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Sam is tired down to his bones, but he knows himself well enough to realize that sleep won’t be that easy. He’s procrastinating by cleaning up the map room, collecting empty bottles into a cardboard box. Cleaning is as good an excuse as any.
The refugees have been more or less settled. The Bunker was always set up for more than just the two of them, but it wasn’t exactly meant to house an army. Fortunately Bobby and Charlie and the other leaders among the group settled any disputes about who gets the lumpy old mattresses and who gets the floor. They were all pretty agreeable. Even sleeping on cold concrete is a step up from their previous lodging.
Sam tried to give up his room, but they waved him off. Dean kept his room with its decorative arsenal out of the hands of curious strangers. Rowena headed out hours ago to find somewhere more accommodating and Mary is crashing with Charlie and some of the other women.
Jack has his own room. He’d disappeared before the party wound down. Sam wants to talk to him, but he’s not sure what he can say. He figures a night to cool off will help.
“Why did you do it?”
Sam startles. Clearly Jack wasn't down with the 'cooling off' plan. He’s not sure if he was just that lost in thoughts or if Jack teleported in, but the kid is standing at the top of the steps to the library. Sam’s instantly reminded of the moments after the ghoul hunt, when Jack disappeared. He sets the box he’s holding down, empty bottles clinking softly.
Sam knows that Jack’s upset. What’s more, he gets why. What he doesn’t know is how to help. Because he can’t feel any regret for what he did. He left Lucifer behind to likely be tortured and killed by Michael. Sam understands that Jack feels that acutely, because Michael hurt him.
Sam has felt guilty for so many things in his life, but he still can’t regret this. He’d do it again. So he doesn’t know how to bridge this gap between them.
Jack clearly isn’t happy with Sam’s lack of response. “Why did you leave my father behind?”
Sam chooses his words carefully. “Allowing him to come back was too dangerous.”
“He was helping us!” Jack exclaims. He surges forward and a frisson of terror skates down Sam’s spine. He holds himself still through sheer force of will. “You left him with Michael!”
“I know,” Sam acknowledges.
“You don’t know.” Jack insists. “Michael tortured me.”
Here is his opening. And Lucifer tortured me. Jack needs to know. Needs to understand who his father is.
What comes out instead: “Lucifer isn’t who you think.”
“He was locked up!” Jack is every inch the angry teen. There is a part of Sam who understands, who was angry like this once. He remembers the fights with his dad, remembers hating when his dad didn’t listen. But that part is so distant now, with the expanse of the Cage standing in between. Jack’s still going. “All those things people say, they’re lies. He didn’t do all of those things. He was locked up. God locked him up.”
“Do you know how he got out?” Sam asks.
The change of direction seems to trip Jack up and he loses a bit of steam. “No.”
“I let him out,” Sam admits, quietly. He can’t look up at Jack for this, so he doesn’t know how Jack takes it, but Sam assumes the silence is a good sign. “It was almost ten years ago. And the things he did… thousands died. Earthquakes. Plagues. War. Dean and I, we lost friends, people we’d known for a long time. People we cared for. Everything that you saw Michael do in that world? Lucifer tried to do that here.”
He works up the nerve to look up and finds a contemplative look on Jack’s face. “What stopped him?”
“I did.”
“How?”
“The difference between our world and theirs is that Dean and I were never born there,” Sam explains. “We were supposed to be their vessels. Lucifer and Michael, me and Dean.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“Actually, I did,” Sam says, and some part of him remembers the rush of power, like standing in the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. He has to distance himself from that, from the memories crowding up against his head. “We found a way to open Lucifer’s cage back up. The only way to trap him was for me to say yes and jump in. So that’s what I did.” He’s on autopilot now, voice almost monotone. He just has to get through this. Jack has to know. But Sam has spent so much time trying to ignore that year and everything that came after that it’s hard to force himself back there.
Jack, for his part, looks shocked. “You went to hell?”
“Yes,” Sam says in clipped tones. He can do this. “I dragged our version of Michael in, as well.” He thinks that might help Jack, knowing that there isn’t another Michael running free. “He’s still there.” Sam shuts his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath. “I wanted you to know. If given the chance, Lucifer would do everything that that Michael did. He’d do worse.”
“Could he have… maybe he changed,” Jack suggests, though he doesn’t sound as certain as he had just minutes earlier.
“People can change,” Sam admits. “But he hasn’t. He only helped us because it helped him. I’m sorry.”
Sam picks up the box of empty bottles and heads towards the kitchen.
Jack slumps into the chair at the map table. What Sam told him is a lot to take in. Everyone said Lucifer was bad, but they never really said why. They all acted like it was so obvious, but the things his father told him made sense. Humans weren’t perfect, Jack had seen that. And Lucifer had been locked up for a very long time. Jack never considered how he got out.
Sam’s footsteps have only just faded away when another set approach from the opposite direction. Jack looks up to find Dean walking through one of the doorways.
“You get it now?” Dean asks. He doesn’t sound angry, at least not any more than he usually does. He’s got a tumbler of brown liquor in his hands and an air of practiced calm.
“I think so,” Jack says. He isn’t afraid of Dean anymore, but he can’t help but feel wary.
“Because Sam left out a lot,” Dean continues as if Jack hadn’t answered.
“He didn’t say how he got out,” Jack admits.
“It’s a long story, even a longer one for Sam. Time passes differently down there. Mom told me that Michael had you for days. Maybe weeks? Sam was down there for over a year, topside. Hell-time it was… decades. Centuries, maybe. And that whole time Lucifer was pissed. Pissed and with no one else to take it out on but the human who ruined his plans. You get it?”
Jack’s been alive for barely over a year. Those weeks in Michael’s hands had been a significant chunk of his life. Now he tries to imagine years. Sam’s in his thirties. He’s spent more time in hell than on Earth. It’s too big to even begin to contemplate.
“Lucifer hurt him,” Jack says, because it’s obvious now. He’s seen the way Sam reacts to even the mention of his father. But it wasn’t as if anybody else liked the devil. Sam had only seemed slightly out of the norm.
“When Sam got back, the memories of what Lucifer did to him, they almost broke him.” Dean takes a sip of his drink. “If he was anyone else, they would have killed him. But Sammy’s always been tough.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” Jack asks, a touch of anger flaring up. He feels stupid. Everyone knew this and no one told him. Why didn’t they tell him? Jack had wanted to get to know his father, but Sam was the first person who cared about him. Lucifer was his father by dint of biology. Castiel was the father that his mother chose for him. They had been assigned the label ‘father’ since before Jack was born.
But Sam was the father Jack chose.
“Sam doesn’t talk about it,” Dean says, like the words hurt him. “It’s not your fault, kid. This is gruesome stuff. Sam just wanted to protect you.”
Jack wants to rage at that. He’s powerful. He doesn’t need their protection.
Except he does. Because with all his power, he hadn’t seen through Lucifer’s lies and half-truths.
“Is he mad?” Jack asks. “At me?”
“Sam? No way,” Dean admits. It’s good news, to Jack, but it makes Dean look sad. Like maybe he wishes Sam was angry.
“Are you?”
Dean stares at him for a long moment, long enough for Jack to start to feel nervous. But eventually he shakes his head. “No, kid. You didn’t know any better. But you do now, right?”
Jack nods.
Dean gives him a slap on the shoulder. “Good. Now get to bed. We’ve got work to do.”