Drabble challenge for huntedhunter
Prompt: The Great Destroyer by Nine Inch Nails
Requested By: huntedhunter
Characters: Dean Winchester, Alastair, mentions of Sam Winchester
Timeline/Verse: Canon-verse; between S3 and S4
Word count: 821.
Disclaimer: Kripke and co. own Supernatural, not me. Dean is likedillinger , the Sam mentioned is huntedhunter and the Alastair is not linked to any journal in particular.
Warning: Uh, this might count as containing mature content, since there's talk of torture. I'm horrible at putting ratings on things b/c I have no soul and don't know what's inappropriate.
Still accepting requests here!
I hope they cannot see.
The limitless potential.
Living inside of me.
To murder everything.
I hope they cannot see.
I am the great destroyer.
Turn it up.
Listen to the shit they pump into your head.
Filling you with apathy.
Hold your breath.
Wait until you know the time is right on time.
The end is near.
His rebellion was in the subtleties.
Dean knew - knew intimately, from experience born of innumerable days spent under the knife - exactly what hurt the most. What made the pain linger. Which cuts seared white hot circles behind a person’s eyelids as they struggled against the agony. Where to scrape, to carve, to peel, to rip and tear and twist.
He knew which nerves not to sever, lest they render the victim paralyzed and immune to the kiss of metal.
Flesh from bone, muscle from organs. Other thick wet slabs of meat that were useless in terms of physical torment, no better than lard, but extremely effective when you scraped them out and brought them eye level with your victim. Emotional torment. Worse than the physical pain.
But knowing all these things also gave him an edge when his conscience pricked at him, reminding him who he was. Or used to be.
As well as he knew how to find them, he knew equally how to avoid the worst pain centers: to nick them instead of dig them, to go around them, to offer some small amount of … not exactly relief, but respite that the victim couldn’t even fully appreciate. It could be so much worse for them, and yet he could hold back.
Sometimes it was because it was Sam he saw there in front of him, begging him, and screaming, and a lump would form in his throat that would remind him of himself, in vivid technicolor, and send him into one of these fits of quiet rebellion.
Alastair, however, was hardly stupid.
Dean should have known that they were always watching.
When he picked up his knife at the beginning of a day like every other, he was surprised to feel Alastair’s hand wrap around his wrist, and hear his throaty whisper close to his ear: “Uh uh uh, Dean, my boy,” he chastised, and despite himself, Dean gulped. “Not today. You’ve been letting us down. Failing the course.” He drew out the s sound, a hissing breath against Dean’s skin. He tried not to flinch. It had gotten easier over time.
“Excuse me?” he managed to say, sounding actually affronted. “I’ve been doin’ your damn dirty work for months now.” He fought to keep the edge of panic down, but sweat broke across his brow, just at the mere thought of what it meant if they saw him as a failure at this.
It meant back to the rack.
Back to the other side.
“Dean, Dean, Dean,” Alastair said, clucking his tongue against the name each time. “We’re not just gonna give you the passing grade for showing up to class every day. You’ve gotta put in the effort. Otherwise …” He let it trail off ominously.
A deep crease formed across Dean’s forehead as he stared down at the twisted handle of the knife in his hand. The whimpers, whines, groans, and pleas of the man already waiting for him had served as mere background noise through this, something he’d learned to tune out. Alastair pressed a finger to Dean’s temple, hard enough to push his head away, and prompt a scowl from the man.
“You’ve got decades of knowledge locked up in there, Dean. I wanna see you put it to use. I want you to listen when they scream.”
“I want it to feed you.”
Dean didn’t respond, just stared at the knife, fighting against the clawing whispers in the back of his head that threatened him with vivid memories of his own days of torture there. He wondered if those whispers were just as much Alastair as the voice speaking beside his ear. If they weren’t part of his own mind anymore.
Because the demons seemed to be able to get inside, in a way that was as real as the way he could get inside someone’s guts wrist deep, and feel them. Sometimes he imagined that’s exactly what Alastair was doing, to everything he was inside. Reaching inside, rearranging into something twisted and new, to suit his own fancy.
He didn’t trust that his thoughts were his own half the time now.
And he hated himself for being terrified.
But letting Alastair’s words in, letting the screams in, allowing himself to take some note of pleasure in what he was doing, kept the fear at bay. Like a needle to the vein, it kept him soothed, everywhere but in the darkest pit of his stomach where he could still hear Sam screaming, Sam crying out for him to stop.
Even when he finally gave up rebelling, eliminated the subtle attempts at mercy, he kept those phantom screams somewhere in the back of his mind, where he didn’t think Alastair could ever reach.
However, he was less and less convinced that he could reach them.
He didn’t want to lose that one final lifeline.
He held on to it with everything he had.
Requested By: huntedhunter
Characters: Dean Winchester, Alastair, mentions of Sam Winchester
Timeline/Verse: Canon-verse; between S3 and S4
Word count: 821.
Disclaimer: Kripke and co. own Supernatural, not me. Dean is likedillinger , the Sam mentioned is huntedhunter and the Alastair is not linked to any journal in particular.
Warning: Uh, this might count as containing mature content, since there's talk of torture. I'm horrible at putting ratings on things b/c I have no soul and don't know what's inappropriate.
Still accepting requests here!
I hope they cannot see.
The limitless potential.
Living inside of me.
To murder everything.
I hope they cannot see.
I am the great destroyer.
Turn it up.
Listen to the shit they pump into your head.
Filling you with apathy.
Hold your breath.
Wait until you know the time is right on time.
The end is near.
His rebellion was in the subtleties.
Dean knew - knew intimately, from experience born of innumerable days spent under the knife - exactly what hurt the most. What made the pain linger. Which cuts seared white hot circles behind a person’s eyelids as they struggled against the agony. Where to scrape, to carve, to peel, to rip and tear and twist.
He knew which nerves not to sever, lest they render the victim paralyzed and immune to the kiss of metal.
Flesh from bone, muscle from organs. Other thick wet slabs of meat that were useless in terms of physical torment, no better than lard, but extremely effective when you scraped them out and brought them eye level with your victim. Emotional torment. Worse than the physical pain.
But knowing all these things also gave him an edge when his conscience pricked at him, reminding him who he was. Or used to be.
As well as he knew how to find them, he knew equally how to avoid the worst pain centers: to nick them instead of dig them, to go around them, to offer some small amount of … not exactly relief, but respite that the victim couldn’t even fully appreciate. It could be so much worse for them, and yet he could hold back.
Sometimes it was because it was Sam he saw there in front of him, begging him, and screaming, and a lump would form in his throat that would remind him of himself, in vivid technicolor, and send him into one of these fits of quiet rebellion.
Alastair, however, was hardly stupid.
Dean should have known that they were always watching.
When he picked up his knife at the beginning of a day like every other, he was surprised to feel Alastair’s hand wrap around his wrist, and hear his throaty whisper close to his ear: “Uh uh uh, Dean, my boy,” he chastised, and despite himself, Dean gulped. “Not today. You’ve been letting us down. Failing the course.” He drew out the s sound, a hissing breath against Dean’s skin. He tried not to flinch. It had gotten easier over time.
“Excuse me?” he managed to say, sounding actually affronted. “I’ve been doin’ your damn dirty work for months now.” He fought to keep the edge of panic down, but sweat broke across his brow, just at the mere thought of what it meant if they saw him as a failure at this.
It meant back to the rack.
Back to the other side.
“Dean, Dean, Dean,” Alastair said, clucking his tongue against the name each time. “We’re not just gonna give you the passing grade for showing up to class every day. You’ve gotta put in the effort. Otherwise …” He let it trail off ominously.
A deep crease formed across Dean’s forehead as he stared down at the twisted handle of the knife in his hand. The whimpers, whines, groans, and pleas of the man already waiting for him had served as mere background noise through this, something he’d learned to tune out. Alastair pressed a finger to Dean’s temple, hard enough to push his head away, and prompt a scowl from the man.
“You’ve got decades of knowledge locked up in there, Dean. I wanna see you put it to use. I want you to listen when they scream.”
“I want it to feed you.”
Dean didn’t respond, just stared at the knife, fighting against the clawing whispers in the back of his head that threatened him with vivid memories of his own days of torture there. He wondered if those whispers were just as much Alastair as the voice speaking beside his ear. If they weren’t part of his own mind anymore.
Because the demons seemed to be able to get inside, in a way that was as real as the way he could get inside someone’s guts wrist deep, and feel them. Sometimes he imagined that’s exactly what Alastair was doing, to everything he was inside. Reaching inside, rearranging into something twisted and new, to suit his own fancy.
He didn’t trust that his thoughts were his own half the time now.
And he hated himself for being terrified.
But letting Alastair’s words in, letting the screams in, allowing himself to take some note of pleasure in what he was doing, kept the fear at bay. Like a needle to the vein, it kept him soothed, everywhere but in the darkest pit of his stomach where he could still hear Sam screaming, Sam crying out for him to stop.
Even when he finally gave up rebelling, eliminated the subtle attempts at mercy, he kept those phantom screams somewhere in the back of his mind, where he didn’t think Alastair could ever reach.
However, he was less and less convinced that he could reach them.
He didn’t want to lose that one final lifeline.
He held on to it with everything he had.