A falling cage in a cave? Really? This asshole's watched the Indiana Jones movies a few too many times, that's all I'm sayin'.
Sam knows that voice better than his own: it's Dean, offering his brand of coping mechanism to a shitty situation. Make fun of the situation, make it small and unimportant, and obviously the cause of the situation will be small and unimportant too.
It'd be more comforting if he didn't know for a fact that Dean was miles away in Tucson, staking out that run-down ranch home on the outskirts, coyote scat in the yard and suspicious sigils spray-painted on the siding—the people in the neighborhood had all made sad noises about gang signs and drug houses and how you couldn't trust your neighbors anymore, but he and Dean had broken in and found an altar, standing there in the middle of the living room—
How did they even know you were going to be standing there? How long did they take to set this thing up? Hell—how did they maintain the mechanisms? We're in the middle of nowhere, they must've been hauling 3-in-1 oil out here every week. Awful lot of work for a Looney Tunes trap.
It's just a voice. His own coping mechanism his brain's taken on, a byproduct of current and recent events. He pictures it as an equation, imagines writing it on graph paper in no. 2 pencil: recent trauma x current stress = hallucinations. He winds his fingers around the iron of the cage bars, tries not to focus on the looming dread that's forming around the void where monster we’re fighting should be in his brain—
I guess if this is a Looney Tunes trap, that makes you the Roadrunner, huh? Did they put out a pile of birdseed for you? Are there any giant red Xs around?
Sam tightens his grip, feels the rough texture of the metal. "Primitively forged," he mutters to himself, or tries to; his lips form the words, but the air only comes out in a whisper, his voice caught somewhere in his throat. "Basic industrial skill? Or advanced scavenging and repurposing?" He wishes he had a Dictaphone, or a notepad—anything more than a darkened smartphone with the screen cracked where he landed on it, anything to focus on, to keep him from noticing the way the cadence of the voice in his head is changing, taking on that all-too-familiar lilt, the childish I-know-something-you-don't-know musicality—
Oh, nooo, that's right, the roadrunner never falls for the birdseed, does he? Poor Sammy, outwitted by a dim bulb of a coyote—guess your brother was wrong, you aren't actually the smart one. Sure, you talk a good game, but it's all just regurgitated trivia from books, isn't it? Little Sammy, so desperate for his father's love, for his brother's attention, he'll do anything to keep from being left behind again—
Sam's jaw tightens. It's almost better, the despair that Lucifer's voice touches off in his mind; it's permission, in a way, to sink into hopelessness. Dean's voice is false hope, cheer, determination; when Lucifer comes out, the game is up, and there's nothing to be done except to grit his teeth and endure—
—except—maddeningly—something's touching off a series of connections in his brain. Dimwit coyote. Coyote scat in the yard, altar in the living room. Coyote, a trickster legend, just the sort of deity to drop a cage on a nosy hunter in a cave somewhere—and they're in the desert Southwest, dust-dry and disjunct, ghost towns and gold mines, the sort of environment that breeds isolation, superstition, dysfunction—and religion—
Such an isolated childhood you had, Sammy—guess it's no wonder you prayed all the time, what else could you do? Shame you didn't have any creativity, it was all about Dad, the least likely deity to answer your prayers...now these folks, they've stumbled on an actual god to pray to, something that'll actually show up and cause some mayhem. Bummer for Dean, though, if he's in the blast radius—
Sam pulls out his phone, glossy black screen dark, cracks spiderwebbing across it, and prays. Holds the power button, waits to see if the screen lights up. Holds his breath, wishes for some sort of sound, even the drip, drip of a stalagmite somewhere to mark the passing of time, but the silence is oppressive, his finger on the button for nearly an eternity—
The screen lights up. Sam lets out his breath with a whoosh, lets the phone boot, the interface cheerful, colorful, badly cracked. Not enough signal for a call, but maybe for a text—he swipes, taps, curses as he cuts his finger, bright red left backlit against the screen. Typing is out of the question; the keyboard is the midst of the web, a chunk in the center gone permanently dark—but there, off to the side, if he can just tap the microphone icon, activate the text-to-speech—
Funny thing, trauma, the voice observes. It shuts down the brain's speech centers, did you know that? Literally bypasses them. I guess that'd explain the low-rent Helen Keller thing you've got going on. A little hum, the verbal equivalent of a smug smile. If only you could let me speak through you—
Sam moves his mouth into the shape of a D sound, takes a breath. Just one. Just one sound, one word, and more will follow—he forces his diaphragm up, pushing breath out through his throat, a raspy whisper—Deeee—and he just has to hold back the laughter, keep the guffaws that are pervading his mind from bubbling up into his voice—
