SPN Fanfic: Unstuck (R)
Meh.
Title: Unstuck
Warnings: SPOILERS through 4.10. Not humour. Weird.
Rating: GEN, R (language, implied violence and torture)
Word Count: 4200-ish words
Characters: Dean, Alastair, others
Disclaimer: All Kripke's.
Beta'd by: starrylizard and smalltwndreamer whose combined input has helped this beast immeasurably. Tea and cookies all around!
Summary: Missing/alternate scene from 4.10. Yep, another one of those, just like everyone else. Not humour.
A/N: (after cut due to spoilers for 4.10)
A/N: This and one other missing/alternate scene for a Season four episode are what's been blocking me, I think. Yeah, it's yet another "Dean breaks in Hell" fic. My take on it anyway. We all have our points of obsession; mine's shiny and showed up around Dean's neck in Hell at the end of Season Three. Also kind of a continuation of " The Sticking Place". It's another one I'll probably never be fully happy with, but anyway. Posting it and moving on.
-
Unstuck
by CaffieneKitty
-
"No matter what you do, it's going to happen. We were being nice, giving you a chance."
Hanging from hooks, Dean was a captive audience to the flurry of black shapes around him. He wasn't sure which was speaking, but certain he didn't care. "Yeah? Meat hooks, torture. Real nice."
"See, the thing about Hell is you have no choice. If you don't let the memory of your self go, we'll take it from you. Slow, fast, it's all good for us."
Dean glared. "I'll bet."
"We'll take your body apart, piece by piece, over and over until you forget how it goes back together, until all you are is fear and pain and rage. And then you'll want to be one of us, and do the same thing to other souls."
"No fucking way. Never."
"You won't remember. No one does."
"Bullshit. Ruby remembers."
A ripple of laughter passed through the clouds. "Ruby is something else entirely. You? You won't remember being human, you won't remember being alive. You won't remember that thing around your neck and you won't remember the person who gave it to you."
Dean reflexively glanced down at the pendant around his neck then back to the circling demons. "Bite me."
"Wait for it," the cloud giggled. "You will forget, and you will join us. It's inevitable."
"No."
The demons descended, and Dean howled.
Forever later, Dean opened his eyes and drew breath. A single cloud hung in front of him, with an air of patience.
"See?" it said. "Just a memory. Now it's back, same memory. This body is not what you are anymore Dean. You have no physical form. You only think you breathe and bleed and feel pain. You have no body here."
"So, what?" Dean panted with reformed lungs, pendant bobbing. "Hell is the Matrix?"
The cloud chuckled lightly. "We only want to help you, Dean."
"Yeah. Right."
"If you can't let go of your body, then we'll help you let go. Every day you have a body, we'll tear it apart. All it is is memory, what you were. The sooner you let that go and join us, the sooner you'll be done with pain."
"No."
"Join us. Plenty of opportunities for advancement. So many other souls to show how to forget." The cloud swooped away to re-unite with the roiling throng, lost in the mass of black. "All you have to do is join us."
No.
And it started again.
-
Months later, a different smoke cloud showed up. When this one swirled in, the others parted to let it through. It took a human shape; a man, narrow-featured, black-haired, hint of a bloodied grey-green uniform, red armband, gloves, amused.
"Well," he says, hanging before Dean in mid-air. "Aren't you fun."
"Yeah, I'm a barrel of fucking monkeys." Dean raised his eyes to meet the ones the demon now had. "What are you supposed to be?"
The half-formed figure swooped around behind Dean and peered at him from behind his left shoulder, holding onto the cable attached to Dean's side. "You know how it is, power in names and all." He swung down, twanging the cable, tearing Dean's flesh.
Dean winced but didn't make a sound; controlling his breathing and watching as the demon returned to hover in front of him again.
"But..." The demon tilted his head and examined Dean. "I think I'd like it if you called me Alastair."
"I'll call you whatever I want, ya charcoal fart," said Dean through clenched teeth.
"Ooo. Spirit. Tasty." Alastair grinned toothily. "You're Lilith's toy, aren't you?"
Dean scowled.
"Ah yes. Well, she's creative, but... mercurial. Gets bored with her toys quickly. And you're the toy that won't break. Very boring."
"That's me. Play-Doh." Dean smirked.
"Still hanging on to the memory of the body you left behind, tsk," said Alastair, glancing at the pendant on Dean's chest. "I'm sure the Welcome Wagon has informed you it's the source of your pain, let it go, join us, great benefits package, and so on?"
"Yeah. Gave me some coupons for twenty percent off at Ikea too. But no fruit basket." Dean shook his head. "Shameful. No class at all down here."
Alastair laughed, slowly turning back into a dark cloud, saving his face for last. "They're right you know. Once you let go, become one of us, the pain will stop."
"I can take pain, asshole," Dean snapped.
"Ah. Well." A final flash of teeth in the smoke, grinning, before they too disappeared. "I do like a challenge."
-
The demons tore his body apart, every day, and everyday it grew back. He wouldn't let go. He wouldn't give in.
They tore him apart. Flesh from bone, muscles, sinew, teeth, eyes. Smaller pieces, and him aware, impossibly, of the raw agony of each part, even when they spread him through the Abyss, fighting over his scraps like hens in a farmyard.
They weren't all smoke. Some still seemed human, ghostly, crawling with deep grey patches like a fungus. They were hesitant, and rare. The ones that were smoke with a mockery of a face were the worst. Hollows where the eyes and mouth should be, like they remembered something of being human but had lost the trick of it, regretted giving up everything. They took their frustrations out on him, he thought.
Alastair watched. He offered, then stepped away, let the pack waiting do their thing. Applauded the creative ones. Offered critiques. Sometimes conducted seminars.
Dean said no. He screamed no, he whispered no, he cried no, he yelled no, he shrieked no, he spat no, he wept no no no no no.
None of them ever touched the pendant Sam had given him. Each day he reformed, it was still there.
-
Years later, Alastair singled out one of the pale grey ghost-shapes out of the roiling wisps of clawed ash, beckoned it closer.
"Just one of the countless former thieves and murderers in Hell, but I thought you should meet again, old friends and all. Say hello, Bela."
What remained of her form snapped into sharper focus when Alastair said her name. Dean felt a stab of shock, seeing someone familiar here.
Bela's translucent face was a mass of oozing sores; her legs ran together, shading down to a formless dark grey cloud. Her eyes widened in recognition of Dean, staring, horrified.
"She's new, like you," Alastair continued chattily. "She got here only seven years before you did. A model student. She almost didn't need to be asked, did you, my dear?"
"Bela," Dean whispered, in a voice not recently used for saying anything but 'no', and for screaming.
Bela's pale hands came up to cover her face, turning away from Dean, away and away; dark smoke spiraling up the faint memory of her torso, erasing her form, chasing her ruined face around until she was just another column of black smoke. Dean clenched his teeth and watched, sickened.
"Ah, good girl," Alastair said with a tone of surprise. "If I had known seeing you here would break her last resistance, I would have brought her by for a chat much sooner."
The cloud extended toward Dean, slowly, forming a sharp tip as it reached his chest and dragged down, tearing the skin, leaving a line of fire in its wake. It was the gentlest thing a demon had done to him in years. Tears formed, but Dean's jaw remained set.
"Come on, Dean. I'd say she could show you the ropes, but you're pretty familiar with those."
A memory of blood trickled down his chest past the pendant. "No."
"Ah well. So much for job shadowing."
The pulsing crowd descended and Dean lost which one was Bela in the pain of the day.
-
"You can end this. Any time. Be one of the tormentors instead of the tormented."
"I'm not torturing some poor bastard to save my own skin!" Dean repeated, same again.
Alastair laughed. "You think anyone we get down here is innocent? Even you. You've killed, you've stolen, you've desecrated graves..." Alastair waved a hand. "Regardless of all that, you made a deal with a demon. You asked to be here. And then you tried to get out of that deal."
Dean said nothing.
"I repeat: No one down here is innocent, Dean. They'd go after you, given a shot. Do unto others before they do unto you."
"No."
Alastair sighed. "How tedious."
"Hey, maybe you should stop talking to me in case I bore you to death."
A chuckle as Alastair turned away and reverted to smoke. "You know what he's doing up there, don't you, Dean?"
Dean tensed. He swallowed, and said "Who?" like he didn't already know.
"You know what he's doing in the name of trying to bring you back?" The smoke cloud that was Alastair twisted and came back, eyes in the cloud flaring with amusement. "We should tell you. It would shred you faster than the Hound did."
"Shut up."
"We like what he's doing up there." The pack of circling demons tittered at Alastair's words.
"I said, shut the fuck up! All of you!"
Teeth flickered in the cloud as Alastair left the pack to their work.
Sam was still alive. Whatever he was doing, Bobby was probably watching out for him. Nothing the demons did to Dean mattered anymore, because Sam was alive.
The pendant sparkled in Hellfire.
-
On the seven thousand three hundred and fifty first day, Dean stopped reacting to Alastair. Stopped talking except to say "No."
After a while, Alastair started talking about people Dean had known before he died. Like it mattered. Like Hell was some kind of big social club.
"You should meet Ava. You remember Ava?"
He drifted idly past, back and forth. Dean glared.
"She was the same as your brother, one of Azazel's little tainted sprogs. Did Sam tell you she could control demons? Did he tell you she murdered damn near every one of Azazel's kids except for your brother and the other one? Jake?"
Alastair paused as though awaiting confirmation, a reaction. Dean continued glaring past him at the swirling horde of waiting demons.
"Jake's the one that snapped Ava's neck. Saved your brother's life before he tried to take it. Whoops, sorry. Did take it, and you sold yourself to get it back, and gave me the opportunity to have our wonderful little chats."
Alastair smirked. Dean glared, trying to stay focussed on not reacting, on breathing.
"Jake's around here, somewhere. You should meet him too, but he's long since moved on to bigger things I'd guess. Fast learner. Ah, but not as fast as Doctor Ellicot, though. You remember Doctor Ellicot, don't you? I meant to thank you for him. You sent him here."
"I sent him here?" Dean croaked, then snapped his mouth shut.
"Ooo! It talks!" Alastair formed some hands, patted them together in token mocking applause. "Yes, you sent him here. He tormented and tortured and murdered hundreds of people for science and personal glory while he was alive, trying to find the sources of insanity. After his death, he did the same again, only a little less focussed on the scientific results end of the business. I appreciate that though. Sacrifice for medicine. You burned his corpse and what was left of his soul came down here like a torpedoed warship. This is a place for tormentors. He's found a calling here."
"Not my problem," Dean grated, voice rough. "He was an evil bastard before I torched him."
"True. Although one's point of view often determines what is considered evil." Alastair's gray-green uniform flashed into existence and disappeared into the smoke again, red armband fading last. "Many small evils are done in the name of a great good."
"You got a point to the cut-rate 'This Is Your Life' crap?" Dean pulled himself up on the cables, stiffening his back out of a tired slouch. He set his teeth, raised his chin. "Or can your buddies get on with tearing my eyeballs out through my ass or whatever's on the to-do list today?"
The waiting demons roared eagerly. Alastair held out a hand to quell the throng. "My point is, they don't remember who they were, what pain they caused up there. None of them. Another hundred years here and they'll be ready to go back to Earth. In a rental, of course. Breathe the air again."
"So?"
"Aren't there memories of things you've done that you'd rather forget? Things you cling to, even now that keep you in pain?"
Dean clenched his jaw and looked past Alastair.
Alastair's voice softened to a tone of concern, but his eyes retained the glint of mockery. "Forgetting who you were is the only kind of forgiveness you're going to get down here, Dean. Take it. Let go. Put another soul in your place and-"
"Fuck you. No."
The demon snorted. "Stubborn, just like your daddy."
Dean's head jerked up. The circling cloud of demons hooted.
Alastair made a show of examining the fingernails of his form. "Really, I wish you'd give up. I'm itching to see if you'll be as good at this as your Daddy was."
The tethers across the abyss vibrated as Dean surged against them. "You shut up about my dad!"
"Oh ho! A sore spot. Lovely." Alastair looped casually around one of the lines in front of Dean. "Your daddy was down here for close to a century, Dean. You think he didn't break?"
"No! My father never would!"
"He broke. Beautifully. It was..." The smoke that was Alastair grew, then shrank, in a self-satisfied sigh. "glorious."
"Lie! You're lying!"
"He was an excellent demon. All that rage, held for so long? When he gave in, he was inspired"
Dad wouldn't do it. Never. He never would. "Demons lie," Dean stated, breath gurgling in his memory of lungs.
Alastair's smoky form grew a face long enough to display a languid smirk before he drifted away.
But as Dean was being torn apart again, he kept seeing his father in the graveyard, forming out of a black smoke cloud that had come from Hell.
No way. No way.
-
Dean lost track of the days for a while after nine thousand; they blurred together, pain and blood and screaming and flesh and no and no and no. And offers.
"Got a nice one today, Dean. He'll be fun to tear up."
Dean looked away, because he could.
"He's a murderer. Like you and your brother. And your dad. Quite a bit worse though. He did some tearing of his own, on his girlfriend."
Dean tried to ignore Alastair, kept staring into the distance, past the throng of demons waiting for the day's entertainment.
Alastair swooped over into Dean's field of view. "A monster. The human kind. Killed a girl who trusted him. Hurt her, for days, months. Took her trust and turned it against her, used it to keep her there, to torture her. And she wasn't the first."
Dean felt the outrage that came from a lifetime of hunting evil and protecting the innocent, came from being a decent person, and swallowed it down, hard. He couldn't give in. He turned his face the other direction, away from Alastair.
The demon followed the turn of Dean's head. "We need a fresh perspective, Dean. Come on. This guy's a monster. A bad guy. He needs to be punished for what he did. You can help. You can make this guy really regret everything he ever did to that poor girl."
Dean swallowed, shook his head. He couldn't give in.
"No? Dean. I'm disappointed." Alastair sneered in disgust. "You do know the kind of people we get down here? They're coming here because they deserve to be here. We're providing a service. I thought you were the type to enjoy punishing the wicked."
"No." He raised his eyes. "I won't. Not to save myself."
Alastair smiled. "But isn't that why you won't do it? Because you figure it'll make you one of us if you do?"
Dean looked away to the waiting, roiling smoke surrounding them.
"Selfish of you. Not how you were raised at all. Not very heroic." Alastair swooped around again, getting in Dean's line of sight. "What would Sam say if he could see you, his 'heroic' big brother; refusing to take on a bad guy because you were afraid of what it would do to you?"
Closing his eyes, Dean said "No."
Dean could feel Alastair observing him, watching, as the chittering clouds circled unseen. "Hm," Alastair said eventually. "That's too bad. This guy'll scream real nice. So will you." Alastair snapped gloved fingers and the pack rushed in again.
Every day, Alastair came back, a new soul on offer. Dean stopped listening to him, stopped listening to the daily iteration of, "We've got a murderer..." "It's a serial rapist today." "Killed her whole family." "All you have to do is let go and join us." "Join us." "Join us."
Every day, Dean fought down his instincts and stayed on the hooks. Every day, he thought of what he might really be sacrificing by not choosing to torment the human monsters Alastair pitched in graphic detail. Every day, he thought about his Dad, and Sam, and what they would think.
Every day, the pendant gleamed a little less brightly.
-
Years later, in the middle of the day's pitch of a new soul to torture, Alastair looked at Dean, smirked and changed the subject.
"He gave up, you know."
The change in tone caught Dean's attention. He lifted his head to snarl at Alastair. "I said shut the fuck up about my Dad."
"Oh, I'm not talking about John."
"What?"
"Sam. He gave up on you. Ages ago. Took all of a week up there, and he was done even trying to get you back. Buried your corpse in the middle of nowhere and walked away."
Dean's breath went out in a long exhale and his head drooped. He swallowed. "Good."
"You don't want out, Dean? If Sam had made another Deal, traded his soul for you? Got you out, free and clear? You wouldn't want that?"
"No! I wouldn't. Never."
"Maybe Sam never even tried. Maybe he didn't need you as much as you needed him. Maybe he tried, and Lilith's acquisitions department laughed in his face, because they already had his soul. Maybe he killed another demon in the crossroads, along with the innocent human it had borrowed."
"No."
"Your little brother likes death, Dean. He's very good at it."
"He's not! He-" Dean's defiant shout cracked. He choked, coughing.
Alastair looked on, amused, waiting for Dean to regain his voice.
"Bobby's there," Dean rasped. "He'll keep Sam's head screwed on straight."
White points of light flared in the cloud. "You're right, he would. But Sam's not listening to that old bone-rack any more."
"Bobby'd make him listen."
Alastair moved away. "He would. But he's not. Sam's got a different shoulder to cry on. Went and shacked up with his new black-eyed honey-pot."
"...Ruby?"
In the smoke that was Alastair a Cheshire Cat grin formed, followed by a face. "Yeeeeesss... Ruby."
"No way... Sam-" He glared at the demon in front of him, chest heaving. "You're lying!"
"Suit yourself. It's the truth."
"Demons lie!" Dean spat.
Alastair smiled, eyes glittering. "We also tell the truth, when it hurts worse than a lie would."
Panting, Dean shook his head. "No."
Alastair formed a set of shoulders long enough to shrug. "Thought you should know Sammy isn't going to come swooping in to rescue you. After all, the sign on the door does say 'abandon all hope' for a reason. Kind of a Public Service Announcement. Once you're down here, there's no going back. You're ours. The sooner you give up hope, give in and forget, the easier it'll be on you."
"No," Dean repeated, sagging on the hooks, not meeting the demon's eyes, not watching the clouds swarm in for the day's torture.
As Dean was reforming later on, he thought of Sam, alone, desperate, and dancing to a demon's tune. Dean watched the pendant, his eyes being in a convenient position to do so. Sam. What are you doing?
-
Sometime in the twenty-ninth year, instead of telling him about a new soul, Alastair dragged someone new in front of Dean.
"I have someone else for you to meet. Someone special. Brand new arrival."
Her blonde hair was caked in dried blood, her eyes were flat and dull with despair. She dangled from a hook like an earthworm. She was maybe fourteen, fifteen. A kid. She was just a kid.
"Let her go!" Dean roared. "You said no one down here is innocent! What did she do?"
"Oh, same as you. Same as Bela. Sold her soul for revenge." Alastair twirled a finger in the girl's hair. "Or at least she thought she was. Lilith had other plans."
The girl sobbed, twisting slowly on her hook.
"See, Lilith didn't really need her soul; she took it anyway, but what she really needed was someone sweet and innocent-looking for one of her flunkies to inhabit to try to get past your brother's defenses. A decoy."
"Let her go!"
"She's here, she's ours." Alastair waved a hand and the girl was pulled away on her hook, shrieking off into the distance with a few demons from the pack peeling off to chase her. "Your brother killed her. Up there."
Dean shook his head. "No. Sam would never-"
"He did!" Alastair said with a tone of someone sharing some salacious gossip. "Near enough. Seems he got sloppy. Ruby stabbed her, Sam just watched. Not that he had any other choice, really, but you'd think he could control his little lapdog."
"Shut up!"
"Of course there's the question of who is actually on whose leash..."
"I said shut up!" Dean croaked. "Sam would never-"
"He would and he has. Your brother will be coming here when he dies. He'll come here and hang next to you and we can tear you both up and make a jigsaw puzzle of your bits."
"He's not! Sam isn't-" Dean started choking, blood flowing from his mouth and the hole in his side where the hook dug in. "He's not a monster. Not Sammy."
The roiling clouds surrounding them screeched in mockery. "Sammy!" "Oh Sammy!" "Precious innocent Sammy!"
"Shut up!" Dean rasped, pulling against the wires, pendant swinging.
"Oh, no," Alastair swirled back. "Sammy's ours now. Well, technically he's always been ours, thanks to Azazel's little blood donor program, but now he's ours in thought, word and deed. His soul is ashen."
Dean winced and gasped for air that didn't exist. "He can't- He wouldn't-"
Suddenly Alastair was there, fabricated face nose to nose with Dean's. "You have no idea what your brother's already done since you left. He's our meat. Only a matter of time now."
"Shut up! Shut up! Demons lie!"
"Oh ho, when the truth is this good, Dean, there's no need for lying. You know what he's doing up there? What he's really doing up there?" Alastair said, repeating himself from decades earlier.
Dean met Alastair's eyes, head drooping, grating bloodied teeth.
"He's doing exactly what she wants him to. Every. Last. Thing."
"No."
"There's no going back for Sammy now!" Alastair crowed. "He's a demon's puppet, and he's even less innocent than any other soul down here. All because you - selfish, pathetic, big brother extraordinaire, Dean Winchester - wouldn't let him die innocent."
Dean fought to disbelieve Alastair. Sam was strong. Sam was doing fine on his own. Sam hadn't gone to Ruby in desperation to try anything in his power to bring Dean back... "Sam..."
Alastair pulled away from Dean with a smirk and tapped the tarnished pendant.
Dean flinched.
"You made him into this," Alastair said as Dean began choking on his own remembered blood. "Left him alone. He had no choice but to turn to a demon for help. He'd have been better off dead. Not better for us, though. So thank you, Dean. Thank you for Sammy's precious life. You've done Hell a great service."
"No," whispered Dean, "please, no."
Alastair left. Dean started screaming before the first demon touched him that day.
-
The days and weeks that followed, Alastair didn't say anything about souls to torture, or Sam. He just said, "Thank you, Dean, you've been a great help," and left the demons to their work.
On the ten thousand nine hundred and forty-ninth day when Dean re-formed, the pendant was missing.
-
The next day, Alastair formed in front of Dean, he didn't look at him, but started back in with a new soul description.
"Oh, this one's a bad one, Dean. You should really consider helping us out with this one. He'll probably join us as soon as someone makes the offer. He'd like it. We're holding off on offering for a while. We want to get our mileage out of him first."
Dean's head hung. He stared blankly at his own bare chest.
Alastair smiled to himself as he swished back and forth in front of Dean. "He went and had himself a grand old time upstairs, carving up a busload of school kids."
Dean's eyes closed and he shook. "Stop."
Alastair didn't stop. "Bus driver too. He saved her for last. Made her watch. That's artistry. Imagine what he'd do down here-"
"Just stop."
Alastair swooped in beside Dean and put a comradely arm around the shoulder without a hook. Dean didn't flinch away. "You know Dean, I bet with all your experience in the receiving end of the business, you could figure out some real inventive things to do to this soul, Dean. It's a nice ice-breaker. He's practically not human already."
Dean yelled, voice cracking, disintegrating. "I said stop."
Alastair grinned and gestured grandly at the silently swirling cloud of demons. "But you know what will make us stop, Dean. Nothing else will. You have to join us."
"Yes," Dean whispered. "Yes."
"Sorry, didn't quite hear that?"
"I said yes. I'll do it."
Alastair smiled as the hooks and wires fell through Dean's flesh; grey patches formed in their absence.
"I knew you'd see things our way. It was only a matter of time."
-
Forty years later, four months after Dean had died, Sam put the pendant back into his hand. And Dean forgot he had ever lost it.
- - -
(that's it.)
Title: Unstuck
Warnings: SPOILERS through 4.10. Not humour. Weird.
Rating: GEN, R (language, implied violence and torture)
Word Count: 4200-ish words
Characters: Dean, Alastair, others
Disclaimer: All Kripke's.
Beta'd by: starrylizard and smalltwndreamer whose combined input has helped this beast immeasurably. Tea and cookies all around!
Summary: Missing/alternate scene from 4.10. Yep, another one of those, just like everyone else. Not humour.
A/N: (after cut due to spoilers for 4.10)
A/N: This and one other missing/alternate scene for a Season four episode are what's been blocking me, I think. Yeah, it's yet another "Dean breaks in Hell" fic. My take on it anyway. We all have our points of obsession; mine's shiny and showed up around Dean's neck in Hell at the end of Season Three. Also kind of a continuation of " The Sticking Place". It's another one I'll probably never be fully happy with, but anyway. Posting it and moving on.
-
Unstuck
by CaffieneKitty
-
"No matter what you do, it's going to happen. We were being nice, giving you a chance."
Hanging from hooks, Dean was a captive audience to the flurry of black shapes around him. He wasn't sure which was speaking, but certain he didn't care. "Yeah? Meat hooks, torture. Real nice."
"See, the thing about Hell is you have no choice. If you don't let the memory of your self go, we'll take it from you. Slow, fast, it's all good for us."
Dean glared. "I'll bet."
"We'll take your body apart, piece by piece, over and over until you forget how it goes back together, until all you are is fear and pain and rage. And then you'll want to be one of us, and do the same thing to other souls."
"No fucking way. Never."
"You won't remember. No one does."
"Bullshit. Ruby remembers."
A ripple of laughter passed through the clouds. "Ruby is something else entirely. You? You won't remember being human, you won't remember being alive. You won't remember that thing around your neck and you won't remember the person who gave it to you."
Dean reflexively glanced down at the pendant around his neck then back to the circling demons. "Bite me."
"Wait for it," the cloud giggled. "You will forget, and you will join us. It's inevitable."
"No."
The demons descended, and Dean howled.
Forever later, Dean opened his eyes and drew breath. A single cloud hung in front of him, with an air of patience.
"See?" it said. "Just a memory. Now it's back, same memory. This body is not what you are anymore Dean. You have no physical form. You only think you breathe and bleed and feel pain. You have no body here."
"So, what?" Dean panted with reformed lungs, pendant bobbing. "Hell is the Matrix?"
The cloud chuckled lightly. "We only want to help you, Dean."
"Yeah. Right."
"If you can't let go of your body, then we'll help you let go. Every day you have a body, we'll tear it apart. All it is is memory, what you were. The sooner you let that go and join us, the sooner you'll be done with pain."
"No."
"Join us. Plenty of opportunities for advancement. So many other souls to show how to forget." The cloud swooped away to re-unite with the roiling throng, lost in the mass of black. "All you have to do is join us."
No.
And it started again.
-
Months later, a different smoke cloud showed up. When this one swirled in, the others parted to let it through. It took a human shape; a man, narrow-featured, black-haired, hint of a bloodied grey-green uniform, red armband, gloves, amused.
"Well," he says, hanging before Dean in mid-air. "Aren't you fun."
"Yeah, I'm a barrel of fucking monkeys." Dean raised his eyes to meet the ones the demon now had. "What are you supposed to be?"
The half-formed figure swooped around behind Dean and peered at him from behind his left shoulder, holding onto the cable attached to Dean's side. "You know how it is, power in names and all." He swung down, twanging the cable, tearing Dean's flesh.
Dean winced but didn't make a sound; controlling his breathing and watching as the demon returned to hover in front of him again.
"But..." The demon tilted his head and examined Dean. "I think I'd like it if you called me Alastair."
"I'll call you whatever I want, ya charcoal fart," said Dean through clenched teeth.
"Ooo. Spirit. Tasty." Alastair grinned toothily. "You're Lilith's toy, aren't you?"
Dean scowled.
"Ah yes. Well, she's creative, but... mercurial. Gets bored with her toys quickly. And you're the toy that won't break. Very boring."
"That's me. Play-Doh." Dean smirked.
"Still hanging on to the memory of the body you left behind, tsk," said Alastair, glancing at the pendant on Dean's chest. "I'm sure the Welcome Wagon has informed you it's the source of your pain, let it go, join us, great benefits package, and so on?"
"Yeah. Gave me some coupons for twenty percent off at Ikea too. But no fruit basket." Dean shook his head. "Shameful. No class at all down here."
Alastair laughed, slowly turning back into a dark cloud, saving his face for last. "They're right you know. Once you let go, become one of us, the pain will stop."
"I can take pain, asshole," Dean snapped.
"Ah. Well." A final flash of teeth in the smoke, grinning, before they too disappeared. "I do like a challenge."
-
The demons tore his body apart, every day, and everyday it grew back. He wouldn't let go. He wouldn't give in.
They tore him apart. Flesh from bone, muscles, sinew, teeth, eyes. Smaller pieces, and him aware, impossibly, of the raw agony of each part, even when they spread him through the Abyss, fighting over his scraps like hens in a farmyard.
They weren't all smoke. Some still seemed human, ghostly, crawling with deep grey patches like a fungus. They were hesitant, and rare. The ones that were smoke with a mockery of a face were the worst. Hollows where the eyes and mouth should be, like they remembered something of being human but had lost the trick of it, regretted giving up everything. They took their frustrations out on him, he thought.
Alastair watched. He offered, then stepped away, let the pack waiting do their thing. Applauded the creative ones. Offered critiques. Sometimes conducted seminars.
Dean said no. He screamed no, he whispered no, he cried no, he yelled no, he shrieked no, he spat no, he wept no no no no no.
None of them ever touched the pendant Sam had given him. Each day he reformed, it was still there.
-
Years later, Alastair singled out one of the pale grey ghost-shapes out of the roiling wisps of clawed ash, beckoned it closer.
"Just one of the countless former thieves and murderers in Hell, but I thought you should meet again, old friends and all. Say hello, Bela."
What remained of her form snapped into sharper focus when Alastair said her name. Dean felt a stab of shock, seeing someone familiar here.
Bela's translucent face was a mass of oozing sores; her legs ran together, shading down to a formless dark grey cloud. Her eyes widened in recognition of Dean, staring, horrified.
"She's new, like you," Alastair continued chattily. "She got here only seven years before you did. A model student. She almost didn't need to be asked, did you, my dear?"
"Bela," Dean whispered, in a voice not recently used for saying anything but 'no', and for screaming.
Bela's pale hands came up to cover her face, turning away from Dean, away and away; dark smoke spiraling up the faint memory of her torso, erasing her form, chasing her ruined face around until she was just another column of black smoke. Dean clenched his teeth and watched, sickened.
"Ah, good girl," Alastair said with a tone of surprise. "If I had known seeing you here would break her last resistance, I would have brought her by for a chat much sooner."
The cloud extended toward Dean, slowly, forming a sharp tip as it reached his chest and dragged down, tearing the skin, leaving a line of fire in its wake. It was the gentlest thing a demon had done to him in years. Tears formed, but Dean's jaw remained set.
"Come on, Dean. I'd say she could show you the ropes, but you're pretty familiar with those."
A memory of blood trickled down his chest past the pendant. "No."
"Ah well. So much for job shadowing."
The pulsing crowd descended and Dean lost which one was Bela in the pain of the day.
-
"You can end this. Any time. Be one of the tormentors instead of the tormented."
"I'm not torturing some poor bastard to save my own skin!" Dean repeated, same again.
Alastair laughed. "You think anyone we get down here is innocent? Even you. You've killed, you've stolen, you've desecrated graves..." Alastair waved a hand. "Regardless of all that, you made a deal with a demon. You asked to be here. And then you tried to get out of that deal."
Dean said nothing.
"I repeat: No one down here is innocent, Dean. They'd go after you, given a shot. Do unto others before they do unto you."
"No."
Alastair sighed. "How tedious."
"Hey, maybe you should stop talking to me in case I bore you to death."
A chuckle as Alastair turned away and reverted to smoke. "You know what he's doing up there, don't you, Dean?"
Dean tensed. He swallowed, and said "Who?" like he didn't already know.
"You know what he's doing in the name of trying to bring you back?" The smoke cloud that was Alastair twisted and came back, eyes in the cloud flaring with amusement. "We should tell you. It would shred you faster than the Hound did."
"Shut up."
"We like what he's doing up there." The pack of circling demons tittered at Alastair's words.
"I said, shut the fuck up! All of you!"
Teeth flickered in the cloud as Alastair left the pack to their work.
Sam was still alive. Whatever he was doing, Bobby was probably watching out for him. Nothing the demons did to Dean mattered anymore, because Sam was alive.
The pendant sparkled in Hellfire.
-
On the seven thousand three hundred and fifty first day, Dean stopped reacting to Alastair. Stopped talking except to say "No."
After a while, Alastair started talking about people Dean had known before he died. Like it mattered. Like Hell was some kind of big social club.
"You should meet Ava. You remember Ava?"
He drifted idly past, back and forth. Dean glared.
"She was the same as your brother, one of Azazel's little tainted sprogs. Did Sam tell you she could control demons? Did he tell you she murdered damn near every one of Azazel's kids except for your brother and the other one? Jake?"
Alastair paused as though awaiting confirmation, a reaction. Dean continued glaring past him at the swirling horde of waiting demons.
"Jake's the one that snapped Ava's neck. Saved your brother's life before he tried to take it. Whoops, sorry. Did take it, and you sold yourself to get it back, and gave me the opportunity to have our wonderful little chats."
Alastair smirked. Dean glared, trying to stay focussed on not reacting, on breathing.
"Jake's around here, somewhere. You should meet him too, but he's long since moved on to bigger things I'd guess. Fast learner. Ah, but not as fast as Doctor Ellicot, though. You remember Doctor Ellicot, don't you? I meant to thank you for him. You sent him here."
"I sent him here?" Dean croaked, then snapped his mouth shut.
"Ooo! It talks!" Alastair formed some hands, patted them together in token mocking applause. "Yes, you sent him here. He tormented and tortured and murdered hundreds of people for science and personal glory while he was alive, trying to find the sources of insanity. After his death, he did the same again, only a little less focussed on the scientific results end of the business. I appreciate that though. Sacrifice for medicine. You burned his corpse and what was left of his soul came down here like a torpedoed warship. This is a place for tormentors. He's found a calling here."
"Not my problem," Dean grated, voice rough. "He was an evil bastard before I torched him."
"True. Although one's point of view often determines what is considered evil." Alastair's gray-green uniform flashed into existence and disappeared into the smoke again, red armband fading last. "Many small evils are done in the name of a great good."
"You got a point to the cut-rate 'This Is Your Life' crap?" Dean pulled himself up on the cables, stiffening his back out of a tired slouch. He set his teeth, raised his chin. "Or can your buddies get on with tearing my eyeballs out through my ass or whatever's on the to-do list today?"
The waiting demons roared eagerly. Alastair held out a hand to quell the throng. "My point is, they don't remember who they were, what pain they caused up there. None of them. Another hundred years here and they'll be ready to go back to Earth. In a rental, of course. Breathe the air again."
"So?"
"Aren't there memories of things you've done that you'd rather forget? Things you cling to, even now that keep you in pain?"
Dean clenched his jaw and looked past Alastair.
Alastair's voice softened to a tone of concern, but his eyes retained the glint of mockery. "Forgetting who you were is the only kind of forgiveness you're going to get down here, Dean. Take it. Let go. Put another soul in your place and-"
"Fuck you. No."
The demon snorted. "Stubborn, just like your daddy."
Dean's head jerked up. The circling cloud of demons hooted.
Alastair made a show of examining the fingernails of his form. "Really, I wish you'd give up. I'm itching to see if you'll be as good at this as your Daddy was."
The tethers across the abyss vibrated as Dean surged against them. "You shut up about my dad!"
"Oh ho! A sore spot. Lovely." Alastair looped casually around one of the lines in front of Dean. "Your daddy was down here for close to a century, Dean. You think he didn't break?"
"No! My father never would!"
"He broke. Beautifully. It was..." The smoke that was Alastair grew, then shrank, in a self-satisfied sigh. "glorious."
"Lie! You're lying!"
"He was an excellent demon. All that rage, held for so long? When he gave in, he was inspired"
Dad wouldn't do it. Never. He never would. "Demons lie," Dean stated, breath gurgling in his memory of lungs.
Alastair's smoky form grew a face long enough to display a languid smirk before he drifted away.
But as Dean was being torn apart again, he kept seeing his father in the graveyard, forming out of a black smoke cloud that had come from Hell.
No way. No way.
-
Dean lost track of the days for a while after nine thousand; they blurred together, pain and blood and screaming and flesh and no and no and no. And offers.
"Got a nice one today, Dean. He'll be fun to tear up."
Dean looked away, because he could.
"He's a murderer. Like you and your brother. And your dad. Quite a bit worse though. He did some tearing of his own, on his girlfriend."
Dean tried to ignore Alastair, kept staring into the distance, past the throng of demons waiting for the day's entertainment.
Alastair swooped over into Dean's field of view. "A monster. The human kind. Killed a girl who trusted him. Hurt her, for days, months. Took her trust and turned it against her, used it to keep her there, to torture her. And she wasn't the first."
Dean felt the outrage that came from a lifetime of hunting evil and protecting the innocent, came from being a decent person, and swallowed it down, hard. He couldn't give in. He turned his face the other direction, away from Alastair.
The demon followed the turn of Dean's head. "We need a fresh perspective, Dean. Come on. This guy's a monster. A bad guy. He needs to be punished for what he did. You can help. You can make this guy really regret everything he ever did to that poor girl."
Dean swallowed, shook his head. He couldn't give in.
"No? Dean. I'm disappointed." Alastair sneered in disgust. "You do know the kind of people we get down here? They're coming here because they deserve to be here. We're providing a service. I thought you were the type to enjoy punishing the wicked."
"No." He raised his eyes. "I won't. Not to save myself."
Alastair smiled. "But isn't that why you won't do it? Because you figure it'll make you one of us if you do?"
Dean looked away to the waiting, roiling smoke surrounding them.
"Selfish of you. Not how you were raised at all. Not very heroic." Alastair swooped around again, getting in Dean's line of sight. "What would Sam say if he could see you, his 'heroic' big brother; refusing to take on a bad guy because you were afraid of what it would do to you?"
Closing his eyes, Dean said "No."
Dean could feel Alastair observing him, watching, as the chittering clouds circled unseen. "Hm," Alastair said eventually. "That's too bad. This guy'll scream real nice. So will you." Alastair snapped gloved fingers and the pack rushed in again.
Every day, Alastair came back, a new soul on offer. Dean stopped listening to him, stopped listening to the daily iteration of, "We've got a murderer..." "It's a serial rapist today." "Killed her whole family." "All you have to do is let go and join us." "Join us." "Join us."
Every day, Dean fought down his instincts and stayed on the hooks. Every day, he thought of what he might really be sacrificing by not choosing to torment the human monsters Alastair pitched in graphic detail. Every day, he thought about his Dad, and Sam, and what they would think.
Every day, the pendant gleamed a little less brightly.
-
Years later, in the middle of the day's pitch of a new soul to torture, Alastair looked at Dean, smirked and changed the subject.
"He gave up, you know."
The change in tone caught Dean's attention. He lifted his head to snarl at Alastair. "I said shut the fuck up about my Dad."
"Oh, I'm not talking about John."
"What?"
"Sam. He gave up on you. Ages ago. Took all of a week up there, and he was done even trying to get you back. Buried your corpse in the middle of nowhere and walked away."
Dean's breath went out in a long exhale and his head drooped. He swallowed. "Good."
"You don't want out, Dean? If Sam had made another Deal, traded his soul for you? Got you out, free and clear? You wouldn't want that?"
"No! I wouldn't. Never."
"Maybe Sam never even tried. Maybe he didn't need you as much as you needed him. Maybe he tried, and Lilith's acquisitions department laughed in his face, because they already had his soul. Maybe he killed another demon in the crossroads, along with the innocent human it had borrowed."
"No."
"Your little brother likes death, Dean. He's very good at it."
"He's not! He-" Dean's defiant shout cracked. He choked, coughing.
Alastair looked on, amused, waiting for Dean to regain his voice.
"Bobby's there," Dean rasped. "He'll keep Sam's head screwed on straight."
White points of light flared in the cloud. "You're right, he would. But Sam's not listening to that old bone-rack any more."
"Bobby'd make him listen."
Alastair moved away. "He would. But he's not. Sam's got a different shoulder to cry on. Went and shacked up with his new black-eyed honey-pot."
"...Ruby?"
In the smoke that was Alastair a Cheshire Cat grin formed, followed by a face. "Yeeeeesss... Ruby."
"No way... Sam-" He glared at the demon in front of him, chest heaving. "You're lying!"
"Suit yourself. It's the truth."
"Demons lie!" Dean spat.
Alastair smiled, eyes glittering. "We also tell the truth, when it hurts worse than a lie would."
Panting, Dean shook his head. "No."
Alastair formed a set of shoulders long enough to shrug. "Thought you should know Sammy isn't going to come swooping in to rescue you. After all, the sign on the door does say 'abandon all hope' for a reason. Kind of a Public Service Announcement. Once you're down here, there's no going back. You're ours. The sooner you give up hope, give in and forget, the easier it'll be on you."
"No," Dean repeated, sagging on the hooks, not meeting the demon's eyes, not watching the clouds swarm in for the day's torture.
As Dean was reforming later on, he thought of Sam, alone, desperate, and dancing to a demon's tune. Dean watched the pendant, his eyes being in a convenient position to do so. Sam. What are you doing?
-
Sometime in the twenty-ninth year, instead of telling him about a new soul, Alastair dragged someone new in front of Dean.
"I have someone else for you to meet. Someone special. Brand new arrival."
Her blonde hair was caked in dried blood, her eyes were flat and dull with despair. She dangled from a hook like an earthworm. She was maybe fourteen, fifteen. A kid. She was just a kid.
"Let her go!" Dean roared. "You said no one down here is innocent! What did she do?"
"Oh, same as you. Same as Bela. Sold her soul for revenge." Alastair twirled a finger in the girl's hair. "Or at least she thought she was. Lilith had other plans."
The girl sobbed, twisting slowly on her hook.
"See, Lilith didn't really need her soul; she took it anyway, but what she really needed was someone sweet and innocent-looking for one of her flunkies to inhabit to try to get past your brother's defenses. A decoy."
"Let her go!"
"She's here, she's ours." Alastair waved a hand and the girl was pulled away on her hook, shrieking off into the distance with a few demons from the pack peeling off to chase her. "Your brother killed her. Up there."
Dean shook his head. "No. Sam would never-"
"He did!" Alastair said with a tone of someone sharing some salacious gossip. "Near enough. Seems he got sloppy. Ruby stabbed her, Sam just watched. Not that he had any other choice, really, but you'd think he could control his little lapdog."
"Shut up!"
"Of course there's the question of who is actually on whose leash..."
"I said shut up!" Dean croaked. "Sam would never-"
"He would and he has. Your brother will be coming here when he dies. He'll come here and hang next to you and we can tear you both up and make a jigsaw puzzle of your bits."
"He's not! Sam isn't-" Dean started choking, blood flowing from his mouth and the hole in his side where the hook dug in. "He's not a monster. Not Sammy."
The roiling clouds surrounding them screeched in mockery. "Sammy!" "Oh Sammy!" "Precious innocent Sammy!"
"Shut up!" Dean rasped, pulling against the wires, pendant swinging.
"Oh, no," Alastair swirled back. "Sammy's ours now. Well, technically he's always been ours, thanks to Azazel's little blood donor program, but now he's ours in thought, word and deed. His soul is ashen."
Dean winced and gasped for air that didn't exist. "He can't- He wouldn't-"
Suddenly Alastair was there, fabricated face nose to nose with Dean's. "You have no idea what your brother's already done since you left. He's our meat. Only a matter of time now."
"Shut up! Shut up! Demons lie!"
"Oh ho, when the truth is this good, Dean, there's no need for lying. You know what he's doing up there? What he's really doing up there?" Alastair said, repeating himself from decades earlier.
Dean met Alastair's eyes, head drooping, grating bloodied teeth.
"He's doing exactly what she wants him to. Every. Last. Thing."
"No."
"There's no going back for Sammy now!" Alastair crowed. "He's a demon's puppet, and he's even less innocent than any other soul down here. All because you - selfish, pathetic, big brother extraordinaire, Dean Winchester - wouldn't let him die innocent."
Dean fought to disbelieve Alastair. Sam was strong. Sam was doing fine on his own. Sam hadn't gone to Ruby in desperation to try anything in his power to bring Dean back... "Sam..."
Alastair pulled away from Dean with a smirk and tapped the tarnished pendant.
Dean flinched.
"You made him into this," Alastair said as Dean began choking on his own remembered blood. "Left him alone. He had no choice but to turn to a demon for help. He'd have been better off dead. Not better for us, though. So thank you, Dean. Thank you for Sammy's precious life. You've done Hell a great service."
"No," whispered Dean, "please, no."
Alastair left. Dean started screaming before the first demon touched him that day.
-
The days and weeks that followed, Alastair didn't say anything about souls to torture, or Sam. He just said, "Thank you, Dean, you've been a great help," and left the demons to their work.
On the ten thousand nine hundred and forty-ninth day when Dean re-formed, the pendant was missing.
-
The next day, Alastair formed in front of Dean, he didn't look at him, but started back in with a new soul description.
"Oh, this one's a bad one, Dean. You should really consider helping us out with this one. He'll probably join us as soon as someone makes the offer. He'd like it. We're holding off on offering for a while. We want to get our mileage out of him first."
Dean's head hung. He stared blankly at his own bare chest.
Alastair smiled to himself as he swished back and forth in front of Dean. "He went and had himself a grand old time upstairs, carving up a busload of school kids."
Dean's eyes closed and he shook. "Stop."
Alastair didn't stop. "Bus driver too. He saved her for last. Made her watch. That's artistry. Imagine what he'd do down here-"
"Just stop."
Alastair swooped in beside Dean and put a comradely arm around the shoulder without a hook. Dean didn't flinch away. "You know Dean, I bet with all your experience in the receiving end of the business, you could figure out some real inventive things to do to this soul, Dean. It's a nice ice-breaker. He's practically not human already."
Dean yelled, voice cracking, disintegrating. "I said stop."
Alastair grinned and gestured grandly at the silently swirling cloud of demons. "But you know what will make us stop, Dean. Nothing else will. You have to join us."
"Yes," Dean whispered. "Yes."
"Sorry, didn't quite hear that?"
"I said yes. I'll do it."
Alastair smiled as the hooks and wires fell through Dean's flesh; grey patches formed in their absence.
"I knew you'd see things our way. It was only a matter of time."
-
Forty years later, four months after Dean had died, Sam put the pendant back into his hand. And Dean forgot he had ever lost it.
- - -
(that's it.)