Chapter Text
Within the first hundred years he's trapped inside the Mystery Spot, Sam stops doing a lot of things a fully grown person should do. He doesn't sleep, eat, shower, change clothes, brush his teeth, shave, talk to other humans besides grunting, and so much more, because it's all just a massive waste of time.
Everything resets after Dean dies, making all menial tasks futile. Instead, he uses the never ending hours to read article after article online in the hopes that he'll find a way out of this hell hole.
After the first thousand years of Tuesdays Sam stops attempting to keep track of how many times he's had to repeat the same day. All that does is remind him just how many ways he's failed, -both at saving Dean and trying to kill himself.
One million years in, he's very much dead inside.
All that remains of the old Sam is his desperation to save Dean from this unending loop of death. It's been his only goal all these years; the only thing he's been able to focus on when everything else -his memories, his sanity, his humanity- slip away. Sam almost hates Dean for his blissful ignorance throughout all this. He's ashamed to admit that he did stoop to fratricide on several of the Tuesdays he's been forced to live through in a desperate bid to make it stop.
Dean thankfully never remembers those days either.
Sometime after a billion years have gone by, Sam has it all figured out. Why he's trapped here, what creature put him here, and how to save both his brother and himself from this godforsaken time loop. The only thing powerful enough to have trapped him here is an archangel. Which one Sam has no idea, but whichever one it was, it put him here because it wanted him to learn a lesson.
Well Sam learned something alright, but definitely not whatever that angelic asshole wanted him to.
Because after all these many, many, many years, Sam still hasn't learned how to just let Dean go. But he has learned how to twist his own soul into something powerful enough to break free from the archangel's cage. He'll turn himself into an archangel! One more powerful than any of them, -and he's going to do it by stealing quite a lot of the big guy himself's power.
Sam was very surprised to stumble across such a spell after all this time, and even more baffled by its simplicity but he isn't going to question it. Besides, even if things go wrong he can't actually die here so there's no harm in trying.
Standing alone in the middle of a field near town, Sam sacrifices a goat over several supposedly angelic feathers they'd had in the Impala, and performs the archaic chant he'd found in Enochian.
Lo and behold, it works!
Earth shattering power pours into Sam, burning his clothes and scorching the earth beneath him. He can feel it changing his physical form as it pumps through his veins, eager to fulfill his every whim. He's been waiting for this moment for so long, (an eternity) the moment the power settles within him, he doesnt hesitate. Four sets of wings bursting from his back, Sam flies to Dean, grabs his hand and ruthlessly tears the power holding them here apart.
Wings spread to the end of the horizon, he soars to the Grand Canyon. What little he remembers now, he only recalls because even though he'd stopped talking, Dean never had. Many times he would talk of the places he wanted to see with Sam someday. The Canyon came up so many times it'd stuck in his head like the song that won't be named. It feels right to give Dean this as their first sight together as free men.
The sun is setting, the colors something only a very skilled artist could capture, Sam has freed them at last, and Dean is-
Clinging to his brother with a distressed wail, Sam holds Dean, his one true constant all these years, as he crumbles, first to ash, and then to nothing at all within Sam's despairing grasp. Desperately he searches for Dean's soul, only to sense it alive and whole a few states away, but slightly different -older, though not by much. Power seeping out, Sam flexes and searches for an explanation, listening in to demons, Angels, and humans alike. He doesn't like what he sees.
Roaring with outrage, Sam slams his fist against the nearest rock, holding himself back so that only the surface cracks. All this time Sam has been working to save Dean, and Dean was never really with him. He's been here, dying, going to hell, coming back to life, stopping apocalypse after apocalypse, and now trying to defeat the darkness, all with someone wearing Sam's face.
Sam has been alone in the Mystery Spot all this time while the world moved on without him. While Dean and the thing pretending to be him saved the world time and again. And yet, despite this Sam can hear stories of the fake Sam betraying Dean over and over -it gives him hope.
Maybe if he goes to Dean, shows him that the snake at his side is a fake, maybe he'll let Sam come back. Sam never realized that Dean was an imposter, so Sam can forgive Dean for never realizing that the Sam he has is also false. Sam just desperately wants to go home. To the only home he can ever remember having, where it's just Dean and Sam in the impala.
But first, this 'Darkness' thing that's been bothering Dean has to go.
Hands clenching and unclenching with nervous tension, Sam launches towards the Darkness, determinedly ignoring Dean's brightly beckoning soul for the moment.
'Soon,' Sam swears to himself, 'Home soon.'