She had only come because Dean, surprisingly, had texted her. You need to socialize seriously. Come on. We can leave if we're bored. She wondered if that had been a joke: if Truth or Truth could be an active game, Dare or Dare had far more potential for something entertaining.

Sam knew she was going to be left alone the moment they got there, and she had been right. She was always right. Dean meant well, but his pack mentality seemed to stretch more towards his friends than it did to her. It bothered her, but at the same time it also didn't; they used to be close, but she was a singular individual with actual potential. He was another cog in the machine. These were the things they had wanted to be just as much as they had been born to be.

But cogs at least got to move. She was awash with so many people at once that Sam had frozen up, alone and distant. Deus had forced her to face the fact that she was the least sociable person she knew. And that wasn't saying much, considering her actual social group consisted of 3 men who were busy mixing and matching their lips, clothes, and manner of behaviors, a gamer who had the common sense not to show up, and a brother who was sulking about who knew what with some admirer of his.

She just...didn't understand. What was the point of this game? To win? Win what, bragging rights? The group was so large, there wasn't much point in showing off as only a portion might be impressed. And the activities being given weren't particularly strenuous: if it wasn't something as common as taking a photo, it was making out with a possible stranger or enacting vague sexual motions. It was like watching a slow-motion picture of orgy, all manner of human emotion on display in a caricature of bonding.

Emotion. That was probably why she didn't understand.

Sunsinger, she asked, do you remember any games like this before you were converted?

He shifted in her mind like he was shaking off the sand that had partially buried him. I do not, he replied drowsily, his voice buzzing low and soft as cicadas in summer. Are they testing one another? I would see the measure of a hunter myself one day...

Something like that. Mostly it's been used to force pairs to kiss and other equally childish things.

Sunsinger hummed some more as he took in the information in her head. And you would not participate?

No.

Then why are you here?

Because my brother forced me to. But they both knew that was a lie; Dean could never make her do anything she didn't have at least a small interest in prior. Sam sighed through her nose and crossed her arms, her expression as passive as ever despite the unrest inside.

You feel as if you are apart, the horseman observed. Even with those men.

And she always had been. Be it her evident genius or her knowledge and prodigious memory, Sam had always known herself to be alone. That was the trade off for talent: the loneliness at the top. She had long accepted it. It was just that being here as a trainee forced her back to the ranks of others who had been viewed as beneath her. She hadn't even realized how sore she had been from the fall until now. The restrictions. The lack of funds. The lack of respect. And now, her always prevalent lack of emotion on top of it all.

I do not think they care, Sunsinger offered genially. You think too much. Act and see today, rather than wait and find out tomorrow.

Sam mulled it over, her right hand squeezing and relaxing idly. The idea...terrified her. Not the dares, she couldn't find herself caring about it. It was the theories and assumptions and truths that were coming from these dares. Who associated with whom. Who asked to do what. It was Dare or Dare, but to Sam, it might as well have been Truth or Truth again. Just without the words.

Consider this an experiment. Challenge yourself.

Sam closed her eyes. How brutish. He could have tried being more subtle about pressing that button. Sunsinger merely jingled something like a chuckle.

You will either confirm what you already know, or you will learn something new. Is that not worth the risk?