Life, if one deems it fit to call his time there as such, in the cage wasn't all meat hooks, chains and fire.

It wasn't all hot heavy air that made him want to choke and skin crawling laughter that made him want to curl up and tear through his eardrums. In fact sometimes it wasn't even the Cage. Sometimes it was another motel room, with the tacky wallpaper that should've been an insult to the art deco era and the plastic coated mattresses with the undesirable sheets they hid beneath. Sometimes it was an old church. Hunched over and hollowed out, sat idle by the mud slathered moors. Empty. Cold. Quiet.

The Cage was liquid. The Cage was sand. Palpable and yet not. It breathed. And its breath was cold, a cold that slipped through each and every crevice of the mind.

Pain was pain. As it always would be. Sam could handle pain. The tearing of his flesh and the snapping of his joints was terrifying. As it always would be. But Sam understood pain, he could grit his teeth and scream. Sam could cry and strain. Even if the pain was otherworldly, when slick, cold fingers burrowed beneath his skin like a kitten would into a blanket, and caressed his spine. And pulled. Pulled the bones. His bones. Through the same tissues the fingers had. Sam screamed and cried and caved. He came back though. He was reeled in again, from the blackening of his vision. Sam would be once again swallowing the same metallic air that made the blood so much stickier. The ripping of his lungs and the crushing of his skull. But he could manage.

He could not manage Jess though. Or Jo. Or Dad. Or worst of all, Dean. He could not manage the clawing fingers that slipped over his arms. Chilling and slick with tears and memories.

The Cage didn't pierce his head as so much as ebb over it. It coxed his life, his love out like a burger would a starving dog. And that same love bled into the veins of the cage, and Lucifer loved it. Playing along as the Cage smeared his face into the memories of Sam. Into every single moment that Sam hated, into the crumbled church where Sam had once brought the end.

No. Pain was what Sam wanted. Watching each, and every moment that Sam had fucked up. Had lost. Or failed. Had betrayed. Was what made him break. Feeling his own hand curl around a knife that wasn't there, and gut his own mother, slowly and methodically. Was what made Sam bleed through his heart. Feeling his blood sing with Demonic energy and watching as the ground beneath him shatter as Lucifer poured free. Again. Was what drove him mad.

The memories looped. His mother burning. Jess screaming. Loved ones. Lost ones. Crying out for salvation as his body repeated the same mistakes that caused their demise the first time. Their hands, desperate and painful as they pawed at his feet before slipping through the ground.

His body moving, crushing their skulls beneath his feet. Screaming in his own head to stop. For the love of God, stop.

Dean's face, slack, defeated. Dead. As it bowed backwards to gaze into Sam. Eyes filled with unshed tears, betrayal and unmistakable love.

Glazing over as Sam's fingers tore through a ribcage to pull out Dean's warm sputtering heart.

No. Torn off limbs felt so much more comforting then these twisted memories. So he would burn. Feel his flesh boil and split. And he would relish it. Because it was so much better than the faltering breaths of his family echoing in his ears. He would peel for them. The pain was Ok.