A/N: Wow, this story got away from me. It was originally intended to be some straight hurt Sam, protective Dean, but in this chapter it turned into something bizarrely psychological. Sorry about that.

Technically the end, although I may do an epilogue.

Revelation

And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, and bound him a thousand years.

Revelation 20:2

"Hey douchebag!"

Sam and Lucifer whip their heads around.

Dean is standing in the threshold of the library, his frame silhouetted by the lights, glaring at Lucifer like he could send him back to hell with the sheer force of his hate.

"You're gonna want to get your fucking hands off of him, now."

Lucifer is actually stunned into silence, and Sam stammers, "D-Dean…how…?"

Dean grins. "Little dreamroot, little hair, down the hatch. You really need to stop using that fruity girl shampoo, by the way. Gross, dude." He looks back to Lucifer. "Now, you can go ahead and get your feathery ass the fuck out of here."

All the anguish, all the helplessness and hopelessness, all the shadows that had hung over Dean's face are gone. His eyes are bright with purpose, and he looks larger than life as he strolls toward them. Sam feels like a kid, feels like he did when Dean could do everything and protect him from anything, when the simple presence of Dean meant everything was going to be okay.

Lucifer is pissed. "I am so—fucking—sick of you!" he snarls at Dean.

Lucifer's grip on Sam loosens, and Sam pulls himself away and stumbles toward Dean. Dean grabs Sam and pulls him back, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Go ahead and take a knee, Sammy. I got this one." Dean turns his attention back to Lucifer. "Oh, yeah, asshat? I'm not your biggest fan, either."

"How are you always there?" Lucifer snaps, sounding like a petulant child. "I'm in Stull Cemetery with my vessel, and you're there. I'm in hell with my vessel, and you're there. Why won't you just go away?"

"If Sam's there, I'm gonna be there, too," Dean says, without a hint of fear. "Always."

Lucifer glares at him, literally gnashing his teeth. With Dean standing there like a shield, sucking it all up and reradiating it as stark, come-and-fucking-get-me confidence, Lucifer's rage is kind of funny. Sam laughs, and Dean joins in and Lucifer gets even madder.

"This doesn't change anything," Lucifer spits. "I can still come into his dreams. You still need me. This vessel, your best buddy, he's gonna die, soon."

Sam stiffens, his laughter dead and buried and putrefied in a second, and he looks to his brother. But Dean's not at all ruffled. "I know all that. And I'm gonna get you out of Cas. But here's the thing." Dean starts to walk lazily around the library, keeping himself between Sam and Lucifer. "You've got some freaky angel-possession connection thing going on with Sam? That's fine, because that kid's been in my back pocket since he was born and we share a heaven, so I figure our psychic-twin deal is a lot stronger than yours."

Lucifer's lips twist. "Sam's been mine since the beginning of time. He exists for me, and because of me. You are nothing in this equation, do you understand? When will you—"

Lucifer stalks toward Dean, and Sam flinches, but the archangel never comes within swinging distance of his brother. Dean lifts a single hand, and Lucifer freezes.

"And you're an archangel and everything," Dean drawls, unconcerned, "so maybe you can pull a few tricks in here, keep Sam from waking up, make him feel pain, whatever. But that dreamroot I took? It's pretty powerful stuff. I can do things in here, too."

Dean snaps his fingers. One of the Men of Letters swords lifts up, whistles through the air, and impales Lucifer through the chest.

Lucifer, pinned to the wall like a bug specimen, spits out a mouthful of blood and then reaches down and slowly removes the blade from his body. "So this is your plan? A nightly cage match in your little brother's head?"

"That's Plan B, actually. Plan A—"

Sam doesn't hear Plan A, because Lucifer is suddenly right next to him and a cloud of mist blossoms between them and Dean. Sam hears one last panicked shout from Dean, sees Dean vault toward them, and then Dean is distant and unreachable, like they've been separated by a mile of ice.

"DEAN!"

Sam rushes forward, but there's something separating him from his brother. A wall.

"What the hell did you do?"

"Just a little angelic trick of the trade," Lucifer puffs, out of breath. "One of the things we use to keep our vessels' consciousness out of the way. I thought I could use it to let us talk."

While Lucifer watches him quietly, Sam punches the wall until his fingers break. Finally, he gives up, feeling a surge of despair so vast and crushing that it takes everything he has not to lie down on the ground and try to cease to exist.

"Sam," Lucifer says, soothingly, and Sam could almost believe that the archangel hadn't been about to brutalize him not five minutes ago. "I know this is hard. I know Dean's being here makes it harder. But you have to think about your brother."

Sam knows he should be telling Lucifer to fuck off and starting kicking the wall until he toes break too (that's what Dean would do), but he'd settle for not crying in front of the Devil, so instead he says "What?"

"You know Dean hasn't been right lately," Lucifer continues. "He hasn't been sleeping, he hasn't been drinking or taking his medicine… You know something is wrong with him, really wrong. You saw the bill from your fake insurance. Dean tried to hide it, but you saw it. What did it say?"

Answering Lucifer is automatic. It's a reflex like pulling your hand from a flame. Do it or pain will follow. "They pumped his stomach," Sam whispers.

"He tried to kill himself," Lucifer says, his voice still low and silky smooth and a twisted, pathetic part of Sam wants to find comfort in that almost-Cas voice. "And you drove him to that, Sam."

A sob breaks out of Sam's mouth.

"You're broken, Sam." Lucifer places a gentle hand on his shoulder, and Sam wants to push him off but he can't. He's exhausted, fucking exhausted from fighting so much for so long. And Dean had been here, which meant he was supposed to be safe. He wasn't supposed to have to do this on his own anymore. "You're broken. Dean's been holding you together, but's it's breaking him, too. You need to let him go, Sammy. I know you love him, but you're killing him."

Sam glances over to the smeared figure of Dean behind the blurry wall. "Dean needs me," he chokes out.

"No, Sam. Older brothers never need you as much as you think." Lucifer frowns, his eyes going distant for a moment. "Think, Sam. If you say yes, Dean will have Cas back. He'll have his best friend, a relationship that didn't come from obligation or orders from his father. We'll destroy the Darkness, together, and then he'll be free to do whatever he wants with his life. Isn't that the best thing you can give Dean? His freedom?"

Sam tries to pull the strands of this insanity together into a coherent picture, tries to penetrate through Lucifer's mind-fuckery to figure out his best move. He loves Dean and he wants to do the right thing. He feels dizzy.

"I'll tell you this, Sammy. I'm broken, too. We can hold each other together. No more being alone."

Sam looks up into Lucifer's eyes and sees something new. No anger, no contempt or hate or sarcasm or sadness. Desperation. And then he glances over to where Dean is waiting for him on the other side of the wall, because he plunged himself into Sam's fucked up head to go hand-to-hand with Satan.

Sam straightens himself to his full height, takes a step back to meet Lucifer face-to-face, and then he hurls himself at the wall.

His head shatters the surface at impact, and then it's pressure and viscosity and for a moment he feels a powerful sensation of suspension, of lack of identity, of existence without life. It's almost pleasant in its numbness. But the pressure is warm because it's crushing him and he can see something on the other side, something reaching for him, something calling for him, and he struggles through the blur and the flog and—

Sam bursts out into Dean's arms. They both crash down to their knees.

"Sam?" Dean gasps. "Are you okay?" They haul each other to their feet.

"Yeah," Sam says. He can feel something pulsing under his collarbone, something warm and electric.

"Sam! We're not finished here." Lucifer is back, as furious as he's ever been, looming over them, but Sam doesn't feel that usual deep-seated fear, that primal impulse to bear his throat and take his punishment. He has Dean by his side. In an instant, he knows he's not going to say yes.

Lucifer is just as scared and lost as the rest of them, so why should Sam be afraid of him?

"Yeah, we are," Sam tells him. "We're finished."

"Time for Plan A," Dean adds. Dean pushes against him so they're shoulder to shoulder. "This is your head, Sammy. Cast him out. I'm here to back you up."

"Please." Lucifer barks out an ugly laugh. "This is your plan? Sheer force of Sammy's will?"

"Sam's will was enough to put you away before," Dean retorts. Sam closes his eyes, trying to focus. Get out of my head. You're not welcome here. Get out of my head.

"Sure," Lucifer hisses. "But that was before I got my hooks into him. We both know what a good couple centuries on the rack can do to a person, right, Dean? I tore your little brother apart, peeled off all those fleshy red muscles, you know the ones, and I let him taste them, and I burned up the wounds to that perfect crisp, and then the grand finale, and, oh, Dean, the pretty little sounds he made when he begged me to stop, you've never heard anything like it—"

"Shut up!" Dean shouts, and Lucifer's jaw clamps shut.

Sam's shaking by now, his rhythm broken, and Dean grabs his arm and he keeps going.

"Get out of my head, Lucifer. Get of out my head, Satan. Helel, Beliar, Beelzebub, Mastema, you're not welcome here. GET OUT!"

Sam squeezes his eyes shut, feels Dean's vice-grip on his arm, feel's his brother's warmth pressing into his side. He remembers that day by the tidal pools, how Dean listened to him babble on about crabs and sea turtles and the moon, how Dean bullshitted about the kraken life-cycle to calm Sam down in the emergency room while his snakebite got treated.

Sam opens his eyes and fixes them on Lucifer. "I'm not yours. Get the hell out."

Lucifer finds himself expelled and alone on the outskirts of hell, and Sam and Dean wake up in the Bunker, exhausted and weighed down and together.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Proverbs 17:17