"Hunger is a good discipline. You learn from it." - Ernest Hemingway

...

Sam sat there for a good ten minutes, almost kneeling, in the center of the room, knees against the floor, head bowed, blood soaking into his jeans.

Blood soaking into everywhere.

He felt it in his hair, clumps of curdled death, a splash across his cheek, drying quickly, crusty and crackling, slippery between his hand and the hilt of the knife, but coagulated, sticking to his fingers, keeping them, too.

He regarded the massacre almost detachedly, all of his emotional energy being expended on not moving, clamping his teeth and clenching his jaw just to stop his tongue from darting out, a white prison. Unable to breath through his nose because it made his stomach roll, because he suddenly felt it curling in his muscles and thoughts.

Hunger

It coated his arm, drenching through the fabric, and his skin could be bubbling for all he knew.

Sam suddenly found a scintilla of energy, began to struggle to his feet.

It hung strong on him, making him desultory, gluing him to the floor. It wasn't syrup or honey. It was molasses.

It made wet, protesting, squelching noises as he dragged himself up, staggered a step forward. He had been breathing minutely through his mouth, but now he was breathing heavily through his nose.

The smell bombarded him. He felt the urge to wretch, to drink, the hunger and disgust susurrous in his mind, making his hands shake. He felt the spasms of gagging coming on.

Luckily he hadn't eaten anything recently.

The hunger rushed over him.

Ok, maybe not "lucky".

I can't do this, he thinks in calm hysteria.

No.

Before he can make the conscious effort to stop himself, because he's so tired, and afraid, because he'd spent so many years automatically doing it, every night before he went to sleep.

He prays.

Back before he knew, knew they were real, he rarely prayed for something. Once in a blue moon, when he was worried bone-deep about Dean or Dad, or, more recently, prayed that it was all a dream, first when Jess died, then Dean.

He hasn't prayed since the night Dean died, actually.

The voice melts off the walls, into his brain, making him close his eyes.

"Sam?"

He hadn't been thinking. Why, what was wrong with him? What was he doing? Why? Why?

The hand tentatively reaches out to the younger brother. Sam can't see him - his head is bowed again, too much effort expended on not giving in. He doesn't realize now how strange it is that of all the beings to hear a prayer, this is the one that intercepts it. He still flinches at the ghost of the touch.

The trickster.

If he wasn't so preoccupied with not doing anything, he would be screaming.

Because of course the Trickster knew.

He'd been the one to "prepare" Sam for Dean's "departure", after all.

Another wave of nausea washes over him, and he doubles over, bending like blade of grass underfoot. He won't give in, though.

He can't.

"what are you fighting it for?"

The question is confused, almost exasperated, sounding annoyed by the perceived stupidity - or perhaps by how inconsequential the effort was.

Sam grits out a breath, somewhere deep in his brain the synapses for laughter fail to ignite in irony.

"I can't"

"wrong, buddy boy, you can, and you probably will."

The answer was too quick, too unwilling to see something else. It doesn't matter, anyways. Sam has bigger things to worry about than a nervous trickster in denial. Sam curls his fingers into fists, knits his resolve back together.

Pushes himself back up, smearing blood between his fingers and the ground.

"Then I won't."

He makes it halfway across the room when everything goes black.

Wakes up back at the motel, knife gleaming on his nightstand.

Next to it is a lollipop.