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tarotgalTitle: On a Scale of One to Ten
Author: tarotgal
Fandom: Supernatural (spoilers through season 7)
Pairing: None
Rating: NC-17 for canon-typical violence and pain
Prompt: There's always a new ten (prompt by Anonymous)
Notes: Written for the 2018 OhSam Birthday meme on the side of hurt. A lot of hurt. So much hurt.
“Hey, Sammy.” Sam looks up from his drawing to see Dean looking pale and worried and standing in the middle of the waiting room.
Instead of working on his homework this afternoon, Sam had been dragged to the hospital with Dean and Dad, parked in the waiting room, and then abandoned multiple times while Dad got treated and Dean tried to get to him to figure out what was going on. Sam had sat and people-watched a while, his legs dangling and singing from the plastic chair. Finally, he had spotted a small stack of cards with smiley faces on them and decided to amuse himself with them. After the first two houses of cards had been unsuccessful, utter failures, he had picked up a pencil and started doodling. Sam will be the first to admit that he isn’t the best artist, but it isn’t hard to add hair and stick figure bodies to the lineup of faces on the card showing expressions that ranged from smiles to utter destress.
“C’mon. We’ve gotta go now.”
Sam hears the urgency and knows it’s serious. Most likely, Dad wants to sneak out before they can make him pay. So Sam slides to the edge of the chair so he can hop down. He puts the decorated card back on the side table where he found it, next to magazines and a half-dead potted plant. But as he drops it, the card slices open his index finger with a sharp sting of pain.
He looks at his finger, turning it so the florescent light catches a thin line of blood on his skin. Immediately, he pops his finger into his mouth and sucks. He can taste the blood, but he would rather do this than risk dripping blood on the floor.
Then he remembers where he is. “Can I go ask one of the nurses for a Band-Aid?” he asks around his finger as Dean hurries over to him and grabs his other hand. Sam holds up his injured finger. “Paper cut.”
Dean seems flustered by the unexpected question and torn between Dad’s order to always look after his little brother and Dad’s most recent order to leave the hospital immediately. “There are Band-Aids in the first aid kit in the car. I’ll get you one of those, but we need to hurry.”
Sam thinks about the card, about the little scale and the levels of pain. His finger hurts, sure, but not that much. He thinks about Dad, about Dad looking dizzy and out of it, about how Dad couldn’t even walk into the ER today without Dean helping to hold him up, about the blood on his flannel and the way he kept his hand pressed to the side of his neck. On that card, Dad would be on one side, and Sam would be way over on the opposite end. Sam would be a one. And if Dad, who was most certainly not a one, was leaving the hospital right now, then so could Sam.
After driving his knife all the way through the creature, Dean rushes over to Sam, wincing as he bends down, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side. “Where does it hurt?” he asks, his eyes raking over Sam’s body as if they are an x-ray machine and can figure out his answer for him.
“My leg,” Sam says. “And my back, too, I guess.” The creature hadn’t thrown him far but had thrown him hard. He had crashed against the trunk of a pretty solid oak tree and had distinctly heard a crack when he’d fallen to the ground. Getting up had been impossible. Watching Dean struggle with the creature alone—all teeth and strength—had been agony. “But mostly the leg.” It lies there on the forest floor at an unnatural angle.
“Might be broken. Shit.” Dean goes to touch it and winces. “My arm… hold on a second.” He gets up, surveys the tree, and then rams his side into it. His yell of pain is loud enough to frighten off birds settling back down on branches nearby. He makes a fist with his other hand, takes a deep breath, and hits his arm against the tree even harder. This time, they both hear a popping sound and Dean sighs with relief. "That's so much better.” He squats down next to Sam again. “But I don’t think I can carry you. Think you can hop back to the car if I put an arm around you for balance? Or is the pain too bad?”
Sam considers carefully, not wanting to get stuck halfway and not being able to go any further. His whole body hurts, both from being thrown but also from the blows sustained when he had been in the fight. His head is throbbing and his whole body aches, especially his back. Trying to hop over logs and push through foliage will be intensely unpleasant. But his arms are sore and bruised but otherwise okay, unlike one of Dean’s. Sam’s in pain, but not nearly to ten yet. Not even close. “I’m a four,” he says, reaching up for Dean’s good arm. They grip each other’s forearms and manage to get Sam upright.
Sam leans heavily on Dean and takes an experimental hop forward. Pain shoots through his whole body and he sucks in air through clenched teeth.
Dean’s hand tightens on his side in concern.
“Maybe… maybe make that a five.” He takes a deep breath and looks ahead in the direction he thinks they left the Impala, where the forest was too dense to drive further. He knows Dean’s hurting, too, but he isn’t sure he can hurry, even for Dean’s sake. “Can we… go slow?”
Dean looks over his shoulder at the creature, completely still, death twitches stopped. “Yeah,” he agrees. “We’ll go as slow as you need to, kiddo.”
Nodding with determination, Sam takes another hop forward, bearing the pain in his back and dragging his useless leg between the two of them, and sets the pace.
Sam is wrapped up in their thickest quilt and parked right next to the radiator, but he's still shivering. The chills are miserable, sure, but it's the pain in his stomach that's the worst. It’s only really bad when he moves, but unfortunately breathing counts as moving, and that’s the one thing he’s scared to stop doing. He bites down on the thermometer so hard he thinks he might have broken it until it finally beeps, startling both him and Dean.
Dean pulls the thermometer out and, instead of telling Sam what it says, swears. “Dad took the car. Ambulances cost money we don’t have.” He swears again and goes to get the phone. Sam knows who he’s calling even before Dean’s anxious voice asks “Pastor Jim?”
Sam’s brother tries not to look panicked as he returns. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and he’s perspiring here next to the device that heats the Winchester’s crappy apartment. He’s got to be uncomfortable, but he sits down right next to Sam anyway. “Can you hang on for an hour, Sammy?”
If Dean’s saying an hour, Sam knows it’ll most likely be two. They haven’t seen Pastor Jim Murphy in years, since they were little kids, but Sam knows he’ll come. And Sam also knows roughly how far away Fort Dodge, Iowa is from Blue Earth, Minnesota. And he knows it’s at least twenty minutes from the apartment to the hospital; he’s taken that trip a number of times since they moved here.
When Sam tries to sit up straighter and show Dean that he’ll be okay, his abdomen shoots an especially strong bolt of pain at him, making him hunch back over again. He refuses to be sick to his stomach on top of the pain and the fever, but he worries he might not get a choice in the matter. “Water?” he whispers.
Dean gets him a glass and holds it to his lips so Sam won’t have to take his arms out from beneath the quilt. The act of swallowing feels like a solid accomplishment, and the lukewarm tap water is calming, familiar.
Sam tries not to think about the pain, tries to remain calm and just ignore it. But then Dean makes him pay attention to it. “How much pain are you in?”
Sam wants to tell him that it’s a ten, because he can’t imagine anything Dean can do not will make this worse, only better. But it’s really just a high fever, a touch of nausea, and an appendix getting ready to burst. When he thinks about it seriously, he knows it could be worse. He starts to say it’s an eight, but then he sees the worry and helplessness in his big brother’s eyes. “Seven,” Sam says, hoping that will make it true. And even though moving is excruciatingly painful, he leans a little, his shoulder bumping Dean’s in what he hopes is a reassuring way. “I can hang on as long as I need to. Promise.”
Dean doesn’t even try to hide his relief. He presses his palm to Sam’s forehead and rubs his thumb back and forth over Sam’s hairline. “Good. That’s good, Sammy. If you need to get to the hospital sooner, I’ll… I don’t know… I’ll hotwire a car or something.” Never mind the fact that Dean only has his learner’s permit. “So you tell me if it gets worse.”
Sam closes his eyes and nods, knowing that he won’t. He won’t admit to Dean that this pain is worse than a seven.
Sam never knew that his whole body could hurt from crying. His eyes, sure, that made sense. Even his chest, because those deep sobs that burst from him are intense. But his whole body is affected. He feels bone tired, weary, with absolutely no strength to do anything but curl in on himself in the passenger seat of the Impala and cry some more. It’s like he’s forgotten how to do anything else—walk, eat, sit, talk, sleep.
No, he remembers how to sleep, just doesn’t want to. When he sleeps, he dreams of Jess again, as real and wonderful as ever. And then he sees her on the ceiling on fire with no way for him to possibly save her and wakes up screaming with Dean so startled he almost runs them off the road. So Sam doesn’t let himself sleep—at least, not for long enough to drop into an REM cycle. He gives himself a few minutes here and a few minutes there in-between the tears and fits of body-shaking sobs.
Dean forces Gatorade and bottled water on him. Sometimes Sam humors him and takes a gulp or two, if he can get his arms to uncurl from around his chest and can keep his hitching breaths in check long enough to swallow without choking. He lets Dean wipe rough, wet paper towels from gas station bathrooms over his red, tear-streaked face. He lets Dean tuck his jacket around Sam, knowing Sam will probably get it wet with tears.
He endures Dean’s music, thinking about dancing with Jess for the last time at that costume party, and now he wishes he’d made more of an effort. He listens to Dean go on and on endlessly about hunts he and Dad went on, thinking the whole time about how he was glad to miss all of those moments. He feels the bumps and turns of the road, thinking that this was what he’d grown up with, this was what he was born into, this was his lot in life.
This was always going to be his fate. This was all his fault.
And that sets him off again, crying and keening, heartsick and soulsick. And he hurts so much he doesn’t understand why his whole body doesn’t just give out already. He can’t possibly endure this pain.
Every time Sam is certain he’s at his ten, Dean somehow knows to reach out and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing just a little to let him know he’s there. Dean doesn’t feel his pain now, but Dean is here for him. Dean won’t leave him. Dean lost Mom the very same way, so he knows what it’s like. And he is just as determined to find this demon. And in that moment, the pain feels like it’s sent all the way back to level one, nothing worse than a paper cut. Stick a Band-Aid on it and carry on, Winchester. There’s a job to do now.
Dean is here. Dean is here and yelling his name. Dean is here. Sam follows the sound. The freezing rain has him sliding along the muddy road, and so much of his body hurts that he has to move slowly. He limps, holding his side, trying not to think about all the wounds and internal injuries, just trying to get close enough for Dean to find him. It’s an effort, and he pants heavily, each breath a small, visible cloud he follows forward, footstep by footstep. He’s not sure where he is on that damn pain scale. Six? Thirteen? Eighty-five? Two? Nothing makes sense to him any more except for his brother’s voice in the darkness.
Then he sees a flash of light up ahead. A flashlight. Dean’s flashlight. He sees Bobby with a shotgun and Dean right next to him, looking relieved to find Sam at last. “Sam!” Dean calls out again.
“Dean!” Sam yells back, just as relieved, if not more-so. Dean is here. All this hell the yellow-eyed demon put them through was finally over. Dean was here. Everything was going to be okay.
And that was when he saw it in Dean’s eyes. Just a flicker of understanding that something was wrong. “Sam, look out!”
But the warning comes too late for Sam to react. The last word is barely out of Dean’s mouth when Sam feels something strike his back. A hot, piercing pain starts radiating from his chest. He’s been hurt plenty over the years, but it’s like nothing he’s ever experienced before. And then it comes at him again, even stronger, like something inside him is being turned or opened or cut irreparably forever. The pain is unimaginable. As he hears his brother scream “No!” Sam wonders if finally he’s found his ten. But Dean is here. It can’t be a ten if Dean is here. It can’t.
He falls to his knees, not even aware he’s done it. His body is useless now and the pain blocks out every thought in his head except for Dean. Dean. Dean is here. The hot pain somehow turns cold inside of him. Chilling and paralyzing, it takes control of him. It’s Sam with pain and then pain with a little bit of Sam left and then just pain. His vision’s gone all blurry, but he thinks it’s still Dean in front of him, and Dean can fix him. Dean can patch him up. Dean can do anything. Because he’s Dean. Dean is here. Dean is here. Dean is
Sam sees the knife and knows he’s tied so tight he can’t avoid it, but he struggles in the chair anyway. Seeing the danger coming makes it worse, somehow. He knows it will hurt, so he should be able to brace himself for it. But seeing the Pagan god with that knife come at him and being unable to stop it feels worse than being surprised with a knife in the back. “No! Don’t!” Of course the Pagan god doesn’t listen to him.
Sam tries to tell him it won’t hurt as much as he anticipates. He reminds himself that he has actually died. That’s got to be his ten. Dying is the final stage for more people, the part of life they just can’t fight against, the part that finally does them in. And he’s not only been there and done that but come out again alive on the other side. So no matter what happens to him now, he’s got that ultimate level of pain experienced. Being cut and bled should be almost familiar and boring by now.
When the knife sinks into his forearm, though, the pain is there. It’s real and fresh. He cries out. And he can hear Dean struggling and swearing, wanting to help him but being just as stuck. Sam squeezes his eyes shut against the pain as blood flows from his arm. He’s barely aware of what anyone’s saying, but he’d rate this at about a two… until they start to bleed Dean as well.
Then the anger takes over, and the pain of not being able to help his brother is overwhelming. When the god comes at him again with some sort of tool—plyers, perhaps—Sam’s already fast heartbeat seemed to double. “What do you think you’re doing with those?”
Sam finds out a second later “Don’t!” as the god grabs hold of his fingernail with the tool and pulls it right off with a strength Sam hadn’t expected. The pain is sharp and raw and, in the moment, spikes to eight or maybe even nine. Sam can’t do anything about it, but he tries to bear the pain. He looks up at the ceiling, eyes wide, body shaking. He tries to talk himself back down the scale. He’s not dying. This is nowhere close to dying. But it hurts so much he hunches forward, and he can feel himself start to lose consciousness.
He tells himself to stay awake. He can’t kill them if he doesn’t stay awake. Dying on Dean’s last Christmas is not in his plans.
Losing Jess had almost killed him. Losing Dean hundreds of times over and over again on Tuesday after Tuesday had been almost unbearable. But losing Dean for good… watching Dean be mauled to death by invisible hellhounds so his soul could be dragged down to Hell… Sam isn’t sure he will ever get over this.
He’s had a year to prepare himself, but he had so much hope that a year would be enough time to break the deal. When the time came, there was nothing anyone could do. Dean died. And Sam had had no choice but to watch it happen.
Cradling Dean’s gutted body in his arms, he’d made the call to Bobby. Even now he can’t remember what he said. He isn’t even sure he had been able to get real words out through his tears. But Bobby had come. Bobby had helped him burry Dean, despite protesting that he should be salted and burned. Bobby had taken Sam in his arms, into a hug Sam could barely feel, and insisted Sam stay in his house for a little while. Unable to think straight and unable to feel anything but pain, Sam had agreed automatically.
So here he is now, walking silently through the salvage yard. Rusted metal against his fingertips. Hard-packed dirt beneath his feet. A light breeze upon his cheek. He can feel it all, but it is as though he feels it at a distance, through some sort of tunnel that dulls his senses and numbs his body. With Dean gone, nothing seems real to him anymore.
The pain is off the scale. He can’t even conceive of a number this high. The Wong-Baker faces scale wasn’t created with this amount of grief in mind.
To his credit, Bobby never once asked if Sam was okay. He understood the boys far too well to think that either of them could be okay if the other was dead. And he tried to look after Sam as best he could, make sure he ate and slept and did something apart from cry and rage and mourn. But he was grieving, too, and even getting near words that sounded like a reassurance that things would be all right again one day would set him off, making his voice crack and his eyes tear up. Liquor was the only thing that kept Bobby from breaking down, most days, but even the smell of alcohol turned Sam’s stomach, reminded him of Dad and Dean’s coping technique. In the end, they discovered companionable silence worked best for them.
Sam goes out walking every day, sometimes for hours at a time, sometimes just going around in circles. It’s a comfort to know Dean had been here, had walked these same paths, maybe even passed by some of these same cars. There are so many places in the world Dean never went, and Sam isn’t sure he can face the world beyond this place now.
Sometimes he sits in the Impala. If he closes his eyes and blasts cassette tapes, it’s almost like Dean’s still here. It feels like Dean could just climb right into the driver’s seat of his baby at any second. Sometimes he can’t bring himself to leave the car once he’s in it, and he stretches out across the seat and sleeps there. More than once, he’s woken up in the morning to find a blanket draped over him, and for a moment he thinks Dean’s come back before he realizes Bobby put it there.
When Sam isn’t walking or spending time in the car, he’s reading. Staying at Bobby’s means having access to an extensive library of the very sort of information he needs. He looks at rituals and bargains with demons. He looks at resurrection spells and summonings. He makes lists of everything he can try—opening the Devil’s Gate, dealing with crossroad demons, hiring witches. He’ll do anything he can think of to make this pain go away. Because he knows the only thing that will ever make his pain stop is to bring Dean back.
So he walks and he sits and he reads and he schemes every day until his body is so weighed down with the pain of his grief he can’t function. Then he collapses into bed and does the only other thing he can think to do before sleep takes him. He prays.
The agony is so hard to endure. He feels ripped apart from the inside out, like the only thing that has made him strong, helped him survive, and made him who he is seems to be burning up now and can’t be replenished. If he even survives without it, what will he be? An empty shell? A useless human being? He can’t go back to feeling weak and inadequate and alone. That’s no way to keep the world safe.
Sam feels heat and pain and death in every cell of his body, in every drop of blood in his veins. He feels violently ill and just plain violent at the same time. He can’t even think about that fucking scale, those fucking smiley faces.
The worst is the powerful need, though. The way his body pleads with him for something he can’t get. That one thing that will help is completely beyond reach. As hard as he tries to get to it, he can’t. Sam can’t save himself. Not this time.
No one has known this sensation before. No one could possibly understand what this is like. Everything in him is being stripped away against his will. He feels violated, raw, and exposed without his consent.
The fact that Bobby and Dean were the ones who did this to him makes it infinitely worse.
“Dean! Help!” he screams, knowing the thick iron walls, covered in protection symbols, contain both him and his words. Dean isn’t coming. Dean doesn’t even care. Dean left him here to deal with this himself. Dean left him here to die.
His hands tremble as his veins go black, tearing through every layer of his skin. He stares at his reflection, watching the darkness shoot through his neck, his face. He screams for help, knowing no help is coming. Demons can’t get to him and he can’t get to them. All it would take to end this agony is just one swallow of blood, and he can’t have it.
His whole body shakes with need and with weakness and with fear. After all he has been through, this is where he’s going to die. His vision goes black and he shakes as his body falls to the floor.
When he wakes, he’s back on the cot, but he’s bound tight to it this time. He pulls with all his might, straining, but the cuffs on his wrists and ankles are so solid he can’t pull free. He doesn’t have the strength to overcome just a little metal and leather. He’s pathetic. He sickens himself.
Dean’s there with him in the panic room, at the foot of the cot. “We had to,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the restraints. “The demon blood was flingin’ you all over the room.” He looks at Sam with so much hurt in his eyes, Sam can barely look at him. It makes the pain even worse. “Tell me something, Sam. Why did you do this to yourself?”
Sam has done a lot of pointing tonight.
"Point to where it hurts," the nurse says, holding up a picture of the human body that Sam first just lays his palm on top of to indicate that absolutely everything hurts. Then he starts pointing until the nurse realizes she should go get the doctor immediately.
"Point to any of the photos of the men who did this to you," says the police officer. "Anyone you recognize?" He turns the pages slowly, holding the book of mug shots open for Sam. It takes many pages, during which Sam fights to stay awake despite the pain and the drugs he’s been given. Finally, Sam spots some familiar faces. He points to one. Then to another a few pages later. The third one, the one who Sam is sure was the one who shattered his jaw with a steel-toed boot, isn't in the cop's photo book at all.
"Point to your level of pain now," the doctor says, after the x-rays are done and Sam is as safely bandaged up as he can be. Sam can barely move now, but he manages to raise his arm just enough. He was a six when they’d brought him in.
Sam's finger points to three. Then he hesitates, reconsidering, and movies it down to two.
The doctor’s eyes are wide, incredulous. “Just so you understand, that’s the low end of the scale,” he points out, gesturing vaguely to the other end of the spectrum. “The higher pain levels are—”
Sam points at the little number two again and the face associated with it. Being attacked by random muggers had been almost quaint. No demons. No shapeshifters. No angels. Nothing supernatural. Just some jerks with guns and knives wanting his wallet. He’d put up a good fight for a while, but three against one had never been great odds and eventually the blood he’d lost from the gunshot wound had taken him down where the boots had done what fists hadn’t been able to.
And, sure, Sam feels horrible. Sure, it hurts absolutely everywhere still, though the pain meds and the IV bring a sense of peace and relief he’s not used to. So he really isn’t that bad.
The best part, though, is that Dean is on his way. The fight they’d had meant nothing in the long run. When the hospital had called him, Dean had turned the Impala right around to get back to Sam. Sam is sleepy but determined to stay awake until Dean is here, watching over him.
"On a scale of one to ten," Lucifer says, Sam's blood dripping down his arm, down the serrated blade in his hand. "How bad's the pain?"
And Sam knows what the answer is. But Sam has made a promise to himself to not say ten, not unless he's absolutely sure this is the worst he's ever felt, the worst he could ever feel. But a hundred years of this has worn him down, and he wants to shout 'eleven,' thinking that maybe if he admits he's at his limit, this will make it stop.
As he makes an effort to raise his head, to look into Lucifer's eyes, he sees Michael on his way over. Sam doesn't know if the weapons in his hands are for Lucifer or for him, but he knows for sure that he won't escape some pain. And that will be more, that will be worse than what he feels now. So Sam closes his eyes. "Nine," he squeaks out and waits for the next blows to strike. The pain mixed with anticipation of more pain makes it a nine-point-five.
It’s really not so bad, when he thinks of everything he’s been through, not being able to sleep is kind of the best problem he’s had in a while. He’s so tired his body feels like it’s shutting down. It’s heavy and hard to move. Lucifer’s interruptions every time he has even a hope of resting aren’t appreciated.
But he’s felt worse. He has been killed multiple times. He was tortured by the devil and a vengeful angel for over a hundred years. The fragile wall protecting his soul crumbled to dust. And seeing hallucinations of Lucifer isn’t remotely comforting, but they don’t hurt directly.
Sam’s sitting up in bed, trying to nod off and knowing at any moment he will be stopped from doing so.
The door to his room opens. “Sam, how are we feeling today?” White coat. Clipboard. Pen. The doctor. Doctor… Sam can’t remember his name. But his face is familiar. “Rib pain? On a scale of one to ten?”
Rib pain? From the car that ran into him. Right. It hardly registers. “It’s… it’s not bad.” He tries to feel his ribs. His body feels too numb with fatigue. He clears his throat and guesses. “Um… three?”
The doctor moves forward, putting his hands on his hips. Sam can’t remember what that expression is supposed to mean. “You don’t have to lie, Sam.”
Is he lying? Sam doesn’t think so. There’s a lot he has to lie about here. He knows they’re supposed to be helping him, and they can’t help him unless he tells the truth. But he also knows he can’t tell them everything, either. They’ll never believe him. They’ll lock him up. But about the pain in his chest, he’s not lying. It really isn’t bad. He’s sure of it. “I’m not.”
“You’ve suffered terrible agony.” Agony? The doctor has no idea. “I mean, your ten must be astronomical.”
“Yeah, I guess I have a high threshold.”
“Yeah. But the worst is knowing that there’s always a new ten.”
A new ten? Sam thinks about the pain he’s felt his whole life, how it’s haunted him. How it’s never been more than he can take until it is. And when he’s sure it will break him, he still makes it through. Maybe he’s never really reached his ten. Or maybe he’s reached it a thousand times and just won’t admit it to himself. Every Tuesday he watched Dean die. Every time he dared think Dean wouldn’t save him. Every time he welcomed pain in his hand to let him know what was real. But how could this doctor know that? “What are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m talking about the truly elegant torture I have prepared for you today, Sam.”
And suddenly the face before him is morphing, changing. Suddenly it’s not the doctor at all. It’s Lucifer. And Sam goes colder than cold inside. No matter where he goes, no matter what he tries, there’s no escaping from what’s in his mind. He’s his own ten now.
Author: tarotgal
Fandom: Supernatural (spoilers through season 7)
Pairing: None
Rating: NC-17 for canon-typical violence and pain
Prompt: There's always a new ten (prompt by Anonymous)
Notes: Written for the 2018 OhSam Birthday meme on the side of hurt. A lot of hurt. So much hurt.
On a Scale of One to Ten
“Hey, Sammy.” Sam looks up from his drawing to see Dean looking pale and worried and standing in the middle of the waiting room.
Instead of working on his homework this afternoon, Sam had been dragged to the hospital with Dean and Dad, parked in the waiting room, and then abandoned multiple times while Dad got treated and Dean tried to get to him to figure out what was going on. Sam had sat and people-watched a while, his legs dangling and singing from the plastic chair. Finally, he had spotted a small stack of cards with smiley faces on them and decided to amuse himself with them. After the first two houses of cards had been unsuccessful, utter failures, he had picked up a pencil and started doodling. Sam will be the first to admit that he isn’t the best artist, but it isn’t hard to add hair and stick figure bodies to the lineup of faces on the card showing expressions that ranged from smiles to utter destress.
“C’mon. We’ve gotta go now.”
Sam hears the urgency and knows it’s serious. Most likely, Dad wants to sneak out before they can make him pay. So Sam slides to the edge of the chair so he can hop down. He puts the decorated card back on the side table where he found it, next to magazines and a half-dead potted plant. But as he drops it, the card slices open his index finger with a sharp sting of pain.
He looks at his finger, turning it so the florescent light catches a thin line of blood on his skin. Immediately, he pops his finger into his mouth and sucks. He can taste the blood, but he would rather do this than risk dripping blood on the floor.
Then he remembers where he is. “Can I go ask one of the nurses for a Band-Aid?” he asks around his finger as Dean hurries over to him and grabs his other hand. Sam holds up his injured finger. “Paper cut.”
Dean seems flustered by the unexpected question and torn between Dad’s order to always look after his little brother and Dad’s most recent order to leave the hospital immediately. “There are Band-Aids in the first aid kit in the car. I’ll get you one of those, but we need to hurry.”
Sam thinks about the card, about the little scale and the levels of pain. His finger hurts, sure, but not that much. He thinks about Dad, about Dad looking dizzy and out of it, about how Dad couldn’t even walk into the ER today without Dean helping to hold him up, about the blood on his flannel and the way he kept his hand pressed to the side of his neck. On that card, Dad would be on one side, and Sam would be way over on the opposite end. Sam would be a one. And if Dad, who was most certainly not a one, was leaving the hospital right now, then so could Sam.
After driving his knife all the way through the creature, Dean rushes over to Sam, wincing as he bends down, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side. “Where does it hurt?” he asks, his eyes raking over Sam’s body as if they are an x-ray machine and can figure out his answer for him.
“My leg,” Sam says. “And my back, too, I guess.” The creature hadn’t thrown him far but had thrown him hard. He had crashed against the trunk of a pretty solid oak tree and had distinctly heard a crack when he’d fallen to the ground. Getting up had been impossible. Watching Dean struggle with the creature alone—all teeth and strength—had been agony. “But mostly the leg.” It lies there on the forest floor at an unnatural angle.
“Might be broken. Shit.” Dean goes to touch it and winces. “My arm… hold on a second.” He gets up, surveys the tree, and then rams his side into it. His yell of pain is loud enough to frighten off birds settling back down on branches nearby. He makes a fist with his other hand, takes a deep breath, and hits his arm against the tree even harder. This time, they both hear a popping sound and Dean sighs with relief. "That's so much better.” He squats down next to Sam again. “But I don’t think I can carry you. Think you can hop back to the car if I put an arm around you for balance? Or is the pain too bad?”
Sam considers carefully, not wanting to get stuck halfway and not being able to go any further. His whole body hurts, both from being thrown but also from the blows sustained when he had been in the fight. His head is throbbing and his whole body aches, especially his back. Trying to hop over logs and push through foliage will be intensely unpleasant. But his arms are sore and bruised but otherwise okay, unlike one of Dean’s. Sam’s in pain, but not nearly to ten yet. Not even close. “I’m a four,” he says, reaching up for Dean’s good arm. They grip each other’s forearms and manage to get Sam upright.
Sam leans heavily on Dean and takes an experimental hop forward. Pain shoots through his whole body and he sucks in air through clenched teeth.
Dean’s hand tightens on his side in concern.
“Maybe… maybe make that a five.” He takes a deep breath and looks ahead in the direction he thinks they left the Impala, where the forest was too dense to drive further. He knows Dean’s hurting, too, but he isn’t sure he can hurry, even for Dean’s sake. “Can we… go slow?”
Dean looks over his shoulder at the creature, completely still, death twitches stopped. “Yeah,” he agrees. “We’ll go as slow as you need to, kiddo.”
Nodding with determination, Sam takes another hop forward, bearing the pain in his back and dragging his useless leg between the two of them, and sets the pace.
Sam is wrapped up in their thickest quilt and parked right next to the radiator, but he's still shivering. The chills are miserable, sure, but it's the pain in his stomach that's the worst. It’s only really bad when he moves, but unfortunately breathing counts as moving, and that’s the one thing he’s scared to stop doing. He bites down on the thermometer so hard he thinks he might have broken it until it finally beeps, startling both him and Dean.
Dean pulls the thermometer out and, instead of telling Sam what it says, swears. “Dad took the car. Ambulances cost money we don’t have.” He swears again and goes to get the phone. Sam knows who he’s calling even before Dean’s anxious voice asks “Pastor Jim?”
Sam’s brother tries not to look panicked as he returns. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and he’s perspiring here next to the device that heats the Winchester’s crappy apartment. He’s got to be uncomfortable, but he sits down right next to Sam anyway. “Can you hang on for an hour, Sammy?”
If Dean’s saying an hour, Sam knows it’ll most likely be two. They haven’t seen Pastor Jim Murphy in years, since they were little kids, but Sam knows he’ll come. And Sam also knows roughly how far away Fort Dodge, Iowa is from Blue Earth, Minnesota. And he knows it’s at least twenty minutes from the apartment to the hospital; he’s taken that trip a number of times since they moved here.
When Sam tries to sit up straighter and show Dean that he’ll be okay, his abdomen shoots an especially strong bolt of pain at him, making him hunch back over again. He refuses to be sick to his stomach on top of the pain and the fever, but he worries he might not get a choice in the matter. “Water?” he whispers.
Dean gets him a glass and holds it to his lips so Sam won’t have to take his arms out from beneath the quilt. The act of swallowing feels like a solid accomplishment, and the lukewarm tap water is calming, familiar.
Sam tries not to think about the pain, tries to remain calm and just ignore it. But then Dean makes him pay attention to it. “How much pain are you in?”
Sam wants to tell him that it’s a ten, because he can’t imagine anything Dean can do not will make this worse, only better. But it’s really just a high fever, a touch of nausea, and an appendix getting ready to burst. When he thinks about it seriously, he knows it could be worse. He starts to say it’s an eight, but then he sees the worry and helplessness in his big brother’s eyes. “Seven,” Sam says, hoping that will make it true. And even though moving is excruciatingly painful, he leans a little, his shoulder bumping Dean’s in what he hopes is a reassuring way. “I can hang on as long as I need to. Promise.”
Dean doesn’t even try to hide his relief. He presses his palm to Sam’s forehead and rubs his thumb back and forth over Sam’s hairline. “Good. That’s good, Sammy. If you need to get to the hospital sooner, I’ll… I don’t know… I’ll hotwire a car or something.” Never mind the fact that Dean only has his learner’s permit. “So you tell me if it gets worse.”
Sam closes his eyes and nods, knowing that he won’t. He won’t admit to Dean that this pain is worse than a seven.
Sam never knew that his whole body could hurt from crying. His eyes, sure, that made sense. Even his chest, because those deep sobs that burst from him are intense. But his whole body is affected. He feels bone tired, weary, with absolutely no strength to do anything but curl in on himself in the passenger seat of the Impala and cry some more. It’s like he’s forgotten how to do anything else—walk, eat, sit, talk, sleep.
No, he remembers how to sleep, just doesn’t want to. When he sleeps, he dreams of Jess again, as real and wonderful as ever. And then he sees her on the ceiling on fire with no way for him to possibly save her and wakes up screaming with Dean so startled he almost runs them off the road. So Sam doesn’t let himself sleep—at least, not for long enough to drop into an REM cycle. He gives himself a few minutes here and a few minutes there in-between the tears and fits of body-shaking sobs.
Dean forces Gatorade and bottled water on him. Sometimes Sam humors him and takes a gulp or two, if he can get his arms to uncurl from around his chest and can keep his hitching breaths in check long enough to swallow without choking. He lets Dean wipe rough, wet paper towels from gas station bathrooms over his red, tear-streaked face. He lets Dean tuck his jacket around Sam, knowing Sam will probably get it wet with tears.
He endures Dean’s music, thinking about dancing with Jess for the last time at that costume party, and now he wishes he’d made more of an effort. He listens to Dean go on and on endlessly about hunts he and Dad went on, thinking the whole time about how he was glad to miss all of those moments. He feels the bumps and turns of the road, thinking that this was what he’d grown up with, this was what he was born into, this was his lot in life.
This was always going to be his fate. This was all his fault.
And that sets him off again, crying and keening, heartsick and soulsick. And he hurts so much he doesn’t understand why his whole body doesn’t just give out already. He can’t possibly endure this pain.
Every time Sam is certain he’s at his ten, Dean somehow knows to reach out and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing just a little to let him know he’s there. Dean doesn’t feel his pain now, but Dean is here for him. Dean won’t leave him. Dean lost Mom the very same way, so he knows what it’s like. And he is just as determined to find this demon. And in that moment, the pain feels like it’s sent all the way back to level one, nothing worse than a paper cut. Stick a Band-Aid on it and carry on, Winchester. There’s a job to do now.
Dean is here. Dean is here and yelling his name. Dean is here. Sam follows the sound. The freezing rain has him sliding along the muddy road, and so much of his body hurts that he has to move slowly. He limps, holding his side, trying not to think about all the wounds and internal injuries, just trying to get close enough for Dean to find him. It’s an effort, and he pants heavily, each breath a small, visible cloud he follows forward, footstep by footstep. He’s not sure where he is on that damn pain scale. Six? Thirteen? Eighty-five? Two? Nothing makes sense to him any more except for his brother’s voice in the darkness.
Then he sees a flash of light up ahead. A flashlight. Dean’s flashlight. He sees Bobby with a shotgun and Dean right next to him, looking relieved to find Sam at last. “Sam!” Dean calls out again.
“Dean!” Sam yells back, just as relieved, if not more-so. Dean is here. All this hell the yellow-eyed demon put them through was finally over. Dean was here. Everything was going to be okay.
And that was when he saw it in Dean’s eyes. Just a flicker of understanding that something was wrong. “Sam, look out!”
But the warning comes too late for Sam to react. The last word is barely out of Dean’s mouth when Sam feels something strike his back. A hot, piercing pain starts radiating from his chest. He’s been hurt plenty over the years, but it’s like nothing he’s ever experienced before. And then it comes at him again, even stronger, like something inside him is being turned or opened or cut irreparably forever. The pain is unimaginable. As he hears his brother scream “No!” Sam wonders if finally he’s found his ten. But Dean is here. It can’t be a ten if Dean is here. It can’t.
He falls to his knees, not even aware he’s done it. His body is useless now and the pain blocks out every thought in his head except for Dean. Dean. Dean is here. The hot pain somehow turns cold inside of him. Chilling and paralyzing, it takes control of him. It’s Sam with pain and then pain with a little bit of Sam left and then just pain. His vision’s gone all blurry, but he thinks it’s still Dean in front of him, and Dean can fix him. Dean can patch him up. Dean can do anything. Because he’s Dean. Dean is here. Dean is here. Dean is
Sam sees the knife and knows he’s tied so tight he can’t avoid it, but he struggles in the chair anyway. Seeing the danger coming makes it worse, somehow. He knows it will hurt, so he should be able to brace himself for it. But seeing the Pagan god with that knife come at him and being unable to stop it feels worse than being surprised with a knife in the back. “No! Don’t!” Of course the Pagan god doesn’t listen to him.
Sam tries to tell him it won’t hurt as much as he anticipates. He reminds himself that he has actually died. That’s got to be his ten. Dying is the final stage for more people, the part of life they just can’t fight against, the part that finally does them in. And he’s not only been there and done that but come out again alive on the other side. So no matter what happens to him now, he’s got that ultimate level of pain experienced. Being cut and bled should be almost familiar and boring by now.
When the knife sinks into his forearm, though, the pain is there. It’s real and fresh. He cries out. And he can hear Dean struggling and swearing, wanting to help him but being just as stuck. Sam squeezes his eyes shut against the pain as blood flows from his arm. He’s barely aware of what anyone’s saying, but he’d rate this at about a two… until they start to bleed Dean as well.
Then the anger takes over, and the pain of not being able to help his brother is overwhelming. When the god comes at him again with some sort of tool—plyers, perhaps—Sam’s already fast heartbeat seemed to double. “What do you think you’re doing with those?”
Sam finds out a second later “Don’t!” as the god grabs hold of his fingernail with the tool and pulls it right off with a strength Sam hadn’t expected. The pain is sharp and raw and, in the moment, spikes to eight or maybe even nine. Sam can’t do anything about it, but he tries to bear the pain. He looks up at the ceiling, eyes wide, body shaking. He tries to talk himself back down the scale. He’s not dying. This is nowhere close to dying. But it hurts so much he hunches forward, and he can feel himself start to lose consciousness.
He tells himself to stay awake. He can’t kill them if he doesn’t stay awake. Dying on Dean’s last Christmas is not in his plans.
Losing Jess had almost killed him. Losing Dean hundreds of times over and over again on Tuesday after Tuesday had been almost unbearable. But losing Dean for good… watching Dean be mauled to death by invisible hellhounds so his soul could be dragged down to Hell… Sam isn’t sure he will ever get over this.
He’s had a year to prepare himself, but he had so much hope that a year would be enough time to break the deal. When the time came, there was nothing anyone could do. Dean died. And Sam had had no choice but to watch it happen.
Cradling Dean’s gutted body in his arms, he’d made the call to Bobby. Even now he can’t remember what he said. He isn’t even sure he had been able to get real words out through his tears. But Bobby had come. Bobby had helped him burry Dean, despite protesting that he should be salted and burned. Bobby had taken Sam in his arms, into a hug Sam could barely feel, and insisted Sam stay in his house for a little while. Unable to think straight and unable to feel anything but pain, Sam had agreed automatically.
So here he is now, walking silently through the salvage yard. Rusted metal against his fingertips. Hard-packed dirt beneath his feet. A light breeze upon his cheek. He can feel it all, but it is as though he feels it at a distance, through some sort of tunnel that dulls his senses and numbs his body. With Dean gone, nothing seems real to him anymore.
The pain is off the scale. He can’t even conceive of a number this high. The Wong-Baker faces scale wasn’t created with this amount of grief in mind.
To his credit, Bobby never once asked if Sam was okay. He understood the boys far too well to think that either of them could be okay if the other was dead. And he tried to look after Sam as best he could, make sure he ate and slept and did something apart from cry and rage and mourn. But he was grieving, too, and even getting near words that sounded like a reassurance that things would be all right again one day would set him off, making his voice crack and his eyes tear up. Liquor was the only thing that kept Bobby from breaking down, most days, but even the smell of alcohol turned Sam’s stomach, reminded him of Dad and Dean’s coping technique. In the end, they discovered companionable silence worked best for them.
Sam goes out walking every day, sometimes for hours at a time, sometimes just going around in circles. It’s a comfort to know Dean had been here, had walked these same paths, maybe even passed by some of these same cars. There are so many places in the world Dean never went, and Sam isn’t sure he can face the world beyond this place now.
Sometimes he sits in the Impala. If he closes his eyes and blasts cassette tapes, it’s almost like Dean’s still here. It feels like Dean could just climb right into the driver’s seat of his baby at any second. Sometimes he can’t bring himself to leave the car once he’s in it, and he stretches out across the seat and sleeps there. More than once, he’s woken up in the morning to find a blanket draped over him, and for a moment he thinks Dean’s come back before he realizes Bobby put it there.
When Sam isn’t walking or spending time in the car, he’s reading. Staying at Bobby’s means having access to an extensive library of the very sort of information he needs. He looks at rituals and bargains with demons. He looks at resurrection spells and summonings. He makes lists of everything he can try—opening the Devil’s Gate, dealing with crossroad demons, hiring witches. He’ll do anything he can think of to make this pain go away. Because he knows the only thing that will ever make his pain stop is to bring Dean back.
So he walks and he sits and he reads and he schemes every day until his body is so weighed down with the pain of his grief he can’t function. Then he collapses into bed and does the only other thing he can think to do before sleep takes him. He prays.
The agony is so hard to endure. He feels ripped apart from the inside out, like the only thing that has made him strong, helped him survive, and made him who he is seems to be burning up now and can’t be replenished. If he even survives without it, what will he be? An empty shell? A useless human being? He can’t go back to feeling weak and inadequate and alone. That’s no way to keep the world safe.
Sam feels heat and pain and death in every cell of his body, in every drop of blood in his veins. He feels violently ill and just plain violent at the same time. He can’t even think about that fucking scale, those fucking smiley faces.
The worst is the powerful need, though. The way his body pleads with him for something he can’t get. That one thing that will help is completely beyond reach. As hard as he tries to get to it, he can’t. Sam can’t save himself. Not this time.
No one has known this sensation before. No one could possibly understand what this is like. Everything in him is being stripped away against his will. He feels violated, raw, and exposed without his consent.
The fact that Bobby and Dean were the ones who did this to him makes it infinitely worse.
“Dean! Help!” he screams, knowing the thick iron walls, covered in protection symbols, contain both him and his words. Dean isn’t coming. Dean doesn’t even care. Dean left him here to deal with this himself. Dean left him here to die.
His hands tremble as his veins go black, tearing through every layer of his skin. He stares at his reflection, watching the darkness shoot through his neck, his face. He screams for help, knowing no help is coming. Demons can’t get to him and he can’t get to them. All it would take to end this agony is just one swallow of blood, and he can’t have it.
His whole body shakes with need and with weakness and with fear. After all he has been through, this is where he’s going to die. His vision goes black and he shakes as his body falls to the floor.
When he wakes, he’s back on the cot, but he’s bound tight to it this time. He pulls with all his might, straining, but the cuffs on his wrists and ankles are so solid he can’t pull free. He doesn’t have the strength to overcome just a little metal and leather. He’s pathetic. He sickens himself.
Dean’s there with him in the panic room, at the foot of the cot. “We had to,” he says, gesturing vaguely toward the restraints. “The demon blood was flingin’ you all over the room.” He looks at Sam with so much hurt in his eyes, Sam can barely look at him. It makes the pain even worse. “Tell me something, Sam. Why did you do this to yourself?”
Sam has done a lot of pointing tonight.
"Point to where it hurts," the nurse says, holding up a picture of the human body that Sam first just lays his palm on top of to indicate that absolutely everything hurts. Then he starts pointing until the nurse realizes she should go get the doctor immediately.
"Point to any of the photos of the men who did this to you," says the police officer. "Anyone you recognize?" He turns the pages slowly, holding the book of mug shots open for Sam. It takes many pages, during which Sam fights to stay awake despite the pain and the drugs he’s been given. Finally, Sam spots some familiar faces. He points to one. Then to another a few pages later. The third one, the one who Sam is sure was the one who shattered his jaw with a steel-toed boot, isn't in the cop's photo book at all.
"Point to your level of pain now," the doctor says, after the x-rays are done and Sam is as safely bandaged up as he can be. Sam can barely move now, but he manages to raise his arm just enough. He was a six when they’d brought him in.
Sam's finger points to three. Then he hesitates, reconsidering, and movies it down to two.
The doctor’s eyes are wide, incredulous. “Just so you understand, that’s the low end of the scale,” he points out, gesturing vaguely to the other end of the spectrum. “The higher pain levels are—”
Sam points at the little number two again and the face associated with it. Being attacked by random muggers had been almost quaint. No demons. No shapeshifters. No angels. Nothing supernatural. Just some jerks with guns and knives wanting his wallet. He’d put up a good fight for a while, but three against one had never been great odds and eventually the blood he’d lost from the gunshot wound had taken him down where the boots had done what fists hadn’t been able to.
And, sure, Sam feels horrible. Sure, it hurts absolutely everywhere still, though the pain meds and the IV bring a sense of peace and relief he’s not used to. So he really isn’t that bad.
The best part, though, is that Dean is on his way. The fight they’d had meant nothing in the long run. When the hospital had called him, Dean had turned the Impala right around to get back to Sam. Sam is sleepy but determined to stay awake until Dean is here, watching over him.
"On a scale of one to ten," Lucifer says, Sam's blood dripping down his arm, down the serrated blade in his hand. "How bad's the pain?"
And Sam knows what the answer is. But Sam has made a promise to himself to not say ten, not unless he's absolutely sure this is the worst he's ever felt, the worst he could ever feel. But a hundred years of this has worn him down, and he wants to shout 'eleven,' thinking that maybe if he admits he's at his limit, this will make it stop.
As he makes an effort to raise his head, to look into Lucifer's eyes, he sees Michael on his way over. Sam doesn't know if the weapons in his hands are for Lucifer or for him, but he knows for sure that he won't escape some pain. And that will be more, that will be worse than what he feels now. So Sam closes his eyes. "Nine," he squeaks out and waits for the next blows to strike. The pain mixed with anticipation of more pain makes it a nine-point-five.
It’s really not so bad, when he thinks of everything he’s been through, not being able to sleep is kind of the best problem he’s had in a while. He’s so tired his body feels like it’s shutting down. It’s heavy and hard to move. Lucifer’s interruptions every time he has even a hope of resting aren’t appreciated.
But he’s felt worse. He has been killed multiple times. He was tortured by the devil and a vengeful angel for over a hundred years. The fragile wall protecting his soul crumbled to dust. And seeing hallucinations of Lucifer isn’t remotely comforting, but they don’t hurt directly.
Sam’s sitting up in bed, trying to nod off and knowing at any moment he will be stopped from doing so.
The door to his room opens. “Sam, how are we feeling today?” White coat. Clipboard. Pen. The doctor. Doctor… Sam can’t remember his name. But his face is familiar. “Rib pain? On a scale of one to ten?”
Rib pain? From the car that ran into him. Right. It hardly registers. “It’s… it’s not bad.” He tries to feel his ribs. His body feels too numb with fatigue. He clears his throat and guesses. “Um… three?”
The doctor moves forward, putting his hands on his hips. Sam can’t remember what that expression is supposed to mean. “You don’t have to lie, Sam.”
Is he lying? Sam doesn’t think so. There’s a lot he has to lie about here. He knows they’re supposed to be helping him, and they can’t help him unless he tells the truth. But he also knows he can’t tell them everything, either. They’ll never believe him. They’ll lock him up. But about the pain in his chest, he’s not lying. It really isn’t bad. He’s sure of it. “I’m not.”
“You’ve suffered terrible agony.” Agony? The doctor has no idea. “I mean, your ten must be astronomical.”
“Yeah, I guess I have a high threshold.”
“Yeah. But the worst is knowing that there’s always a new ten.”
A new ten? Sam thinks about the pain he’s felt his whole life, how it’s haunted him. How it’s never been more than he can take until it is. And when he’s sure it will break him, he still makes it through. Maybe he’s never really reached his ten. Or maybe he’s reached it a thousand times and just won’t admit it to himself. Every Tuesday he watched Dean die. Every time he dared think Dean wouldn’t save him. Every time he welcomed pain in his hand to let him know what was real. But how could this doctor know that? “What are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m talking about the truly elegant torture I have prepared for you today, Sam.”
And suddenly the face before him is morphing, changing. Suddenly it’s not the doctor at all. It’s Lucifer. And Sam goes colder than cold inside. No matter where he goes, no matter what he tries, there’s no escaping from what’s in his mind. He’s his own ten now.
