Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.

Summary: Lucifer tortures Sam about the voice mail.

A/N: Takes place during the seventh season.

A/N2: I'd like to thank my beta PrivateRadio for making this better and more enjoyable to read.

It didn't matter that Soulless Sam had deleted the message, because what use was guilt to someone without a soul? He still knew all the words. He knew them because he had listened to that message a thousand times, and that was even before Lucifer had carved every single word into his skin, over and over. He would never forget the words but Lucifer didn't seem to be taking a chance.

"Listen to me, you bloodsucking freak. Dad always said I'd either have to save you or kill you. Well, I'm giving you fair warning. I'm done trying to save you. You're a monster, Sam - a vampire. You're not you anymore. And there's no going back."

"Sam, what's he saying?" Sam looked to Dean, who seemed worried, like he had been trying to get Sam's attention for awhile.

"It doesn't matter...It doesn't matter because he's not real...I know he's not." Lucifer was affecting Sam more than usual because in addition to saying Dean's words back to him, he had also taken on Dean's appearance. For Sam, there were two Deans in the room, so it was difficult to tell which one was which. Of course, sometimes there had been two Dean in hell as well, but Sam stopped that train of thought before it went any further.

"You sure?" One of the Deans - the real Dean, Sam thought - asked out loud.

"Yeah."

It was Lucifer's form of torture today, constantly repeating that message to him as Dean. "Listen to me, you bloodsucking freak. Dad always said I'd either have to save you or kill you. Well, I'm giving you fair warning-"

"Sam what is he saying to you." Sam jumped again and saw Dean looking concerned. Sam realized the paper in his hand he had been writing on was crumpled and his hand was clenched in a fist.

The last thing he wanted to bring up was that phone call. It had come from a very bad place in their relationship. That place was over with, they were closer now albeit just because Dean was trying to keep him from going further into crazy town.

"It doesn't matter." He answered, hoping Dean would drop it.

"Well, obviously it does." Dean replied, gesturing to the hand which he couldn't quite unfurl since Lucifer was still going on and on in a loop without stopping.

"Bloodsucking freak-"

"Pineapples." Sam blurted out, needing to say anything to drown out Lucifer - well, Dean's - voice.

"Pineapples?" Dean said slowly, confused and even more concerned.

"Yeah, pineapples. We should buy some." he said with a strained smile on his face that he didn't notice.

"Sam are you sure-"

"I'm done-"

"And apples, we should get some apples too, and then we should get a blender and make smoothies." Sam wasn't even sure what it was he was talking about as long as he focused on his words and not the repetition of that message. "Of course, that presents the problem of moving the blender from place to place but maybe if we get a small one then it will fit in our bags."

"Vampire."

Sam upped the volume a little bit to try to compensate. "Then we can have smoothies all the time!"

"Sam!" Sam jumped at Dean's volume. "What the hell are you talking about?" It only took him a few moments to figure out what he said but in that time Lucifer, via Dean's voice, started to speak again.

"I'm done trying to save you, you're a monster."

"I...I want a smoothie." at least that was what he thought he was talking about.

"Sam? Are you sure there isn't something you want to tell me?" He wondered for a moment whether it would make him feel better to tell Dean, but bringing up all those bad feelings again didn't seem like it would help anything, so he just shook his head.

"Well, then can you at least stop shouting before the neighbors call the motel manager?" Dean asked, motioning to the walls. Music! Music would drown him out and wouldn't make anyone think he was even more crazy then he was.

So Sam rifled through his bag.

"Now what are you doing?"

"Looking for my iPod." Sam said. Unfortunately, Dean didn't say anything back which left a hole in the conversation, a hole that Lucifer was all too happy to fill.

"There's no going back. Listen to me you bloodsucking freak!" his iPod; he had to find his iPod. There, he found it! He shoved the ear buds into his ears and pressed the play button.

"You can't drown me out" Sam looked up and saw that at least he looked like Nick again and had lost Dean's voice. "I'm in your head, I can make myself louder then the music without even yelling and no one but you can hear me. Do you still think he feels that way?" he gestured over to Dean.

"I mean, what has really changed since then? He got you out of hell but do you think he really wants you around? Especially when he has to deal with this craziness? Let go of him, he was always better without you around, and he didn't always want you around, I mean at one point he was ready to kill you." Nick's face changed to Dean's again.

"I'm done trying to save you."

"You're not him." Sam stated.

He changed back to Nick's face again. "Does that kind of hate ever really go away completely?" It had for him; he hadn't really wanted to kill Dean. But when he had been hopped up on demon blood he had felt that Dean was standing in his way. He had even hurt Dean, really hurt him, physically and mentally.

"He was ready to kill you, but you can't really blame him can you? I mean he was right and that's the worst part, isn't it? That he was right. I mean, good for me, but really I had thought it would have taken longer for you to open my cage and let me out, that you would have had to be manipulated just a little bit more, but I was wrong. It was easier with you than I thought."

"Sam!"

Sam blinked and saw Dean in front of him where Lucifer had been a moment ago.

"What's going on?" Sam opened his mouth.

"Don't lie to me...you're not fine...you may know he's not real but that doesn't stop whatever he's saying from rattling you."

"Dean I don't want to-"

"I don't want to hear about you not wanting to talk about it. Before I snapped you out of it, you had gone a very nice shade of white and you weren't really breathing very well, you were seconds away from passing out, so I don't care if you don't want to talk about it because you're going to!"

Sam noted that he was breathing a bit heavily. Sam shook his head. "Dean."

"Sam." Dean said determinedly.

"Dean-" Sam tried again.

"Sam." Dean said again just as determined.

"It's about the year that Lucifer rose... that I let Lucifer rise." Sam corrected himself.

"Oh." the deflation of Dean's tone, and the fact that Dean broke eye contact and looked down at the floor was the very reason Sam hadn't wanted to bring it up in the first place.

"So let's not get into it." Sam suggested.

"What's he saying?" Dean asked after a long moment, still looking at the floor.

"It doesn't matter, it's only in my mind and it'll only bring up bad memories." Sam insisted.

"What's he saying?" Dean look up from the floor and asked again, after another long moment.

"He's just repeated some stuff someone said back then."

"By 'someone' you mean me, don't you?" Damn! His brother was a lot smarter than he pretended to be and it sometimes it really irritated him.

"Dean," Sam tried, but he knew it was no use.

"What's he repeating?" he asked more forcefully.

"Dean." Sam practically begged.

"Sam, what is he repeating?" It was clearly an order he was being given and while he had balked whenever his dad had given him one, he usually just did what Dean told him when he gave an order.

"The voice mail you sent me."

"Because you didn't listen to it?" Dean asked. Sam frowned. Listen to it? Of course Sam had listened to it.

"What?" he asked confused.

"Because I told you I forgave you, and we were still brothers and you still went and killed Lilith."

The whole world plummeted. "What? No... no, that's not what the message said." Sam insisted.

Dean looked at him strangely and said "yeah, it is."

"No...no it wasn't." Sam said shaking his head. He knew the exact words Dean has said and that was not what he said.

"Yeah, I don't remember the exact words, but I told you I shouldn't have given an ultimatum, that I wasn't Dad and.." Sam crumpled onto his side on the bed and shut his eyes tightly. No...no it couldn't be.

"Sam are you okay?" Dean's panicked voice hit him. Sam opened his eyes and saw Dean staring at him worriedly.

"Please don't lie to me, tell me the truth." Sam whispered.

"I'm not lying to you. What's going on?" Dean asked.

"That's not the voice mail I received." Sam replied quietly.

"What do you-what did it say?"

"It doesn't matter," his voice came out as a mixture between laughing and crying, "it apparently wasn't true...which I'm really happy about." Sam let out a small laugh and sat up straight. He looked Dean in the eyes, still scared to hear the entire message, but the first part of it hadn't sounded so bad.

"Tell me the rest of it...please"

"I told you I was angry but we were still brothers. What did you think it said?"

"Do you need help Sammy, because I know, it's starts with 'listen to me you bloodsucking freak'." Lucifer whispered.

"It doesn't matter Dean, because you didn't say it." Sam said loudly.

"But you thought I did and whatever it was didn't help stop you from killing Lilith... It probably pushed you towards it."

Sam shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I thought it said, I still shouldn't have done it."

"Hindsight being 20/20, no you shouldn't have, but we didn't know back then that killing Lilith would have broken the last seal."

"And rescued me." Lucifer cut in.

"It doesn't matter, it still happened."

"And you fixed it, that's why you got Lucifer messing around with your noggin." That's what he tried to cling to through all his time in hell and all his time being out. He told himself that in the long run, he had done more good than bad.

"Now, tell me what the message you thought I left said."

"Why?" He asked warily.

"Because I need to know what you thought I said."

Sam remembered it word for word but wondered if he should paraphrase it.

"Listen to me you bloodsucking freak." Lucifer added again in case he had forgot how it started. Sam stared at the floor; he couldn't say this while looking at Dean.

"Listen to me...you called me a freak." there was no need to add bloodsucking or was there? Maybe he should just say it how the message had, how he had been repeated it in his head every day since.

"Listen to me, you bloodsucking freak." he wasn't sure if he could say it, he knew the words by heart, but he wasn't sure he could actually say the words aloud. "Dad always said...Dad always said I'd either have to save you or kill you." he wished he still had the voice mail, that way he could just play it for Dean and wouldn't actually have to say the words themselves. He could always write it instead. He got off the bed and went to the table where his notebook was and wrote the rest down. It was hard writing it, but not nearly as hard as it would be saying it.

He finished and when he had put the pen down, he looked at the paper then at Dean - he wasn't sure if he could actually give him the paper, but Dean was picking it up before he could think of ripping it up.

"Well, I'm giving you fair warning. I'm done trying to save you. You're a monster, Sam - a vampire. You're not you anymore. And there's no going back. " Lucifer quoted, at least this time as Nick. Sam looked Dean nervously as he read, unsure of what his response would be. Then Dean put down the paper and looked at him.

"You remember every single word?" Dean asked slowly.

"You couldn't forget it even if you tried...and what does it matter that he didn't actually say any of the words? You know he thought it. I bet he only said what he did because he was trying to stop you from doing what you did, which he failed." Lucifer said with a smirk.

"Yes." Sam said simply, answering Dean's question.

"Does it make a difference, knowing I didn't actually say them? I was mad at you Sam, so mad, but I never...I never said this." he said holding up the paper. "But you never thought it was fake for a moment, did you?" Sam hung his head; he should have known. It was just hard to tell, since Dean had said other stuff and there was no magic wand to wave those away.

"Sam. If I didn't know you, I would want to hunt you..." Lucifer, again looking like Dean, winked at Sam. "Because it's not something that you're doing," Lucifer continued, "it's what you are! It means- It means you're a monster. "

"Well, I don't know when it happened. Maybe when I was in hell. Maybe when I was staring right at you. But the Sam I knew? He's gone.

"Do you even know how far off the reservation you've gone? How far from normal? From human?" he said, then smiled and was Nick again. "Always willing to lend a helping hand."

"Things were so messed up between us back then." Dean, the real Dean, said slowly.

"That's what happens when one brother turns into a monster, and the other brother tries to tell him that but he doesn't listen." Lucifer said in a stage whisper his hand cupped around one side of his mouth.

"I know Dean...and I'm so sorry." Sam blinked back tears, he was not the victim here, he wasn't allowed to cry.

"I didn't and don't agree with all your decisions back then, but I shouldn't have let it separate us like that."

Sam laughed sadly. "Don't you get it Dean? It was my fault not yours...I mean, you tried to detox me, and I still refused to believe I was a junkie. I should have never walked out on you, when you have never walked out on me." Damn eyes tearing up again, he couldn't let the tears fall.

Dean swallowed and looked down at the floor. "I did, I let you go."

"That was me walking out again."

"But you wanted to come back and I..." Dean trailed off.

"Needed time?" it was the nice way to put it. Dean nodded anyway.

"Gonna tell him? About what happened while you were separated?" Lucifer began to taunt again. "How you didn't just taste demon blood once when famine hit but twice when they fed it to you? You never did mention that to Dean, did you. Is that because you think he would be disgusted with you? Or maybe you held out some hope that he would be angry and wanted to protect him from it?" Sam barely stopped himself from shaking his head. Dean wasn't done talking and Sam wasn't going to interrupt him, not to tell him that.

"Things should have never gone the way they did. I should have never tried to throw in the towel. We had the forces of Heaven and Hell working against us and there was hardly an us, it's no wonder they they were able to manipulate us."

"I broke us apart." Sam sighed.

Dean shook his head. "I let you, it wasn't all your fault. I played my part too, and they knew exactly which buttons to push." Sam looked down at the floor. "Speaking of buttons to push, this voice mail it was one of them wasn't it? What did it push you into doing?"

Sam didn't want to tell him but Dean deserved the truth. "I listened to it right before I went in the convent."

Dean nodded then asked. "Why?" Sam was confused; he opened his mouth when Dean added "Why then? Why was it so important you heard it then?"

Sam had had doubts and the message had made it so much worse, the fact that he had doubts, but the thought that Dean would never forgive him, that there was nothing to lose, that Dean was right and he was a monster... he had hoped Lilith would kill him at the same time he killed her. He thought his last act would be taking down the two biggest monsters who had hurt Dean the most.

"I was starting to have doubts." Sam said, leaving all the other stuff out. Dean wouldn't be able to deal with the fact that Sam had been trying to get himself killed now that they were close again.

"So, the voice mail did what?" Damn Dean, Dean didn't know that he didn't really want Sam to answer that. Sam didn't want to have to lie but he also didn't want to tell him the truth.

"It made me have less doubts." Sam said vaguely, hoping Dean would leave it at that.

"What does that mean?" Dean asked.

"It means you don't really want to know the answer to your question." Sam said honestly.

"I think I do."

Sam shook his head. "No, no you don't."

"Sam!"

"Dean, you don't want to know, so just leave it alone." Sam pleaded.

"Sam." It was a wonder that Dean didn't have to say anything other than Sam's name, but his tone and expression said 'please tell me'. Sam shook his head. "Do you really want me to guess?" Dean said.

Sam didn't say anything.

"Alright, I'll guess. It made you think that what? That because I was angry at you it was okay to go do that?" Dean asked incredulously and Sam winced at the words.

"No." Sam said, that wasn't it at all.

"Then what, Sam?"

Sam didn't want to hear anything else like that come out of Dean's lips so he decided to tell the truth even though he knew that Dean wasn't going to like it. No, Dean wasn't going to like it at all.

"I...I...thought since you were willing to hunt me down that we would never be what we were." Sam couldn't seem to get the rest of the words out of his mouth.

"So you thought, what, 'no Dean to tie me down anymore'?" Dean asked and the words made him close his eyes - it felt like Dean had just punched him. After a few moments, though, he was able to catch his breath only to lose it again when he remembered what he had to tell Dean and how Dean was likely to react to it. The words were slow coming and he barely managed to speak.

"No...I thought that there no point anymore."

"What?" Dean voice had a dangerous edge to it at it which made Sam look up to see Dean glaring at him. "You mean you went there with every intention not to survive?"

"I told you, you didn't want to know." he said weakly which didn't lessen the glare in Dean's eyes in the slightest.

"You were... just gonna give up?" Sam looked down at his lap. He had planned to give up; there was nothing that he could say right now that would make his intentions seem different or that would change his actions of the past. Dean got up and paced the length of the room a few times, very much looking like he was doing his best to avoid hitting Sam.

"He's a quitter, quitter, quitter." Lucifer said piping up he was sitting in the chair that Dean had just vacated leaning against the back smiling at him. "Why don't you quit now?" he said with a smirk. "Come back to me. Unlike Dean, I'm always happy to see you." He said, with his shark-like grin. "Remember all the fun times we had together?" he asked, leaning forward. "We can have all those again, spend some real quality time-"

"Sam, is he talking again?" Dean asked. Lucifer looked annoyed at Dean and stood up from the chair.

"That was rude I was talking! I was in mid-sentence!"

Sam blinked as he heard Dean snap his fingers in front of his face a few times.

"Sam, stay with me." Dean said even though his jaw was still tight and Sam was pretty sure that the whole topic of conversation hadn't been dropped, merely delayed for a little bit.

"No, Sam, you should stay with me." Lucifer said. He seemed to be battling for his attention.

"Sam." Dean said and Sam looked at him again.

It was like a tennis match going between the two of them. Lucifer had never been fond of being ignored but now that the hand thing didn't work anymore, he was able to punish him for it.

Sam distantly heard himself scream as he felt heat envelop him and his body was in agony. He remembered this sensation. This was what it had felt like to burn past death, the way you only could do in hell. He felt distantly some hands on his shoulders: Dean. Dean was probably holding onto him in the real world but the real world seemed so far away. It seemed like forever before the burning stabbing pain started receding and Sam gasped as his eyes no longer saw flames but the hotel interior.

"Wasn't that fun, Sam?" Lucifer asked cheerfully.

"You weren't the only one." Dean said, breaking him out of his thoughts and he looked at Dean with a confused expression, prompting his brother to elaborate. "I gave up, too, when I was going to be an angel condom." he said but Sam shook his head.

"You were only going to do that because of what I did."

"Sam, listen to me... am I happy that you went to that convent to do - that? No, but the past is in the past."

Sam looked at Lucifer and silently disagreed; if the past was in the past, he wouldn't be seeing Lucifer still.

However, despite not being able to see Lucifer, Dean knew that was who he was looking at and decided to acknowledge it. "Lucifer is in your head, Sam, you're bringing him to the plate. Besides, he's only in there in the first place because, even though he came out, you put him back in." Sam shook his head.

"No, he is." Dean said forcefully and Sam wanted to believe him but was having a little bit of trouble.

"Sam, he is. So how about, even if it's only for a few minutes, we leave the past in the past and look towards the future." Sam looked unsure: surely it couldn't be that easy, to just leave the past in the past?

"Come on, Sammy!" Dean pleaded. How could Sam leave the past in the past when the devil was staring right at him? He wasn't talking at the moment - he seemed to be interested in what Sam had to say on the matter. Sammy. The nickname rang in his head. Sammy. Dean hadn't called him 'Sammy' much in the last couple of years and Sam had missed it, but he understood. It was just sad that the only person who had called him Sammy lately had been the devil, in a mocking way.

"You can't stop him." Sam said "I let him in, there's nothing anyone can do to stop him."

"And why did you let him in? To save me?" Dean demanded even though he already knew the answer Sam nodded and Dean continued. "Besides, who says I can't stop him? If there is a way to stop it I'm going to find it."

"Dean." There was no way to stop his supernatural PTSD and they both knew it.

"I will."

Sam smiled not because he believed Dean but because Dean seemed so determined to do the impossible for him and that gave him a nice warm feeling.

"Sam." Lucifer said, annoyed that he wasn't being paid any attention to. He knew what was coming next and focused on Dean as the flames hit again. It wasn't real, it wasn't real. Dean was real. Dean was real. Dean loved him. Dean cared about him.

Dean had done the impossible before- maybe he could do it again.

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