zombic_thoughts: Forgiveness

Nov 24, 2008 14:58

ooc: Spoilers. Heavy nasty imagery and brushes up with insanity. Heartily recommended to any mun who has a Sam to lock relevant muses far and away before first reading through. If you dare the near-3000 words anyway. Might be an idea to skip altogether.

On the good days, Dean managed not to think about it. Oh sure, the memories came anyway, unasked and uninvited. The nightmares came. But he had other things to focus on all of that, to concentrate on what was happening immediately around him, or what had to be done next, and he rolled on. Tried to wash things down with a stiff one - or few - up until Sammy commented on it - then tried not to, for all the wonderful temptation that was to just numb things down. A little.

He wanted not to feel anything, any of it. But he couldn't. He wasn't able to. And the more it hurt, the more he wanted it not to, but it just didn't work that way. He felt one thing, he felt all things. On the good days, he felt grateful, for feeling the presence, the support of his brother. The small bright blips of satisfaction when they took something down and so somebody lived. Or many people lived, or everybody lived, best case scenario, everybody wins, let's go for it even if it relies on a nerd's ability to make the right call, but he can do that and his city relies on him and he makes the choice and he matters to nobody anymore, again, but the fact is that he chooses right and Dean couldn't, not back when all eternity depended on it

On the good days, he had something to focus on, and even when it hurt, sometimes it turned out right. Even when he knew that Anna was unlikely to be happy, wherever she was. That she'd lost the capacity to be happy, not the way she could have, if fucking demons and angels hadn't come after her. But it was a plan, and it meant they all had something to do, and they did.

Then again, that wasn't exactly a good day. No day that had Alastair in any kind of proximity, even the vanishing kind of proximity, could be good. Especially not when he was fucking talking.

Days ago only, Sam had snarked back at him about swapping stories. Then he'd given him his own story, and no, Dean was far from happy that his own stupidity and failure to get away from the damned pit in the first place had put his brother through that.

Now he wasn't asking. He wasn't even nagging at him in other ways, with the mockery of confusing reality with other stuff. Like porn. Lust was a sin. Gluttony was a sin. Yet Dean wanted things to be as before, his life to be as it had been before he'd failed all that he'd stood for so much that he couldn't let go of either. Not that he couldn't live without lusting after women, or especially acting on that lust. Not that he couldn't do without food either, just as he always could, going on reserves for days at at time - he didn't have to, not when he was with Sam, and they more or less made sure things were as normal for the other as they could be. But there were women, and there was food, and loads of candy. As if the sweetness and the sugar high could numb him any better than the bite of the whiskey and the alcoholic haze. Which didn't work much, he'd learned to focus too well over that ages ago. Years ago. One lifetime ago.

At least it wasn't taste of ash and sulfur in his mouth. Even the worst punches or cuts, even the hits after which he lost consciousness and made his head ring after he came to, they were nothing compared to what he'd been though. Worse, they were nothing compared to what he had caused.

The worse days were the ones when he thought about it. When he tried to turn around and face the reality of what he had done, what he had committed to doing, and try to live through it. And failed.

His body tensed and hurt with the memory of years, of decades of cutting, of pain, of pain caused by creatures who knew about that pain. Who wanted to cause it and wanted nothing else. Had no hope of anything else, just an eternity of that. So they became masters of it. No cut was made in a way that could be maximized per pain. His body remembered, his mind remembered, and shied away from it.

It had been nothing but absolute obstinacy that had gotten him to last as long as he did. Perhaps he hadn't been the greatest kind of guy before he died. He'd lied, and he'd stolen, and he'd cheated, and he'd indulged. But most of that had been for a reason, and the little pleasures he had taken along the way - they might have been technically sins, but they hadn't harmed anybody, he'd taken nothing that hadn't been given to him willingly, in the ways that mattered. In the end, he'd still been after making people a little bit safer, wasting ghosts and spirits and vampires and all of that, because people were dying because of them and they couldn't defend themselves, didn't know enough, didn't know how, just couldn't do it - and he could. And he did.

And that's who he was. And that's why day after day after day, he'd come up with flippant answers to the demon who offered him to stop the pain if he'd cause pain. If he'd be the one harping at people - well, souls - that couldn't defend themselves. It took him months before he even learned that his name was Alastair. Months before he could think enough to consider the fact that it was the same demon every day, though the pain, and before he could think enough to ask. Not that it mattered, but it made him focus or something. Some new way to reject it. Some new way to offend him. It didn't make the pain any less, alas, but it let him focus on other things to. The passage of time. The whys and hows. Why he was there, for one thing. Why he was turning the offer down, too.

Because better him than them. That's how it'd always been. That's how Dad had taught him. Not by words alone, no, by sheer constant example, putting himself between dangers and everybody. Especially between dangers and him and Sammy. And Dean had done that too. That's what he was supposed to do. He clung to that thought. He was here to make sure Sammy was up there and keeping on fighting. He was here because that was the only way to fix his failure, and then he couldn't get out of it, and he wouldn't fail again. Wouldn't fail again the trust that Sam put into his big brother. He wasn't perfect, no. But he'd always be the one protecting. That was his job, that's all he knew, and all that he wanted to know.

Years. He thought he knew the pain and it wouldn't matter that much, every single time when they started over again, and every single time they were wrong. And every single day Alastair came and offered him, and he couldn't. He couldn't just turn over and give up everything that he stood up for, everything that they stood up for.

Decades.

He hurt, and he hurt again, and he cried out without dignity or hope, or even sanity some days. He begged for help, Sammy, anyone help him, but the moment he focused, he was a tiny little bit grateful that he was still here. That meant that Sam was alright. That little bit of light in the hell that hell was.

Decades.

Hunters didn't live until old age. Especially if they worked alone. Maybe Sammy had found somebody else to team up with, and that thought hurt, because it was HIS PLACE DAMMIT and then another sharp pain reminded him that even hard thoughts weren't the worst that he could stand here and there was no honorable escape, there was no escape because his thoughts shied away from the thought of being the one to harm on purpose, fully intending to, for no real reason at all but to spare himself the pain and his thoughts shied away at the thought of more pain too and it was stubbornness that got him to tell Alastair to shove it. He was past creative about answering already. Some days, he'd just turn his head away, too exhausted to answer with words, but it was no less 'shove it' than the most eloquent responses he'd come up with.

He didn't know when he reached the point where it didn't matter. It wasn't the night when he didn't refuse. It was an unknown day when he persuaded himself that Sam was dead. He'd been down here more than the number of years Sam had been alive, and hunters didn't live that long anyway, and when you're used to working in a team, that made it harder to stay focused all the time on your own. And maybe if Sammy was dead, there'd be nobody disappointed if he was no longer who he was supposed to be.

He was a failure anyway, failed all the people in the life he'd had. He didn't deserve all the chances he'd had to go on living, and maybe this was his place here, this was what was supposed to happen to him, and there was no acceptable way out because he did deserve this and didn't deserve better. He'd left Sam on his own too, and if he'd gotten killed, again, it was his fault anyway because he wasn't there to watch his back. What did it really matter if he didn't or did. There was nobody to care anymore. Dean had stopped to matter to himself a long time ago.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Sam wasn't dead, and maybe he was. Maybe he was facing eternity alone and nobody fucking cared. Nobody cared which way he chose, and nobody ever would.

No, obviously the demon who made the offer did, but that never registered with Dean. No demon's opinion mattered. Just one person, anymore, and he'd failed him every way possible. One more way wouldn't make any difference. He'd never know at any rate. Sammy had held on, hadn't made a deal. Sammy had always been better than him. And now Sammy was no more and there was no bloody thing he could do about it, he'd given everything already. And it wasn't enough.

There was no significant aplomb when he changed his answer. Just being taken off the hooks, being given the tools of his trade. Being taught to use them.

The lack of pain was liberating in ways he couldn't have imagined. Within hours, he knew he wanted to do whatever it took to not go back to it. It didn't matter anymore. He had eternity before him, and all he had was keeping something between himself and the pain.

Some part of him knew he was less than the man he had been. That he'd lost something that nobody and nothing would recover to him. That part of him wondered if the souls he sliced and carved and put through pain deserved it, or like him ended up down here believing that they didn't. That part of him tried to keep count in the beginning, but lost it when all the cries and the pleadings started to sound so very similar to his own after years. It didn't matter anyway. There was no way out, and nobody cared. And he'd lost the chance to be worthy of that little part of himself that wanted to respect himself. It was gone now.

On the bad days, after he was proven wrong in that, he felt every single cut he'd made on somebody else.

There was no fixing that. There was no escaping it. There was no avoiding it. He had been a part of what was done in hell, by his own choice. That wasn't guilt, that wasn't the kind of thing that he just really couldn't have helped, because he really didn't know enough, was physically not capable to do something and so could somewhat for a time be brushed aside. This was full load of self-awareness and responsibility.

On the bad days, not only did he not believe he deserved to be saved. (Because, really. Did he, after all he had done?) On the bad days, he knew he'd deserved every cut and every stab of pain, and always would.

He'd broken once, he'd betrayed who he had been. How soon until he broke again, and not when he thought it didn't matter, but when it was important, shattering every little bit of trust anybody had in him?

Anna's words had shaken him to the core. I forgive you. How could anybody forgive anybody else that, bringing death to them? And yet she'd meant it, and he was certain of that, and it confused him.

Forgiveness.

Those souls he'd tortured, they couldn't forgive him. They wouldn't forgive him either. Yet that thing, forgiveness, it had been a glitter of something on a bad day.

The thinking part of himself, that part which had despaired of what he had been doing, which had been mocking him about trying to escape the memories, to pretend everything was as it had been, knew that the only thing he had left was try to forgive himself. Somehow.

He couldn't.

But he saw how his being that upset hurt Sam. And that mattered. He saw that Sam was trying to help, and the fact that he couldn't get through that he was helping, just by staying around (damn but the idea that he'd rather be hunting demons with Ruby had hurt, almost as badly as the fear of what Sam was doing and what the consequences could be, and he'd not understood then and he understood better now) and by coming along and saving him for fuck's sake, over and over again - with the rugaru, from the ghost sickness, and so many other times. And helping with keeping him busy.

The bad days were rarer when he had something else to focus on. A job to do. And he threw himself into those, and into anything else that could stop the thinking. Not blindly as when Sam had told him he was tailspinning, he thought. Focused. Obsessed even.

He'd done evil, unspeakable evil so cheaply, just to spare himself pain.

Now he was trying to do good, as much as he possibly could - which, by comparison, was like a drop in the ocean even when it worked - asking for nothing for himself. Not as a reward. Before, he'd grumped about not even getting thanked, he'd been tired, he'd wanted out. He understood wanting out still.

But there was nothing better he could think of doing. And feeble as the atonement attempt was, as meager as the offering against the wall of pain he'd caused... it was better than nothing. It was all he could do.

Even on the good days, he had no clue how he was expected to save all, though.

On the bad days, he wasn't even up to contemplating that. Those days, he only could try to focus on putting one foot before the other. Shifting to the next gear, pressing the gas, listening to the purr of the car, listening to Sam's breathing, to his words. Focusing on something, anything, was better than thinking and remembering, and focusing on Sam - Sam. Alive. Here with him. Here with him even knowing what he'd done, and that was a miracle he was still trying to accept - was better.

He didn't even want to think what would have happened if he was on his own. The probability of collapsing into a mess of 'nothing matters' or really going into tailspinning at a speed that Sam wouldn't even recognize it was him anymore if he cared to notice was way, way too great.

On all days, even when he knew with dead certainty he didn't deserve it, he was fucking grateful.

That he was out, and no longer torturing anybody - except for the fear that he'd end up causing as much damage eventually if he broke.

That he was out and even though he didn't think he was the person who had believed in himself at least a tiny little bit, he had more of a chance to do something worthy than down there.

That he was out and even though he had no capacity to forgive himself, at least not yet, not at all - there were people who forgave him his betrayal.

And he hated his weakness on the bad days. The days that he knew worried Sam more than Sam needed to be worried.

They had enough on their hands so that the self-flagellations of one person didn't matter anyway. Hadn't they?

chars: alastair, chars: sammy, voice: ic, chars: anna, verse: canon, prompt: forgiveness, misc: memories of hell, type: fic, comm: zombic_thoughts, misc: spoilers

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