The Last House

August 8th

It's easier to sleep when I can hear the others sleeping.

"No, that's no good," Lucifer murmured, his chin propped on Sam's shoulder. "If you tell him that, he'll make you sleep alone."

Sam's hand hovered above the page of his journal and he nodded subtly before carefully erasing the entire sentence and starting over.

I've never had so many homemade meals, it makes me wonder what else I've missed out on.

"Good," Lucifer said approvingly. "Keep up the whole grateful act, don't give him anything to latch on to."

Sam probably shouldn't have been taking his advice from Lucifer of all people, but he was pretty sure Lucifer was the lesser of two evils in the Last House Ranch. Morris could play the good doctor all he wanted, the guy had serial killer eyes. And Sam had seen enough killers - Sam remembered his own face in the mirror, cold and only forcing a mask of faked emotions - to know what serial killer eyes looked like.

The guy was a freaking lunatic, Sam only had to play along until he found a way out of there. As soon as Sam reached ‘visitor privileges', he'd take off with Dean and never look back.

"You can't leave your new bestest friend behind," Lucifer said. "Ooh, are we kidnapping him? Is that the plan? We kidnap the wizard and then fill him full of silver bullets?"

Sam winced when Lucifer jumped in front of him, spraying silver bullets from an automatic rifle. It was so loud, so real, Sam didn't understand how it could only be in his head. Nobody else flinched, nobody had chills climbing their body from Lucifer's laughter.

They were all journaling, the thirty minutes of mandatory journaling for the day. Sam tested it the second he was handed a journal - Sam put a strand of his own hair in the book and it was gone the next day. It wasn't a journal to ‘clear their minds', it was a journal for Morris to get in their heads.

Sam wanted to warn the others not to put too much in their books, but he couldn't be sure who was drinking the kool-aid and who wasn't. The ‘buddies'? The ones who had been there the longest and were nothing more than Morris's musclemen? Sam was sure they had already been too deeply indoctrinated to save.

Tony Stark was a smart guy, a genius and one of Sam's all-time idols, Sam figured he already knew not to put too much in his journal. Spencer, who was probably the smartest person Sam had ever met, was iffy. Sam thought he was smart, but there was something about him that also made Sam think he was easy to manipulate. Billy and Draco weren't too far gone yet, they at least still had some personality and life to them. If Sam knew he could trust them, he'd warn them.

Eddie was a loose cannon, Sam couldn't trust him at all. On his first night, Eddie had been loud and paranoid, reminding Sam of Bobby really. Then Eddie disappeared and when he got back, there were wrinkles on the edges of his hairline, squares in the exact shape of an electrode. If Morris was using electroshock therapy, then he didn't want rehabilitation, he wanted robots.

Mindless, empty, robots he could claim all of the success for.

It only really left Sam with Harry and Bucky to confide in. Bucky was quiet, but Sam felt his eyes on him before and figured that Bucky had everyone's measure pretty much figured out. Harry… Harry just… Sam wanted to trust Harry, Sam wanted Harry to see what he was seeing.

Sam planned to warn Harry carefully before they started journaling; he was going to find a way to tell Harry to be careful with what he wrote, but Harry never showed up for journal time.

Then he wasn't at lunch.

By the time Sam had to go outside with Tony and Taylor to take care of the animals, it was starting to bug. If Harry had a session with Morris, he should have been back. Sam had two sessions since he arrived, they were both completely messed up and had Sam more sure than ever that the whole place was a scam.

"That sounds paranoid." Lucifer put on a sparkling cowboy hat and chewed a piece of hay while Sam followed Tony and Taylor to the barn. "Someone might say you've got paranoid delusions, Sammy Boy."

"Someone might say that paranoia has kept me alive," Sam muttered to him. It wasn't paranoia, it was a gut instinct. Sam survived things that should have killed him thanks to his gut, and his gut was screaming that the whole place was screwed up.

"What's that?" Tony looked over his shoulder, completely missing the six foot tall devil wearing a bedazzled cowboy hat.

"Nothing," Sam said. It totally wasn't the biggest bummer in Sam's life that his idol thought he was insane, no… it was fine. Totally fine.

Tony didn't seem convinced, but Sam wasn't convincing anyone. They didn't see Lucifer, they didn't hear him. They weren't followed around by two-hundred pounds of douchebag.

"You wound me, Sammy." Lucifer clutched his chest and slowly slid to the ground, dramatic as hell. "It's Harry, isn't it? He's taking my place as your favorite sidekick."

"You are not my sidekick," Sam whispered quietly. "You're the hallucination that makes me miserable."

"Sam, why can't you admit that what we have is special?"

Sam was not going to laugh, he wasn't. Sam wasn't so freaking insane that he was going to start giggling about the stupid crap that his hallucination said to him.

Ignoring him didn't make him go away, but it at least didn't make Sam look like more of a lunatic in front of Tony freaking Stark.

Taylor put Sam in charge of shoveling actual shit from the stalls and Sam pictured Dean laughing his ass off if he saw him. God, Sam would never hear the end of the jokes Dean would make… each one dumber than the last.

Just thinking about Dean made Sam's lungs burn, like they were in a vice. It had only been a week, but it felt like a lifetime. Sam was pissed at him, pissed that Dean checked Sam into some loony farm and then left him there, but mostly Sam just missed him.

Everything wouldn't suck so badly if Dean were there to deal with Sam. The two of them could figure out what Morris's deal was and then they'd find a way to get the others free. Some of them probably needed jail cells or straight jackets, but nobody deserved to be trapped on a crazy farm with a psychopath using them like lab rats.

Until then - Sam had a case he wanted to crack, Regulus Black.

If Harry wasn't completely crazy, and Sam kind of didn't think he was, he seemed more lost than crazy, then Regulus wasn't exactly human. Sam didn't know if he was just an anomaly of a wizard or something worse.

Best case scenario, Regulus never died and had a great skin care routine. Worst case scenario, Regulus was some sort of monster who absorbed the lives of the people Morris brought to his ranch.

"That sounds delusionaaaaal," Lucifer sang. "Thoughts like this and you'll never get released, Sam!"

"How's it going in here?"

Sam didn't hear Taylor sneaking up behind him over Lucifer's taunts, but it was a good chance to get started on collecting the research on the ranch.

"Fine," Sam answered him. He paused and wiped some of the sweat he built up off his forehead. "I was just thinking that my brother would laugh his ass off if he saw me shoveling manure."

Taylor laughed and leaned on the stall wall, right on top of Lucifer. Taylor was an alright guy, he was just some normal guy with PTSD and a pill dependency. If Sam lost his leg in a war, he might have gotten hooked on pills too.

"My first day here when they told me to shovel shit, I was ready to run for freedom," Taylor grinned. He knocked on his left leg and Sam heard the hollow thunk of wood. "I guess it's a good thing I knew I'd never make it to a road, huh?"

"Yeah." Sam forced a smile. "Maybe. So everyone started out here as the new guys? What was your buddy like?"

"My buddy? Regulus was my buddy," Taylor said. "Trent took on Charlie and Charlie and I rose in the ranks together. It's weird sometimes, thinking about how long we've been here."

"How long have you been here?" Sam asked curiously.

"It'll be a year in September."

So Regulus had been there longer than a year, long enough that he either worked the program himself or he had never been a client to start with.

"Cool," Sam pretended to be inspired. "It's good to know that next year I'll be the guy handing out shovels to everyone else."

"It's a hell of a lot more fun than being the new guy with the shovel," Taylor said with another grin. "Man, I don't know how Reg and Trent did it all before Charlie and I got here. I grew up in a city, you know? I had no idea how much work goes into a ranch."

"Wait." Sam started to frown, working that through. "There wasn't anyone else here when you got here? Just Regulus and Trent?"

"Yup, poor bastards."

Sam felt goosebumps on his arms and there was his gut instinct again, red alarms firing quickly in his mind.

For the last year… nobody had left the ranch. New people arrived, nobody left.

"Doctor Morris made it sound like he's had dozens of success stories," Sam said carefully. "Did they not stay here?"

Taylor started to frown and Sam saw his eyes flicker briefly to a corner of the barn. Sam didn't look yet, but he thought he knew what he'd find when he did.

"If so, they were gone by the time I showed up," Taylor said, the easy smile gone. "Hurry up in here, the guy with one arm is faster than you are."

Sam nodded and made a good show of getting back to work while he thought over what Taylor told him. Regulus had been there for at least a year, Harry swore he died twenty years ago. Morris was bringing new ‘clients' to the ranch, but there wasn't any proof that anyone was ever discharged.

And, when Taylor said it was time to go inside for a group therapy session, Sam saw a little red light blinking in the corner of the barn.

It was a camera and once Sam found the one, he started noticing the rest of them. They were everywhere - in the kitchen, the laundry room, the bedrooms, even the bathroom.

The good doctor had them all under constant surveillance and Sam didn't think that it was for their health or safety.

Sam waited all day to see Harry again, but when seven rolled around and Harry still didn't show up, he had to assume that Morris had him. If Morris was doing sick and outdated shit like electroshock therapy, Sam didn't like to think about what Harry was going through alone with the guy.

"Is this normal?" Sam asked Regulus that night, sitting down right beside him on the couch where Trent usually sat.

"People being in a session for a whole day?" Sam clarified.

"In 1953, Doctor Carl Rogers held a sixty hour therapy session with one of his patients to get complete inversion," Spencer said. "It's ethically questionable by many psychologists, but not detrimental if done correctly."

"God, do you every shut the fuck up?" Billy complained, glaring across the loose circle they formed at Spencer. "If you were really as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be here."

"Actually, I'm here because I tend to be ‘too smart for my own good'," Spencer said calmly. "I talked my way out of too many rehabs before I was admitted here."

Yeah, Sam could see that. Spencer was a behavioral analyst for the FBI, Sam was sure he could talk his way out of almost anything.

"Oh good," Sam said, trying to steer the conversation back. "So it's normal to have long sessions here? Regulus? You've been here the longest, right? Do you do a lot of all-day sessions?"

Regulus had a good poker face, he was impossible to read. His eyes didn't so much as twitch when he casually responded.

"Doctor Morris uses different methods for different patients," he said. "No two clients are the same, why should their treatment methods be the same?"

It was a good way for Regulus to answer Sam without actually answering him. He was good, Sam would give it to him.

"Yeah, that makes sense," Sam agreed, trying a different tactic. "He's smart. I wish I could meet some of the people who graduated from the program, see what my life will be like when I'm done."

"Recovery is a lifelong commitment," Taylor said. "You'll finish the program eventually and then your life will look like everyone else's, all the normal people in the world who don't get hooked on stupid shit to cope with other stupid shit."

Jesus. Sam didn't need some rehab recovery shit being spilled, he just wanted a couple of straight answers from Regulus. If not about himself, then about Morris and the ranch.

What Sam really needed was a computer and a stack of newspapers to read through. They had never let Sam down before when he wanted to collect lore.

People lied, research didn't.

"That's right," Sam snapped his fingers. "You guys all have an addiction, right?"

That was the criteria - an addiction, a mental illness, trauma, and a history of abuse. According to Morris, every one of them had those four things in common.

"Didn't we already do group therapy?" Billy complained while he played cards with Eddie and Draco. "Do we really have to talk about whatever bullshit you all snort off the asses of hookers?"

"I'm going to guess that Spence never snorted anything off the ass of a hooker," Tony said, winking overly-obviously at Spencer. "I'd say everyone needs to do it at least once, but I don't think that's the sentiment I'm supposed to share here."

"I - uh, I think I'll pass on that specific milestone," Spencer said, stuttering some in embarrassment. "I was more of a quiet user, I never did the ‘party scene'."

"I only did the party scene," Charlie said. "Two tabs of E and I was ready to fuck and fight, not necessarily in that order."

"How about you, Bucky?" Taylor asked, reaching his leg out to nudge the silent soldier on the floor. "What was your poison?"

Bucky didn't answer, Tony did:

"Booze," Tony said. "He's an alcoholic."

"Yeah?" Billy glanced up from his cards to Bucky. "Did it actually make you talk?"

"I'm going to take that silence as an answer," Lucifer said cheerfully. "Man, imagine how boring your life would be if you had that guy following you instead of me. No one to talk to? The horror."

Yeah, it would be a real shame.

The others got off on a conversation about the different addictions they had, none of them brought up demon blood so neither did Sam. Regulus never contributed a word though, not one word.

But… maybe Sam didn't need him to. Maybe Sam was asking the wrong person the questions, because what he did get from Regulus were a lot of looks being shared with Draco.

Sam didn't think much of it before, but they kind of favored each other in looks. They both had fine facial bones, slanted grey eyes. Draco was as blonde as blonde could get, Regulus had black hair, but the resemblance was there.

So maybe Draco would be an easier nut to crack.

It was hard to sleep that night - Sam kept tossing and turning, grinding his teeth every time he saw Harry's empty bed. It bugged, it bugged Sam that Morris would still have Harry locked up somewhere with some probably half-assed psychological experiment being ran on him.

"You're the big bad hunter," Lucifer mocked him. "Shouldn't you go find him? Save him from the monster?"

"With every inch of this place covered in cameras?" Sam whispered to him. "Yeah, sure."

"What? You're scared of getting caught?" Lucifer blew a raspberry and if it were real, his spit would have actually landed on Bucky's face. "I guess our time together did teach you something. It's good to be humble, Sammy boy. Morris is stronger than you, especially in your fragile state."

Sam's eye twitched, he felt it actually twitch. Lucifer was a hallucination, a figment of Sam's imagination from the time he spent in the cage with him. He wasn't real, he couldn't say things unless Sam thought them, it was Sam's own sick brain calling himself a coward.

So there was no reason to prove himself, none at all.

Sam quietly swung his legs from his bed and started gesturing wildly with his hands, preemptively plotting his insanity defense.

"Atta boy!" Lucifer cried, skipping behind merrily as Sam tiptoed out of the bedroom. "Put that pre-law degree to work!"

Yeah, it was really worth all those years of studying his ass off so Sam could one day use a defense of mentally incapacitated in the psychiatric center he was locked in.

Sam kept it up though, clear through the house and up the stairs. He tried to stay out of range of the cameras, but they pretty much covered everything from what he could tell. It was easier to see the cameras when the house was dark, the subtle glows that weren't immediately noticeable in the daylight.

At the top of the stairs Sam spun around a few times, threw his hands in the air, and whispered loud nonsense to Lucifer. For a complete bag of dicks, Lucifer had a great time arguing back with Sam about any random thing Sam could think of.

"The doctor will prove it!" Sam whispered loudly as he reached for the doorknob of Morris's office. "You can ask him yourself!"

The knob turned, but the door itself was locked. Sam assumed it would be so he wasn't disappointed, it wasn't the room he wanted to be in anyway. There were two other doors on the top floor and Sam noticed they were both locked when he had first seen them. Morris seemed like he had too much of an ego to sleep in the same ranch as the rest of them, he probably had a nearby house of his own where he could monitor his little experiments, so what were the rooms for?

"He didn't abandon me!" Sam hissed loudly, storming to the door further from the staircase. "No he's not! Doctor Morris wouldn't leave me, he wouldn't! He's not like him!"

Morris could interpret that any way he wanted, all Sam needed was a reason to twist the knob of the door. It opened immediately and Sam stumbled in the room with Lucifer casually skipping in behind him.

It was a bedroom, an empty bedroom. There weren't any closet doors, only a four-poster cherry bed with a giant white bedspread covering it.

What was the dude's obsession with white??

"Oh, no Harry here," Lucifer quipped while Sam did a quick sweep of the room. "He could be dead, you know. Maybe if you were more of a hunter and less of a psych case, you could have saved him."

"Shut up," Sam snapped. That wasn't true, Harry wasn't dead. There was still another door and - and a million other possibilities. Harry could be in a hospital, he could have had someone show up and demand his release. Hell, he could be in jail. All of those would probably be safer than the ranch and they'd be better options than death.

"If you knew Morris was dangerous, that would make it your fault if Harry died, right?" Lucifer asked, following just behind Sam on his way to the third door. "Harry would be just another one of the many people who died because Sam Winchester will never measure up to his dear dead daddy or big bro."

He was a figment of Sam's imagination. He wasn't real. He was not real. Sam did not need to respond to him and argue with his own thoughts.

"He didn't abandon me!" Sam cried instead, flapping his hands and trying to look as crazy as he could. "He's - he's hiding! Yeah, it's like when I was a kid! Dean! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Sam twisted the third knob and it turned, but there was a deadbolt keeping it closed. Sam pushed on it to try and wiggle it just a little bit and swore he heard someone crying in the room.

"Yeah, but you hear me talking too, so I don't think you're exactly what anyone would consider a credible witness," Lucifer said.

Hallucination. Not real.

The crying was real, Sam was sure of that. It was muffled, Morris must have most of the rooms sound-proofed, but Sam definitely heard someone inside the room.

Which meant Sam could go back downstairs, go to sleep, hope Harry showed up for breakfast. Or…

"Dean? Dean!" Sam started yelling his brother's name while he shouldered the door a couple of times. "Dean! Please! Are you in there? Why are you hiding?"

One more half-assed shove…

"Please, Dean!" Sam tried to make himself sound insane, like he was in the middle of a mental breakdown or something. "DEAN!"

Sam shouldered the door with all of his weight in it. The door splintered at the lock and went crashing to the floor, nearly taking Sam down with it.

It was pitch black in there at first, Sam had to blink a few times to get his eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was a faint buzzing in the walls, an electronic storm of probably more tech than Sam had ever seen before.

In the middle of the floor was a dark lump, a dark lump that Sam thankfully didn't drop a freaking door on.

"Harry?" Sam kneeled down by the lump and stupidly felt for a pulse. Harry wasn't dead, he was mumbling shit. None of it made any sense to Sam, but he was pretty clearly not in a good place. There was a ripe smell, urine, and Sam had to assume that Harry had been there since he first disappeared.

"Hey, you're okay," Sam said quietly, reaching out slowly to brush his hand over Harry's forehead. He was drenched in sweat, Sam exhaled shakily when Harry's eyes fluttered and tried to focus on Sam.

"I'll get us out of here," Sam swore under his breath. "Just hang on, alright? We'll get out of here."

How? Sam wasn't sure yet. Sam had to figure out exactly what breed of psychopath Morris was, monster or human, then he had to figure out the best way to take him down.

"Better plan quick, Sammy Boy, someone's coming," Lucifer said just as Sam heard a creak on the staircase. Sam was already kneeling on the floor, he wasn't going to get out of there without being caught, it was better to lean into the whole crazy bit and take whatever hand he got dealt.

"Dean!" Sam pulled Harry's torso on his lap and tried to think of how it felt when Dean died, how much it shattered him. Sam tried to remember some of Lucifer's most memorable tortures, the nights he actually did cry for his brother. It wasn't enough to actually make Sam cry, but he could work up some passable sobs.

"Don't die, Dean, not again," Sam wailed as he rocked Harry. "Please, Dean, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Don't leave me."

"Buckle up, Sam," Lucifer said cheerfully. "Doc's at your six o'clock. Or is it your eighteen-hundred? Seventeen fifty-nine? Come on, throw me a bone! I can't be the best sidekick ever if you don't tell me how you like to hear time."

Sam would have told Lucifer to just shut the hell up, kept up the crazy act, but he had about two seconds to start up another wail for his brother before there was a familiar pinch in the back of his neck.

Then everything went completely black and Lucifer, for the first time in months, was gone.