Family Ties

Summary: Post-season 6. Soul memory doesn't work the same as physical memory. After the wall in Sam's head falls, memories of Hell engulf his mind. Meanwhile, Dean scrambles to pick up the pieces of his broken world. Warning: I don't list warnings.

Author's note: This story takes place right as season 6 ends. As such, there are spoilers for the season finale. (I started writing this fic around the middle of season 6 but decided not to post it until the season ended so that I could go back and rewrite it to keep it in line with canon.)

I'll be honest, this story is not for the faint of heart. I wrote this as a challenge for myself to write something that makes me intensely uncomfortable. (Or, at least, as uncomfortable as I can make myself while remaining at an M rating.) Because of the psychological nature of this fic, it would be hard to list warnings or pairings for it even if I wanted to. Let's just say I'm going to be detailing Sam's time in Hell and leave it at that. If anyone wants an expanded list of the major labels, warnings, and "pairings," I can provide one in a private message. It's not my intention to trigger anyone; I just don't want to spoil anything. (There's another reason I'm not listing pairings that will probably become evident somewhere around chapter 2. I will mention that if you're too uncomfortable reading about slash or incest though, you probably shouldn't read this.)

That said, enjoy.

-o-o-o-

Chapter 1: Broken

Sam fought hard to hold back the tide. He could not let himself break down. Not now. Not when Dean and Bobby were off fighting Crowley, and possibly Castiel, somewhere. If they were even still alive.

Still, hard as he tried, bits and pieces leaked through, flames licking at the edge of his mind. As he drew nearer the building, it was all he could do to remember why he was here.

He clutched his head, tugging at the roots of his hair to ground himself in the moment. Almost there, he thought to himself. Just a few more minutes. He could not let himself think beyond those few minutes.

He had a stunning moment of clarity inside the building. He could not remember how he got there, but that did not matter. He could see Dean, Bobby, and Castiel. Castiel's back was to him. Sam knew what he had to do. He raised the angel blade, not remembering or caring how it got into his hand, and plunged it downward.

Nothing happened.

Castiel turned and said words to him. Sam heard them but did not understand. A wave of nausea took him, but he hardly noticed it. He was already falling away toward a crackle of flames and a low voice calling his name.

-o-o-o-

Dean did not have long to think on Castiel's words. When he saw Sam fall, his vision narrowed. He forgot where he was, who was standing in front of him, the danger he was in.

"Sam!" He darted past Castiel, oblivious to Bobby's attempts to stop him, reaching Sam just as he landed. To Dean's surprise, Sam did not pass out or convulse. He fell to his knees and retched, spewing out a watery stream of vomit.

Dean dropped down beside Sam and grabbed his shoulder. "Sammy?"

Sam's head just rolled on his shoulders before coming to rest where it had before. His eyes stared at the ground, vacant.

"Dean." Bobby's voice penetrated the haze in Dean's brain.

Dean leapt to his feet and rushed Castiel, seizing a handful of his trench coat in each fist. "Fix him!"

Castiel did not waver. "Swear your allegiance to me."

"Dean…" Bobby tried again.

Dean ignored him. "Listen to me, you son of a bitch. I don't know what you are, and I don't give a rat's ass. You bring him back or I swear to God, I will hunt down a way to kill you."

Without a single change of expression, Castiel raised a hand to touch Dean's forearm. The strength went out of Dean's limbs. He lost his grip on Castiel, and his knees hit the ground.

"The pieces of your brother's conscious have mended faster than I anticipated," Castiel said. "The wall cannot be rebuilt." For just a brief moment, he looked regretful. Then, he vanished.

The feeling returned to Dean's legs at the same time, but he still could not move.

"Dean?" Hands shook Dean's shoulders. "Damn it, Dean, snap out of it!"

Dean blinked. Bobby crouched in front of him, watching him with mixed apprehension and impatience.

"We gotta get out of here," Bobby said, "now."

"I…" Dean fought to string together enough coherent thought to speak. "I…I don't…"

He felt a sharp blow across his face and the vice grip on his shoulders resumed. "Don't you dare do this to me," Bobby growled. "Not now."

The panic in Bobby's voice was just enough to bring Dean's focus together. Still unable to speak, he nodded once.

Bobby's shoulders slumped, and he bowed his head for a second before snapping back to business. "I need to make a call," he said, taking Dean by the arms and helping him to his feet.

Dean could only nod again. With some reluctance, he turned his back on Bobby, who was already dialing a number into his cell phone.

Sam had not budged an inch. Dean made his way over to him on shaky legs and knelt in front of him. "Sammy?" He raised a hand, hesitated, then rested it against Sam's jaw, tilting his head up. Sam just stared out at him with empty eyes. "Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Footsteps approached. "I called in a favor to get us a car," Bobby said. "We need to get him outside."

Dean did not move for a moment. When he did finally let go, Sam's head stayed where it was instead of falling back down. Dean stood and stooped to slide an arm under Sam's. Bobby did the same.

"On three," Bobby said. "One, two…"

The moment they started pulling upward, Sam began to rise all on his own. He clambered to his feet, nearly sending both Dean and Bobby toppling over. Dean let out an ecstatic burst of air, but his hopes were soon dashed when he saw that, although Sam was standing on his own two feet, his eyes were just as dead as before.

"Back off a second," Bobby said. "Let me try something."

Dean wanted to do no such thing, but he obeyed without a fight, taking a few steps to one side. Bobby wrapped an arm around Sam's shoulders and started forward. Sam moved with him, matching him step for step, still with the same dull expression.

"Well, that should make things easier anyway," Bobby said, dropping his hands. "You take him. I'm probably better in a fight than you right now."

Even if the statement had been meant as an insult, it would have been lost on Dean. He followed the command, taking Sam by the shoulders and steering him after Bobby. Following orders was easy. Following orders he could do.

-o-o-o-

Sam had expected to remember everything at once. That was the way it was when he merged with his soulless self. Even as he fought so hard to keep himself together, he had thought that tidal wave would bring it all crashing back.

He had not expected to find himself, after the initial burn and the voice had died away, in darkness and silence.

Paranoia edged in around him. There was something out there. He could feel it brushing past him in the dark. The touch was light, almost incidental, but it made him shudder.

Far away, he heard a familiar voice calling his name. "Dean!" he yelled, but it was no use. The nothingness swallowed his voice.

"He can't hear you."

Sam whirled around and saw a carbon copy of himself standing a few feet away, flipping a knife in the air and catching it by the handle over and over. Sam recognized Ruby's knife, the knife that killed demons.

"No," Sam breathed, backing away. He only made it a few steps before his feet froze to the spot and would not move again. "This isn't happening. I killed you already."

The other him caught the knife one last time and lowered his hand. He looked at Sam with eyes that were his but not his. "Don't be so naïve, Sam. You know who I am."

And Sam did. In an instant, he knew that his assumption that this was his soulless self was ridiculous. Even without a soul, he had never looked like this.

Something soft buffeted Sam's body, almost knocking him over. A screech filled his ears, raising the hair on the back of his neck.

"Patience, brother," Lucifer said. "You'll have your turn."

A strong wind swept over them both, and a horrific figure of swirling light towered overhead that was so bright it made Sam's head ache and his eyes water. Tendrils of wispy energy stretched out from a set of massive wings and wrapped around Lucifer, crackling and popping. Lucifer waived off the tendrils as though they were annoying flies, and they dissipated along with the looming figure.

"I apologize for my brother. He lacks subtlety. I'm sure you can understand."

Sam tried again to move, but his feet held fast.

"You're wondering why you don't remember," Lucifer continued. His lips drew up into a smirk. "Your other self neglected to mention. Soul memory doesn't quite work that way."

He held up his free hand, palm facing toward Sam. Sam's body went rigid, and his arms were lifted up away from his body and held outstretched as though by invisible ropes.

Lucifer closed the distance between them in an instant. The cool blade pressed against Sam's forearm, moving back and forth in motions that could almost be described as caresses. Then, on the fifth pass, the blade shifted a hair's width and sliced into his skin.

Sam bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from reacting. A thin circle of flesh fell to the ground with an audible thump too loud for such a small object. Lucifer pressed his thumb into the wound. In spite of Sam's best efforts, this elicited a strangled moan through his gritted teeth. He might have fallen to his knees if he was not being held in place by some unseen force.

"You've gone soft." Lucifer dug his thumbnail in, unfazed by the blood welling out of Sam's arm. "I can fix that."

He lifted his blood-streaked hand from the wound and raised it again. Sam's neck stiffened, forcing him to stare straight ahead. Lucifer pressed the blade against Sam's cheek, and Sam instinctively shut his eyes.

"Tsk, tsk." Phantom fingers wrenched Sam's eyes back open. "You don't get off that easy."

The knife bit into Sam's cheek less than an inch from his eye. He screamed.

-o-o-o-

Dean passed the next hour in a haze. He had a vague recollection of a truck pulling up in front of the building, towing a rusty old car behind it. Bobby introducing him to a stout woman with a wild mane of brown hair whose name was gone from his mind just as quickly as it entered. She handed Bobby a set of keys and lowered the car to the ground for them.

In spite of Sam's compliance, getting him into the car was a tricky feat. Three times Dean had to stop him from cracking his head on the top of the car. Finally, between Dean and Bobby, they managed to shove Sam into the back seat of the car. Then, the two of them and the woman set to the task of rolling the Impala over. The windows were all shattered, but aside from a few sizable dents, the frame itself had retained its shape for the most part. Once the car was back on its wheels, the woman got into her truck and backed it toward the Impala so Bobby could hook the car to the truck.

"You still got weapons on you?" Bobby asked.

Dean ran a quick mental check of the weapons he had on him. Two hand guns. A vial of holy water. Ruby's knife. He nodded.

"Good." Bobby turned his attention to the woman, who leaned out of her window to await instructions. "Follow behind us. We've got a stop to make."

Dean wondered vaguely where they would be stopping, but he got into the passenger seat of the rusty car without a word. Bobby slid into the driver's seat and, after a few tries, managed to get it started.

Their drive was a short one, but Dean still checked on Sam at least a dozen times during the trip. Every time he looked back he saw that Sam was still in the same position they had left him in: sitting upright and staring straight ahead.

Bobby pulled into a motel a few miles down the road, and the truck followed close behind.

"Stay here," Bobby said. He got out of the car, took a quick look around, and stepped into the motel.

Dean turned around in his seat immediately. He need not have bothered. Sam had not moved.

Bobby was inside for only a few minutes, but they were an excruciating few minutes. When he did come back out, he gave a wave to the woman in the truck and walked around to Dean's window. "Let's get him inside," he said.

If getting Sam into the car was a challenge, getting him out was near impossible. He put up no resistance, but he did not help the process along either nor did he seem to care if he got hurt. He did not even flinch when Dean accidentally banged his shoulder against the frame of the car.

Finally they got Sam out. From there, steering him over to the outside door to the room Bobby had gotten was easy. Bobby unlocked the door and, between the two of them, they led Sam inside and, by pushing down on his shoulders, managed to sit him on one of the two beds in the sparsely furnished room.

"Wait here," Bobby said, and he disappeared back through the door without a word of explanation. Dean stayed right where he was. His mind was still too muddled to do much more than what he was told. Besides, he could not think to leave Sam alone, even for a moment.

Bobby returned carrying two duffle bags of clothes, one Dean's the other Sam's, from the backseat of the Impala. He deposited these along the wall and approached Dean, gripping his shoulders.

"Dean," he said, "I need you to focus. Can you do that?"

Dean stared back at Bobby, who was obviously trying his best to look confident, to hide his worry. With some effort, Dean nodded. "Yeah."

"We can't take Sam back to my house. That's the first place Cas or Crowley would look. But to stand a chance of helping Sam, we need every scrap of information we have on souls and Hell. So I'm going to go back and get as many books as I can."

"But…"

"Don't argue with me, boy. Now, I want you to lock down this room with every anti-demon and anti-angel ward you know. It probably won't keep Cas out, so we'll just have to hope he can't find you. I'll leave the car in case you need it, but don't go anywhere unless you absolutely have to. If you need food, have it delivered. Otherwise, don't open the door or answer the phone for anyone but me. Do you understand?"

"I…" Dean knew he should argue, but he could not summon the words.

"I said do you understand?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah what?"

Dean closed his eyes, gathering everything he could to make one simple statement. "Yes, sir, I understand."

"Good. I shouldn't be gone more than a day, but I bought out the room for a week just in case. If you haven't heard from me by that time, assume the worst." He patted Dean's shoulder. "Take care of your brother."

Dean had heard that order enough times to know exactly how to answer. "Yes, sir."

And without another word, Bobby was gone.

Dean knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he was supposed to ward the room. Instead, all he could manage to do was make his way over to the unoccupied bed and sit down. He stared across at Sam. He had hoped, when Sam showed up and stabbed Castiel that he was better. That somehow the memories of Hell had not caused him as much pain as they had feared.

But this state he was in now was different than the one after Castiel broke down the wall. Sam had been unconscious then. But now…Dean was not even sure how to describe the state Sam was in now. He might have said "soulless," but he had seen Sam with no soul.

Right now, he would have given anything to have even a soulless Sam back.

-o-o-o-

Author's note: Please review. I'm definitely looking for some constructive criticism on this one since I'm trying to make it fit with the ending of season 6. Next chapter: Sam fights to stay strong, but Lucifer has more in his repertoire than just physical torture and he's not the only one getting in on the fun. Meanwhile, Dean is faced with a new symptom from Sam and a visit from the last person he wants to see.