Author's Note: Hey look, Chapter 3, based off the song Everybody's Fool. I was initially torn with making a chapter where it is all AU, then decided, to Hell, I can make this fit the current world of Supernatural with some effort and a little bit of a personal twist. And yeah, I've noticed that Lucifer is in them, but Evanescence's song have such a haunting feel, and Lucifer is the best at haunting Sam Winchester, along with other ghosts of his past.

Rating: T, mentions of dark subjects including blood drinking, soulless!Sammy, a tormenting Lucifer and character death, so yeah, major angst alert!

Everybody's Fool

Sam groaned as he pushed himself to his feet, his shoulder crying out with agony as he scooped up the iron crowbar and tossed it at the ghost of Martin Chase, a guy who had been killed by his son and had been haunting 'bad children' in Upstate South Carolina ever since. The ghost dissipated, but not for long, and Sam knew this. He just needed to buy Dean some time to roast the corpse. He scooped up the crowbar again and turned to go find Dean, only to run into a kick in the chest from the pissed off ghost.

Sam went flying and promptly smashed through the rotting dry wall of the dead dude's old house. Now that hurt. Black dots surged his vision, and it took every ounce of Sam's shattered will to stand up and challenge the spirit. Bad idea since he had lost the crowbar.

Martin was on him in a flash, corpsified hand gripping his throat and lifting him off the ground. His eyes narrowed, hate raged in his dead, glacial blue-white eyes. "Murderer," he hissed, and Sam knew it was true.

He fought against the grip, but knew he wouldn't win. Black danced across his vision, and this time it was from lack of oxygen. He clawed at the spirit's arm to no avail, desperate for a gasp of air into his aching lungs. Dean, hurry, he thought desperately.

When the spirit dropped him and burst into flames, Sam was already in a semi-unconscious state. The rush of air and the smack of the floor against his injured shoulder, accompanied by the scream of the roasting spirit was enough of a shock to bring him back to consciousness. He coughed, panting heavily as his sore, aching lungs took in greedy gulps of air.

From the corner of the room, Lucifer laughed, amusement dancing across his features. "So close," he cooed darkly once his chuckles subsided.

Sam ignored him in favor of Dean's concern. His elder brother ran gentle fingers over the hand shaped bruise forming on Sam's neck, asking him several times if he was okay.

"My shoulder hurts, but other than that I'm alright," Sam reassured, allowing Dean to help him to his feet. He was a little dizzy and winded, but he'd be alright.

Once the brothers reached their hotel, Dean had insisted Sam got the first shower. The heat would help his sore shoulder, he had said, and Sam was in no condition to argue as Dean left to go get them some food.

Sam turned on the shower, letting the water get hot as he gingerly pulled off his clothes. Lucifer stood beside him, observing their reflections with mild interest as Sam tried to ignore him. Lucifer had become a nagging sort of presence; Sam never knew when he was going to show up and never knew what the Fallen Archangel was going to say to him once he did. Today he hadn't said much, but he refused to go away.

Maybe it was because Sam was having doubts.

"When are you going to quit pretending, Sammy?" Lucifer purred darkly and Sam swore, but didn't take his eyes off the man's reflection, almost as if looking at him directly would make it all too real.

"Get lost. You aren't real," Sam spat under his breath, the retort hardly audible over the sound of the running shower behind him.

"Oh Sammy, I know you better than you know yourself, remember? I know what you think, what you feel," he pushed, his fingers resting on Sam's injured shoulder, making him wince as he met Sam's gaze in the mirror. "I know you don't believe in any of this anymore."

"Shut up."

Sam turned away from the mirror and reached for the shower curtain, but Lucifer was there first, and Sam withdrew before he touched the not real Archangel.

"Sam," Lucifer insisted, stepping closer and closer until he had Sam pinned to the counter. Sam looked up, refusing to meet those horrible, sadistic eyes. Lucifer grabbed his jaw, fingers playing over the bruise marks he found there as he leaned forward, whispering darkly into Sam's ear, "Let's not play these games, hm? Tell me the truth."

"You aren't-,"

"The truth!" Lucifer growled, and Sam, terrified and crippled with memories of Hell, caved under that tone that had commanded him so many times before.

"I know the truth," he spoke somewhere between a broken whisper and a sob.

"Tell me, Sammy," the Devil commanded.

Sam hated it when Lucifer called him Sammy, it was another thing he had taken from him, the association of good with Dean's pet name for him, once holding so much love and tenderness, now the name only reminded him of agony, haunting him like so many other things.

"The truth," he whispered and Lucifer grinned. "None of this is real, and if it is, I don't have a right to it anyway."

"Why?"

Always pushing, always demanding more, always bending until he broke. Lucifer truly was a master at such things.

"Because," Sam choked out, memories of everything he had ever done wrong wracking his body with shame, guilt and self-loathing. Oh the truth? Sam wasn't okay, and he never would be. Sam Winchester was not who he had once been, he was not happy, he was not sane, he did not believe, he did not have hope. All he had was regret, guilt, and visions of his own torment, something that both mortified him and appeased his conscious, because he was a monster, and he deserved it.

Right?

"Right, now tell me out loud, Sam," the smaller figure demanded, and Sam was vaguely aware of Dean's voice on the other side of the door.

"I killed innocent people, everyone I love dies, everything I care for turns to ash at my fingertips," Sam spoke with pain and regret thick in his voice, and it hurt to say these things out loud.

"Tell me your sins," Lucifer commanded once again, and Sam was familiar with that, as Lucifer had demanded these things of him before, only with more physical pain.

"I'm a freak, a monster," Sam replied, and really it was more of a habit now, but the truth to him none the less. "I've killed innocent people, people who did nothing to me. I consorted with demons and I liked it. I'm a wrathful, proud, gluttonous monster, who only hurts."

Lucifer purred at the words and Sam relaxed, not having realized that he had gone tense under the Devil's touches. Sam wanted to make it stop, but all he did was shove the Devil away just as Dean broke open the motel door and wrapped Sam in his arms. Sam hadn't realized he was crying, and he figured this must've been what Dean meant when he said the other shoe would drop, the time when the truth sprang from the lies, when Dean found out just how messed up he was.

And Sam was disgusted with himself for taking comfort in Dean's embrace as he slid to warm tiled floor, the heat of the shower's steam melting them together. Dean held him, hushing him and Sam became aware that he was virtually screaming apologies. Who was he, for he certainly wasn't the man who crawled into his brother's arms and lost his grip on himself.

In that moment, it was too much. Everything hurt; his heart, his mind, and even his very soul. All of them sang with pain, lighting him up from the inside out until he was sure all his guilt and inner hatred toward himself was tangible in the air. This only made him feel more pathetic, adding to another layer of all the fucked up things that defined Sam Winchester.

"It's going to be okay Sam," Dean whispered in his ear, "It's going to be okay."

Only it wasn't.

Dean had believed it at the time, was so sure Sam was going to be okay after they had talked, after Dean had tried to soothe his baby brother's aching soul and put him to sleep by petting his hair. He knew now that he had been wrong.

As he held Sam's dead body in his arms, not crying, not moving and finally, truly alone, he knew now that he should have fought, that he should have tried harder, that he should have made Sam believe, that he should have listened. Now he was dead inside, not aching, not hurting, just numb and cold with shock and disbelief.

And he wished, with Sam's blood-covered, cold corpse in his hands, more than anything, that he had told Sam he loved him. It was then that Dean began to sob over the loss of the only thing he had left, of the one person he had truly cared for more than life itself.

In the depths of Hell, Sam Winchester cried out in agony as the Devil himself ripped away at his flesh, his head forever screaming with the pain of the bullet he had buried in his brain.