Chapter Text
Sam was panicked for a moment at the idea that he may have just killed Bobby. And of course the trickster let that panic fester before he made himself known. “You're right. I was just screwing with you. Pretty good, though, Sam. Smart. Let me tell you, whoever said Dean was the dysfunctional one has never seen you with a sharp object in your hands. Holy Full Metal Jacket.”
Sam knew that making demands and fighting was pointless. It would never work so he tried the only option he had left. Begging. “Bring him back.”
The trickster feigned ignorance for a moment. “Who, Dean? Didn't my girl send you flowers? Dean's dead. He ain't coming back. His soul's downstairs doing the hellfire rumba as we speak.” He wasn’t about to tell the hunter that this little alternate dimension didn’t go so far as to include hell and that his brother’s soul was safe and sound just waiting to be restored to his body. It would rather defeat the purpose of this whole thing.
“Just take us back to that Tuesday—er, Wednesday—when it all started. Please. We won't come after you, I swear.”
The trickster scoffed. Sure they wouldn’t. “You swear,” he said skeptically.
“Yes,” Sam said earnestly. He needed the trickster to believe him if he was going to have any chance here.
The trickster pretended that he was starting to come around. “I don't know. Even if I could…”
“You can,” Sam interrupted.
“True,” he admitted. “But that don't mean I should. Sam, there's a lesson here that I've been trying to drill into that freakish Cro-Magnon skull of yours.” If the hunter wouldn’t learn by doing then he would just have to beat it into him the blunt way.
“Lesson? What lesson?” Sam asked confused.
The trickster sighed. The kid hadn’t even realized that there was a lesson at all. Why did he get himself into these things? “This obsession to save Dean? The way you two keep sacrificing yourselves for each other? Nothing good comes out of it. Just blood and pain. Dean's your weakness. And the bad guys know it, too. It's gonna be the death of you, Sam. Sometimes you just gotta let people go.”
“He's my brother,” Sam said desperately.
Oh please. Like he was the only person to ever lose a brother. “Yup. And like it or not, this is what life's gonna be like without him.”
“Please. Just…please,” Sam begged, tears coming to his eyes. “I’ll do anything. Just…please.”
The trickster groaned. “You know I can’t get your brother out of his deal right?”
“I don’t care. I still want him back. Even if it is only for a few months.”
“Fine. I’ll make a deal with you then,” he said walking menacingly towards the hunter who instinctively backed up to the wall. “I’ll bring him back, give you your time, but after that…after he goes to hell…you’re mine,” he drawled running a finger down the side of Sam’s face. If he couldn’t make Sam let Dean go willingly then he would keep control of him and make sure he didn’t mess anything up.
“And if I find a way to get him out of his deal?” Sam asked.
“Then our deal is invalid. You get to keep him until the next stupid thing that kills him.”
“But it won’t be you?” Sam clarified.
“Nope. You accept this deal I’m hands off whether you get him out of going to hell or not.”
“And how long will I be ‘yours’ for?” Sam asked.
“For the rest of your life obviously,” the trickster told him.
“The rest of my life for a few months with my brother?” Sam was going to take the deal. If he could do something to get Dean back then he would, no matter what that was. He would never be able to forgive himself if he didn’t. He could still try to bargain though.
“Undoing all this also means I just wasted a year of my life not to mention all the power and effort put into it so yeah,” the trickster said narrowing his eyes, still pressed up against the hunter.
“Ok then how about a year,” Sam tried to bargain.
The trickster just laughed. He could enjoy a good bargain. As long as he gave himself enough time to convince the hunter to stay off the apocalypse path. Not that he was going to make it easy for him. “Fifty years,” he countered.
“Three.”
“Twenty-five”
“Five.”
“Ten. And that’s my final offer.”
“Done,” Sam agreed seeing that the little being wasn’t going to think about going any lower. He had just argued himself from a life sentence to ten years so he supposed it could be counted as a win. There were still a few more details to iron out though before the deal was done. “And you can’t interfere at all with my attempts to get him out of his deal,” Sam said. It wouldn’t do to have the trickster trying to sabotage him so that their deal would stay in effect.
“Like I said. Hands off. That means with everything. I will have nothing more to do with you, either seen or unseen until the day Dean goes to hell, be that in three months or three decades.”
“Then we have a deal,” Sam said. “Do we…um…have to kiss to make it official?” he asked distastefully.
The trickster grinned. He knew that was how demons sealed their deals. “No, but I like that idea,” he said kissing Sam before he could even protest. The hunter steadfastly resisted deepening the kiss so the trickster gave up and stepped back. “Rather more disappointing than I hoped, but oh well. A deal’s a deal. Adieu Sammykins. See you soon.”
The next thing Sam knew he was waking up to the sound of music and looked up to see Dean brushing his teeth. He scrambled out of bed and over to his brother, who accepted the hug and just asked, “Dude, how many Tuesdays did you have?”
“Too many,” Sam mumbled into his shoulder. He wasn’t going to tell Dean about the six months he’d spent without him. Despite the deal he’d made with the trickster he was still nervous about letting Dean out of his sight at all for a while. It wasn’t until the narrow escape from the FBI and a few dozen demons that he finally accepted that Dean wasn’t going to die again. If the trickster was going to double cross him that would have been the perfect opportunity.
Over the course of the next few months Sam tried everything to get Dean out of his deal. Turned over every rock. Nothing helped. The only chance they had was a desperate hail mary, but then they were out of time. They had to take the hail mary. A direct assault on Lilith and they had only Ruby’s word that it would release him from his deal. It seemed a little too easy to Sam, but it was worth a shot.
It turned out to be for nothing. Dean was lying dead on the floor and Lilith was about to kill him. As he watched the light speeding towards him, suddenly he found himself standing in the middle of what looked like a nice living room and he stumbled at the change. “Welcome to casa de Loki. I do hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” the trickster said in mock-welcome. He knew exactly what he just pulled Sam out of and would have helped sooner, but until Dean was dead his hands had been tied due to their deal.
Sam fell to his knees, and couldn’t help the sobs that tore from him. He had failed. His brother was in hell and he was now prisoner to a monster for the next ten years. Loki couldn’t help but feel a little tug to his heartstrings. “Hey now. It’ll be okay,” he said patting Sam on the shoulder. “I promise I’ll be a good master.” He knew that the bulk of the tears were for the brother, but there was nothing he could say in that regard that would make the hunter feel better so he focused on what he could fix. It didn’t much help though.
“Please…just…just let me bury my brother. Get…get Bobby there and…and say goodbye. That’s all I ask. Just two days. Please.”
Loki thought for a moment. That wasn’t unreasonable. And perhaps it would get him some goodwill. It couldn’t hurt to lessen the hostility the hunter would feel as much as he could manage. “You can’t tell him or anyone else about me or our deal,” he said and when he got a nod from the hunter he agreed. “You have forty-eight hours. I will send both you and your brother’s body to the other hunter’s motel room.”
Sam nodded his thanks before he suddenly found himself in Bobby’s room with Dean’s body. He noticed that the trickster had apparently cleaned the body up too. He also noticed that Bobby wasn’t back yet. “How did you get back here so fast? How did you get out?” Bobby asked when he got back to find Sam already there.
“It’s a long story,” Sam said sadly, still clutching at Dean’s body.
Bobby saw that Sam wasn’t in the mood for questions right now so he stopped pushing. He clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Come on son. Let’s go give him a hunter’s funeral.”
“No.” Sam said firmly. “We bury him.” He couldn’t stand to watch his brother’s body whither away to nothing. He had to exist somewhere. In some form. There couldn’t just be nothing left.
“Sam…” Bobby said tiredly.
“I mean it Bobby. We bury him. It’s my choice.”
“Okay son. Okay,” Bobby said giving in. They could always come back later when Sam was a little more willing to listen to reason. They buried Dean in the woods behind the old gas station in a simple box that Bobby hastily made.
When Sam noticed that his forty-eight hours were almost up, he turned to Bobby. “Listen, I’m gonna be out of contact for a while. I don’t want you to worry. I’ll be fine.
“What do you mean out of contact? For how long? Why?”
“I can’t explain right now. I’m sorry. Just trust me. Please,” Sam said.
Bobby knew that he didn’t have a choice. Even if he were Sam’s father, Sam was a grown man. Nobody could tell him what to do. “I don’t like this Sam, but I can’t stop you. Please just be careful and keep in contact when you can.”
“I will Bobby. Thank you. For everything,” Sam said pulling Bobby into a hug and heading back to the car.
He didn’t want to be with the old hunter when he disappeared and sure enough his timing was apparently pretty good because he didn’t even get a mile down the road before he was back in the living room again.
Sam had been through far too much the last few days to be nice to his new captor, so he just looked at him and snapped. “Let’s not pretend that I’m anything but your prisoner okay. Can it with the homey welcome crap.”
Loki raised an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulders. They were suddenly in a dark dank prison and Sam was in a dirty cell. “That more what you had in mind?” he asked sarcastically. Sam just glared at him and went and sat down in the corner without a word. “Seriously? This is where you wanna stay?” Sam still didn’t speak so Loki just threw up his hands. “Fine. Suit yourself. If I’m remembering right, bread and water is the appropriate meal for such a setting?” He snapped his fingers and the aforementioned items appeared on a try in front of the hunter. It was a full loaf of gourmet, four grain, fresh baked bread and a whole gallon of distilled spring water, but hey. He was making an effort.