#if anyone has a better title suggestion btw hit me up I'm not wedded to it lol

[peanutbutterandbananasandwichs]

Soulless Sam tries to figure out why he still has the Samulet.

Sam Winchester, Soulless Sam

Words: 1,818

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Sam held the amulet again. He had been doing this almost every night since he somehow woke up on Earth; it had become a routine. He opened his palm and stared at it. Nothing.

He remembered plummeting into hell. In those final moments - before everything became black and meaningless— he had fumbled desperately in his right jacket pocket, curling his fingers around the little lump of brass, clutching it so tightly it dug into his flesh. He recalled the pain and something else—something that nagged at the edges of his mind. But what was it?

The inability to remember bothered him. Not in the way some distant and detached part of him thought it should, where it would eat him up from the inside, gut-wrenching, soul-twisting. No, it wasn’t like that at all. It was the nagging frustration of a crossword puzzle whose answer you know but can’t quite access.

He closed his hand again, trying to recreate the sensation. His fist tightened until his knuckles turned white, veins on the back of his hand popping. Hard press of cold metal against his skin, pain so bright and sharp it should be bringing tears to his eyes. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

When he unclenched, his palm was stained with blood. Passing the amulet to his other hand, he examined it, watching dispassionately as a bead of scarlet slid across his palm, trickling down to his wrist.

Sam walked to the bathroom and rinsed the blood away, watching the red swirl into the freezing water. It was faintly hypnotic. The cut wasn’t deep, just a pinprick, and the bleeding had already stopped. He dried his hands on the scratchy motel towel and returned to the main room. Where had he put it? After searching the bed, under the covers, and the floor, he was ready to declare it lost. But when he dropped down on the bed, something poked his thigh. He’d slipped the amulet into his pocket, a force of habit, he supposed.

His phone rang. It was Samuel. They had caught wind of a vampire nest two towns over. Sam grabbed his already-packed duffle, slung it over his shoulder, and headed out. Instinctively, he patted his pocket, checking the amulet was still there before locking the door behind him.

-------

Two weeks later, Sam found himself in a gloomy patch of marshland, deep in the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan. He hadn’t thought about the amulet in days. This hunt had been complicated, tracking the creature on foot as it followed the Lake Superior shoreline.

He had always been prone to fixating on problems, often to the exclusion of almost everything else, sometimes forgetting to eat or sleep until he was near collapse. Dean had found it unnerving, and told him so on more than one occasion. After Ruby, Lilith, the apocalypse, Sam had started to agree.

But lately, he'd begun to see its utility. Now, he didn’t sleep, and he could ignore hunger pangs in ways he couldn’t before the fall. He could push himself to limits he didn’t know he had. Dean was busy playing house with Lisa and the kid, and there was no one around to call him a “weird, obsessive bastard.” Well, maybe Samuel—but he wasn’t one to throw stones. In fact, Samuel seemed pleased to have someone who wouldn’t—or couldn’t—stop until the job was done.

The sun had set, and the chill in the air was bone-deep. Sam barely registered it, except for the way the hair on his arms stood on end. He might not care about the cold, but he knew he’d be at his best if his body wasn’t fighting against it. He shrugged off his backpack, pulled out his jacket, slipped it on, and paused for a second to calculate the last time he ate. Grabbing a protein bar, he decided it was time to refuel. He couldn’t stop for long, or he'd lose the creature’s trail. 

Then he heard it, a guttural rattling sound, somewhere close, too close. He’d been made. Shit. Sam dropped to the ground, the squelch of sodden peat beneath his knees, and crawled as silently as he could to the nearest thicket of thorny briar, crouching behind it, watching, waiting. It loomed into view, vaguely man-shaped but with raw, exposed flesh that seemed to be sliding off its bones. Stinking marsh mud and half-rotted weeds clung to its decaying form.

The rawhead he and Dean had hunted years back was the more common southern type, they died by electrocution, the northern ones were a small isolated pocket, a remnant of the very first of their kind that had crossed the Atlantic stowed away in trunks and cabinets of colonists coming from Lancashire and Devon in England. They died by silver. 

It hadn’t spotted him yet. Sam reached into his jacket pocket and drew out the little silver knife. As he did, the handle snagged the string of the amulet, and it tumbled into the boggy ground at his feet with a splosh. The rawhead turned, eyes glinting in the gloom. 

Sam seized his chance. He lunged forward, barreling the creature onto its back. Caught off guard, it twitched as he drove the blade straight into its heart. Then it went still. He hauled himself upright, blood, and mud, and stench coated him. He would have hated this, that Sam from before, it would have made him shudder and feel the need to scrub himself in the shower until his skin turned raw. He used to do that a lot.

-------

“That went better than the last one.” He said out loud to himself, as the memory of Dean lying in the hospital, weak and pathetic and his heart giving out flashed before him, a sliver of satisfaction and faint contempt sliding over him. And he knew he should feel something else, but he didn’t. And then he remembered the amulet. Staggering back over to the spot he’d been hiding behind the bushes, he found it, he’d trampled it underfoot in his rush to get to the kill, pushed it down into the peat. He pulled it out, holding it up by the leather thong, inches from his face, glinting in the moonlight. He still didn't know. He stuffed it back into his jacket pocket.

Six months later and he’s back with Dean. They’d stopped at a roadside truck stop on the way back to their motel. Dean had declared he was going to die if he didn’t eat “something with enough grease for ten heart attacks”, and stat. Sam would rather not have wasted the time, but on the other hand, he knew that after a burger and a beer or three Dean would pass out faster, and it would be easier to disguise the fact that he wasn’t sleeping if Dean wasn’t conscious. 

There was only so much Sam could take of lying in the dark, pretending. It was exhausting—everything about being with Dean was exhausting. Remembering to frown, or laugh, or furrow his brow just right, at just the right moment, to convey just the right amount of puppy dog empathy. Old Sam had this down to a fine art, the difference was that under the performance he felt it, really felt it. Sometimes he thinks about how much of a misty-eyed milksop he’d been, and he’s not sure how he’d ever functioned. This was better. His mind was so much sharper without the constant screech of shame, and guilt, and worry about everybody but his own damn hide.

Dean was rambling on about Ben and Lisa again, and Sam was nodding at regular intervals. Too regular, maybe, judging by the sudden look of annoyance and suspicion that clouded Dean’s gaze. 

“Sammy, have you been listening to a damn word I’ve said?” Dean asked sharply.

Sam thought for a fraction of a second, carefully arranging his features into a shape he’d learned read as apologetic. “I have, Dean. I’m just tired—it’s been a long day.” He added a crooked smile and pantomimed a yawn. Dean seemed to buy it, his face relaxing.

“You gonna eat that?” Dean asked pointing at Sam’s untouched burger. 

“Be my guest.” Sam slid the paper across the table. Dean snatched it up, devouring the burger in less than three bites, which was almost impressive.

“Alright, let’s get going.”

Sam dug into his jeans pocket for two ten-dollar bills, and his knuckles grazed metal. He’d been thinking about it more since Dean was back. Mostly he’d been thinking about how Dean had cast it aside, and how he’d dug it out of the trash, warm, wet, pathetic tears dampening his face. Why had he done it?

More importantly, why did he still have it?

When he’d first met back up with Dean he’d thought, briefly, about giving it back, technically it was his after all. Then he could stop fixating on the puzzle, trying to find that missing piece to the memory. Except he couldn’t, he needed an answer.

-----

Two weeks later, they drove over to the Campbell compound. Sam's insides still ached, the phantom pain of where Cas had shoved his fist through him lingering. It was the first real pain he’d felt in a year—horrifying, yet strangely clarifying.

Dean kept glancing over at him, tension coiled in him like he was scared Sam was about to crack his skull open. Sam rolled his eyes, and turned away, staring absently out the window. His fingers tangled into the thong of the amulet, it was in his jacket pocket again, the one he’d been wearing when Dean had beat him into unconsciousness. 

He didn’t have a soul. Honestly, he had no idea what that meant. But it, somehow, made sense.

It explained why he’d been so fixated on the amulet. He hadn’t just been trying to figure out what it meant—he’d been trying to figure out what had changed. His soul. That was the missing piece.

“You're not gonna hold me, Dean -- Not here, not in a panic room, not anywhere.” But some part of him, a big part apparently, was still being held, trapped with Lucifer and Michael, in the cage. 

Old Sam, his soul, whatever. He’d truly believed he deserved it when he was shut away and left to rot. Not once, but twice. And he’d believed he deserved it when Dean had thrown the amulet away. He’d believed he’d deserved it as he’d jumped into hell. 

Sam manoeuvred the amulet into his palm, and for the first time in a while, tried again. Closed his fist and let the memory of endless, inky blackness suffuse him. Well maybe old Sam had deserved it, he didn’t think so, but either way, he wasn’t that guy—and he was the one in charge of this hulking lump of meat right now.

And right now, that’s what the amulet meant.