Sympathy for the Devil

Chapter 1

Warnings: Depression, Self-Harm, Suicidal ideation/actions, Violence, references to Child Abuse.

Sam has forgotten exactly how long it's been since he began seeing the blond haired boy. He thinks he started actually seeing him at a rest stop in Michigan as he ate burgers and fries with his older brother Dean. Sam had probably been six at the time and thought nothing of the slightly older child who watched him intently as he ate.

He assumed the boy was hungry or he lost his parents, but when Sam opened his mouth to call the boy over, he vanished. Sam put it off as his mind playing tricks on him because he was tired from the long car ride, but couldn't shake the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach.

The next time he saw the boy was in his dream that night as he lay in his shared motel bed with Dean. The seemingly innocent dream turned sour when the boy continued to do nothing but watch Sam with his strikingly blue eyes. Anxiety pooled in his chest as shrill screams filled the air around him. The blond boy smirked and his eyes slowly lifted to the ceiling above Sam.

Sam's childish curiosity got the best of him and he looked up to see a beautiful woman with a bleeding stomach engulfed in flames. Sam jerked awake with a strangled cry and Dean was immediately holding him tightly. John, their father instantly became alert as well when Sam's crying didn't die down.

"Sammy, what's wrong?" Dean asked, worry thick in his voice. John came over to the bed and pushed Sam's sweaty hair from his eyes. Sam hiccuped a few times, trying to get the words out and finally said, "T-The woman. She was o-on-" Sam lost control once again as he remembered the smell of her burning flesh. Dean rubbed his back gently, "What woman, Sammy? What about her?"

Sam's tears fell faster and he finally managed, "She w-was on the ceiling!" Another wave of tears took him under. The blood drained from John's face and he pushed a shocked Dean out of the way. He held Sam in his arms and fearfully said, "Who was on the ceiling, Sammy?"

"T-The pretty lady, on f-fire!" John began shaking like a leaf along with Sam as he held his head against his chest protectively. Dean's eyes were as wide as dinner plates when they finally met John's. Not long after they finally managed to get Sam to fall asleep, his six year old mind not able to handle the stress and trauma of what he witnessed.

Dean and his father stayed up late that night, checking the salt lines and waiting, on guard for some unknown creature to attack. The next day, John, Sam, and Dean packed up the Impala and drove off, leaving the poltergeist case for another hunter to take care of.

Months passed and Sam appeared to grow more and more distant from John and Dean. John wrote it off as Sam growing up because he couldn't handle the thought of something being very wrong with his son but Dean knew something was strange about his baby brother's behavior.

Even though Dean had only been on the planet for ten short years, he knew that six year olds weren't supposed to have bags under their eyes and flinch when touched. When he finally brought it up to his father, John miraculously agreed to take a break from hunting and stay with their close family friend and fellow hunter, Bobby.

What John and Dean didn't know was that the nightmares kept coming when the boy, whose name he'd been told was Lucifer, let him sleep. They became more grotesque and violent as time passed until they consisted of nothing but torturing Sam. Faceless shadows did the torture but Lucifer would always wake him up after a couple of minutes of it. Sam desperately wanted to tell his Dad and older brother about what was happening but Lucifer assured him that doing so would make them leave him because they would think he was crazy.

Lucifer would often follow him around all day, commenting on just about everything and singing songs until Sam hated them. Even though Sam refused to admit it, he had started becoming used to Luce being around. During his family's stay at Bobby's house, Sam started feeling normal. And with his growing childish happiness, the nightmares disappeared. Before he knew it they were back on the road again, but there was one detail that neither Dean nor John knew about, they had a new passenger named Lucifer.