powers, the tainted blood dripping off his chin and teeth and pumping through his veins -
But Sam had wanted to try. To prove himself, to tackle this together, like the partners he knew they always could be. Split the crapiness, share the burden, find the silver lining together. Redeem himself somehow, in any small way. And yeah, he was scared shitless. But he had hope. Hope that somehow, they could fix it together.
It doesn’t matter.
Stay away from each other. For good.
We’re not stronger together. I think we’re weaker.
Dean had listened quietly while Sam explained the Devil was after him, and he’d calmly and resignedly told him to stay away from him. To get lost - for good. That they were better off that way.
Sam could read between the lines. Dean didn’t have a clue to stop the apocalypse; he just didn’t want to be around for the shitshow that would be Sam getting devoured by Lucifer. Fair enough. Sam doesn’t want to be around for that, either.
But it’s worse than letting Lucifer out, isn’t it? It goes beyond even that.
What had Dean said, back in that hotel room and the end of everything?
It's not something you're doing - it's what you are!
His actions don’t matter. His choices don’t matter. Nothing he does matters.
He is what he is. Half-blood demon bitch boy, slave to sulfur and evil and every other evil thing crawling in the Pit. Sam is Damned. He was Damned before he was even fucking born, and that’s why Dean is staying well away. Because Sam is a monster, and he’ll poison everything he touches.
And after Lucifer gets ahold of him, he’ll do far worse. He won’t be able to stop it. He can’t run, or hide, can’t even kill himself. It was always going to end this way - in a flash of black eyes and blur of ebony smoke.
And Dean - noble, loyal, dependable, broken Dean - is finally cutting his losses. Getting out while he still can.
Dean don’t do this.
Bye, Sam.
He collapses back on his mattress, phone sliding out of his limp hand and clattering on the floor.
He doesn’t get up. Not for food, or water, or anything else. His mind slows to a crawl; his heartbeat a dull thud deep in his ears.
He doesn’t move for two days.
Lucifer doesn’t visit him, because Sam doesn’t let himself sleep. He dozes lightly every now and then, but mostly he just stares blankly at the ceiling and drifts. Sometimes tears stream down his face, dampening the starchy sheet beneath his head. Sometimes his eyes feel as dry and gritty as sandpaper. His blood sugar rises, sinks, and crashes, weakness settling deep into his bones.
Sometimes the dread and fear are so thick he almost chokes on them. Sometimes he listens to the mattress creak faintly beneath him and imagines sinking down, beneath the sheets, into the box springs. Being a bedbug or a dust mite lurking in the dark sounds like a wonderful existence compared to the one he has right now. Unnoticed, unimportant, mayfly life. He wishes he could be the dove cooing outside, the fly buzzing on the wall, the wooden bedframe barely holding up his 200-pound weight.
He wishes he could be anything else, anyone else, small and lowly and unknown. Anything other than Sam Winchester, boy wonder, the dumbest little bitch who was ever blessed by demons and destiny. He wishes for it with a sick desperation, more than he’s wished for anything.
He’s scared. As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, even to himself, he’s scared. Something about Lucifer wearing Jessica’s face, creeping into his dreams and softly caressing his skin, has terrified him beyond words. He doesn’t want Lucifer to find him.
He doesn’t want to hurt anybody.
“Please,” he whispers to the quiet room. It’s his first time speaking in almost forty-eight hours. He realizes even after the words slip through his chapped lips they’re a mistake. He prayed all his life, and what did he get for it? The scorn and disgust of angels. The absence of a God who doesn’t care what happens to him or anyone else.
Sam wishes he’d never been born. Jesus Christ, he wishes he could die. That would fix all his fucking problems, right there in one swoop. He thinks of every book he’s ever read, every movie he’s ever watched, where death seemed like the end all villain to every protagonist that ever dared dream to build something better than the shitty hand they’d been dealt with.
Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter have got nothing on Sam Winchester. At least they can fucking die.
He’s wasting away. He can already feel it in his muscles, in his bones. Decay and survival go hand in hand, and Sam can’t remember the last time he ate or drank anything. He can feel the hormones and chemicals shifting in his body, a deep, weak ache setting into his muscles as they begin to be broken down for sustenance.
It doesn’t take long for the human body to register it’s in starvation mode. It’s been - maybe - 48 hours since that horrific phone call.
That’s all it takes.
He wonders where Dean is. Hopefully doing better than this. Hopefully not drowning at the bottom of a bottle, not feeling alone. That's all he can ask for, at this point. He's fucked, but Dean shouldn't have to be.
He's in the middle of deciding whether he's going to pass out or not from lack of eating when a deafening loud pop echoes in his ears.
Sam blinks sharply and jerks. His movements are sluggish, and he can't really bring himself to care. He turns his head and stares over the rumpled sheets off the edge of his old, creaky mattress with vague disinterest.
There is a dark-haired boy sprawled on the cheap linoleum floor of his motel room.
Sam blinks again while he processes this fact. A dark mop of hair swims into focus.
There is a boy on the floor of his motel room.
"Uh...you okay kid?" Sam finally asks. His voice grates like sandpaper, parched and painful from dehydration. He can't remember the last time he had a sip of water. He doesn't care to.
The dark mop flops wildly as the head its attached to shakes like a wet dog. Eventually a small face peers up at Sam, dark eyes wide and fearful. they seem to flood with - relief? - when they settle on him, rumpled and ridiculous as Sam must look.
"Sam!"
Sam blinks. "We met?"
They haven't met. Sam has an excellent memory. He'd know they'd come across spontaneously appearing children before.
"God, I hope not," is the mystifying answer he receives in response.
Sam blinks again. Hard. He's vaguely aware he should probably be reaching for his gun, or silver knife, or - anything, really. But again, dying would be a relief, so he doesn't really give a shit if he gets ganked by mysteriously-appearing children in his motel room or not. He wishes he could die a hunter's death at this point.
"I tried time travel," the kid says in response to Sam's no doubt flabbergasted look. "I figured if I went back far enough - never mind. has it happened yet? Has Lucifer gone to Australia?"
Sam sits up before his sluggish brain even registers he's moving. The world spins and his vision blackens dangerously for a moment. The kid is still talking, but he can't make out the words through the ringing in his ears. He tenses, his entire body primed to leap off the cheap, creaky mattress.
Gun. He needs his gun. His gun is on the other side of the room, at the table with his duffle stuffed with his meager belongings. Sam had once had a whole townhouse full of things he'd shared with Jess - cheap posters from a college fair on the walls, books on shelves, magnets on a fridge. Now, all he has fits in an Army Surplus duffle, and it isn't even close enough to be useful.
"-don't remember me," the kid is saying, no doubt noticing the shift in Sam's expression. "Of course you don't. But we've met in my time, in the future. About a year in the future. We met at my- well, you found me at my house. And I went to Australia, and Lucifer found me and - and he hurt everyone, and- Sam, I don't know what to do - "
"Hold on," Sam interrupts sharply. A temple throbs painfully in his aching head as he tries to process what's happening. He doesn't have the blood sugar for this right now. "Did you just say Lucifer found you in Australia?"
The kid sniffs, tears flooding his huge dark eyes. "My name's Jesse," he offers, voice trembling violently. "You don't know me - not yet. But I know you, Sam. You - you told me once that I could do the right thing. That I've got choices. Even though there's something - bad inside me. Something that makes me powerful. It's not my fault it's there. I never wanted it. And I know you know how that feels."
The kid looks up at him again, tears streaking down his cheeks. Sam should be formulating a plan to get to his gun - to salt, holy water, anything - but he feels like he's been turned to stone. There's something disturbingly familiar about the words being parroted back at him, something he knows he's never said to a person he's never met, but words that sound like his all the same. He sees all his pain reflected in those mournful eyes, and he feels like his own tortured soul is staring back at him.
"That's what I'm doing now," Jesse says, lower lip trembling. He sniffles wetly, then slowly clambers to his feet. "I - I have to make things right. So here it goes; my name is Jesse Turner, and Lucifer wants to use me as a weapon in his war with the angels. I'm here because I need your help. And I - I think you need mine."
"Weapon," Sam rasps. "You're a kid. How are you a weapon in a demon army?"
"I'm like you. I'm part-demon, part-human. A Cambion - that's what you called me." Jesse's eyes flash dangerously, and his little hands clench to fists at his sides. The temperature in the room drops several degrees. Sam's breath fogs in the air before him. "But I won't serve Lucifer. You told me to make a choice - this is me, choosing. I'm choosing you, Sam. Whatever you need, whatever it takes. I'm going to help you kill the Devil."