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When the fires rose around him and he could feel his skin burning, blistering, blackening, Sam prayed. It was an instinctive, conditioned response, but one that, confused as Sam's memories were, he knew had always worked in the past.
Fire was familiar, burning was familiar. And praying, giving Lucifer a signal beam so he could find Sam, get him away from Michael for a little while longer, was the best way to make it stop.
But this time it didn't work.
'Michael's not here anymore, remember, Sam?' The hallucination laughed in his face. 'He's not the one doing this anymore, I am, so there's no use praying to me any longer. I'm not listening.'
'You're not real,' Sam snarled and pressed his thumbnail into the scar on his palm hard enough to draw blood.
The image of Lucifer didn't even flicker.
'Doesn't work anymore, Sammy. You're just pissing me off.'
The fires were burning hotter, the flames white instead of orange. Sam pulled Ruby's knife out of his belt and stabbed through his own hand with it. The pain was unbelievable, but Lucifer and his fires vanished. Sam didn't have long to enjoy his reprieve, though, as he passed out a moment later.
When he came to, his arm was sticky and the motel sheets were soaked in his blood, ruined. Sam pulled the knife out, slowly, and bandaged the wound. He could still move the hand, by some miracle.
Lucifer was sitting on the bathroom floor, playing with a pair of electrical leads. Every so often he looked up at Sam and grinned, nastily, before going back to his new toys.
Months passed. Things got worse. Then Dean found Castiel, and things got better.
Dick Roman exploded and Sam prayed again.
The hallucination was gone, taken away and not there to bother him anymore, and Sam could finally think clearly. Except he couldn't.
The room was empty.
Sam barely registered Crowley taking Kevin. His mind was numb, unable to process what was going on. They were all gone. He was alone.
He prayed again.
'Sam,' the voice was familiar, understanding and comforting, and Sam looked up, daring to believe it for a moment.
It wasn't the Hallucination. The smile was softer, kinder, the face concerned, the presence calming. The sight of the real Lucifer, his protector, his lover, was a balm to Sam's tortured soul.
With a whimper he threw himself into Lucifer's arms, cried into the familiar green jacket. 'You came back,' Sam sobbed.
There was a hand stroking his back, soothing him. 'I did,' Lucifer murmured.
'Can you find them, too? Dean and Cas?'
Lucifer shifted, moved his hand from Sam's waist into his hair. 'Well,' he said. The hand in Sam's hair suddenly yanked his head back to stare Lucifer in his suddenly cold eyes, and the grip on Sam's midsection turned into a trap. 'I could,' Sam's hallucination said with a sneer. 'If I was real.'
The leviathans, the demons, the humans were all gone, and no one was around for miles to hear Sam's screams.