Always on the Sunny Side...
Title: The Sunny Side
Summary: Dean Winchester's got a theory about Hell: There’s a sunny side to everything. Right?
Word count: 1,400
Rated: pg-13 (Language, violent imagery)
Notes: Set post-S3; Spoilers through “I Know What you Did Last Summer”
Genre: Gen, Angst
Characters: Dean, Alistair, mention of Sam
Disclaimer: Supernatural and it's characters belongs to WB/The CW, I own nothing and make no money.
A/N: For a darker version of Dean in hell, check out melanth0 ’s wonderful Ruby POV fic, The Jeweler's Hands
Dean figures out pretty soon where he is, right after the panic passes and he stops screaming for Sam. The infinite darkness around him is a clue, as is the fact that he still hasn’t passed out despite the meat hooks through his leg and shoulder. Alright, Dean thinks. Let’s keep it together. He’s been waiting on hell for a year, so he’s had time to get used to the idea. He’s had time to come up with a plan.
Ruby says that all souls here eventually give in to despair, forget who they are, and that’s where baby demons come from. Not as cute as the stork story, but fitting enough for the spawn of Satan. All the souls in hell aren’t Dean, though, who has always known about monsters and demons, who is a stubborn-ass hunter straight through, who knows exactly what is at stake. He is going to be the first soul not to cave.
It’s something to shoot for, anyways.
Part one of the plan is coming up with a list of good memories to remind him of who he is. He tries it out, starting as early as he can remember: Mom tenderly wiping his face clean, Mom singing “Hey, Jude” and kissing him goodnight, Mom burning alive on the ceiling, Mom tonguing the Demon wearing her father’s meat, and here he is in hell because of his own deal, waiting for another demon to come and… So that’s no good.
Dad, then, beaming at him after he bulls-eyes his first coke can, Dad torn to shreds by a Daeva, Dad’s limp body on the dirty hospital linoleum, the smell of Dad’s corpse burning and knowing his soul was in hell, where Dean is now, waiting to learn the smell of his own flesh burning from his bones and memories of Dad are not going to work either. Dean starts to suspect that hell might be a little in his head already. Everything leads back to where he is; it’s impossible to imagine himself out, no matter how he tries. And he does try.
So, Dean thinks. No good memories out of hell. The plan is still on, though. He’s just going to have to think of good things in hell.
It’s pretty easy to think of the things that aren’t good. For one, he’s alone so far and he hates being alone. It’s not even like it hurts less, because the hooks through his shoulder and leg are tying his nerves into hot bundles of agony, and every move he makes to take the pressure off just triggers a flaring supernova of pain. He’s starving and he’s thirsty, and he’s not stupid enough to think that he’s getting food or water any time soon. There’s an itch between his shoulder blades that he can’t scratch and he’s cold. In fact, everything about hell he can think of sucks out loud.
Which brings him to the one good thing about hell: Sam’s not here.
No matter how crappy it is in hell, Sam got a pass. Sam’s alive because Dean is here, Sam’s walking in the sun and eating good diner food and hopefully he’s got his head out of his ass and is getting some action, too. Right now, at this moment, Sam is living the life he deserves. That, undoubtedly, is a good thing about hell.
So it’s Sam not being there that Dean focuses on when he wakes up on a rack instead of hung like a side of meat, and when he realizes that being alone isn’t that bad, after all, because hanging from a few meat hooks is so far superior to the alternative that it may as well have gone in the pros column right along with Sam.
It’s Sam not being there that Dean thinks about when Alistair teaches him that, in hell, you don’t get to die when your intestines are pulled out and used as a make-shift gag and when he finally does learn the smell of his own flesh burning. It’s Sam not being there that Dean repeats to himself again and again when the pain makes it impossible to form complex thoughts: Sam’s not here, Sam’s not here, Sam’s not here. And then he stutters to a stop, because he was almost sure he was thinking of good things about hell, and he can’t imagine how Sam not being with him could be good.
***
“Good morning, Sunshine,”Alistair drawls.
“Sa’ms nt hrr” Dean mutters, but it’s only when Alistair laughs that he realizes he’s said it out loud.
“Dean, Dean, still fixated on that brother of yours. You know, he’s dead now.”
“Don’t believe it. You didn’t kill him.” It’s been some time since Dean gave up being a smart-ass.
Alistair smiles, or at least, the deformed mess that is presumably his face pulls in a way that it often does when the demon is amused. “I didn’t say we killed him, just that he was dead. How long do you think you’ve been here, Dean?” It’s a good question. Years? Decades? “Even if Sam lives to the ripe old age of one hundred, he’ll still be dead long before we’re done here. Because we’ll never be done.”
This hits Dean harder than he thought anything could hit him anymore. Of course he understood that hell meant eternity, and clearly Sam wasn’t immortal. But somehow, he had never quite thought of it in those terms, that Sam wouldn’t just be going on with life while he suffered. It had never occurred to him that when Sam died, went wherever good souls went, he would be someplace Dean would never go and can’t imagine. Sam will be gone, and Dean will still be on this rack.
While Alistair carves the flesh from his ribs in strips and tucks them carefully into the holes where his eyes used to be (“Removing one sense makes the others sharper.”) it’s this new idea that Dean turns over, worries at. He can’t even imagine what Sam might be doing now. Sam’s dead- or if he isn’t, he will be soon- and that means his brother has really and truly left him. Sam not being here is supposed to be good. He remembers that, he does. But somehow, it’s starting to sound like the worst thing about hell.
When the day, or session, or year is over, Alistair makes the same offer he always does. Usually Dean doesn’t listen, forces himself not to hear because he knows he has to say ‘no’ and a few days, or sessions, or years ago he realized that if he let himself hear the offer he might say yes. This time, he listens.
“All you have to do is get off the rack, Dean-o. Easiest thing in the world. Just take this knife, get off the rack, and we’ll get you set up. These souls aren’t special like you, Dean. These souls are the sludge of humanity. They deserve to be cut, and you would be so very good at cutting them.” Dean can’t help but feel a spark of pleasure at the praise, the first he’s had in a lifetime. Hurting things is something he’s good at.
“No,” he says. Getting off the rack is the first step to…something. He forgets exactly what. He’s forgotten a lot of things.
Alistair hears the hesitation, though, smells blood in the water. “You agree to put other souls on in your place, and hell can be a much more pleasant experience for you. No more chains, no more getting carved up.” Dean has to close his eyes to keep from weeping at the desperate beauty of that prospect. When he opens them, Alistair is smiling. The demon plays his trump card: “In time, if you do well, you might even fight your way topside. Might even see that brother of yours again.”
Dean thinks he might be making a mistake, but Alistair’s argument has no holes that he can see. Just take the knife, like the ones he’s been handling since he was a kid, and use it to cause pain, which is something he’s been doing his whole life, anyways. And then, he gets to leave hell, and if there’s one thing he knows about hell its that Sam isn’t here. So he has to get out, and to get out he just has to say…
“Yes.”
Summary: Dean Winchester's got a theory about Hell: There’s a sunny side to everything. Right?
Word count: 1,400
Rated: pg-13 (Language, violent imagery)
Notes: Set post-S3; Spoilers through “I Know What you Did Last Summer”
Genre: Gen, Angst
Characters: Dean, Alistair, mention of Sam
Disclaimer: Supernatural and it's characters belongs to WB/The CW, I own nothing and make no money.
A/N: For a darker version of Dean in hell, check out melanth0 ’s wonderful Ruby POV fic, The Jeweler's Hands
Dean figures out pretty soon where he is, right after the panic passes and he stops screaming for Sam. The infinite darkness around him is a clue, as is the fact that he still hasn’t passed out despite the meat hooks through his leg and shoulder. Alright, Dean thinks. Let’s keep it together. He’s been waiting on hell for a year, so he’s had time to get used to the idea. He’s had time to come up with a plan.
Ruby says that all souls here eventually give in to despair, forget who they are, and that’s where baby demons come from. Not as cute as the stork story, but fitting enough for the spawn of Satan. All the souls in hell aren’t Dean, though, who has always known about monsters and demons, who is a stubborn-ass hunter straight through, who knows exactly what is at stake. He is going to be the first soul not to cave.
It’s something to shoot for, anyways.
Part one of the plan is coming up with a list of good memories to remind him of who he is. He tries it out, starting as early as he can remember: Mom tenderly wiping his face clean, Mom singing “Hey, Jude” and kissing him goodnight, Mom burning alive on the ceiling, Mom tonguing the Demon wearing her father’s meat, and here he is in hell because of his own deal, waiting for another demon to come and… So that’s no good.
Dad, then, beaming at him after he bulls-eyes his first coke can, Dad torn to shreds by a Daeva, Dad’s limp body on the dirty hospital linoleum, the smell of Dad’s corpse burning and knowing his soul was in hell, where Dean is now, waiting to learn the smell of his own flesh burning from his bones and memories of Dad are not going to work either. Dean starts to suspect that hell might be a little in his head already. Everything leads back to where he is; it’s impossible to imagine himself out, no matter how he tries. And he does try.
So, Dean thinks. No good memories out of hell. The plan is still on, though. He’s just going to have to think of good things in hell.
It’s pretty easy to think of the things that aren’t good. For one, he’s alone so far and he hates being alone. It’s not even like it hurts less, because the hooks through his shoulder and leg are tying his nerves into hot bundles of agony, and every move he makes to take the pressure off just triggers a flaring supernova of pain. He’s starving and he’s thirsty, and he’s not stupid enough to think that he’s getting food or water any time soon. There’s an itch between his shoulder blades that he can’t scratch and he’s cold. In fact, everything about hell he can think of sucks out loud.
Which brings him to the one good thing about hell: Sam’s not here.
No matter how crappy it is in hell, Sam got a pass. Sam’s alive because Dean is here, Sam’s walking in the sun and eating good diner food and hopefully he’s got his head out of his ass and is getting some action, too. Right now, at this moment, Sam is living the life he deserves. That, undoubtedly, is a good thing about hell.
So it’s Sam not being there that Dean focuses on when he wakes up on a rack instead of hung like a side of meat, and when he realizes that being alone isn’t that bad, after all, because hanging from a few meat hooks is so far superior to the alternative that it may as well have gone in the pros column right along with Sam.
It’s Sam not being there that Dean thinks about when Alistair teaches him that, in hell, you don’t get to die when your intestines are pulled out and used as a make-shift gag and when he finally does learn the smell of his own flesh burning. It’s Sam not being there that Dean repeats to himself again and again when the pain makes it impossible to form complex thoughts: Sam’s not here, Sam’s not here, Sam’s not here. And then he stutters to a stop, because he was almost sure he was thinking of good things about hell, and he can’t imagine how Sam not being with him could be good.
***
“Good morning, Sunshine,”Alistair drawls.
“Sa’ms nt hrr” Dean mutters, but it’s only when Alistair laughs that he realizes he’s said it out loud.
“Dean, Dean, still fixated on that brother of yours. You know, he’s dead now.”
“Don’t believe it. You didn’t kill him.” It’s been some time since Dean gave up being a smart-ass.
Alistair smiles, or at least, the deformed mess that is presumably his face pulls in a way that it often does when the demon is amused. “I didn’t say we killed him, just that he was dead. How long do you think you’ve been here, Dean?” It’s a good question. Years? Decades? “Even if Sam lives to the ripe old age of one hundred, he’ll still be dead long before we’re done here. Because we’ll never be done.”
This hits Dean harder than he thought anything could hit him anymore. Of course he understood that hell meant eternity, and clearly Sam wasn’t immortal. But somehow, he had never quite thought of it in those terms, that Sam wouldn’t just be going on with life while he suffered. It had never occurred to him that when Sam died, went wherever good souls went, he would be someplace Dean would never go and can’t imagine. Sam will be gone, and Dean will still be on this rack.
While Alistair carves the flesh from his ribs in strips and tucks them carefully into the holes where his eyes used to be (“Removing one sense makes the others sharper.”) it’s this new idea that Dean turns over, worries at. He can’t even imagine what Sam might be doing now. Sam’s dead- or if he isn’t, he will be soon- and that means his brother has really and truly left him. Sam not being here is supposed to be good. He remembers that, he does. But somehow, it’s starting to sound like the worst thing about hell.
When the day, or session, or year is over, Alistair makes the same offer he always does. Usually Dean doesn’t listen, forces himself not to hear because he knows he has to say ‘no’ and a few days, or sessions, or years ago he realized that if he let himself hear the offer he might say yes. This time, he listens.
“All you have to do is get off the rack, Dean-o. Easiest thing in the world. Just take this knife, get off the rack, and we’ll get you set up. These souls aren’t special like you, Dean. These souls are the sludge of humanity. They deserve to be cut, and you would be so very good at cutting them.” Dean can’t help but feel a spark of pleasure at the praise, the first he’s had in a lifetime. Hurting things is something he’s good at.
“No,” he says. Getting off the rack is the first step to…something. He forgets exactly what. He’s forgotten a lot of things.
Alistair hears the hesitation, though, smells blood in the water. “You agree to put other souls on in your place, and hell can be a much more pleasant experience for you. No more chains, no more getting carved up.” Dean has to close his eyes to keep from weeping at the desperate beauty of that prospect. When he opens them, Alistair is smiling. The demon plays his trump card: “In time, if you do well, you might even fight your way topside. Might even see that brother of yours again.”
Dean thinks he might be making a mistake, but Alistair’s argument has no holes that he can see. Just take the knife, like the ones he’s been handling since he was a kid, and use it to cause pain, which is something he’s been doing his whole life, anyways. And then, he gets to leave hell, and if there’s one thing he knows about hell its that Sam isn’t here. So he has to get out, and to get out he just has to say…
“Yes.”