Jess had been an English major. Those nights they weren't out with their friends, when Sam had no paper to write, and the world existed for just the two of them, she'd curl up against him on the couch, warm and sweet in his arms, and read to him from her books.

"Milton," she smiled. "He was up there with Shakespeare." Sam played with the ends of her corn colored hair and let her voice soothe him. "To bottomless perdition, there to dwell, in adamantine chains and penal fire."

A shudder ran down Sam's spine. "You got nothing more upbeat?" He asked, a smile breaking on his face. Jess had shook her head fondly and kissed the tension from his fingers.

"Who says life's upbeat?"

_______________________________________

Ruby's official new name was Kristina, and she'd lived two doors down from the house where Dean had been ripped from Sam's life. Her body was already dead, Ruby assured him, Lilith's demons had seen to that. If Sam was going to be honest, he couldn't have cared less.

She'd been waiting for him in Lawrence, casually propped up against the entrance to Stull Cemetery, her dark hair in braids and stuffed under a yellow baseball hat. "You realize this ranks zero on the great ideas scale?" She'd asked, and he'd known it was her there and then.

Opening the gate there had been easy. It wasn't trapped, locked tight by Samuel Colt and his gun. This gate open opened with a plea and a drop of blood.

After, when he'd failed, Sam crawled under the showerhead at some no name motel and washed the ash and blood from his skin, Dean's screams ringing in his ears. He'd heard them on the wind, echoing from below.

Ruby had brought him a BigMac and fries, Super Sized with a large Coke on the side. "Can't have you starving on us." She said off handedly, stripping to her underwear and changing into one of Sam's shirts.

Sam ate obediently.

"Tell me about it." He asked later, when the last of his fries settled like lead in his belly. His voice was hoarse, tight, and he realized then that's he'd not really spoken much since he'd held Dean to his chest and begged for his life.

"About what?" Ruby asked, unbraiding her hair and trying different styles in front of the dirty mirror.

Sam cleaned away the trash and laid Dean's guns out on the table. He worked his way through each, one by one, imagining the metal was still warm from his brother's hands. "Hell." He said calmly. "What will they do to him?"

Ruby stopped twirling her hair long enough to shake her head, meeting Sam's cold gaze in the mirror. "Don't ask that question, Sam. You won't like the answer."

Sam nodded and continued. "I'll ask someone else then."

A small, fragile little hand closed over his, bright pink nails brushing the barrel of Dean's Desert Eagle. "Don't torture yourself like this." She said softly, voice almost pleading.

Sam shook her off and stripped the gun. His fingers didn't tremble. Dean had taught him this, back when they were kids, and a bust leg had kept Dean on the couch all summer, nothing better to do than watch cartoons and teach Sam how to take care of their kit.

He imagined his brother's hands over his, guiding him, steadying him. Ruby turned on the TV, and Sam moved on to another gun.

_______________________________________

He didn't need to ask. He didn't even need to invent any Dante inspired vision of suffering and anguish. When he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, Sam saw Dean tied to a chair, the skin on his shoulder visible through a rip in his shirt, the red hot poker propped up beside him. "You hate me that much?" He saw Dean gagged, struggling against his bonds, dust from the explosion turning his skin grey. Hanging from his wrists, so pale, so still, and when he opened his eyes, he might as well have been dead. Cringing from his touch, his face a bloody mess, his shoulder nothing but mangled flesh and bone. Sick, so sick, skin like snow, thin and brittle, icy to the touch as his heart struggled to pump blood to his extremities. "I'd rather die." Pinned to the wall like a butterfly caught in a spider's web, Gordon's teeth deep in the fragile skin of his throat, draining him, leeching his life. His spine arched as electricity ran through his body. Not breathing. Not moving. Bloody. Broke.

Sam opened his eyes, and prayed to a God who had betrayed him that Dean's death would be more forgiving than his life.

_______________________________________

Sam did thing -lots of things- that would have made Dean curse the day Sam was born.

The Impala growled and choked whenever Sam gunned her engine, voicing her anger on behalf of the master silenced by death.

Sam kept Dean's haunting presence tightly locked away in his mind, where Dean hammered his fists on Sam's conscience, and his screams grated raw over his emotions.

After the third month, he'd done so much that Dean no longer screamed. He huddled at the back of Sam's mind, rocking himself, a child lost in the dark.

_______________________________________

He held his brother to him, Dean warm and solid, breathing in his arms.

He pulled back, stepped away.

And lied so many times he lost count.

_______________________________________

He'd not thought it possible. But Dean had come back at least twice as stubborn and a fair part more confrontational.

He still slept like a little boy though, soft and still. He'd promised Sam he remembered nothing of Hell. Sam knew a spell that would keep things that way, and wasn't too concerned if Dean was lying or not. He didn't need his brother's consent to rid him of all he'd suffered through.

He snuck out.

He'd wanted to rip that demon bitch from her host in the diner that morning. It would have been easy. So easy. Dean was no longer just a presence in his mind any more, and Sam would rather die than lose him again.

He came back to the motel and thought that maybe death would be the only way out.

_______________________________________

The place was a warzone, trashed and full of shattered glass. There was blood on the floor. Dean's blood, and the power ripped through Sam's body so fast it made his head spin.

The foundations of the building trembled at his feet, the walls shuddered as his shredded senses reached out across time and space for his brother.

Alive. Well. Scared. Terrified..

The power dipped, juice all used up, the engine dry.

He'd bind Dean to him with those adamantine chains, and this time the whole world would burn before anyone touched him again.

"To bottomless perdition, there to dwell, in adamantine chains and penal fire."
John Milton 1608-1674