Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/13372653.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M, Multi, Other
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Dean_Winchester/Other(s), Alastair/Dean_Winchester
  Character:
      Dean_Winchester, Original_Supernatural_(TV)_Character(s), Alastair_
      (Supernatural), John_Winchester, Sam_Winchester, Lucifer_(Supernatural),
      Bobby_Singer, Incubus_-_Character
  Additional Tags:
      Hell_Fic, Canon_Compliant, Hurt_Dean_Winchester, Dean_Whump, Porn_With
      Plot, Rough_Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally_Hurt_Dean_Winchester, Implied/
      Referenced_Underage_Sex, Rape/Non-con_Elements, Underage_Rape/Non-con,
      Tortured_Dean, Psychological_Torture, Aftermath_of_Torture, Dean_in_Hell,
      Child_Abuse, Anal_Sex, Mutilation, Suicide, Implied/Referenced_Suicide,
      Fratricide, Implied/Referenced_Underage_Prostitution, Forced
      Prostitution, Forced_Ejaculation, Non-Consensual_Bondage, Double_Anal
      Penetration, Heavy_BDSM, Electrocution, Stabbing, Cutting, Vivisection,
      Force_Choking, Strangulation, Hypothermic_Dean_Winchester, Hellhounds,
      Burns, Rats, Cannibalism, Out_of_Body_Experiences, Demonic_Possession,
      Rape, Blood_and_Torture, Medical_Torture, Genital_Torture, Torturer_Dean
  Series:
      Part 1 of Dean's_Hell
  Stats:
      Published: 2018-01-14 Updated: 2018-03-22 Chapters: 25/? Words: 35401
****** FORTY YEARS ******
by charlie4short
Summary
     What really happened to Dean in Hell? After thirty years, why did he
     finally break?
Notes
     The gang rape that Alastair alludes to and Dean experiences
     flashbacks to is described in "Breathe" (chapter 20, I think).
     The chapter titles are all Metallica songs. You may dub me
     'unforgiven' after reading this. ;P
***** Prologue: Alastair's Special Toy *****
===============================================================================
                                        
                                        
“You are special, Dean, I’ll give you that.”  Alastair’s lisping compliment was
accompanied by a tilt of the head and shake of a single bony digit.
He paced around the nude man strapped to the rack in front of him, face
thoughtful.
Dean held still, eyes locked on the blood-spattered wall across the room,
refusing to show any concern as Hell’s most respected torturer moved out of his
line of sight.
A cold finger traced down his naked back, and Dean closed his eyes against the
sense of revulsion that rose in his chest.
“You see,” and Alastair’s breath was hot against the younger man's neck, “you
learned something straight away that most never do.”  He continued the
trajectory his pacing had initiated, trailing the tip of one icy finger over
Dean’s skin as he moved to stand before the bound man.
He paused, nail raking almost tenderly at the curling silk of Dean’s pubic
hair.
Although they were now eye-to-eye, the hunter looked right through him.
“You’ve learned that pain without fear has no real power.”
Alastair opened his fist, palm easing down to cup his toy’s genitalia, the
gesture either a threat or a promise.
 
Or perhaps both.
 
Just get the fuck on with it,Dean fumed, but did not allow his impatience to
manifest into something that Alastair could use against him.
Chuckling, the demon squeezed, nails turning to claws, digging into sensitive
flesh.  He kept his eyes locked on Dean’s as he slowly began to twist and pull,
blood running across his wrist in crimson furrows.
 
Although Dean’s chest hitched, his expression didn’t change.  
Screaming won’t help.  
Gonna hurl.  Hope this time the bastard doesn’t move out of the way quick
enough.
 
Alastair pulled harder, dug his talons in deeper, knowing his victim’s pain had
to be excruciating, detecting none of it in the Winchester’s vacant expression.
 
Be over soon.  Be over soon.  It was a mantra that had worn a permanent track
in Dean’s brain.
 
Alastair jerked viciously, stepping to the side as  he did so, raising  his
prize up and away from the stream of vomit that erupted from his newly
emasculated toy.
 
Dean turned his head to keep the acidic fluid from burning his open wound as
his stomach continued to convulse uselessly.
Be over soon.  Be over soon.  
He raised his head, eyes vacant, ignoring the mangled flesh that Alastair held
before him in a triumphant flourish.
Not the first time, won’t be the last.  
 
Be over soon.  Be over soon.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
A day could only last so long.
 
Dean refused to think about how many days made up an eternity.
Refused to think about how his eternity would be this, one day after another,
stretching on and on and on....
 
Be over soon.  Be over soon.
 
Because if he thought of anything else, he would say “Yes”.
 
***** DYER'S EVE *****
===============================================================================
 
Dean had to admit: he hadbeen terrified.
 
At first, anyway.
The Hellhound had scared the living shit out of him.  He was sure he must have
screamed himself raw as it shredded him with its claws, and there was no way he
could have held back when it crushed his shoulder in that putrid maw.
Then again, Dean knew better than most that pain can make you breathless, so
maybe he hadn’t yelled too much.
He hoped for Sammy’s sake that he hadn’t.
 
But when he found himself in that completely alien space of criss-crossing
cables, enormous meat hooks impaling and immobilizing him, no other being,
human or otherwise, to be seen or heard or felt or sensed --
He had panicked.
Screamed in a way that he would have been embarrassed to admit to topside.
Out of control.
Hysterical.
Weak.
So notWinchester-worthy.
 
===============================================================================
 
It was exhaustion that silenced him eventually, and he added a raw throat to
his list of physical insults.
 
===============================================================================
 
And then came hours or days or weeks or yearsof….nothing.
 
Hanging there.
That pain, nothing more.
No sounds, no scents, nothing to taste.
Nothing to see except the cables and empty space that he had already studied
and studied and studieduntil his eyes ached and he thought his head would
explode.
 
He tried to move, of course.  Rocked and pulled and jerked; grunted, swore, and
raged.
 
It didn’t do anything, and he wondered what would have happened if it had.
 There was no pull of gravity to detect while he was suspended, so if he had,
by some 'miracle' -- mentally, he sneered at the word -- freed himself, would
he have fallen, presumably all the way to Hell?  Risen, maybe to find himself
topside?
Or would he have simply floated there, no longer impaled, but still, and now
hopelessly, immobile?
 
===============================================================================
 
 
He sang.  Every song he knew and  many he didn’t.  Made up words when he
couldn’t remember the lyrics.  Invented songs when he grew bored with the ones
he knew.
Laughed, the mania of it lost on him, when he imagined the look Sam would give
him if he ever heard his big brother’s imitation of Miley Cyrus.
And then he’d cried, sobbed, howledat the thought of never seeing his brother
again.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
He talked.  Told everyone he cared about all of the things he’d never said.
Told Sam how much he loved him. How proud he was of his brother: his height,
his strength, his intelligence, the way he stood up to their father.
Told Sam that he really meant it when he told the boy to give up hunting and
make a life for himself.  To move on, forget Dean and really live.
He told Bobby how sorry he was if he’d ever let the older man down.  How much
he loved him, thought of him as a father, admired him, appreciated all he’d
ever done for both brothers.  Begged their surrogate father to help Sam find a
life, and to find one of his own, too.  
Begged them both to keep on living.
Then it was his father he spoke to.  Pleaded with John to forgive him, because
his dad had sacrificed himself for Dean, and Dean had thrown that away in order
to save Sam.  But he thought his father would understand, needed him to
understand, because it was Sam, and Dean had tried to let him go, tried to let
his baby brother’s death stand, but he just couldn’t.  Because as bad as this
was, hanging in this nothingness with a pain his mind no longer bothered to
acknowledge, it was nothingcompared to the agony of trying to envision a world
without his brother in it.
 
===============================================================================
 
When the pain had been a constant for so long that his brain had turned a deaf
ear to it;
when he could no longer tell whether his voice was projecting or was only in
his head;
when he was seconds away from madness --
they came for him.
 
He cried with relief when he saw their demonic faces, thanked them over and
over between  agonized screams as they slashed at his flesh, tearing the hooks
from his body, freeing him from his bonds.
Thispain was new, their faces were new, there was something newinvading that
soul-crushing sameness, and he wept with joy, heedless of the monsters’ pity
and disgust.
 
Then came Alastair, and the level of horror was also new.
 
***** EYE OF THE BEHOLDER *****
In the long, insanity-inducing hours that Dean had spent hanging from meat
hooks right after being shredded by a Hellhound, he’d spent a lot of time
thinking.  With his playfulness, his often juvenile sense of humor, and his
“act first, ask questions later” approach to life, one would be tempted to
assume that thinking wasn’t something that Dean Winchester was accustomed to.
 Or particularly good at.
 
One would be wrong.
 
He had explored some lines of reasoning and developed strategies for his time
on the rack that turned out to be very useful to him -- and, more importantly,
exquisitely frustrating for Alastair.
 
The first was something his father had taught him at a very young age, and Dean
had pulled the memory out, turning it over, exploring it.  Savoringit.
 
===============================================================================
 
It was his first somewhat serious injury.
Seven or maybe eight years old, out hunting a poltergeist with his father.  He
had zigged when he should have zagged, and took a flying coffee cup to the
temple.  He felt the blow, and the next thing he knew, his father was cradling
him against his chest.
The look on John’s face was one of sheer terror. 
Dean’s head hurt and he could taste blood, but it was the thought that
something had frightened his father that drove the boy to begin wailing.
“Sh-sh-sh,” John had sussed, bouncing his son gently in his lap.  “It’s just a
little cut.  You’re going to be fine.  Shhhhhhh.”
He had bundled Dean into the car, gone back to take care of the poltergeist,
then rushed them both to Bobby’s house.
Along the way he had explained something to Dean, imparted facts that had made
such an impact on the achingly young hunter that they had dictated his mindset
from that day forward.
“Pain,” the Winchester patriarch had explained to his wide-eyed son, “is how
your body knows that something is wrong.”  He patted the dashboard.  “Your body
is like a car, right?”  Dean nodded solemnly.  “It’s a machine, and it needs to
run right. Your mind, that’s you.  That’s who you are, and you are in charge of
taking care of your machine.  Now, a car can’t tell you, ‘hey, that pothole
cracked my axle a little.  Let’s get that fixed.’  But if you twist your ankle,
your body can make your brain understand that something is wrong, and it trusts
your brain to get it fixed.”
Dean blinked as images of a cartoon version of  himself ran around in his head,
wearing mechanics overalls and clutching a socket wrench, tightening bolts all
over his body.
John saw the look of comprehension, and went on: “Fear is another way the body
has of making sure it stays safe, and they go together.  When your body gets
injured, it tells your brain, ‘I’m hurt!’ and ‘We need to get away!’.  That’s
how your body makes sure that whatever injured it doesn’t get to keep on doing
that.  Make sense?”
Dean nodded, wide eyes and relaxed mouth showing how seriously he was taking
his father’s lecture.
“Now, sometimes there are things that hurt but are helping your body.  Getting
a vaccine from the doctor is one.  Getting a wound cleaned out and stitched up
is another.  It hurts, and you might feel scared, but you know what?  Your
brain can decide whether to be afraid or not.  And if you know that the hurt is
helping, not breaking your machine, you can make the fear go away.”
This was a pretty intense concept, and John paused to make sure that Dean was
still following.
“Is that why you don’t cry and yell when Uncle Bobby stitches up your owies,
Dad?”
John’s dimples made a rare appearance as he beamed at his son.  “That is
exactly it, Dean.  It doesn’t  hurt nearly as much when you aren’t scared.  And
crying or screaming?  That’s the same thing: trying to get help so your body
doesn’t get messed up any more.  Sometimes crying or screaming helps,
especially if you need someone to come and get you or fix you up.  But if
someone is already doing that, then will crying about it do any good?”
Dean shook his head.  “No, Sir.”
John reached over to ruffle his son’s hair carefully.  “You are such  a smart
little man, Dean.”
And when they got to Bobby’s and his dad cleaned out the cut on his scalp and
then put stitches in it, Dean sat, tense and unmoving, and he did not make a
sound.
“I’ve seen grown men who couldn’t sit through that so well,” Bobby remarked.
John smiled down at his son.  “He’s not just any man.  He’s a Winchester.
 Right, Dean?”
 
It remained one of the proudest moments of Dean’s life.
 
===============================================================================
 
The other thought that Dean had examined in each minute detail was that he
really had no body.  The hooks that felt like they were impaling him: they were
actually in an artificial vessel.  In fact, more than likely they didn’t exist
at all, and everything was just one giant mind-fuck.  Hallucinations.  Because
what Dean had traded was his soul, and he knew without a doubt that his body
had been left topside.
Was charcoal and ashes by now, courtesy of the hunter’s funeral that he knew he
had earned.
So pain and fear were made to keep the body safe, but he had no body.  That
meant there was nothing to be afraid of.  The denizens of Hell could
manufacture pain that he would be forced to experience, but he didn’t have to
worry or care about it, because pain alone could not damage his soul.
 
Fear could.  
 
So could isolation.
 
And Dean realized, as he followed those threads of thought, that what he needed
to do down here in Hell was protect his soul.  He needed to stay human, not
allow them to break him and turn him demonic.  They could have his figmental
body, but not his soul.
 
In the stifling monotony Dean began to compile a list of things that made
him...well, so Dean.
 
     Sarcasm and snark.
     His sense of humor, even though Sam thought it was stupid.
     His love of music, especially rock music.
     His love of cars.
     Being able to ignore pain.
     Hating monsters and demons and sadists.
     Loving women and pie and...well, just food in general.  But not Sam’s
rabbit food.
     Saving people. Hunting things.
     And Sammy.  Being willing to do anything for Sammy.
 
These things and more were what he needed to protect, and he drew them in,
curled around them, locked them away, so when he found himself on the rack,
facing Alastair’s blades and fire, he was ready.
 
Unfortunately, so was Alastair.
 
***** SAD BUT TRUE *****
===============================================================================
 
"Dean Winchester." The syllables were drawn out until they were almost purred.
Dean scrutinized the man before him. Doesn't look very scary, he thought. Tall,
gaunt, pale, with thinning hair and grey peppering his beard. Why did he
take this form, though? There must be a reason. Dean remained wary.
"Oh, I'm sorry, how rude of me." The demon smiled, an expression that
contrasted starkly with the venom in his eyes. "The name's Alastair. It's a
pleasure to meet you."
Dean quirked a half grin. "I'd shake your hand, but," he turned his head to
look meaningfully at his right wrist, and the smirk spread in anticipation of
the lame cliche he was about to deliver, "I'm kinda tied up right now."
Alastair rewarded him with a chuckle. "Oh, Dean," and he raised a long, slender
finger, waggling it playfully. "I've heard about you. You do not disappoint."
"That's what all the girls say, Allie." Dean winked at him.
Before that slight motion of his eyelid ended, Alastair was before him, holding
up a bloodied scalpel blade. He ran his tongue along it, cleaning the metal,
savoring the unique sapidity of the famous Dean Winchester.
"What the hell?" Dean glanced down, and the thin line of cold that had captured
his attention quickly became a sharp burn as he took in the bone deep
laceration running down his left side. He smirked back at Alastair. "Well,
you're quick. I'll give you that."
"Oh, but so very thorough," was the demon's response, and he placed another
incision parallel to the first.
"Death by a thousand cuts, eh?" So this is Hell. I expected it to be much
worse. This I can handle. "Those Geneva Convention folks would not be amused.
And hey," he motioned with his head, "come close. I need to tell you a secret."
Tilting his head, wary but curious, Alastair sidled one step closer, leaning in
with an ear turned toward his captive.
"I'm already dead," and Dean lunged forward, teeth closing around the base of
the demon's ear, tearing flesh from bone with a vicious wrenching motion of his
head. He grinned around his bloody prize before spitting it out to bounce off
of Mr. Supreme Tormentor's chest.
Alastair turned to look at him, admiring the smear of blood across the former
hunter's lips. "Dean, Dean, Dean."  He shook his head sadly, finger waving a
censure. "While I do admire your spunk, you have to know that what you just did
moved you right to the top of my naughty list."
A belt appeared in his hand, identical to the one that John Winchester had
worn.
Dean licked his lips, and Alastair smiled in satisfaction as he watched the
young man swallow. Hard.
He began wrapping the tongue of leather around his fist, allowing the buckle to
swing free. "Do you remember the first time you discovered what happens to
naughty boys, Dean?"
Shit fucking hell. What had initially seemed almost laughable had suddenly
become terrifying as Dean realized that it was no longer his adult self
strapped to the metal frame.
The body he inhabited was small, the fragile chest bird-like, and he knew that
if he could see his own face, it would be dominated by a pair of luminous and
tremulously fear-filled eyes.
This body had no defense against pain, and Dean felt his heart breaking for the
boy he had been the first time he lived through this particular torment.
I'm sorry, little guy. He spoke to his own young self, realization dawning for
the first time. You didn't deserve it then, and you don't deserve it now.  I'm
sorry.
 
Although Dean had adopted his best poker face, the tight jaw, tension
throughout his body, and fine sheen of sweat between his shoulder blades gave
him away.
 
Alastair shifted his erection.
 
When first blow fell, Dean closed his eyes. His breath betrayed him with a
whimper on the second, so he held it in for the third strike. I will not reward
this asshole by letting him know how much he's hurting me.
But it wasn't just Dean's body that had regressed; part of his soul had, as
well. By the fourth blow the child inside him was already begging for the
punishment to end, and Dean could feel the damning tears cooling his cheeks.
Hang in there, little guy. It's gonna be okay.
But innocence cannot comprehend brutality, and the timorous confusion broke
through, leaving the child sobbing despite Dean's best efforts at maintaining
control.
You're doing great, buddy. It's alright to cry. Just don't say 'sorry', because
you didn't do anything wrong, okay? Don't apologize, and don't beg.
 
But this was Hell, and a belt was not merely a bit of leather and metal in
Hell. Or at least there was no reason for it to remain so.
 
Alastair tried decorating the buckle with ice, then a series of minuscule
blades.
 
It wasn't until he turned the metal to the temperature of a branding iron that
Dean - the adult as well as the child- began to scream.
 
===============================================================================
 
The flesh had been flayed from Dean's piteously juvenile frame before Alastair
paused to give his breathless victim a chance to speak.
Dean's head was hanging, saliva stained with bile dripping sluggishly from his
lower lip.
Alastair gripped the boy's hair, jerking his head back.
Hazy eyes now devoid of their innocence gazed back at him.
"Do you have something to say to me, Dean?" He stroked his toy's face almost
lovingly with the edge of the folded belt.
He watched the child struggle to focus, tip of his tongue flicking out weakly
to touch his soiled lip.
"Yeah." His high-pitched, scream-roughened voice was almost too quiet to hear,
and Alastair turned his good ear toward the boy.
 
"It.
Was.
Worth it."
 
The demon's head snapped around, mouth widened in surprise, and Dean spit in
his face.
 
Alastair burst out laughing, mirth glinting in his eyes.
"Oh, I like you, Dean Winchester!" He clapped his hands together, nearly
dancing with glee. "This is going to be so much fun!"
 
===============================================================================
His first day in Hell, Dean learned that even after having all of the flesh
removed from your body by a demonically-enhanced belt, there was no escape into
loss of consciousness in that realm.
***** ENTER SANDMAN *****
===============================================================================
 
 
Each day began with the same question:  “What’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”
 As if Alastair were a barista, Dean a regular customer dropping by on his way
to some white-collar job.
The first time Alastair had asked, the hunter’s reply had been standard Dean
Winchester: “Fuck you, Alastair.”
In the blink of an eye, the rack had become a table with Dean bent over it and
strapped down tightly.
 
Dean was instantly frantic --
 
     hands circle Dean’s ankles like talons and they pull and he fights
     and something tears in his leg and he panics
     and there is weight on his thighs and he struggles and the men hold
tighter
     and he feels the pressure against his ass and he knows what’s coming
     and he’s not ready, he doesn’t want this, and his mind screams and he
panics
     and the man above him pulls harder on the bridle of Dean’s gag,
     using it for leverage while he thrusts forward viciously
 
-- screaming in rage tinged with hysteria before anyone had even touched him,
thrashing hard enough to lacerate his wrists and ankles, risking serious injury
to himself in his terror and desperation.
 
Alastair stood back, fascinated.
 
Eventually the hunter wore himself out.
He sagged limply, skin slick with sweat and blood, chest heaving.  
Alastair squatted down, face level with that of his favorite toy, and only then
could the piteous begging be heard.  
“Please please please.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  Not this.  Don’t do this.
 Please.”
The boy’s face was contorted, red, glistening with tears and snot.
“Dean, Dean.  I knew that whole gang-rape thing messed with your mind a little,
but this reaction is a tad extreme, don’t you think?”
“Please.  I’m sorry.  Just lemme go, please.”
“What are you sorry for, Dean?”
“I left Sammy.  I shouldn’a left Sammy.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.”
“Sam isn’t here, Dean.  You’re in Hell, remember?”  He touched his forefinger
to the young man’s head, and Dean’s eyes snapped open, wide and aware,
flashback receding.
“Jesus Christ!”
Alastair chuckled.  “Has left the building.”
Ignoring him, Dean lifted his head, turning it with difficulty, tugging
halfheartedly at his restraints.  “Alastair, please….”
The demon smiled, eyes black.  “‘Please’ what, my dear boy?  You asked me to
fuck you.”  He carded his fingers through the young man’s hair, and Dean
shuddered, a look of horror shading his countenance.  “Well, what you actually
said was ‘fuck you, Alastair,’ which I believe implies that you wanted to top.
 But --” he drew the word out in a sing-song “--given the current situation,
I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
“I’m sorry, Alastair.  I’m sorry I was a smart-ass.”  Even as he spoke, Dean
struggled to remain silent, knowing that he was exposing his weakness,
guaranteeing that this, his worst nightmare, would fill the entire day.  And
probably every one after that, until he found a way to make it not matter
anymore.
Not shred his soul.
Alastair continued to smile, fingers traveling down the nape of Dean’s neck,
between his shoulder blades, tracking languorously down his spine.  
“It’s going to happen, Dean.  This is Hell; sex is a given, and sex combined
with both pain and humiliation...well, that epitomizes the term ‘hell’, don’t
you think?”
Dean closed his eyes, swallowing back tears.  “Please, not today.  I - I’m not
ready.  Something else, okay?  You can use the belt again, or set the
Hellhounds on me, or burn me.  Just please, please, not this.”
His voice was tight, the panic clear.
It doesn't matter. Protect your soul.
But he couldn't.
Alastair straightened, licking his lips as his eyes roamed over the man spread
out before him, naked and deliciously unwilling.  His fingernails scraped
teasingly along the curve of one muscular buttock, and Dean shuddered.
 Alastair closed his eyes, flattening his palm along that supple flesh, the
better to enjoy his victim’s reaction.  “Mm, mm, mm.  That is so nice.”
Dean’s body was rigid, tears flowing freely.
“Do you know how long I’ve been dreaming of this, Dean?”  Keeping his hand in
place, he moved until he was standing between the boy’s spread thighs.  “Since
before I arranged for those men to meet you in that bar.”  He dropped his hands
to Dean’s ankles and began to slide them up, appreciating the shape of the
hunter’s toned body.
“W-what?”  Dean’s eyes were open, and he craned his neck in a hopeless bid to
read his tormentor’s expression.
“Oh, yes, Dean.”  Alastair ran his palms up and down Dean’s calves, humming his
pleasure.  “Hell has had plans for you for quite a while, boy.  That night -
- your gang rape -- that was my first task.”  His hands traveled higher, and
Dean tensed, feeling the demon’s thumbs caress the tender skin on the insides
of his thighs.  “Wanted me to soften you up.  Make you weak.  Easier to kill.”
 Higher still, and he alternated between stroking and kneading the globes of
his toy’s ass, feeling his own lust build.  “I didn’t even need to possess them
all. Just the ring-leader.  Ryan, I think his name was.  I took him, and he
found the others.”  Alastair’s clothes disappeared, his erection monstrously
large and straining.  “Then it was just a matter of getting you into the right
place at the right time.”  He licked his lips, lining up, readying himself.
 “So, as you can see, I’ve been anticipating this moment for years, Dean, and I
just don’t think I can hold off any longer.”
Dean’s frantic “Wait!”  was followed by an agonized scream as Alastair thrust
into him viciously.
The hunter’s cry was cut off abruptly as the improbable organ that Alastair had
conjured buried itself in Dean’s body with enough force to knock the breath
from his lungs.
Alastair alternated between thrusts so powerful they crushed organs and
withdrawing so slowly that tissue shredded along the way.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
That day Dean discovered that even having half of his lungs pulverized, the
rest filled with his own aspirated vomit, he could still scream,
and that no porn star in the world could out-last Alastair when it came to
holding back for the perfect money shot.
 
 
It was his worst day in Hell thus far.
He refused to think about how many more there were to come.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
 
Each day ended with the same question:  “Are you willing to take up my blade in
order to save yourself from the rack?”
 
This day Alastair directed the question to the back of Dean’s head, holding
himself balls-deep in the boy’s somehow still virgin-tight ass.
And when he heard the exhausted, pain-filled, and nearly unintelligible “No”,
Alastair allowed himself to attain his release, shuddering in ecstasy as the
liquid fire of his ejaculate immolated his young victim from the inside out.
 
***** THE STRUGGLE WITHIN *****
===============================================================================
 
I’m not gonna scream today. 
Dean had found that it helped to have goals.
No matter what that bastard does: I don’t have a body, they’re just making it
hurt somehow even without one.  The asshole wants me to scream, which means I'm
gonna make damned sure he doesn't hear so much as a fuckin' whimper.
“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”  The demon thought his daily
question was clever.
“Oh, hey.  I’d like a double cheeseburger, extra onions, and a side of fries. 
Wait: can I get slice of apple pie, too?  Thanks.”
Alastair chuckled.  He set the box he was carrying down on a table that had
materialized from out of nowhere.  “You know, Dean,” and the lisp was as
prominent as always, “I’m not lying when I say that I like you.  Even your
father lost his charm eventually.  Somehow, I think you'll stay fresh longer.”
Dean’s smile faltered, but not for long.  “Dad’s in Heaven now, asshole.  You
can talk about him all you want.  It don’t matter anymore.”  He leaned forward,
eyes hard despite his smirk.  “He won.”
Alastair shrugged, nonplussed.  “I had my fun with him."  He moved languidly
 around his captive, pausing behind him to caress the curve of Dean’s ass,
knowing how much the young man hated it.  "Learned a lot, too.”  
He felt his toy flinch in reaction, and he smiled.
He slid his arms around the hunter, pressing his cheek to Dean’s ear, running
his fingers over the boy’s torso as if he were cuddling a lover.  “Would you
like to see something that never failed to get a response from your father,
Dean?”
“Was it gutting you with a demon blade?  Because I’d love to see that.”
A straight razor appeared in Alastair’s hands, pressed against the center of
Dean’s abdomen.  “You’re close!”
The pressure increased, and Dean closed his eyes, feeling the line of ice that
became fire an instant later, skin parting, metal biting deeper, muscles in his
abdomen separating.
“Open your eyes, Dean.” The demon had adopted a commanding tone, mirth
dissipating.
Dean obeyed, gaze locked on the wall before him, refusing to look down at the
damage that had undoubtedly been done.
No body.  ‘S not real.
Then Alastair was directly in front of him, their faces nearly touching as he
pushed long fingers into the incision.
First nails, then digits explored the rent in Dean's flesh, burning sharply as
they worked their way into him.
Can’t hurt.  You don’t have a body.  Can’t hurt.
Dean continued to stare right through his tormentor.
Alastair canted his head to one side, tip of his tongue appearing at the corner
of his mouth, wriggling his fingers to work them in deeper.
Dean held his breath, body rigid.
Can’t hurt.  Can’t hurt.
Brow furrowed in concentration, Alastair added his thumb to the four fingers
already working to stretch and expand the laceration penetrating his victim’s
abdomen.
Don't scream. 'S not real.
His fist popped through, buried to the wrist in hot, living flesh.
A small involuntary cry escaped the boy on an exhale.
Be over soon.  Be over soon.
The demon braced his hand on the hunter’s shoulder, then jerked his arm out
quickly, bringing a loop of intestine with him.
Dean vomited explosively, coating both of them in blood and bile.  
Leaving the pink twist of living rope to contract and writhe, Alastair crossed
to the table, wiping Dean’s vomit from his face.
Dean shuddered continuously.
Tears coursed down his face in an uninterrupted stream.
Be over soon.  Be over soon.
Alastair lifted the box, returning to his captive’s side.  
“I brought you a present.”
He set the box on the floor between Dean’s spread ankles.  
He removed the lid.
The haunting scritch of small, sharp nails on cardboard heralded the appearance
of a twitching black nose ringed by long whiskers.
Alastair draped the displaced portion of Dean's bowel inside the container.
A rat investigated, nipping at the glistening tissue.
Not real can’t hurt no body won’t last
It began climbing the rope of intestines, a verminous prince to Dean's
eviscerated Rapunzel, forcing its way into the convulsing heat of the young
man's abdominal cavity.
Another rodent followed.
 
Dean screamed.
 
===============================================================================
 
By the end of the day, there was little left of him.
The flesh had been gnawed from his fingers and toes.
His lips and eyelids had been nibbled away.
The gluttonous rodents had filled their bellies with the contents of the man's
abdomen and chest, leaving his torso hollow and their own on the verge of
bursting.
 
Dean had screamed himself raw.
Again.
 
Be over soon.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Alastair stood before him, the rats suddenly gone.
“Are you ready to take up my blade, Dean?  Ready to end this unnecessary pain?
 To escape this rack?”
The sound that emerged was equivalent in strength and beauty to that of a
corpse being dragged across gravel.
 
“No.”
***** RIDE THE LIGHTNING *****
===============================================================================
 
“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”
“Seriously?  I haven’t even had a chance to look at a menu yet!  I gotta tell
ya, the service in this place sucks.”
Alastair chuckled. “I’ll be sure to take it up with the management.”
The demon’s morning inspection of his subject had begun, and Dean ground his
teeth, gaze stubbornly fixed on a spot directly in front of him as Alastair's
hungry eyes licked over ever millimeter of the hunter’s exposed flesh.
Quit letting him fuck with your head, Dean.  Your soul is the new Sammy.  Keep
it safe.
Hell’s Grand Torturer completed his circuit, coming to rest directly in front
of his favorite boy toy.  He tilted his head, skeletal forefinger resting on
his lower lip.  “Do I remember right?  Were you once electrocuted?”
Oh, shit.  The horror of his near-death experience with the Rawhead washed over
him, but Dean’s face remained implacable.
“Didn’t you, in fact, actually fry your heart with your own taser?”  
Alastair’s amused condescension broke through Dean’s facade, and the young man
flicked a glance at  his captor.  “Saved the kids, though, didn’t I?  Asshole.”
The demon reached out, a soft smile warming his features, and began to stroke
Dean’s naked chest.  “You had us worried with that one, Dean-o.  So close to
dying, and you were happy about it." He toyed at an erect nipple.  "You would
have gone to Heaven, and we couldn't have that." His fingers glided lower,
teasing into the trail of soft hair leading away from the man's navel.  "Thank
goodness little Sammy came along with a plan to save you.”
Dean’s face burned, both in shame that his self-hatred had been so evident to
the denizens of Hell, and at the helpless fury instigated by his tormentor's
unwelcome intimacy.
“That rape?" Alastair's tone was inquisitive, as if he expected Dean to have
forgotten, or need clarification.  "The gang rape that I orchestrated so
beautifully, and, by the way, consider one of my proudest moments?”  His hand
dropped, following the tantalizing ‘V’ of Dean’s well-developed abdominal
muscles all the way to its apex.
The demon’s palm was surprisingly warm and soft as it cradled the hunter’s
genitalia, and Dean was pleased to note that his body’s only response was his
scrotum tightening as his testicles sought an escape from the alien touch.
Not that Alastair minded.  Consensual or not, he would take what he wanted.  It
was all the same to him.
“That was supposed to drive you to suicide, Dean."  He sighed dramatically.  "I
came so close to succeeding.”  He began to knead the flesh he held, a gentle
press and pull that Dean had to admit would have felt pretty damned good in any
other situation.
In that time, in that place, with that being, all it did was make him nauseous.
“Victims of suicide come to us.  Did you know that, Dean?”
The question was wasted on the distracted hunter.  Dean refused to look down,
because what had started as a hand was now a hot, velvety wetness, sucking and
petting him, and he wanted to feel disgust, with every fragment of his
tormented soul he longed to feel disgust, and if he looked down and Alastair
had conjured a woman, Dean was certain that he’d lose this fight, and he didn’t
know why Alastair wanted that, but just knowing he did was enough for Dean to
want to deny him --
“Those sad, lonely, lost and hopeless souls come to us.  Doesn’t seem fair,
really.”
 
Dean had closed his eyes tightly, focusing on the sibilant drawl of Alastair’s
nauseating voice, struggling to ignore the growing heat in his loins, the first
pleasure he’d felt in what was probably years.
 
No.  This isn’t right .
 
“Already so tortured, you know?”  The demon watched his subject’s face closely
as he fondled the man, noting the tension, the hitched breaths, the sweat on
his brow.  “And then I am tasked with hurting them even more.”  He shook his
head in mock sorrow.
 
Dean’s cock was like iron in Alastair’s fist.  What could only have been a
tongue slid around the engorged crown, even as a second fantom mouth surrounded
him, muscles stroking his shaft with each swallow.
 
     it shouldn’t feel so good,
     he can’t remember why but it shouldn’t
 
Alastair leaned close, breath fanning the conflicted hunter’s ear.  “I would
much rather give them pleasure.”  The drawl had been replaced by a low,
seductive purr.
 
     he feels the build and he knows it’s coming
     and it shouldn’t
     and it is
     and he can’t
     and it’s wrong
 
A third mouth drew both testicles into its delicious heat while the first
scraped the ridge of his head with gentle teeth, tongue dipping into his slit. 
The second worked rapidly, sliding up and down his shaft even as the fictional
throat squeezed him convulsively.
Dean's breath locked and his muscles strained with the strength of his denial.
But the body is a machine.  Pleasure is pleasure, and this vessel had been
craving remembered ecstasy for a very long time.
 
His anguished “No!” was lost in the bliss that exploded through him, whiting
out his vision.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
The excruciating pleasure drained away, and Dean found himself hanging limply
from his restraints, face wet with tears.
Without raising his head and through the veil of eyelashes clotted with the
evidence of his self-loathing, Dean could just make out the shape of Alastair’s
shoes.
“I hate you.”  
Alastair chuckled.  “That’s the point, my fine young hunter.”  
 
Something moved into his line of site, and Dean recognized the shape of a
cattle prod as the twin metal prongs came to rest coldly against his lower
abdomen.
“Hell is a place for sinners to come and, well, sin.  Have you ever thought of
that, Dean?”
The demon must have pressed a button, because Dean’s entire body went rigid,
teeth locked on a scream as white-hot comets of agony shot through him, fire
trailing behind each one as if a Roman Candle had been detonated in his groin.
 
The sensation ended as abruptly as it had begun, and the hunter sagged
bonelessly against the rack.
 
“There are very few rules here, you see.  All of the those urges that you try
so hard to fight topside? They are virtues here, Dean.  They are applauded,
celebrated, even.”
 
The explosive misery contorted him again, whiting out his brain with the same
intensity that his orgasm had, sparing him the humiliation of hearing his own
scream.
 
Alastair moved in close, cattle prod temporarily abandoned, and pressed his
nude body to the long, lean form of the succulent young hunter.  He lifted
Dean’s chin with one elegant finger, stroking the silky flesh of the boy’s
flank with his other hand.  “Sadism is sin, Dean, but so is lust.”  He pressed
his erection into the yielding heat of his toy’s temporarily flaccid member.
 “I can bring you pleasure, or I can manufacture so much pain.”  He licked the
young man’s lips, savoring the briny flavor of the boy’s tears.  “Which will it
be, Dean?”
 
“Pain,” the hunter snarled, and he snapped his head forward, the thick helmet
of his skull shattering the bridge of his tormentor’s nose.
 
The demon staggered back, now fully clothed, laughing through the blood
streaming down his face.  In the air around him various implements hung, of
which Dean recognized a small handful:  taser, cattle prod, car battery with
leads, portable defibrillator.
“As you wish, my dear boy.”
 
===============================================================================
 
 
That day Dean learned that if electrical current is applied in just the right
way, a person’s muscles can contract with enough force to separate joints.  
     Tear tendons and ligaments.
     Break bones.
All without, unfortunately, stopping the heart.
 
He also learned that the burns a conductive device leaves on the skin are much
less agonizing than those left on the lining of the rectum, the underside of
the tongue, the crystalline window of an eyeball.
 
The final lesson of that never-ending day was that, in the hands of a skilled
professional, destruction of a simulated human vessel by electrical stimulation
can take a very, very long time.
 
***** TRAPPED UNDER ICE *****
===============================================================================
 
“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”
“I could really go for some pizza.  One of those deep, Chicago-style ones.
 With sausage and pepperoni, and garlic butter brushed on the crust.”
 
Dean’s stomach contracted painfully as the object he had described appeared,
balanced on Alastair’s palm.
“Like this?”
Dean swallowed the saliva that flooded his mouth.  Can’t remember the last time
I tasted food.
A table appeared, covered in a white cloth, taper candle centered and
flickering invitingly.  Alastair set the pie on it gently, then snapped his
fingers, nodding in satisfaction at the frosted mug of beer that appeared,
condensation beading on the glass.
I get it: today I get to drown in my own drool.  That’ll be fun.
 
And more somberly: Guard your soul, Dean.
 
Alastair leaned against the wall, his face now blocking the spot that
Dean habitually focused on when he was trying to will himself to ignore
whatever torment the demon had chosen to inflict on him that day.
“It’s all yours, Dean.  All you have to do is go get it.”
 
===============================================================================
 
Without warning Dean found himself kneeling on the stone floor, staring down a
long corridor that ended with the table, his table, shining like a beacon.
He stood, stomach complaining loudly at the years of neglect, and stared down
the long, innocuous-appearing hall.
Not even a flicker of a glance gave him away as he launched himself sideways,
driving his shoulder into the creature that he had been dreaming of ripping
apart with his bare hands for what Dean was sure was at least months, if not
years.
 
It was hard to keep track of time down here.
 
He felt his shoulder drive into a bony chest, heard the wind huff out of his
surprised opponent, was reaching for the demon's throat, his hands curled into
talons --
 
The throaty growl, stench of sulfur and wet dog, and sensation of something
piercing his skin even as it crushed his skull all assaulted Dean
simultaneously.
 
===============================================================================
 
And he was strapped to the rack, whole once more.
“Would you like to try that again?”  Alastair was smiling.
 
Son of a bitch.  I did exactly what he wanted me to.
 
Yet, finding himself once again on his knees on the hard, cold, floor, corridor
stretching out impossibly away from him, he could not resist the temptation to
try for Alastair's throat again.
 
And then a third time.
 
By the fourth he thought he may as well make an effort to reach the table.  He
knew he’d never get there -- this was Hell, after all, and even if he did, the
pizza would undoubtedly kill him in some horrible, nightmare-inducing way. 
Poison that made his skin blister and peel off in gelatinous chunks, or each
sausage he swallowed would turn into some living thing and eat him from the
inside out. 
But maybe, if he paid attention, he could figure out a way to get a weapon.
Find a chink in Hell’s armor.
And even if he didn’t, the effort would be food for his soul.  A reminder of
who Dean Winchester truly was. 
 
What he stood for.
 
He figured the first time down the guantlet was a give-away, just to see what
would happen.  He came up off the floor in a sprint, making it a good fifty
feet before flames shot out from the walls like a row of gigantic blow-torches.
He smiled as he was immolated, pleased with himself for catching whoever was in
charge of the 'Incinerate Dean' button off-guard.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
The second time he approached one wall, examining it with care, eyes probing
even as his fingertips read the abrasive stone surface.
That left his back exposed, unprotected, to the opposite wall.
He never saw the shining mass of blades that diced him neatly into bite-sized
cubes.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
The third time he stood, weighing his options.  
 
I’m gonna die in some insane way no matter what.  Not gonna crawl; too
humiliating.  Already tried running.  Might be worth another go, just to see
how far I can get.  Or I could try the ol’ Winchester swagger.
 
Although he figured he scored points for style and bravado, the Winchester
Swagger method proved to be the most excruciating death thus far: venomous
snakes abruptly covered the floor, forcing Dean to either give up and retreat
or continue despite being bitten.
The fangs themselves were bad enough, but the toxins simultaneously sent
electric jolts of pain zinging along his nerve endings while melting his
tissues into a black goo.
He went from walking to crawling as his feet and shins dissolved, then to
pulling himself by his arms when his thighs similarly disintegrated.
He had made it three quarters of the way to his prize by the time his upper
body and face melted.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
The fourth time he stood gazing at the walls, thinking about how twisted
reality was in this realm.  
“I wonder…”
He took off at a dead run right at one expanse of vertical stone, raced halfway
up it, and launched himself into the air, completing a beautifully executed
backflip to land, feet wide, knees bent, in a perfect superhero pose.  “Holy
shit!  Did you see that?”
The irritated shake of Alastair’s head was all the reward Dean needed, and he
laughed as the section of rock he posed beneath dropped, crushing him into Dean
pudding.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
“Did you see that, Allie?  Did you see my sweet back flip?”
Not only was his body restored each time, but he retained the memories of his
prior experiences as if the death had never occurred.
Except that he remembered it, of course.  The pain and frustration and horror
and relief and hopelessness of it.
 
He managed to get away with two more video game moments before Alastair changed
the rules, coating the walls with ice.
“Spoil sport.”  Dean crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to move now that
his game had been ruined.
He remained in that position, lip thrust forward in a stubborn pout, watching
as the yeti stalked towards him.
Until, that is, the beast was within a few feet of him.  Then Dean went for a
running high jump directly over the beast, inverting his body in mid-air to
avoid the grasping arms of the slavering beast.
He was as stunned as the monster undoubtedly was when he found himself standing
unharmed in the center of the corridor, beyond the yeti's reach and halfway to
his goal.
Dean turned and sprinted, feeling ice form on his spine in the wake of the
monstrous snowman’s indignant bellow.
 
HIs fingers were literally touching the table cloth when the second roar came,
and the supernatural creature’s expelled breath engulfed Dean in a block of
ice.
The table, the pizza, and -- dammit -- the beer disappeared to be replaced by
Alastair’s jeering countenance.
 
Asshole.
 
The ice burned against Dean’s bare skin. His face was free, though his skull
was not.  Unable to move his jaw, Dean spoke through clenched teeth: “Think I
got frostbite on my dick.”  
Alastair’s smile was as lascivious as always.  “This doesn’t have to be, you
know.”  Dean’s three favorite Busty Asian Beauties centerfolds appeared,
scantily clad and simpering.  “Hell can be a happy place, Dean.”  A table
filled with all of  his favorite foods came next, with the women holding items
up to him, almost close enough to taste, before feeding them to one another.
 “It’s a place to indulge all of your appetites.  No judgments.  No
consequences.”  A full bar appeared, taps gleaming, bottle after bottle of
expensive liquor lining a mirrored wall.  The ladies poured drinks, spilling
them down their chests, giggling as they lapped the sticky fluid from one
another’s skin, eyes on Dean the entire time.  “Every pleasure you’ve ever
dreamt of, Dean, every day for the rest of eternity.  
"All you have to do is say ‘yes’.”
 
The cold that burned Dean's skin also made his bones ache.  His teeth would
have chattered if there had been any motion possible in his jaw.
 
Alastair stepped closer.  “I can take you out of that iceberg right now, Dean.
 Conjure a warm, soft bed.  Let those delicious young ladies use their hot
bodies to drive the chill from your bones.  They would do whatever you wanted,
give themselves to you over and over until you forgot that such a thing as
'cold' ever existed.”
 
What hurt the most was his head.  He’d never felt pain like that before, like
something was crushing his skull, grinding the bones together, at the same time
that he had the worst ice cream headache of his life.
 
“Or you can continue to punish yourself, Dean.  Continue to deny yourself the
rewards you clearly deserve, just as you did Topside.”
The demon snapped his fingers, and the buffet was crawling with maggots.
The bar became the honky tonk that a roofied Dean had been hauled from.  Jeff
and his buddies replaced the Asian beauties, staring at him like a pack of
ravenous lions, waiting for another turn at his ass.
And the ice started to compress, forcing a reluctant cry from gritted teeth as
his bones fractured under the weight.
 
“‘Yes’ brings you unending pleasure.  ‘No’ has you weeping and wailing each and
every day for all of eternity.”  
 
Mary appeared on the ceiling behind Alastair, eyes horror-stricken, dripping
blood even as she burned.
 
“Will you take up my razor?”
 
Every one of Dean's ribs snapped like a chorus of frost-laden branches in a
Wisconsin forest.
The exhale that particular agony forced from him carried Dean’s unequivocal
reply:  
 
“No.”


***** THE UNFORGIVEN *****
Chapter Notes
     Inspired by "In Shadow" by UnholyMuse (NongPradu here) on
     FanFiction.com (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5057112/1/In-Shadow), a
     story that literally had me crying.
     Warning: rape of a minor.
===============================================================================
 
"So, what'll it be today, Mr. Winchester?"
 
Dean was heartily sick of it all:
.....The rough stone walls, smelling of mildew and glistening with damp;
.....The sconces holding flickering candles that Alastair insisted were made
from human fat;
.....The distant screams and moans, interlaced with cheers and hysterical
laughter;
.....The bitter synesthesia of his own sweat and fear.
 
"How about your fucking head on a fucking platter, you sadistic son of a
bitch?"
Alastair chuckled. "Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed!"
Dean barely remembered to choke off the instinctive "Fuck you" that teased at
his lips, remembering what had happened the last time he'd said that.
He'd suffered a lot of 'bad' during his tenure in Hell, but getting ass-raped
by this clammy-skinned demon still ranked high on his list of experiences to
avoid repeating.
 
"Maybe if I actually got to wake up in a bed for once, I'd be a little more
pleasant."
 
Alastair's smile was the indulgent response of a doting parent.   "Oh, my
sweet, sweet boy!  All you had to do was ask!"
He snapped his fingers.
 
===============================================================================
 
The cheap sheets abraded his skin as his naked body shifted on the worn
mattress.
Dean blinked, fighting his way to cognizance past an unfamiliar sense of
heaviness that suffused both his body and his mind, like being submerged in wet
concrete.
Large hands rolled him onto his back, turning his head -
 
And his heart skipped into overdrive, eyes suddenly wide and panicked, his
visual field overwhelmed with a dirty, stubble-flecked face just inches from
his own.
Colorless lips split to reveal blackened teeth. The necrotic odor made Dean
gag.
"Hey, boy. 'Bout time you woke up."
A wide thumb reached out, and Dean's eyes crossed as he attempted to follow the
grime-encrusted digit as it neared his face.
The man caressed the boy's lower lip, smile deepening as his pupils blew out
wide.  "That is such a pretty mouth."  The man's voice twisted with want.
Dean trembled, feeling tears gather along the rims of his eyelids.
 
He was a child again.
 
===============================================================================
 
The man rested a large, sweaty palm on Dean's cheek, stroking the unblemished
skin appreciatively. "Your daddy said you'd be a good boy for me, Dean. Was he
right? Are you going to be a good boy?"
This never happened! My father never did that - would never do that!
The hand moved, gliding over Dean's chest and abdomen in long, salacious
strokes. "So beautiful."
Dean shuddered, trying to force his child's body to move, but it wouldn't
respond to his commands.
The man licked his lips, skin around his eyes tightening, pulse beating
steadily in his temple as he cupped the young boy's prepubescent genitalia in
one massive palm.
Dean closed his eyes. No no no. This isn't right. Don't do this!
A meaty finger quested further, probing insistently.
Nonononono -
 
===============================================================================
 
 
"'No,' Dean? 'No'?"
He was on the rack again, adult and whole, and the relief nearly overwhelmed
him. "Alastair -" He sobbed the name, having no idea what words might follow.
"Are you ready to take up my blade, Dean?" Alastair leaned in close, and it was
the pedophile's breath that assaulted Dean's nostrils. "I know it's early in
the day to be asking, but you seem so...upset."
 
--  It's fire and tearing and he's never felt agony like this before,
--  pain, plenty of pain, but not like this -
 
Dean remembered all too well what being raped had felt like as an adult.
He couldn't imagine what soul-rending fear and agony and despair he would
experience as a small child.
 
"That man? That pedophile running his hands all over your sweet, young body?
He's a soul, Dean. A new soul to Hell. Serial rapist and murderer of young
boys, just completed his sentence on Death Row." Alastair mimicked sticking a
needle into his own vein, a coarse parody of death by lethal injection. "I
could give him to you, Dean. He could be your first."
 
Dean was tempted. He was sickeningly, powerfully, righteously tempted.
 
And then Alastair licked his lips, anticipation of victory a potent lust in his
eyes.
 
Why does he want this so bad?
Despair crushed him in a suffocating blackness.
There's a price...there's gotta be a price...and whatever it is, it's worse
than this.
A single sob choked him.
What could be worse than this?
But he knew what his father would say.
Knew what he had to do.
 
"No."
 
His soul split in two.
 
===============================================================================
 
The man reeked of sweat and feces.
 
He pulled the sheets from Dean’s body, and gooseflesh pebbled the young boy’s
skin.
The man hovered, troll-like, nearly salivating with desire as he devoured the
boy with his hands, consumed him with his eyes.
He turned the boy over, and Dean sobbed, paralysis rendering him helpless.
 
Hopeless.
 
-- his mind screams and he panics --
 
The moist decay of the man’s breath was hot on his ear: “You be good for me,
boy.  I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
 
And they both knew it was a lie, that the thing this man wanted most in the
world was an excuse to mark that perfect flesh, pull agonized cries from the
boy that would wrench the most exquisite bliss from the vile human monster now
hovering over his prey --
So when he thrust brutally into the boy, splitting the child in two with his
barbarous lust, it was the boy’s mindless, hopeless, horrified shriek that
ignited the fire of the brute’s orgasm.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Dean lay face down on the mattress, bile trickling from his nose and mouth,
blood a bright splash of crimson on his pale thighs.
He was  hemorrhaging internally, cardiovascular system failing, seconds away
from death.
Alastair lay beside him, breath warm and sweet on Dean’s face, stroking the
boy’s hair with tender fingers.  “What an awful, awful man he is, Dean.  A
monster, really.”
A tear balanced on the sharp ridge of the boy’s perfect nose, winking briefly
before dropping to the soiled sheet.
“You can pay him back, Dean.  Avenge your own death.”
A long razor appeared in Alastair’s hand.  It glowed warmly in the weak light,
a thing of beauty.
“Would you like to do that, Dean?  Would you like to punish this man for all of
the pain and suffering he has wrought on young, innocent children such as
yourself?”
 
The answer rode on the boy’s final heartbeat:
 
“No.”
 
***** THE GOD THAT FAILED *****
===============================================================================
 
“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”
 
     Tearing, bludgeoning, horrifying pain, and he doesn’t understand why this
is happening,
     adults aren’t supposed to hurt you, unless you’d been bad, and he didn’t
think he’d been bad,
     but the man said something about his dad, and had he done something wrong?
 
     Was his father mad at him, and that’s why this man was hurting him,
hurting him so bad,
     please stop, I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again, please --
 
Alastair shook his head.  “Tsk, tsk, tsk.  The great Dean Winchester, hunter
extrordinaire, already crying before the day has even begun.”  He lifted the
man’s head by his hair, grimacing.  “Pitiful.”
Dean was trapped in the horror of the day before.  Should I have taken the
blade?  Killed that guy?  Would it have mattered?
As if reading his thoughts, Alastair stroked the backs of his fingers through
the man’s tears.  “How about if we give you another shot?”
 
===============================================================================
 
He was standing against a wall in a dingy hotel room.  Not tied to anything,
not bound, yet unable to move.
Sam -- Sammy, the scrawny, long-haired six year old whose face was all eyes -
- sat up in the bed, blanket falling away to reveal his bare and pitifully bony
torso.
“Dean?  What are we doing here?”
Oh God.  I can’t.  I can’t do this.
The door opened.
It’s not real.  This never happened.  I’m an adult, he’s a little kid.  That
couldn’t be.  This never happened.
The same pale-faced, rancid pervert from the day before entered the room,
closing and bolting the door behind him.
“Hey, Sammy.  That’s your name, right?”
“It -- it’s ‘Sam’.”
Not him.  Sam’s an adult, topside, maybe even in Heaven by now.  It’s not  him.
“Alright: Sam.  Your daddy said you’d be a good boy for me.  Is he right?  Are
you going to be a good boy?”
The man had removed his belt as he spoke.
“Because bad things happen to naughty boys that come to me, don’t they, Dean?”
Not real.  Not real.
Dean closed his eyes, willing himself not to see, not to hear.
“I...I’m a g-good boy.  Right, Dean?  I’m a good boy!”
Heisgood. Sam isgood, and if he’s not topside, he’s in Heaven, not here,
becauseSamisgood.
But he couldn’t move, or speak.  There was no way at all for Dean to help the
innocent boy on the bed.
Sam's high-pitched, frantic voice cut through Dean's resolve.  “Why...why are
you....you’re not supposed to touch me there!”
 
Dean sobbed.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Alastair appeared, body tight against Dean’s, breath hot on the man's lips.
 “You can end this.”  He pried Dean’s fingers loose from one tightly clenched
fist, pressing the  handle of his razor into it.  “I’ll release your paralysis,
and you can end this.”  
Dean’s fist closed around the weapon.
He was shaking.
Alastair patted him on the cheek.  “Good boy.  Go save your brother.”
He disappeared.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Sam was on the bed, mouth widened in horror, the disgusting man’s hand between
his spread thighs.
The boy turned, eyes swimming with tears, to the one person that had never let
anything bad happen to him before.  “D-Dean?”
Dean raised the blade --
 
and slit his own throat.




***** PULLING TEETH *****
===============================================================================
 
“You’re wrong, you know.”
Dean didn’t care enough to ask.
Alastair enlightened him anyway.  “You do have a body.  They didn’t burn you.
 They buried you.”
That almost got his attention.  “What?”  His voice was weary.  Doesn’t matter.
 He’s lying anyway.
“Bobby wanted to light you up, but your brother wouldn’t let  him.  He was
convinced that he could find a way to bring you back.  That’s what he let Bobby
think, anyway.”  Alastair smiled, caressing Dean’s inner thigh.  “In reality he
is willing to take you in any form, including a ghost.”  He ran his fingernails
over his toy’s scrotum, chuckling as the skin tightened, drawing away from him.
 “That’s why you feel everything.  React so perfectly, no matter how hard you
try not to.  You are actually your own vessel.”
Dean tried to find a reason to care, and couldn’t.
“I’ll have to remember to thank Sam for that.  He’s made my time with you so
much more pleasurable.”  He stroked Dean’s flaccid penis.  “Maybe next time
I'll let you have a conjugal visit so I can pop in for a minute, show him my
appreciation.”  
Dean looked up at the change in the demon’s voice --
 
And looked into his own eyes.
 
“I could show him what your body looks like at the end of a day on my rack --”
 the face before him changed, blood and colorless gel oozing from one eye
socket, a cheek torn away, exposing teeth, remainder of the lips sewn shut with
thick, black thread.  
“Or I could show him how much his big brother truly loves him.”  The figure
shifted once more, the features perfect, body nude, glistening with sweat,
muscles taut, cock red and straining.
Dean didn’t want to react, tried to tell himself it wouldn’t happen, Alastair
was just fucking with him, but he felt the fear rise, knew the son of a bitch
was going to get exactly what he wanted.
Again.
“Or I could just let him watch.”  He was back to himself, razor in hand, nude
and hard.  He ran the blade horizontally across Dean’s chest, smiling at the
cascade of blood.  He leaned down, lapping at it.  “Mmmm...You taste so good,
Dean.”  He straightened, gripping the hunter’s jaw at the hinges.  He held up a
small silver hammer.  “Rock hammer.  Do you like it?”
Dean’s eyes were glazed.
He’d gone away.  Not lost in memory, not in a happy place.  Just...gone.
Alastair tightened his grip slowly, a vice clamping down on bunched muscle, on
tendons...then on bones.
Dean’s expression didn’t change, but tears ran down his face.
The pressure forced his mandible to drop.
Alastair stopped, hammer poised to strike.  “Hmmmm…”
He released his hold abruptly, and Dean’s chin hit his chest.
A waving motion with both hands replaced the hammer with a wicked-looking
curved needle, threaded with thick, black suture.  “Head up, Dean.”
The man did not respond.
Alastair struck him, a backhanded blow that rocked the hunter and reverberated
off the walls.
The skin on Dean’s cheek went from pale to red to purple immediately.
Alastair rolled his eyes.  “You’re really not much fun like this, you know.”
He snapped his fingers, and a strap crossed Dean’s forehead, securing him to
the rack with his chin raised.
“That’s better.”
He went to work with the needle and thread, pinning Dean’s lips back.  “Don’t
want to damage those cock-sucking lips.  Not just yet.”
 
===============================================================================
 
He spent the next two hours removing all of Dean’s teeth.
 
===============================================================================
 
The young man’s cries of pain were muted, half-hearted.  His expression
remained placid.  
His mind was blank, shut down, in a state of mental catatonia.
The worst had happened: he had failed his little brother. It was all that he
was, the one thing that truly defined him, and he could have done something,
could have taken Alastair’s blade, could have negotiated to have his life back,
to save Sam.
But he had said ‘no’.
 
There was nothing left.
 
So when Alastair forced him to his knees, thrust his impossibly large phallus
literally down Dean’s throat, when that conjured body part turned into a fanged
serpent that devoured Dean from the inside out --
The man remained passive, staring at nothing, thinking nothing.
And when Alastair withdrew long enough to ask the inevitable question, he
received no answer.
 
None at all.
***** THROUGH THE NEVER *****
===============================================================================
 
 
“So, what’ll it be today, Mr. Winchester?”  Alastair chuckled, and a coiled
bullwhip appeared in his hand.  “Nevermind: I already know what it will be.”
 He allowed the braided leather to unwind, graceful and menacing, to pool at
his feet.  “You were a very naughty boy the other day, Dean.  You remember what
happens to naughty boys, don’t you?”
 
I didn’t save him.
It doesn’t matter: it wasn’t Sam!
 
Dean welcomed the bite of the lash.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Alastair surveyed his battered toy.
Sweat, snot, and tears dripped from the man’s face in equal proportions,
wetting the floor at his feet.
Skin hung in tatters down his back, and in places white bone shone through.
The back of his body was coated with blood from his shoulders to his heels, and
he stood in a congealing pool of the stuff.
 
Topside, he would have been dead by now.
 
Here, he had screamed until his vocal folds failed, and then he had continued,
the actions soundless.
Alastair gripped the man’s sweaty  hair in a tight fist at the back of his
skull, raising the hunter’s face.  
Bloodshot eyes swam, struggling to focus.
The lush mouth that Alastair so loved to bury his cock in hung lax.
“The man who beat and raped your innocent little brother is still  here, Dean.
 Would you like to take a crack at him?  Teach him not to mess with a
Winchester?  Show him what happens to anyone that dares to lay a hand on your
Sammy?”
 
He held the razor up, turning it enticingly.
 
Those cock-sucking lips moved, and although Dean was unable to make a sound,
Alastair knew what he was saying:
 
“No.”
 
===============================================================================
 
 
As cruel as the demon was, it was rare for him to lose his temper.
 
He did so now.
 
Stepping to the side, he flicked his wrist.
The wall that formed the front of Dean’s prison disappeared, and a raucous
cheering assaulted his ears.
 
Dean flinched.
 
“You see all of those demons out there, Dean?”  Alastair’s spittle flecked
Dean’s skin as the demon hissed into his ear through clenched teeth.  “There
are thousands of them, Dean.  Thousands.  Each one was given a task, and
promised a reward for completing said task.”  He used his grip on the man’s
hair to turn his head, allowing the hunter a chance to scan the crowd of
excited demons.  “Wanna guess what that reward is?”
He thrust his toy’s head away, and Dean was whole once more.
“You!”  Alastair’s bony finger picked out a burly, long-fanged beast at the
front of the crowd.  “You’re first.”
The creature stepped forward, salivating in his eagerness.  “Do I have to save
some for the others?”
Alastair shook his head.  “I can rebuild him.  He’s all yours.”
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Alastair watched, letting them have the boy, sometimes in singles, sometimes in
groups of two or three.  He picked out a few that looked promising, making a
mental note to ask Lucifer if he could take over their training.  He needed
some fresh disciples.
 
Initially his curiosity kept him entertained, as he was interested in seeing
how creative Hell’s minions would get.  After all, each had spent time on the
rack -- Alastair’s rack -- and he expected them to  have learned something.
The rapes were expected and uninspired -- though the demons themselves seemed
pleased, and Dean almost always screamed at least once.  He was surprised at
how many of them wanted to cannibalize the hunter, and made a note to mention
something to Lucifer about adding more human meat to the cafeteria's menu.  A
few thought to feed the man pieces of his own flesh, particularly his genitals.
 Some cut off chunks and fed them to Hellhounds.  One gutted the boy, sharing
the entrails between himself and several hounds before cutting out Dean’s heart
and forcing it down his throat, suffocating him.  
 
Alastair made sure to get that one’s name.
 
Each time the hunter was almost done, nothing but scraps left of his fragile
vessel, Alastair would step in, offering him the blade and a chance to escape.
 
Each time, the miserably little fuck denied him.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Alastair had had enough.  It was time to up the ante.
He collected a bowl of Dean’s blood, using it to contact Lucifer’s personal
assistant.
 
“I need to talk to Lucifer about obtaining Sam Winchester.”
 
***** HARVESTER OF SORROWS *****
===============================================================================
 
“Alright, Alastair.  You wanted a meeting, you’ve got --” the King of Hell
checked his watch -- “ten minutes.  What seems to be the problem?”
“Dean Winchester.  He is as stubborn as his father.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes.  “You had nearly a freakin’ century -- “
“And he never broke --"
"Good thing he wasn't truly righteous."  Lucifer crossed his legs, folding his
hands over one knee.  "Of course, you are the one responsible for the fact the
he is now in Heaven, and completely out of our reach."
"It was Azazel who opened the gate --"
"But you who allowed the  man to atone for his sins.  If it'd just been
Azazel's fuck-up, we'd have had Winchester's less-than-righteous ass back here,
and you could have used that sanctimonious asshole against his precious older
son."
"I had your blessing with the eldest Winchester, Sire.  We were hoping to learn
how to break the Righteous Man."
“And you’ve only had, what,  five years?  Ten?  I lost track, but still, it's
been, what, a quarter of the time you had with John?  Not even.  About two
months topside, and all of the pieces aren't in place up there yet, either.  No
one's been breathing down your neck.  So you’re here blubbering to me about
what , again?”
“We don't have another one hundred years.  Pain won't break him: I need to
attack  his sense of self.  His soul."  Alastair paused, knowing how volatile
his master could be, and how dangerous his request was.  "I need his brother.
 I need Sam Winchester.”
 
Lucifer sat back, narrowing his eyes in a manner that birthed fear even in
Hell’s Grand Torturer.
 
“Sam Winchester.   My  vessel.”
 
“He is Dean’s only weakness.  I used a likeness of him, a child, and the
Righteous Man almost broke -- “
 
“MY VESSEL.”
 
Lucifer had risen to his feet on his dais to stand towering over Alastair.
The torturer cowered, backing away.
“Pain just isn’t enough, my liege.  It wasn’t with John, and it hasn’t been for
his son.”
“Or maybe YOU aren’t enough, Alastair.  Maybe I overestimated your abilities.”
Alastair trembled.  To be demoted would mean that he would be put on the rack
himself.   Lucifer’s  rack.
Or, worse yet, be sent topside.  He  hated  going topside.
“Each death equals a day,” Alastair explained, grovelling just a bit.  “I
allowed every unoccupied demon in Hell to spend some quality time with Dean
Winchester, one on one, so to speak.  Every. One.  He went through over three
thousand days with that alone, and he still did not break.”
Lucifer sat, and Alastair hid his sigh of relief behind a cough.
“I still don’t see how  your  failure means that  I  have to give up my vessel.
 What good does it do to break the first seal if I don’t have a vessel to use
when I fight Micheal?  What do you expect me to do, possess Hugh Hefner?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to give him up, Sire.  Just...let me borrow his soul.  I’ll
give it back when I’m done!”
Lucifer shook his head.  He rested an elbow on the arm of his throne, cradling
his chin in his  hand.  The fingers of the other drummed on the smooth wood of
the elaborate seat.  “Sam is already close to suicidal, and if he does that,
he’s lost to me.  You can’t play with his soul.”  He sat up, pointing a sharp-
tipped nail at his cowering servant.  “I’ll tell you what I will do, though:
I’ll let you have an incubus.  Or a succubus.  Whichever I’ve got more of lying
around.”
Alastair licked his lips nervously.  “Sire, I have tried --”
Lucifer waved a  hand impatiently.  “Not for that.  If pain won’t get him, sex
won’t either.  But an incubus can bring part of a person’s soul, their
consciousness, to a space in the Veil that we can use.  It can also access
memories.  You’re telling me the only way to break the little prick is to fuck
with his psyche, right?”
Alastair tipped his head in acknowledgement.
“Well, you need to take your time, build some scenarios, bring some other souls
into it.  Make it seem real.”  He stabbed a finger in Alastair’s direction once
more.  “But NOT Sam Winchester.  Sammy is mine.”
Alastair bowed.  “Thank you, Sire.”
Lucifer grunted, waving him away impatiently.  “Just get this done, Alastair,
or for every time that you fail, you’ll spend an hour as my Hellhound’s chew
toy.”
"Yes, Sire."  He backed from the room.
 
===============================================================================


Alastair could not help but admire the Incubus.
They had rotated the rack into a horizontal position.  The Incubus -- a black,
winged creature that Alastair found completely repulsive -- straddled the prone
hunter, hunched over the man, staring intently into its victim’s face as clawed
fingers sifted through the man’s brain, extracting memories.
The creature’s engorged phallus pulsed with each tortured cry from the man
beneath it.
Alastair’s did, as well.


===============================================================================
 
 
Lucifer had summoned him, demanding a report.
“So, got some ideas?”  He leaned forward on his throne, face both menacing and
expectant.
“Oh, yes, my liege.  The Incubus has already been tremendously helpful.” 
Alastair could kiss ass with the best of them, when his own skin was at stake.
“Good, good.”  Lucifer sat back, rubbing his hands together.  “Give us a little
tease.”
“He has many perceived failures, or near failures.  Hunts that could have ended
in disaster.  And there is an impressive list of  people that he feels
responsible for, or cares for: Bobby, a man called Sonny, girls named Robin and
Cassie.  A woman named Ellen and her daughter Jo.  I have a lot to work with.”
“Fabulous.  Get to it.”
He clapped his hands, and Alastair disappeared.
 
***** ONE *****
Chapter Notes
     This one is extremely graphic.
===============================================================================
 
"So, what'll it be today, Mr. Winchester?"
Flat on my back, strapped to a fuckin' autopsy table. Chin strap, can't even
open my fucking mouth. Starting the day angry beat the hell out of starting it
afraid. "Iz it too late to request an upgrade to the prezidential suite?" The
words were distorted, but intelligible.
Alastair chuckled. "Don't expect that from the souls you deal with, " he
addressed a slightly confused looking demon who stood beside him, dressed in
the garb of a medical examiner. "Dean Winchester is...unique."
"Aw, you big softie. Now I know who sent the flowers." You won't fuckin' break
me, you sadistic fuck.
Alastair allowed his fingers to trail along his subject's skin as he paced from
the man's foot to a position at about waist-level.
The younger demon followed suit, and Dean bit back a snarl, skin crawling at
the new demon's touch. Not a fucking toy.
Alastair caressed the skin of Dean's abdomen with one hand, brandishing a large
scalpel with the other. "Now, an important detail to remember is that Hell-
torture has to be more than just painful: it must be terrifying. Horrifying.
The stuff of nightm- "
"Why d' yo' talk like dat?" Muzzle me like I'm a rabid fucking dog, see if I
don't still make a fool out of you.
"This is my apprentice. I'm just explaining -"
Dean rolled his eyes. "I don' mean dat. Mean the weird nasally t'ing. Like yo'
got a d'ck st'ck in yo'r throat."
He saw the flash of murderous rage that Alastair quickly subdued. "That reminds
me -" he gripped the hunter's flaccid penis with his left hand, slicing it off
at the base with his right - "I haven't had breakfast yet."
He just ate my dick! Dean tried to relax his widened eyes, an exercise made
infinitely easier by the wave of nausea that hit him.
Alastair was chewing with exaggerated enthusiasm.
And an open mouth.
Vomit flowed from Dean's nose, spurting forcefully through his clenched teeth.
Hopefully I'll bleed out quick.
No big deal; it'll be back tomorrow.
Sad thing is I can't think of too many reasons to want it back.
It was hard to clear his lungs with his jaw tied shut. Unfortunately, he'd
already learned that he didn't actually need to breathe to stay alive.
Or what passed for alive in Hell.
"As I was saying," Alastair continued. "Horrify. Now, when I was fortunate
enough to possess an army surgeon during the civil war, I had many
opportunities to both horrify and inflict pain, all under the guise of helping
injured soldiers."
"Nice," the novice demon murmured.
Since he was stroking the circular wound in Dean's groin at the time, coating
his fingers like the arterial spray was a fondue fountain, Dean wasn't sure
whether the apprentice was impressed with Alastair's former position or his
recent work.
Maybe it's both.
"We'll work on amputations later. Right now, I'd like to start with an anatomy
lesson." Alastair turned so that his body was perpendicular to the table. He
gripped Dean's shoulder with his left hand, placing the tip of his blade in the
notch where the man's collar bones met his sternum. "I know that the typical
autopsy uses a 'Y' incision, but I prefer a slightly different approach." He
looked over his shoulder, nodding in satisfaction at the intense concentration
on the face of his student. "Note the handle of the scalpel in my palm,
forefinger at the base of the blade. Lift to deepen the angle, press with the
forefinger, and draw the blade down the torso in a smooth, steady motion."
Skin parted, blood welling.
Not real. You don't have a body. It's not real.
"Not too quickly, or the incision won't be deep enough." The blade dropped off
of Dean's xyphoid process, continuing down the midline of his abdomen. "Now, I
typically end this incision at the line of pubic hair - hair dulls the blade
quickly. In this case, I'll just join it to the previous incision. I'll show
you why in a moment."
Dean had been nearly ignoring the insane burn that his phantom penis had
become, but he couldn't prevent a strong blink when the blade touched it,
reigniting the dying flame.
Focus on your breathing, Dean. In...out. Keep it...nice….and….slow.
He closed his eyes.
"Now, the next incision varies depending on what you want to do. Let's get some
of this skin out of the way, and I'll show you."
Despite himself, Dean felt his eyes pop open, wide and alarmed.
"We'll make this an 'I' incision, like the capital letter."
Dean felt the sharp bite of the blade just under his last rib, starting on the
left and running across to the other side. Unable to see himself, he instead
conjured an image of thin lines of lava erupting from narrow fissures in his
skin, with a pool of it over his groin.
It glowed yellow-orange, but as he closed his eyes and focused, he was able to
cool it, first to red, then to black, watching it crust over into stone.
Instead of an insistent burn, it had become a comforting warmth.
"Now." Alastair's fingernails picked at the edge of the incision where it met
the ruin of Dean's groin.
The illusion of cooled lava shattered, and Dean heard himself grunt.
Don't scream not real can't hurt you will not fucking scream
"You've hunted animals, I assume? When you were human? And skinned them?"
"Yeah. I was actually a taxidermist."
Alastair nodded, pleased. "Excellent. Well, human skin is much harder to peel,
especially on someone like Dean, who has always had a minimal amount of body
fat." He held up a blade, glowing with heat. "I like to use a dull blade to
undermine it. I heated it to cauterize as we go so that blood doesn't obscure
the features I want to show you, but for shock-and-awe, I recommend avoiding
that step. There's nothing like seeing blood everywhere to throw a new soul
into a delicious panic."
He used his fingernails to lift the thin flap of tissue he had freed, thrusting
the blade beneath it.
Dean jerked, restraints creaking.
Doesn't hurt can't hurt no body not real
"You just work it around," the dull blade moved in short, hard stabbing
motions, parallel to the plane of Dean's abdomen, and his body tightened, a
scream building in his head.
Not real don't scream over soon
"You can start the other side." Alastair nodded toward his apprentice, and a
flat, rounded blade appeared in the demon's hand. "Don't forget to heat it."
Dean trembled with the effort of holding himself still. Don't let 'em know no
fucking reward for them doesn't hurt over soon doesn't hurt don't scream dont
scream dontscream
But when Alastair said, "I think we can pull now," and each demon gripped a
flap of flesh with both hands, pulling skin away from underlying muscle, his
body rebelled against the strict control of his soul, and he screamed.
Alastair winked at his apprentice. "Now we're getting somewhere!"
===============================================================================
There was a thing that happened when it got too bad, and Dean had been working
on controlling it, like a lucid dream, so he could make it happen at will.
He went away.
It was an odd sensation of being separate yet present, observing and feeling it
all, but muted. Everything: the pain, the horror, the rage, the hopelessness,
all wrapped in cotton. Almost like it was happening to someone else, but not
quite.
He was in that place now, floating near the ceiling, watching Alastair's
anatomy instruction with interest.
"You can cut through the linea alba," which he did, the thick white tissue
parting with bloodless ease, "which gives you excellent access to the abdominal
contents with a minimal amount of pain and hemorrhage. It's a nice tease, in my
opinion, because the subjects always expect so much worse. You lull them with
this, then reach in -"
Dean watched as the instructor's hand was swallowed by the rent in the man's -
 that's you, you idiot - abdomen.
"- and pull out a loop of intestine to show them."
The pain was breath-taking...sort of.
Alastair held a glistening gray-pink tube up for Dean's inspection. Dean
watched his slow, unimpressed blink. Ha. Take that, you sadistic fuck.
Alastair pushed the organ back into place, and Dean saw his body buck against
its restraints, bile erupting from his nose, forcing its way between his teeth.
"You can also cut through the muscles." The head torturer retrieved his blade,
cutting through the rectus abdominus muscles near their attachments to Dean's
ribs.
The body made a keening sound. The spine bowed, pulling away from the blade.
"This can be very rewarding, as there is much more pain, as well as a very
pleasing amount of hemorrhage." He continued the incision until the incision
formed a 't'. "You'll notice that a well-muscled subject such as this requires
either multiple passes or a larger blade, as the flesh in this case is thicker
than the blade is wide." He returned to the end of the incision, and blood
sprayed as he completed a second, then a third pass.
"Now, I started up here to show you something: you may have noticed that with
the midline incision, each time the patient contracted in pain, intestines
bulged out of the cut. While it can be lovely to observe the effect that seeing
one's own intestines spilling out on the floor has on a victim, there are times
when it is just plain annoying to have them in your way." He drew the flaps of
muscle aside, and Dean's body shuddered. "If your first incision is just below
the ribs, you will encounter some nice, large organs: liver," he stroked the
red-brown organ lovingly, "the tongue-like spleen," he drew this long, slender
mass of tissue out of the man's abdomen, and Dean watched the blood drain from
his face, "and the stomach." Alastair slid his hand beneath a pale, flaccid
organ, lifting it, and vomit once again ran from the subject's nose.
"With this incision, the subject can tense and scream however it likes, and the
organs will stay inside the abdomen. If your toy is standing, you can reach a
hand inside, your face intimately close to your pet's, and play with whatever
you like."
Dean could see the shudders racking his body, knew that he was feeling such
exquisite misery that it left him breathless, that far away a part of him was
begging for it to end, begging to die, but it was all so...surreal.
"Spleen bleeds easily, so avoid it unless you're ready to let the soul go for
the day. It does fry up nicely, though, as, of course, does the liver. Liver,
too, should be left until the end: it has many, many blood vessels, and the
tissue does not hold suture well. Cautery may work, but not if you've taken an
entire lobe."
The instructing demon had removed the majority of the spleen from the abdominal
cavity, handling it with care, preserving the blood supply. "The spleen is
really only attached well at one end, so you can, if your patient is prone,
move it out of your way to provide easier access to the kidneys." He stretched
the organ out on the table.
Dean could feel it pressing against him, and despite how oddly removed he felt
from the situation, it still disgusted him enough to make him cringe away from
it.
"The intestines can be removed, as well, providing you preserve this bundle of
vessels at the root of the mesentery. Again, if you are ready to allow your
patient to bleed out, go ahead and just tear all of this. We'll get to see all
of that when we're done here." He was piling Dean's intestines on the table
like he was serving pasta from a bowl.
"Now, see how empty it is? We've got the urinary bladder -" he held it up, and
Dean watched color rise in his cheeks as urine ran out of the hole in his
groin. He heard himself whine through gritted teeth as the fluid scalded the
raw flesh where his penis used to be. "And my goal: the kidneys."
He flicked one with his finger, and Dean watched his back arch, felt himself
scream.
"Technically they are outside of the peritoneal cavity, which just means that
you have to tear this membrane to get to them." He did so, and Dean's body
writhed.
"It's well worth the effort, though, because these beautiful little things not
only make excellent pie, they are also filled with nerve endings." He slid a
kidney into his palm. "In the fetus, the kidneys and testicles begin from the
same tissue. That means that the renal tissue is least as sensitive, if not
more so, than the testes." He squeezed, and suddenly Dean was back in his body,
screaming mindlessly, his entire existence reduced to the most excruciating
sensation imaginable, and he did not even feel himself convulsing.
 
He always came back like that just before he died.
***** OF WOLF AND MAN 1 *****
===============================================================================
 
Dean woke to someone slapping his face and calling his name.
He scrambled backwards, hands up, eyes wild, stopping only when his shoulders
and the back of his skull impacted something hard.
“Bobby?”
The gruff old hunter’s eyes were full of concern.  “Hey, kid.  How you
feelin’?”
Dean looked around in confused panic.  Bobby’s guest room.  “Where’s Sam?”
“He’s off at college, remember?  We been keepin’ tabs on him.  He’s good; safe.
 Got a girlfriend.”
Dean settled back onto the bed,  heart racing.  What the fuck is going on?
“You alright, son?  That werewolf rung your bell pretty hard.”
He pressed a hand to his temple, realizing that his head did hurt.  “Yeah.  ‘M
okay.  Just need a minute.”
His brain was spinning.  Sam’s in college?  I was hunting a werewolf? Wasn’t I
in Hell?  Sammy’s safe?  He didn’t die?  Didn’t I get him from Stanford to go
look for Dad? And then Dad died, and Sammy….
“Where’s Dad?”
“He went after those witches in Illinois, remember?  Left us to tackle the
‘wolves.”
Dean remembered that hunt.  Remembered getting hurt, Bobby hauling his ass out
of there.  “We didn’t get them….”
“No.”  He patted Dean’s leg.  “But we didn’t get dead, either.  We got two more
nights ‘fore the moon gets too far from full.  If you’re feelin’ up to it,
we’ll go back out tonight.”
“Yeah.  Okay.”  Something’s not right.  He squeezed his skull with both hands,
willing the spinning thoughts to stop, or at least slow down.
“Lemme get ya some aspirin.”
“Thanks, Bobby.”
 
As soon as the older man left the room, Dean got up, ignoring the mild
dizziness and nausea that told him had a concussion.  He crossed the room,
touching the curtain gently at first, then gripping the cloth to run it between
his finger and thumb.  Feels real.   He looked out the window, and the view was
everything he should have expected: Gnarled tree still the same, junked hulks
of dead cars still the same.  He touched the glass, and it was cold and smooth
and solid.   What the fuck?
He went into the bathroom, watching the stream of urine hit the porcelain bowl
with something akin to amazement.  Why does it feel like I haven’t had to do
that for a very long time?  He shook off, and moved with an uncomfortable buzz
of anticipation to the sink.  He leaned on the counter, staring into his face,
searching his eyes.
Did none of that happen?  Was I never in Hell?
There was no trace of it that he could find.  Nothing of the horror he thought
he’d endured was lurking in his eyes.
What the fuck?
He washed his hands, then looked around the room, debating his next move.
 Shower.  I really, really want a shower.  Hot water, steam, soap.  He was
pulling his clothes off before the thought completed running its course, and
the sensation of hard jets massaging his skull was the best thing he had ever
felt in his life.
He examined his body as he lathered it.  No new scars.  But old ones are still
there.  I thought they were gone, thought it was all gone, body brand-spanking-
new every day, ready to be --   He shook the rising hysteria off.  It wasn’t
real.  Sammy never died and Dad never died and I never went to Hell and
Alastair….Who the fuck is Alastair?  Where did that name come from?
He showered until the water turned lukewarm.  The towel was soft and fluffy,
and his clean clothes smelled amazing.  
And bacon.  Bobby was cooking bacon.
When was the last time I ate?  Jesus god, I’m hungry!
He almost fell rushing down the stairs too quickly.
Bobby chuckled as Dean dropped into a chair, eyes wide, practically drooling.
 “Hungry?”
“Starving.”  
Bobby dropped a full plate in front of his young friend before sitting down
across from him with his own.  His eyebrows shot up as he watched the other man
demolish his meal.  “You lose all your teeth or something?”
Dean paused, glancing up with his head over his plate, fork halfway to his
mouth.  “What?”
“Most people chew at least a little bit.”
Dean gulped, lowering his fork.  Why am I so afraid right now?  Why do I expect
to be punished?  Bobby’s never hurt me.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know why I’m so
hungry.”
Bobby chuckled.  “Growing boy, got some injuries.”  His eyes narrowed.  “That
dog didn’t bite you, did it?  I never seen anyone change, but I imagine
becoming a werewolf carries quite an appetite with it.”
“No.”  Dean shook his head, eyes darting to his plate and back to Bobby.  “I
checked myself in the shower.  No bites, no breaks in the skin.”
“Good.”  
The hand holding the fork was trembling, and Dean’s eyes kept darting to his
food.
Bobby pushed his own plate across.  “You really are hungry, aren’t you?”
The slight curve of Dean’s lips was tentative.  “Yeah… you sure you don’t want
this, Bobby?”
The older man chuckled, patting his belly.  “I already ate once today.  ‘Sides,
I can always make more.”
“Thanks, Bobby.  I’ll clean up though, okay?”
“Sounds fair.  You mind if I leave you to it?  Got a few calls to make.”
“Sure.”  He looked up, a pitiful degree of gratitude in his eyes.  “Thanks,
Bobby.”
Concern and confusion flitted across the older man’s face, but he just smiled.
 “No problem, son.  Nice to have my cooking appreciated.”  He patted the
younger man’s shoulder on the way out.
 
===============================================================================

“Dad. We need you.” Dean fought the blackness seeping into his mind, struggling
to stay conscious long enough to get them to safety.
“What happened?”There was no fear in the man's voice, just a suppressed
irritation, and Dean's panic eased.
“Werewolves. And...I shot him..” Dean hated himself for the sob that escaped
him. “I shot Bobby.”
“Christ, Dean.” The irritation had escalated.  “Where? Is he alive? How bad is
the bleeding?”
“Stomach. He's alive, bleeding bad.  He passed out.”  The blackness kept
taunting him.  It was hard to think.  “Should I take him to a hospital?”
“With a bullet would? Come on, son.  You know better than that.  Just get him
home. I'm on the way.”
The line went dead.  Dean dropped the phone, returning his bloody, shaking hand
to the steering wheel.  Just get him home.
 
===============================================================================

John strode into the room, wiping Bobby’s blood from his hands.
“So, you wanna tell me what happened out there, Dean?”
The younger hunter was trying to clean out the deep lacerations that crossed
his ribs, and the pain had him nearly breathless.  “Gun jammed.”
“What?”  John’s voice had taken on a cutting edge.  “The 1911?”
Dean nodded, concentrating on his wounds.
“That thing never jams.  Where is it?”
Dean gestured with his head.  “Pillow.”
John retrieved the gun.
Dean had finished rinsing his cuts with holy water, and braced himself for the
next step: peroxide.  
The sound of  his father ejecting rounds from the magazine barely registered as
he began pouring the cool fluid over his skin, hissing at the immediate and
sharp burn that it caused.
“When was the last time you cleaned this?”
“What?”  His brain wanted to go offline, and he was tempted to let it.
“I said your fucking pistol is filthy.  When was the last time you cleaned it?”
The burn was intensifying, the bubbling liquid feeling for all the world like
it was boiling his flesh.  “I -- I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Dean didn’t miss the danger in that tone, and he struggled to focus.  “Can’t
remember.” Hurts.  Can’t think.
John set the pistol on the nightstand.  His hands moved to his belt.  “Strip.”
“What?”  No.  He can’t...he’s not…
“You know better, Dean.  Your weapon is your life, and your carelessness or
laziness or whatever the fuck it was, that’s why it jammed.  Now strip.”  He
had his belt in his hands.
Nausea and a horrified disbelief washed over him, and Dean swayed on his feet.
 “Dad...I’m hurt.”
John crossed the room in two strides, striking his son with a vicious backhand
swing of the belt wrapped around his fist.  The buckle hit, tearing a furrow in
Dean’s cheek.  Dean staggered back, hand rising to his face, and the side of
his knee hit the bed.
He fell onto it, and John was on him, fingers clawing for the button on  his
son’s jeans.  
“Dad!  Stop!”
Another backhanded blow, this time from John’s free hand, split Dean’s lips and
set off sparks behind his eyes.  He felt his father dragging his jeans down his
legs, but was unable to force a response from his own body.
And then he was face down, and his father was raining fire down onto him, and
knew he had to keep quiet and not move, but that belt was hitting the claw
marks on his back and side, injuries that he had been certain his dad would
clean and suture for him, and a whipping from Dad always hurt plenty, but the
buckle striking raw flesh was an unbearable agony, and he couldn’t stop himself
from jerking away --
“Hold still,” his father growled, grabbing Dean by the hair, lifting his face
to glare into it.  “Bobby might die, and it will be your fault if he does.”
Jesus.  He can’t die. I didn’t mean --
Still holding Dean’s head up, John brought the belt down with as much strength
as he could, each strike emphasizing a word: “Clean. Your. Fucking. Gun.”
It was too much, and as hard as Dean tried to stay still and be quiet, his body
could not, and he twisted away, leaving a handful of hair in his father’s hand,
sobbing as his stomach convulsed.
He fell onto the floor, scrambling away mindlessly until he was up against the
wall on his hands and knees, bile pooling between his spread fingers.
I’m sorry.  Bobby, I’m sorry!  It was an accident!  Please don’t die.  Please.
The floor vibrated with the force of John’s approach, and Dean pressed his back
into the corner, drawing his knees into his chest and throwing an arm over his
head.  “Please, Dad, please.  I’m sorry, it was an accident, please --”
A razor landed on the floor in front of him.
“Who do you hate more right now, Dean?  Me, or yourself?”  A familiar boot toed
the equally familiar blade, and the name ‘Alastair’ beat a pulse in Dean’s
head.  “You can end this right now, boy.  Or it can keep going, day after day
after day.  Your choice.”
Dean stared at the thin steel.  Don't do it it's a trick don't do it -- but he
couldn't remember what he wasn't supposed to do.
“I know you hate me right now, you miserable little fuck.  Such a sorry excuse
for a hunter.  I’m ashamed to even tell people that you’re my son, you know
that?  And I’m not done with this.  I’m going to kick the shit out of you, and
if Bobby dies, I will whip you until there’s no skin left to mark. You
understand what I’m saying, Dean?  You are worthless and careless and a fucking
disgrace.  Unless you show some fucking backbone, pick up that blade and come
at me, you are no son of mine, and I am going to beat you like a dog --”
Dean picked up the blade
 
And drove it into his own heart.
 
===============================================================================
 
Alastair looked over at the salivating incubus.
It had its dick in its hand, stroking furiously.
Alastair rolled his eyes.
“Alright, enough of that.  It was good, I admit, but it didn’t get the job
done.”
The incubus turned matte black eyes on the demon.
“We’ll do it again tomorrow.  Once you're finished with that," he gestured at
the thing's dripping phallus, "figure out how to up the ante.”  Alastair spared
the creature one more disgusted glance before disappearing.







***** OF WOLF AND MAN 2 *****
===============================================================================
 
Dean woke to someone slapping his face and calling his name.
He scrambled backwards, hands up, eyes wild, stopping only when his shoulders
and the back of his skull impacted something hard.
“Bobby?”
The gruff old hunter’s eyes were full of concern.  “Hey, kid.  How you
feelin’?”
Dean looked around in confused panic.  Bobby’s guest room. Why does it feel
like I’ve done this before?  “Where’s Sam?”
“He’s off at college, remember?  We been keepin’ tabs on him.  He’s good; safe.
 Got a girlfriend.”
Dean settled back onto the bed,  heart racing.  Sam’s not dead?  He’s still in
college?  And does he mean Jess?  Sam’s girlfriend Jess?  She’s not dead,
either?
“You alright, son?  That werewolf rung your bell pretty hard.”
He pressed a hand to his temple, realizing that his head did hurt.  “Yeah.  ‘M
okay.  Just need a minute.”
His brain was spinning.  I was hunting a werewolf?  Didn’t I get Sammy from
Stanford to go look for Dad? And then Dad died, and Sammy…I traded my soul to
get Sammy back.  Didn't I go to Hell?  A hound ripped me up....
“Where’s Dad?”
“He went after those witches in Illinois, remember?  Left us to tackle the
‘wolves.”
Dean remembered that hunt.  Remembered getting hurt, Bobby hauling his ass out
of there.  But there was more.  Didn’t it all go sideways?  Didn’t he end up
hurt?  Didn’t he shoot Bobby by mistake?  And then Dad...didn't Dad take his
belt to me?  “We didn’t get them….”
“No.”  He patted Dean’s leg.  “But we didn’t get dead, either.  We got two more
nights ‘fore the moon gets too far from full.  If you’re feelin’ up to it,
we’ll go back out tonight.”
“Yeah.  Okay.”  He squeezed his skull with both hands, willing the spinning
thoughts to stop, or at least slow down.  “Are you okay, Bobby?  Not hurt?”
The older man chuckled.  “Take more than some pissant werewolf to damage a
salty ol’ dog like me.  I’m jus’ fine.  Lemme get ya some aspirin.”
“Thanks, Bobby.”  Doesn't make sense.  None of this makes sense.
As soon as the older man left, Dean got up, ignoring the mild dizziness and
nausea that told him had a concussion.  He crossed the room, touching the
curtain gently at first, then gripping the cloth to run it between his finger
and thumb.  Feels real.   He looked out the window, and the view was everything
he should have expected: Gnarled tree still the same, junked hulks of dead cars
still the same.  He touched the glass, and it was cold and smooth and solid.  
What the fuck?  This is Hell. This has to be Hell.  I was there, I know I was
there.
He went into the bathroom, expecting to see blood in the sink, torn clothing in
the garbage can.
There was nothing.  
He  moved with an uncomfortable buzz of anticipation to the sink.  He leaned on
the counter, staring into his face, searching his eyes.
Did none of that happen?  Are Dad and Sam really still alive? Was I never in
Hell?
There was no trace of it that he could find.  Nothing of the horror he thought
he’d endured was lurking in his eyes.
What the fuck?
He looked around the room, debating his next move.  Shower.  I should shower.  
He examined his body as he lathered it.  No new scars.  But old ones are still
there.  I thought they were gone, thought it was all gone, body brand-spanking-
new every day, ready to be --   He shook the rising hysteria off.  It wasn’t
real.  Sammy never died and Dad never died and I never went to Hell and
Alastair….If Alastair wasn’t real, how do I know that name?
He showered until the water turned lukewarm.  The towel was soft and fluffy,
and something smelled amazing.  
Coffee.  Bobby had made coffee.
 
===============================================================================
 
Bobby chuckled as Dean dropped into a chair, hands curled around a chipped mug,
practically drooling.  “I need to give you some privacy, there, boy?”
Dean ignored the jibe, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.  When was the last
time I had a good cup of coffee?
Bobby settled into a chair across from Dean’s.  “That werewolf didn’t bite you,
did it?  I never seen anyone change, but I imagine becoming a werewolf
heightens your sense of smell quite a bit.”
“No.”  Dean shook his head, eyes opening to admire the dark liquid as he blew
across it.  “I checked myself in the shower.  No bites, no breaks in the skin.”
“Good.”  
Dean took a sip of the scalding brew, nearly vibrating with pleasure.   “This
is awesome.”  He looked up, a pitiful degree of gratitude in his eyes.
 “Thanks, Bobby.”
Concern and confusion flitted across the older man’s face, but he just smiled.
 “No problem, son.  Most people hate my coffee.”  He patted the younger man’s
shoulder on the way out.

===============================================================================
 
 
“Bobby! Behind you!”
The hunt had gone seriously south, and Dean had no time to retrieve his knife
from the chest of the werewolf at his feet.  He drew his Colt, intending to
nail the one coming up on Bobby right through the heart --
 
His gun jammed.  
 
He stared at it in shock.  This has happened before.  I know it’s happened
before.
A tortured scream jerked him back into the present, and he looked up to see the
werewolf bury its fangs into the older hunter’s shoulder.
“Bobby!”
He rammed the misfiring pistol into the back of his jeans, planted a boot on
the body at his feet, and jerked his blade free.
The living wolf tossed Bobby away like yesterday’s newspaper, and Dean threw
his knife, lip lifting in a satisfied sneer as it buried itself to the hilt in
the werewolf’s heart.
 
 
 
===============================================================================
 
 
“Dad. We need you.” Dean fought the blackness seeping into his mind, struggling
to stay conscious long enough to get to safety.
 "What happened?” There was no fear in the man's voice, just a suppressed
irritation, and Dean's panic escalated.  He’s already angry, and I haven’t even
told him --
 “Werewolves. And...I shot him..” Dean hated himself for the sob that escaped
him. “I shot Bobby.”
 “Christ, Dean.” The irritation had escalated.  “Where? Is he alive? How bad is
the bleeding?”
 “He -- he was bitten.  He started to turn, Dad.”  The blackness kept taunting
him.  It was hard to breathe.  “I killed him, Dad.  I killed him.”
 “Jesus Christ, son.  You let him get bit ?  You know better than that.”  
John’s disgust carried clearly across the cell phone connection. “Just get him
home. I'm on the way.”
 The line went dead.  Dean dropped the phone, returning his bloody, shaking
hand to the steering wheel.  Just get him home.

===============================================================================

John strode into the room, wiping Bobby’s blood from his hands.  “Get your
shirt off.  I  need to get you patched up so we can give Singer a proper
funeral.”
Dean had not stopped crying since the moment he realized he was going to have
to kill the man that had always been good to him.He looked right in my eyes
when I pulled the trigger.
“Jesus Christ.”  Dean had peeled his shirt off, wincing as it pulled free from
torn flesh, and John shook his head, clearly disgusted.  “What a fucking mess.
 Get up on the table, face down. The ones on your back are deeper; I’ll take
care of those first.”
Dean set his pistol on the counter.  He almost dropped his shirt on the floor,
then thought better of it, jamming it between his teeth as he settled onto the
kitchen table.
“So, you wanna tell me what happened out there, Dean?”
The older hunter was dumping holy water into the bone-deep claw marks that
crossed Dean’s back, and the pain had him nearly breathless.  He pulled the
self-imposed gag from his mouth.  “Gun jammed.”
“What?”  John’s voice had taken on a cutting edge.  “The 1911 jammed?”
Dean nodded.  John had finished rinsing the cuts with holy water, and Dean
braced himself for the next step: peroxide.  
“That thing never jams.  Where is it?”
Dean gestured with his head.  “Counter.”
Cool liquid flowed over his skin, and Dean hissed at the immediate and sharp
burn that it caused.
John retrieved the gun.
“When was the last time you cleaned this?”
“What?”  The agony in his back coupled with the horror of having killed his
surrogate father had Dean’s brain wanting to go offline, and he was tempted to
let it.
“I said your fucking pistol is filthy.  When was the last time you cleaned it?”
The burn was intensifying, the bubbling liquid feeling for all the world like
it was boiling his flesh.  “I -- I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Dean didn’t miss the danger in that tone, and he struggled to focus.  “Can’t
remember.” Hurts.  Can’t think.
“You know better, Dean." The man's voice was a strangled growl.  "Your weapon
is your life , and your carelessness or laziness or whatever the fuck it was,
that’s why it jammed. Why you had to murder Bobby.”
Nausea and a horrified disbelief washed over him, and Dean choked on his sobs.
 “Dad...I’m sorry.”
“I’ll tell you what: I sure as hell don’t want to have to touch you long enough
to stitch these fucking wounds.  You make me sick.”
When did I clean it last?  Why can’t I remember?  Doesn’t matter.  This is my
fault.  Bobby’s dead and I shot him and it’s my fault.
John rummaged through Bobby’s cupboards, retrieving a bottle of rubbing
alcohol, and poured it over Dean’s back liberally.  “I’ll just cauterize it.”
“Dad!  Stop!”  He’d thought the peroxide was bad, but this was worse, so much
worse, and Dean writhed as he gripped the edges of the table with no idea how
to escape the torment that was his own flesh.
Dean heard the flick of a lighter, and he was on fire, literally on fire, an
absolutely insane, unbearable amount of pain screaming through his body, the
smell of roast pork and burnt hair, and he was shouting, rolling off the table
and onto the floor, onto his back, trying to smother the flames, and it hurt,
oh god it hurts so fucking bad, please--
He turned onto his stomach, chest heaving, fighting nausea as well as pain, and
it still burned, burned so badly he couldn’t even tell if the flames were out,
and his father’s boots were there, and he looked up,like staring through a
sheet of rain on a window, his eyes were so wet -- “Dad.  Please.”
John was holding his belt, and he brought it down across Dean’s charred and
bloody flesh with as much strength as he could, each strike emphasizing a word:
“Clean. Your. Fucking. Gun.”
It was too much, and as hard as Dean tried to stay still and be quiet, his body
could not, and he twisted away, vomiting even as he screamed.
I’m sorry.  Bobby, I’m sorry!  I don’t know why it wasn’t clean, I clean it
after every shoot, I don’t know what happened, I’m sorry, I’m sorry--
His nails split and frayed as he dug them into the rough surface of Bobby’s
worn hardwood floor, his mind gone, body working on instinct to save itself
from the horror that had befallen it.
 
John dropped the belt, grabbing a fistful of his son’s hair, lifting his head
up, forcing Dean to look down the muzzle of his pistol.
 
“You see that, Dean?  That is what a clean gun looks like.  The people who rely
on me won’t die because of a fucking misfire, because my goddamn weapon is
clean.”
He used his grip on Dean’s hair to haul the young hunter into a sitting
position.  He dropped his own pistol in Dean’s lap, then pulled the 1911 from
his waistband.  “You see this?”  He pointed the barrel at Dean’s right eye,
then pressed it brutally under the bridge of his nose.  “You smell it?  It’s
dirty, Dean!  And I haven’t even looked at the magazine yet!  Shells don’t load
right, they don’t fire right, they don’t even fucking flyright when a gun is as
poorly cared for as this!”
He backhanded Dean with the pistol, opening up a fissure along his cheek.
I didn’t clean it why didn’t I clean it I’m sorry Bobby sorry so sorry Bobby
please forgive me
And Dean knew that he couldn’t have actually been to Hell, he must have been
confused about that earlier, because Hell was supposed to be the worst thing
that could ever happen to you, and this, this was so much worse than anything
he could ever remember.
 
A razor hit the floor in front of him.
 
“Who do you hate more right now, Dean?  Me, or yourself?”  A familiar boot toed
the equally familiar blade, and the name ‘Alastair’ beat a pulse in Dean’s
head.  “You can end this right now, boy.  Or it can keep going, day after day
after day.  Your choice.”
Dean stared at the thin steel.  Don’t do it. It’s a trick.  Don’t you dare pick
up that fucking blade.
“I know you hate me right now, you miserable little fuck.  Such a sorry excuse
for a hunter.  I’m ashamed to even tell people that you’re my son, you know
that?  And I’m not done with this.  I’m going to kick the shit out of you, and
after we burn Singer’s body, I will whip you until there’s no skin left to
mark. You understand what I’m saying, Dean?  You are worthless and careless and
a fucking disgrace.  Unless you pick up that blade and prove that you have the
balls to come at me with it, you are no son of mine, and I am going to beat you
to death like a fucking rabid dog --”
 
Dean picked up the pistol his father had dropped in his lap
 
And put a bullet in  his own brain.
 
===============================================================================
 
Alastair sighed heavily, glaring at his companion.
Well, that’s disgusting.
He had looked over just in time to catch the incubus ejaculating.
Alastair rolled his eyes.
“We’ll do it again tomorrow.  This timeIwill figure out how to up the ante.”
 Alastair spared the loathsome creature one more glance.  “Clean that mess up.”
 
***** OF WOLF AND MAN 3 *****
===============================================================================
 
Dean woke to someone slapping his face and calling his name.
He scrambled backwards, hands up, eyes wild, stopping only when his shoulders
and the back of his skull impacted something hard.
“Bobby?”
The gruff old hunter’s eyes were full of concern.  “Hey, kid.  How you
feelin’?”
Dean looked around in confused panic.   Bobby’s guest room. Didn’t I just do
this?   “Where’s Sam?”
“He’s off at college, remember?  We been keepin’ tabs on him.  He’s good; safe.
 Got a girlfriend.”
Dean settled back onto the bed,  heart racing.   I knew he was going to say
that.  I  remember  him saying that.  What the hell is going on?
“You alright, son?  That werewolf rung your bell pretty hard.”
He pressed a hand to his temple.   I have a concussion.  And we’re going after
those wolves again tonight.   “Yeah.  ‘M okay.  Just need a minute.”
His brain was spinning.   He’s going to tell me that Dad is in Illinois.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He went after those witches in Illinois, remember?  Left us to tackle the
‘wolves.”
Dean remembered that hunt.  Remembered getting hurt, hauling Bobby out of
there.  But there was more.   Didn’t it all go sideways?  Didn’t Bobby get
bitten?  Start to turn?  Didn’t I shoot Bobby?  Am I reliving this so I can do
it over, save him?   “We didn’t get them….”
“No.”  He patted Dean’s leg.  “But we didn’t get dead, either.  We got two more
nights ‘fore the moon gets too far from full.  If you’re feelin’ up to it,
we’ll go back out tonight.”
“Yeah.  Okay.”  He squeezed his skull with both hands, willing the spinning
thoughts and building terror to stop, or at least slow down.  “Are you okay,
Bobby?  Not hurt?”
The older man chuckled.  “Take more than some pissant werewolf to damage a
salty ol’ dog like me.  I’m jus’ fine.  Lemme get ya some aspirin.”
“Thanks, Bobby.”
 
===============================================================================
 
As soon as the older man left, Dean got up, ignoring the mild dizziness and
nausea that told him had a concussion.   It’s real.  I’ll touch the curtain and
it will be real. I’ll touch the window and it will be real.  I'll look out and
it will be Bobby’s yard, the tree and the cars and the dirt will all be there.
He swallowed hard, turning away from the window.
He went into the bathroom.   There won’t be anything.  No blood, no torn
clothes, because that part hasn’t happened yet.  
And I’ll look in the mirror because I expect to see Hell staring back at me,
and that won’t be there, either.
But it feels as real as this.  Hell feels as real as this.
Dean  moved to the sink as if compelled.  He leaned on the counter, staring
into his face, searching his eyes.  As expected, there was no trace of trauma
that he could find.  Nothing of the horror he remembered  was lurking in his
eyes.
What the fuck?
He looked around the room, remembering his next move.   Shower.  I shower next.
 
He examined his body as he lathered it.   All my old scars are still there.
 Just like I knew they would be.  But I also thought they’d be gone, because I
get a new body each day.  So if all of the other shit already happened, did
Hell, too?  Did I go back in time?  What the fuck is going on?
He showered until the water turned lukewarm.   I’ll go downstairs now, and
there will be coffee, and bacon.
 
===============================================================================

Bobby turned, mug in one hand, full plate in the other.  “Have a seat, idjit.
 Need ta build yer strength up if we’re goin’ after those ‘wolves tonight.”
Dean accepted Bobby’s offerings, trying to figure out how to ask...or what to
ask.  “Hey, Bobby.”
“Yeah?”  The older hunter was at the stove, filling his own plate.
“What...Um...What’s up with deja vu?  Is it a supernatural thing?”
Bobby settled into a chair across from Dean’s.  “Not that I know of.  Why do
you ask?”
“What about time travel?  Is that a thing?  Or reliving the same day over and
over again?”
Bobby set his fork down, giving Dean his full attention.  “What’s goin’ on?”
Dean took a sip of Bobby’s signature brew.   “This is awesome.”
“Quit evading.  What’s going on?”
Dean sighed.  “I don’t know, Bobby.  I just feel like...like I’ve lived all of
this before.  And more.”
Bobby waited.
Dean shifted uncomfortably.  “Like this hunt: I know we’re going out tonight.
 I know we’re going to get hurt.”  He swallowed.  “I think you’re going to get
shot.”
“Shot?”
“Yeah.  By me.”
Bobby leaned back, looking thoughtful.  “You’ve had an awful lot of concussions
in yer life.  That might have somethin’ to do with it.”
Dean snorted.  “I really don’t think that’s it, Bobby.”
“Maybe it has something to do with those witches yer dad is after.”
“That makes more sense.  I fricken’ hate witches.”
Bobby chuckled.  “You finish yer breakfast. I’ll give him a call.”
“Thanks, Bobby.”  He lifted his mug.  “Coffee’s great, by the way.”
Concern and confusion flitted across the older man’s face, but he just smiled.
 “No problem, son.  Most people hate my coffee.”  He patted the younger man’s
shoulder on the way out.
 
 
 
===============================================================================
 
 
“The witches are taken care of.  Yer pa’s on the way home.”
“What did he say about...my thing?”
“Said these ones weren’t much, but he thought maybe.  Hard to tell, ‘cause we
got no idea how much mojo a thing like that takes.  He ain’t worried, though.
 Says we need to go ahead with the hunt.”
Uneasiness stirred in Dean’s gut.  “Alright.  But if I say, ‘Bobby, behind
you,’  move .  Got it?”
 
===============================================================================


“Bobby! Behind you!”
The hunt had gone seriously south, and Dean had no time to retrieve his knife
from the chest of the werewolf at his feet.  He drew his Colt, intending to
nail the one coming up on Bobby right through its hairy chest --
His gun jammed.  
He stared at it in shock.   This has happened before.  I know it’s happened
before.   He cleared the chamber and raised the gun to see the werewolf
preparing to bury its fangs into the older hunter’s shoulder.
“Bobby!”  
With no clear shot of the creature available to him, Dean dropped to the
ground, aiming at the lower left side of Bobby’s abdomen on an upward
trajectory.  
 
His gun didn't jam a second time.
 
The werewolf dropped and Dean ran over, putting a bullet into the thing’s heart
just to be certain it was dead.
Bobby stared at him, eyes wide.  “You shot me!”
“I know. I’m sorry. It was about to bite you.”  Dean knelt in front of the
older man, trying to pull his shirts out of the way to inspect the damage, and
Bobby slapped at his hands.  
“Get off me, ya idjit.”
“You know I need to see, Bobby.  C’mon.”  Dean’s heart was racing, fear for his
friend making his hands feel clumsy.
“I got this.”  Bobby shrugged out of his jacket and flannel, then gingerly
peeled the hem of his undershirt up.
Blood soaked him from ribs to jeans.   Shit.  He’s bleeding way too much.
“You bleed just fine.”  Dean removed his own already ruined shirts, tearing
each into two pieces.  “One in front might’ve nicked your spleen.”  He folded
half of his t-shirt into a pad and pressed it gently on that wound.  “The one
in back is higher up.  Not bleeding much, so hopefully I missed all the good
stuff.”  He pressed the second half of his shirt to it anyway, then used the
larger flannel to tie both pads in place.  “How are you feeling?”   He regained
his feet, shrugging into his coat.  
“Like I been shot, ya idjit!  How’d ya think I’m feelin’?”
 Dean’s tension eased marginally.   He’s definitely still himself, at least.
“You look worse’n I do."  Bobby continued to exercise his expertise in snark. 
"How’re you feelin’?”  
Dean looked down at the lacerations cutting across his ribs.  He was every bit
as gory as the older hunter.  “Hospital?”
“With a bullet wound? You know better’n that.  Just get me home.”
 
===============================================================================


“Dad. We need you.” Dean fought the blackness seeping into his mind, struggling
to stay conscious long enough to get to safety.
“What happened?”  There was no fear in the man's voice, just a suppressed
irritation, and Dean's panic escalated.   He’s already angry, and I haven’t
even told him  --
“Werewolves. And...I shot him..” Dean hated himself for the sob that escaped
him. “I shot Bobby.”
“Christ, Dean.”  The irritation had escalated.   “Where? Is he alive? How bad
is the bleeding?”
“Left side.  Might be his spleen.  He’s bleedin’ pretty bad.  Passed out about
five minutes ago.”  The blackness kept taunting him.  It was hard to breathe.
 “The wolf was behind him, Dad.  It was going to turn him.  I had to take the
shot.”
“Jesus Christ, Dean.  Thought I could trust you to hunt without me.  Dammit.”
“Should I get him to a hospital?”
“With a bullet wound?  You know better than that.”   John’s disgust carried
clearly across the cell phone connection.  “Just get him home. I'm on the way.”
The line went dead.  Dean dropped the phone, returning his bloody, shaking hand
to the steering wheel.  Dread was building, and he didn't know why.
Just get him home.


===============================================================================


John was waiting for them when Dean pulled up.  He went straight to the
passenger door, scanning Bobby quickly.  “Let’s get him inside.”
They carried the older hunter in, one Winchester under each arm, his boots
dragging limply.  “Clear the table,” John demanded, and Dean complied, fighting
off his own weakness and nausea, a prayer for his friend running as a constant
background noise in his head.
They stretched Bobby out on the table.  John was in full Marine field medic
mode.  “Get the first aid kit -- the big one.”  
When Dean returned John had stripped Bobby to the waist and tied him down to
the table.  “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to transfuse him.  You’re going to go in there, figure out what’s
bleeding, and get it to stop.”
Dean backed away from the table.  “Dad -- “
His father held out an old-fashioned straight razor, handle first.  “Take it,
Dean.  You can’t give him any blood, you’ve lost too much.  And you’re the one
who shot him, so you can be the one to fix him.”  He gestured impatiently with
the blade.  “Come on, son.  Take it.”
“Alastair.”  The word was a horrified whisper.
“Jesus, Dean!  He’s dying!  Let’s get this done!”
“Alastair.”  Horror was giving way to rage.
“What the hell is that?  Some kind of curse?  Get your ass over here and take
this blade!”
“No.  You're not my dad, you evil fucking prick.”
 
===============================================================================
 
Suddenly their positions had changed, and Dean found himself in a situation
that felt horrifyingly familiar: strapped down, stripped down, staring up at a
pallid face and gleaming razor.
Bobby stood near his head, looking both shocked and nauseous.  
“It’s okay, Bobby.  No matter what you see, what you hear, it’s not real, you
got it?”
“Dean -- “
“No! Just listen to me!”  The blade slicked down the center of his abdomen, and
Dean ground his teeth, struggling to mask his reaction from his oldest friend.
 “I died, remember?  My soul went to Hell. My soul, Bobby, not my body.  This
isn’t real!”
“Help me out, Bobby," John commanded. "He’s bleeding bad.”
Alastair had kept John’s face, John’s voice, and he reached into Dean’s abdomen
with both hands.
Dean tensed, body trying to curl forward, a scream trapped desperately behind
his teeth.
“I think it’s his spleen, Bobby.  I’ll hold it, you tie off the vessels.”
"It's not him, Bobby," Dean gasped out.  "That's not Dad."
Tears flowed down Bobby’s face.  He looked from John to Dean, clearly torn.
“It’s not real, Bobby.  I’ll be whole tomorrow.  This’ll be over soon.”  It’s
all he could manage to grind out without losing the tight control he had on a
rising scream.
“Come on, Bobby!" John's voice projected authority as well as rising panic.
"We’re going to lose him!  Get over here!”
Dean felt a familiar tug, and hot liquid flowed over his skin.  
Bone deep cold followed, bringing a profound weakness.
His mind tried to leave, but he wouldn’t let it.  Not with Bobby falling apart
beside him.
“‘S okay, Bobby.  I’m okay.”  He hoped his friend could hear him.
Bobby’s mouth hung open, and his eyes kept jumping from John's face to Dean’s
to the mess of the young hunter’s abdomen and back again.  “Dean…”
“This is Hell, Bobby.  Alastair’s just fucking with me.  Be over soon.  I’m
okay.  Be over soon.”  He wanted to say more, needed to say more, but his lips
tingled and his tongue felt numb and he couldn't catch his breath.
Bobby dropped to his knees.  “Dean.”  His voice was broken.
“Never mind.  I’ll do it myself.”  The John that wasn’t tore the vessels
running into the hilus of Dean’s spleen, dropped the organ to the floor, and
kicked it under the table.  “There.  Problem solved.  Let’s make sure the
bullet missed his intestines.”
Horrified realization was creeping over Bobby's features.  The sight of it
broke Dean's heart.
“I’m okay, Bobby.  Don’ watch.”  A sharp tug deep inside of him sent a bolt of
agony up his spine, and Dean turned his head away from his friend, mouth open
in a silent scream.
“Wow.  Did you know how many intestines a person has?”  John was drawing the
glistening loops out, piling them on the table.
Dean began choking on his own vomit.
“Stop.”  Bobby was looking up at John, face wet.  “Please.  Just stop.”
Alastair-John held up his bloodied hands.  His features shifted, the illusion
of John Winchester falling away.  “He’s just about done anyway, aren’t you
Dean?”
The young hunter’s body was trembling and pale, the table and floor  having
claimed the majority of his blood.
Alastair leaned close.  “Can you hear me, Dean?”
A low moan provided an answer.
“Did you enjoy your visit with your friend, Dean?”
“F-fuck you, Alastair.”  
“Look at him, Dean.”  Alastair turned his toy’s head, and Dean had no strength
to resist him.  “I think we broke him.”  He stroked Dean’s cheek.  “He really
loves you, doesn’t he?”
“I hate you.”  That passion was the only thing powering Dean's voice.
“You could end this, you know, Dean.  We’re torturing your friend here,
breaking his poor, withered heart, and it’s your fault.”
“Stop,” Bobby whispered, and Alastair waved his hand, silencing the older
hunter.
“You could still fix this, Dean.  Take my blade, and I’ll make sure your friend
remembers nothing.”
Eyes locked on Bobby’s, Dean ground out his last words: “Bobby’s tough, and I’m
okay, so you can just go fuck yourself, Alastair.”
 
===============================================================================


Bobby sat up, heart pounding, face wet.  A quick scan assured him that his room
looked the same.  Nothing had changed since he’d gone to bed.  He glanced at
the clock, startled at the realization that he’d only been asleep for an hour.
 
“Dean.”
***** HIT THE LIGHTS I *****
Chapter Notes
     In case you've been following this, I actually added a new chapter
     11, which bumped everything after up another chapter. Confusing, eh?
     Yeah, I'm like that. ;P
===============================================================================
 
“Lock the doors, the windows.  Close the shades.  Most important?”  
“Look out for Sammy.”
Dean followed his father to the door, locking the deadbolt behind him.
===============================================================================
No no no.  This is done, this over, the shtriga’s gone, me and Sam ganked it! 
The incubus crouched over Dean,  talons digging into his victim's skull.  It
salivated as it manipulated the man's brain, feeding off of the angst pouring
from the tortured soul strapped to Alastair's rack.
===============================================================================
 
 
Dean looked in on his sleeping brother before slipping out the door, locking it
behind him.  He just had to get away, even if it was only to play the same
arcade game over and over again.   It’s always about Sammy: keep Sammy safe,
look out for Sammy, keep Sammy happy.   He slammed another quarter into the
slot of the machine.   I never get a break.  Nobody ever asks what I want.  I
never get to be the most important one, the one everyone looks out for, tries
to keep happy. I’m sick of it.  I wish I never had a little brother.
The bartender kicked him out, and he trudged back to the motel room.
Opened the door.
Crossed to the room.
Saw the shtriga perched over his little brother, sucking the life from him.
 
And smiled.
===============================================================================
NO!  That’s not what happened!  I tried to kill it!  I picked up the shotgun!
 I tried!
The incubus moaned, savoring the man's delicious pain, his helpless
desperation.
His guilt.
===============================================================================
 
 
Dean heard a key in the door and scrambled for the shotgun, lifting, aiming --
John shoved him aside, his pistol raised, the shot deafening in the close
space.
The shtriga screamed, flitting out the window.
John went to Sam, weeping over the child’s still form.
His favorite child, young Dean thought bitterly.  Now maybe it will bemyturn
for once.
 
===============================================================================
 
It’s not real.  That’s not what happened, not what I thought, not what I wanted
to happen.  I loved Sammy, I always loved Sammy, I never felt that way!
The incubus writhed ecstatically, phallus dripping.
===============================================================================
 
 
John cradled the small boy to his chest, sobbing.  “Dean!  How did this happen?
 Where were you?”
Don’t tell him you were out!  He’ll murder you!  “I was in  here, watching TV.
 I never heard it!  I just got up to check, just in case, like I always do, and
I saw it!”  He set the gun down.  Took a tentative step into the room.  “Should
we...does he need to go to the hospital?”
There was a knock on the door, and the two froze.  “Hey, kid!”  The bartender’s
voice carried through the door.  “You still awake?  You forgot your coat!”
John stared at his older son, death in his eyes.  “Watch your brother.  Stay
with him this time.”  He eased the comatose child onto his back, brushing past
Dean to open the motel room door.  “Can I help you?”
“Yeah.”  The man held up Dean’s jacket.  “Your son was over playing arcade
games a few minutes ago.  He left this behind.”
“Thanks.  I appreciate it.”  He took the incriminating item, smiling warmly at
the bartender as he closed and bolted the door.
He turned to Dean, who was watching him through the open bedroom door, eyes
wide.
The coat dangled from one forefinger.
“Right here, watching TV,  huh?”
Dean swallowed.  “Dad...I’m sorry.”
John crossed the room, a panther closing the distance in anticipation of a
kill.  “You’re sorry?  Your brother is dying right now, and you’re sorry?”
He had reached the bed, and he wrapped one hand around his older son’s throat,
lifting him off the ground.   “You’re SORRY?”
He threw the child.
Dean  hit the wall, stunned, and slid to the floor.
John paused to slip a pillow beneath Sam’s head, pulling the blankets up to his
younger boy’s chin.
He turned to Dean, lifting him by the hair, and threw him toward the door.
 “Get in the other room, boy.”
Dean scrambled, trying to rise, and boot caught him in the stomach, carrying
him through the door.
He retched, wind blown from his lungs, and curled in on himself.  
He felt his father’s fist in his hair, the other gripping the waistband of his
jeans, and he was airborne once more.
He hit the back of the cheap couch, ribs cracking under the impact with the
thinly covered wooden frame.  He cried out, and John sneered.  “I’ll show you
sorry, you worthless piece of shit.”  
John Winchester unbuckled his belt, pulling it from the loops.
 
===============================================================================
 
No no no.  This isn’t what happened.  This never happened!
But it felt real.  Every blow, every word, every tear: it felt real.
The incubus shuddered, belly bloated, phallus pulsing.
===============================================================================
 
 
“Strip.  Now.”
Snot and tears ran down his face, and he still couldn’t breathe.  Even the
slightest move sent shocks of agony through his ribs, and Dean sobbed, hands
shaking, unable to comply.
John picked him up by the neck, snagging his fingers in the boy’s ragged t-
shirt, tearing it from  his body.  “I gave you an order, Dean!”  He threw the
boy to the ground, wrapping the tongue end of his belt around his fist.  “Oh,
that’s right, I forgot: you’re Dean Winchester.  You don’t have to listen to my
orders.”  The belt came down, buckle striking the boy’s bare shoulder,
shredding the flesh.  “Don’t have to stay in when I tell you to.”  Another
strike landed, this one across the boy’s already damaged ribs, and he screamed,
rolling onto his stomach, arm pressed to his side.  “Don’t have to tell the
truth.”  A third blow opened a furrow along his back.  “Don’t have to keep your
brother safe.”  A fourth laceration appeared.  “Keep him alive!”  
Now the blows fell without pause, the enraged father following the young boy as
he belly-crawled desperately across the floor, sobbing, vomiting, pleading.
He finally stopped, placing one large, booted foot on his son’s neck, pressing
the child’s face into the grimy carpeting of the run-down motel.  “Get your
pants off.  Now.”
The sobbing child struggled to obey, barely having the strength to lift his
arms.
His father lost patience, pulling out a large Bowie knife.
He slid the tip beneath the waistband of the boy’s jeans, taking to pains to
avoid flesh, and cut the cloth from the child’s body.
Dean screamed and thrashed, begging for mercy, for salvation.
 
No one heard.
 
===============================================================================
Stop, Alastair.  Just stop.  My father didn’t do this.  He would never do this!
The incubus cackled, hips pumping, acidic saliva draining onto his victim's
chest, burning through the man's skin to the muscle beneath.
===============================================================================
 
 
The unblemished skin of the boy’s lower body was in stark contrast to the
battered pulp above his waist.
But not for long.
The boot stayed in place, and the child’s body bounced with each blow as the
belt rained down mercilessly, transferring all of the father’s hatred and rage
into the diminutive form.
 
===============================================================================
 
“Would you like it to stop, Dean?”  Alastair’s sibilant murmur cut through the
nightmare he was forcing his captive to live through.  “Or shall I allow your
father to beat you to death?  Aren’t you curious to see what he’ll do with your
body?  I know I am.”
“Fuck you, Alastair.”  Dean knew what saying that to this demon could mean for
him, but at this point even an agonizing rape that ended with his body torn
apart or melted from the inside out was preferable to horror of knowing that
his brother was dying because of him, and watching his father, overcome by
sorrow and rage, beat a younger version of Dean to death.
He couldn’t watch that.
But there were worse things even than this.
“I’m not taking up your blade, asshole.”
 
===============================================================================


The beating stopped, leaving young Dean battered, bloody, yet somehow still
conscious.
John left him sobbing on the floor to go check on Sam.  He returned with the
younger boy, hidden within a swaddle of blankets, cradled in his arms.  He set
the child gently on the couch, smoothing his hand over the child’s brow.
 “You’re going to be okay, sweetheart.  Daddy’s got you.”
He turned abruptly to his older son, lifting Dean by the hair and one ankle.
 He carried him into the room that Sam had occupied, dropping him onto the bed.
 He crossed to the window, striking it with his elbow, shattering the glass.
 He turned out the light, closing the door but not latching it.
“Come on, shtriga.  Come to Papa.”


Dean curled into a ball on his side, alternately sobbing and retching, nauseous
but with nothing left for his stomach to offer.
He shivered as chill air from the broken window fanned across his naked body,
wet with blood and the sweat brought on by extreme pain.
He prayed to a god he didn’t believe in to let his brother live.  To get his
father to forgive him.  To take him away from his misery, his hopelessness, his
shame.
 
When the shtriga came, it was an answer to his prayers.
 
He rolled onto his back, gasping at the renewed agony, and opened his arms,
embracing his killer.
“Thank you.”
He faded into oblivion.
 
===============================================================================
 
The incubus shuddered, talons digging deep, blood and brain matter oozing out
around its matte black digits.  Its ejaculate coated the young man's torso,
burning through flesh, acrid smoke rising in its wake.


"Can we have your final answer, Dean?" Alastair brandished his favorite blade,
turning it to catch the light.
 
"N-nooo..."
 
Another day, gone.
***** HIT THE LIGHTS 2 *****
===============================================================================
 
“Lock the doors, the windows.  Close the shades.  Most important?”  
“Look out for Sammy.”
Dean followed his father to the door, locking the deadbolt behind him.
 
===============================================================================
On the rack Dean moaned, and the incubus shivered, savoring the taste of its
morning meal.
===============================================================================
 
Dean reassured himself that Sam was truly asleep before letting himself out,
locking the door behind him.  He strode into the bar as if he were accustomed
to such places, trading a five dollar bill for quarters, and took up his
position before the lone arcade game.
Hours later he had burned through an entire week’s worth of grocery money, and
the bartender was escorting him out the door.  “Kid. We’re closing.  Don’t you
have a home?  Parents?  What are you doin’ out so late, anyway?”
He hurries back to their room, throwing a glance over his shoulder to make sure
the nosey bartender isn’t watching him.
He lets himself in.
Locks the door behind him.
Crosses the room, knowing before he reaches the bedroom that something is
wrong, Sammy’s in trouble.
Sees a monster crouched over the limp form of his brother.
He lifts the shotgun.
The creature raises its head, turning dead eyes on him, and hisses.
Dean jerks, terror-spiked adrenaline crashing through him.
The gun goes off just as John bursts through the door, yelling, “Get out of the
way!”
The shtriga vanishes.
Dean stares, horrified, at the blood welling out of the remnants of his
brother’s chest.
John pushes past him, dropping to his knees, his tortured cry of “Sammy!”
reverberating in the small space.
 
===============================================================================
“No!”  The incubus held the man in a paralyzed state, talons piercing his
scalp, abdomen swelling as it fed off of its victim’s horror, his pain, his
guilt.  “I didn’t shoot him.  I never shot him!” But the incubus was in
control, and Dean was forced to live this experience as if it were actually
occurring.  “Sammy!  Sam!”
His tortured cry reverberated in the stone room.
===============================================================================
 
“What have you done?”  John hugged the small body to his chest, tears mingling
with the smeared blood on his cheeks.  “Dean, what have you done?”
“I...I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean--”
“You’re ‘sorry’?  You ‘didn’t mean’?”  John hugged his dead child, sobbing out
his grief.  “Do you think that will make this better, Dean?  Do you?”
Dean took a step back, very carefully placing the shotgun next to the door,
vowing to himself that he would never ever fire a gun again for as long as he
lived.  “No.”  But he didn’t know what would make it better, and his horror and
disbelief overwhelmed him, and the tears coursed down his cheeks.
 
John held his younger son, rocking the boy until his body cooled and his limbs
began to stiffen.
Dean stood, a mute witness, wishing he were the one lying dead in his father’s
arms.
“We have to --” John began, voice breaking.  “We have to...burn his body.”
Dean’s catatonia broke.  “Dad, no!  We can’t!  He’s my brother!”
“We  have to, Dean.  We have to.  If we don’t, he’ll come back and haunt you.
 You killed him; he’ll want revenge.”
 
===============================================================================
“No!  He wouldn’t!  Sammy wouldn’t!  He wouldn’t hate me!  He’d understand,
he’d forgive me!”
But he hasn’t, a voice deep in his soul whispered.  You left him alone topside,
and he hasn’t forgiven you.
The incubus groaned its pleasure, phallus filling.
===============================================================================
 
John directed, forcing his older son to wrap the younger’s corpse, to build a
pyre, to salt the body.  He watched the older boy struggle to carry his
brother’s cold, stiff body to the funeral site, helped him lift the dead child
onto the pyre.  Made Dean pour gasoline over everything, made him strike the
match and light the fire.  
Stood by while their little Sammy, their reason for being, went up in flames,
just like his mother before him.
 
===============================================================================
“No!  Sammy!”  Dean cried out in his child’s voice, grieving for his baby
brother.
The incubus moaned, dripping its burning saliva onto the captive’s chest,
melting holes into his flesh.
===============================================================================
 
Back in their room, John pulled out a familiar bottle.  “Go to bed, Dean.”
“But...it’s bloody.”  And Sam’s bladder and bowels had let go in that bed.
 Dean did not want to sleep in it.
“It’s your fault, Dean.  You shot him.  You killed your brother.  Now go lay
down.”
Dean piled what blankets had not burned with his brother over the mess, curling
up as far from it as possible.
He could smell it, nearly taste the iron and ammonia on his tongue, and he
gagged through his tears.
He got up, crossing to the window, straining to push it all the way up.
“You can come back, shtriga.  No one will hurt you.  No one cares.”
He climbed back into bed, waiting, hoping.
But the shtriga never came.
 
Instead, morning dawned, and Dean stumbled out, bleary-eyed, confused, praying
it wasn’t real, praying it had been a nightmare.
His father lay face-down on the couch, saliva tinged with vomit trickling from
his open mouth, empty bottle of Jack Daniels clutched in his fist.
Dean thought about breakfast.  Remembered Sammy, the Lucky Charms, the
Spaghettios.
He ran to the bathroom, vomiting bile into the commode.
The loud flush awakened the slumbering giant, and John pushed himself up.
 “Sammy?  You okay?”
Dean came out, face pale, eyes hollow.  “It’s not Sammy, Dad.  It’s me.  Dean.”
John squinted. “Oh.  ‘S you.”  Disappointment melted his features.  “I forgot.
 You killed him.  Sammy’s gone.”
He pushed himself into a sitting position, head cradled in his hands.  “Gotta
make a plan.  Figure out what to do.”
Dean waited.
“Got a different fam’ly, in Minnesota.  Get rid of you, I can go to them.  Quit
hunting.  Be a husband again.  A dad.”
 
===============================================================================
Dean sobbed.  “No.  He wouldn’t say that.  Wouldn’t do that.  He wouldn’t send
me away.”
The incubus moaned, rubbing its engorged phallus against its victim’s thigh.
===============================================================================
 
A few days later a man came to the door.  John invited him in.
He bent to shake Dean’s hand.
His smile was thin, and it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Dad?”
“I’m not your dad anymore, Dean.  This man is.  You just be a good boy, do what
he says, make him happy.  You’ll be fine, Dean.”
He handed the man Dean’s duffle bag.  The man in turn passed John a small
backpack.  John opened it, lifted out a brick of bills, rifled it with his
thumb, and smiled.  He shook the man’s hand.  “Pleasure doing business with
you.”
“Come on, Dean.  I have some people I’d like you to meet.”
His father turned his back as Dean followed the other man out the door.
 
===============================================================================
“Stop!” Alastair demanded, irritation in his tone.
The incubus froze, body trembling as it leaked fluids, smoke rising from the
body of its victim.
“You aren’t supposed to kill him until I ask the question, you brainless twit!”
The incubus smiled, displaying jagged edges of blackened teeth that gave off a
nauseating odor.
“Dean,” Alastair called, and his toy moaned.
“Have you had enough?  Are you ready to take up my blade, be free of this
horror, start having fun again?”
What you do is not fun, but he lacked the strength to say it.  “Just let me
die.”
“Is that a ‘yes’?  You die, are born again as a demon, and live happily ever
after,” the Grand Torturer offered, every hopeful.
“No.  I live human, I die human.  Shove your blade up your ass, Alastair.”
The demon nodded to the incubus.  “He’s all yours.”
***** JUMP IN THE FIRE 1 *****
Chapter Summary
     Alastair has enlisted the help of an Incubus to dig out Dean's worst
     memories and greatest fears, bringing the involved souls together for
     a re-enactment with a more tragic ending. This one is from "Born
     Under A Bad Sign", a time that was literally Hell-on-Earth for Dean.
===============================================================================
 
He woke up on a groan.  Did somebody call my name?
“Dean!”
Yep.  Feminine hands tugged at him insistently.  The dull burn in his shoulder
intensified, and his teeth chattered with cold.  Jo helped him into a sitting
position, and his swallowed scream turned into a low growl as a white-hot agony
shot from his shoulder to his gut, stirring a boiling nausea.
He just wanted to lay back down, maybe forever.
Sam shot me.
===============================================================================
 
It all came back:
Jo tied up inside the bar. Sam begging Dean to kill him. Hide-and-seek in the
warehouse.
His brother’s dead  eyes over the barrel of his pistol.  Dean armed with
nothing but a flask of holy water.
A hard punch to his shoulder, not sure if it was a demon shove or a bullet.
Falling. Icy water enveloping him.
Forcing himself not to fight, to sink, hide from his demonic little brother’s
view.
Trying to swim, movement of his left arm shattering the blessed numbness
brought on by the bone-solidifying cold, pain so bright and intense he almost
lost his breath on a scream. Blackness threatening; mind telling him this time
he should just give up, it’s a bad wound and he’s drowning, and his brother is
possessed and killing hunters, there’s nothing left to live for, to fight for -
-
But demon-Sam is still up there, and so is Jo.
Jo… .
The water is so cold, it feels like a vice is crushing his head, and he just
wants to let go, no more pain or fear or loss, and Jo is tough, and now she
knows that Sam is possessed.  She’ll be okay.
But it’s Sammy, and the demon will ride him until there’s nothing left, and
Dean would sell his soul to save his brother.  If he can find him, get Sam to
Bobby’s, he knows they can exorcise that demon.  Get his little brother back.
It’s not the first time Dean has been at odds with himself.
Not the first time he’s fought for his life -- not for his sake, but because of
Sam.
So he allows his body to drop, uses his right arm to grip debris on the floor
of the lake, feeling the incline, pulling himself upward, lungs screaming at
him to breath, and he keeps going, releasing just a little air to ease the
pressure, watching the bubbles rise,  following, and there’s wood under his
fingers, but it’s slick: he can’t grip it.  He’s so close, and he pushes off,
head breaking the surface, gasps in a breath, prays the demon doesn’t hear,
right hand finding the edge of something solid, and he pulls himself up, wooden
ramp, just a little farther, crawling but not, because he can’t lift his torso,
he’s pushing with his feet, so cold except for the fire in his shoulder.
 That’s spreading, consuming him, down to his fingertips, through his chest, up
his neck, and when the inferno reaches his brain, he is gone.
===============================================================================
 
“Where’s Sam?”  Because Sam was a threat, but Dean also needed to save him, and
how was that for conflicted?
“I don’t know, but you’re soaking wet and cold as ice.  We need to get you
inside.”  She stood, forcing him to rise with her.  “Come on.  I can’t carry
you.”
He grunted, fighting an urge to cry, the combination of fear and pain,
exhaustion and hopelessness threatening to unman him.
But he shoved it all down, because he was Dean fucking Winchester, and there
was no time for self-pity.  Suck it up, asshole.  You’ve got work to do.
 People to save.  
Sam.
===============================================================================
Whisky almost numbed him, and the shrieking agony of Jo’s inexperienced
fumbling brought clarity to the incessant churning in his mind.  
When she paused long enough to allow him to breathe, he called Bobby.  “Sam’s
possessed, and he’s out to murder hunters. I think he’s headed your way.   We
need to exorcise him.”
“I’m on it.”
Bobby never failed him.
===============================================================================
A light shone from the living room window.  Other than that, Bobby’s home was
silent.  
Lifeless.
Dean crept up the porch steps, flask of holy water open and ready.  
The doorknob turned easily under his hand.  He slipped into the kitchen, deftly
avoiding the loose areas in the floorboards, staying silent.
He wanted to call out, but fear for his old friend choked him, and he couldn't
risk giving away his position until he knew where the demon was.
He flattened his back to the wall beside the entrance to the living room.  His
head dipped around the door frame, pulling back almost immediately.
Sam was strapped to a chair in the middle of a Devil’s trap, but Dean had not
seen Bobby.
He dropped low, pivoting until he was framed by the doorway, scanning the
entire room.
No Bobby.
Demon-Sam moaned, head hanging.
Dean straightened, crossing to loom over the bound figure.
“Hey,” he barked, voice harsh, “where’s Bobby?”
Sam’s head snapped up, eyes black.  “You’ll see.”
Dean flew back, spine striking the edge of the door frame in a paralyzing
crunch, lungs locking.
Sam stood, his smile genuine enough to break Dean’s heart.
He strode across the room, hand rising, sliding Dean up the wall until the two
brothers were eye-to-eye.
Dean fought for consciousness, terrified at the numbness and paralysis
spreading down from the center of his back.
Terrified for Bobby.
“Dean, Dean, Dean,” the demon chided.  He stood so close, Dean could taste the
sulfur on his brother’s breath.  “You should have killed me when you had the
chance. Now we are going to have so much fun together, torturing Bobby!”  He
stroked Dean’s cheek.  “And then it will be your turn.  Always so tough, aren’t
you, Dean?”  He tipped his head as if he were moving in for a kiss.  “So much
for a little brother to live up to.  But I’ll make sure that Sam gets to see
you weak.  Gets to hear you scream and beg -- right before you die.”  He pulled
his head away.  A flick of his wrist sent Dean crashing into the opposite wall,
and the broken hunter's world went black.
===============================================================================
 
Hunter instincts kicked in before conscious awareness, and whatever hurt animal
noises Dean may have been making abruptly ceased.  His conscious mind scrambled
to unravel the signals and memories that flooded it -- shoulder and back burn,
lower body numb, can’t move, Sam, Jo -- Bobby.
Dean opened his eyes, taking in the rope around his chest, feeling the same
coarse fibers biting into his wrists somewhere behind his back.
For a moment he was surprised to find that he was clothed.  That faded quickly,
leaving him wondering why he had expected to be nude.
The floor beneath his feet was concrete.  The air was redolent with the smell
of engine grease and sawdust.
Bobby’s shop.
A quiet moan hovered in the silence.
Dean raised his head.  “Bobby?”
He closed his teeth immediately on the reflexively spoken word, praying to a
god he didn’t believe in that he had not caught the demon’s attention.
The older man did not respond.
Dean scrutinized his friend, trying to assess the man's injuries.  
A clanking and rattling announced the return of the demon.  Dean kept his head
up, intentionally drawing the Sam-thing’s gaze.
“Hey, big brother!  Nice to see you awake!”
Dean didn’t respond.  
Sam turned, waving his hands at the wheeled toolbox and an acetylene cutting
torch rig he had brought with him.  “Look!  I found toys!”
Dean focused on keeping his breathing slow and even, refusing to think about
all of the ways a demon might use those two objects.
“Since you’re awake, I guess I’ll start with you.  I’ll switch to Bobby as soon
as your screams wake him up.”  Sam smiled as if he’d just announced that Dean
would get first dibs at an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Then he turned to the tool
chest, opening drawers and rummaging through the contents.
“Here we go.”  He held a pair of tin snips aloft.
Dean wanted to close his eyes, to will all of this away, but even that was too
much weakness for a Winchester to show.
He clenched his jaw.
Demon-Sam stopped squarely in front of him, eyes gleaming with humor.  
“Sam,” Dean ground out, “I know you’re in there.  Remember Dad.  You can fight
this.”
Sam threw his head back and laughed, a chest-deep rumble that brought tears to
Dean’s eyes for both the novelty and wrongness of it.
White teeth and deep dimples taunted Dean as the tin snips descended.  “I hope
he does, Dean.  That will make this even more fun.”
===============================================================================
 
Despite his assumptions, the demon had not used its chosen tool to remove any
of Dean’s body parts.
His clothing, yes, but so far his hide was still intact.
Sam dropped the tin snips in a drawer, returning to Dean with the torch in tow.
Fuck .  Dean limited  his outward reaction to a clenched jaw while his mind
went into overdrive to smother his rising panic. Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuck !
Sam fumbled with the tanks of oxygen and acetylene.  Dean watched, hoping that
the demon wouldn’t be able to manipulate the complicated tool effectively.  
That hope faded as the distinct hiss of escaping gas breathed into the silence.
 Sam flicked the spark igniter, and a wide, orange flame burst to life.
Dean watched, expression impassive, as the demon fiddled with the knobs on the
torch, coning the fire down into a narrow white beam.
He  held it up, smiling triumphantly.  “What do you think, Dean?  Did I do it
right?”
The young hunter did not respond.
Sam approached, eyes on his brother’s face.
The flame crept closer to the side of the bound man’s thigh.
Dean’s gaze remained steady, face expressionless.
The smell of burning hair rose to his nostrils, followed by acrid smoke, then
the nauseating odor of scorched flesh.
Despite the rising panic in his chest, Dean didn’t so much as blink.  I can’t
feel.  Holyfuck, I can’tfeelit!
Sam’s expectant grin faded, brow furrowing.  He moved the flame to his
brother’s lower abdomen.
Dean clenched his jaw.  That should hurt.  Why doesn't that hurt?
The demon shifted the torch once more, dragging it down his victim’s ribs,
leaving a trail of blistered flesh behind.
And earned not even a grunt for his troubles.
Broken back...I have a broken back. How am I going to save Bobby now?  And Sam?
Expecting nothing after so many failures, demon-Sam brushed the flame over the
distinct curve of Dean’s deltoid.
The skin around the hunter’s eyes tightened and sweat beaded instantly on his
brow.  The clenched jaw was accompanied by held breath.
Sam smiled, bringing the white cone of fire closer, dragging it down his
brother’s arm.
Not gonna scream. Gotta keep him away from Bobby.
Son of a bitch, does that hurt!
He closed his eyes.
The line of agony extended down his forearm.
Sweat appeared on his upper lip, pooled in the hollow of his throat, slicked
his chest.
“You will scream, Dean.  I guarantee it.”
Even when the torch was removed from his arm, Dean kept his eyes squeezed
tightly shut, trying to convince himself that the burning torment was not
nearly as bad as he had imagined it would be.
That almost worked.
Then fire seared his nipple, and a strangled whine slipped through locked
teeth.
He felt the trembling start but held on, determined not to reward the sadistic
creature inhabiting his brother's body, reminding himself that it would hurt
less once the wound was deep enough.
By the time Sam removed the torch, Dean was dizzy from holding his breath for
so long.
Deep lines of dissatisfaction marred the demon's forehead.  
For Dean, the intense misery was unrelenting.  I didn’t scream.  Thank god, I
didn’t scream.
Sam turned the torch of, disgusted.  He glowered at Dean.  “Now what am I going
to do with  you?  Can’t take your eyes yet; I want you to see what I do to your
friend.” He stroked his chin, face a thoughtful rictus.  “I could just take
one.  And one ear drum, maybe.  Some teeth.”
“Leave him alone.”
Bobby.
Glee lit the demon’s face.  It turned to the older hunter.  “You know what I
discovered?”  He crossed the small space, standing beside Bobby so he could
look at Dean as he talked.  “Burning a man with a broken spine is pretty
useless until you get above the break.”
Dean saw horror wash over his surrogate father’s face, and tears rose in his
own eyes.  “It’s okay, Bobby.  I’m gonna be fine.”
Sam laughed.  “No you’re not, Dean.  You could have been.  You had your chance
to kill me, but you were too weak.  Too selfish.  Needed me alive so you
wouldn’t feel so lonely.  So you’d have someone to boss around.”
“Sam -- the real Sam -- knows that isn’t true.  He’s my brother.  I love him,
and I know we can beat you.”
Demon-Sam pulled his lips back in a soundless snarl.  “I don’t think so, Big
Brother.”  He stepped to the tool chest, retrieving a small sledge hammer.
 Mimicking a man with a bowling ball, he took two quick steps towards Bobby,
swinging the sledge into the older man’s knee.  
The wet crunch of shattering bone was nearly drowned out by Bobby's scream.
“Stop!”  The intimidating roar that Dean had intended came out high-pitched and
nearly frantic, having to work its way past the bile that had flooded the back
of his throat.
Sam chuckled.  “Or what, Dean?  What are you going to do if I don’t?”  The
hammer rose and fell, Bobby’s other leg collapsed, and the tough old hunter
shouted once more.
Dean struggled frantically against his ropes, breath hissing out of him as
agony sparked from his shoulder and back.
The demon flicked his wrist, and Dean’s restraints fell away, sending him face-
first into cold concrete.
Sam bent over, hand on his knees, laughter rocking him.
Dean levered himself up onto his forearms, using them to drag his useless lower
half along the floor.  His brutal glare beamed hatred at the demon before him.
Sam straightened, wiping his eyes.  “Oh, my father, you are so, so pitiful,
Dean!  You look like a mud puppy.  No, a merman!  A merman out of water,
dragging himself back to the sea!”  He doubled over once more, overcome by his
own deranged humor.
Dean reached the torch.
He pushed himself up on one hand, reaching for the nozzle of the cutting tool
with the other.  
Sam’s laughter ceased.
The hammer met Dean’s jaw, throwing him five feet to land on his back, stunned.
“What a great idea,” the demon noted.  “Let’s see how good ol’ Bobby reacts to
being burned.”
“No!”  Dean fought the rising blackness, desperate to save his friend.
 
A razor appeared, the handle brushing frantic fingers.
 
“You can end this, Dean.  Save Bobby from this nightmare.  Save your brother’s
soul.  Just say the word, and the demon inside of him will be on the rack.
 You’ll be whole, ready to exact your revenge.”  The voice was seductive,
sibilant, breath warm on Dean’s ear.  “Take the razor, Dean.  Take it.”
Cold horror flooded the young hunter, quelling the insistent burn that consumed
his body, muting the frantic screams that deafened his mind.  “Alastair.”  It’s
not real. None of this is real.  I’m in hell, and he’s fucking with my head
again.  “Shove it up your ass.”
“Is that your final answer, Dean?”
“It is, and always will be, my final answer, fuckwad.  Go screw yourself.”
He covered his ears, his own mantra
 
Not real be over soon
 
too weak to mask imitation-Bobby’s screams as demon-Sam worked him over with
the cutting torch. 
It's not Bobby!  Just a demon wearing his face!  Yet each tortured howl
blistered Dean's soul.
 
When the agonized cries finally ceased, Dean welcomed the onslaught of the
heavy hammer, trusting it to wipe his conscience clean. 
Not real be over soon
 
Over soon.
===============================================================================
 
“That was even less effective than yesterday’s session,” Alastair muttered,
casting a dangerous glare at the salivating incubus crouched over the
relatively dead hunter.  “Time to bring in the big guns.”
 
He snapped his fingers, and the scene changed.
 
***** JUMP IN THE FIRE 2 *****
===============================================================================
 
Dean stood just inside the bar, gun leveled on his laughing brother.
Jo lay, broken and bleeding, on the floor at Sam’s feet.  
His pants were undone.
Hers were tangled around her boots.
“Sam.”  The name vibrated with misery, disbelief, and hopelessness.
“I told you to kill me, Dean!”  Sam threw his arms out wide.  “I can’t control
it!  It’s like my brain is on fire!  I begged you, but you wouldn’t, and now
look!”  He pointed at the motionless girl.  “Look at what you made me do!”
“Sammy.”  The gun wavered.
 
“Dean.”  The familiar notes of disgust and disappointment that so often tainted
his name were like a lance through Dean’s soul.  “I thought I told you to kill
him.”
“Dad?”  Decades of yearning devotion and crippling shame erupted from the
cavern Dean had buried them in.
“I sold my soul so you could live, Dean.  I trusted you to take care of you
brother, to kill him when the time came, and this is how you obey me?”  John
waved a hand at the mess beside him.  “He killed Steve!  He raped Jo!  And now,
what?  You’re just going to stand there and let him kill her, too?”
Dean quivered beneath the lash of his father’s tongue.
“I told him to kill me, Dad, but he wouldn’t do it,”  Sam whined.
John shook his head, face a mask of disgust.  “I know.  He’s weak.  I should
have let him die.”
Dean’s arms were shaking.
He lowered the gun.
“I’m sorry, Dad.  I’m sorry.”  Tears blurred his vision.
Sam laughed.  “Look at him now!  Crying like a little princess because Daddy’s
mad at him!”
John crossed the space between them in two long-legged strides, striking his
older son across the face with a back-handed blow that snapped the younger
man’s head back, staggering him.  He gripped a fistful of Dean’s hair, forcing
his head up.  “Look at him!  Look at your brother!”  He shook his son like a
dog with a rabbit.  “He’s a demon!  A murderous fucking demon!  Pure evil, with
no hope of redemption!”  He pivoted until he was standing in front of his
broken older son, hand still fisted at the back of his skull, forearm pressed
against the boy’s smooth cheek.  
Dean saw the blow coming towards his left side.  Knew that he couldn’t avoid
it.
Didn’t even try.
John's fist landed with the impact of a charging bull, shattering Dean’s jaw.
His knees buckled and his hands went slack, pistol thumping into the floor.
“Stand up!” John bellowed, lifting him by his scalp.  “This is your mess, and
by God, you will clean it up!”
He flung his oldest forward by his hair, sending the man stumbling into a slide
that ended at Sam’s feet.
 
Jo.
 
Dean's face was inches from the girl's inert form.
He smelled blood and urine.
Fear and betrayal.
 
Jo.  I’m sorry.
 
He was close enough that he should have been able to feel her heat.
Her breath.
The beating of her heart.
 
There was nothing.
 
He closed his eyes, willing the images of her last few moments out of his mind.
Jo.  I'm sorry.  I'm so, so sorry.
Sam nudged her with the toe of his boot before kicking his brother over onto
his back.  He squatted down, placing the tip of a large Bowie knife over the
pulse beneath Dean’s jaw.  “She called out for you, you know.”  Sam shook his
head, curling his lip.  “Called your name, when I was the one fucking her to
death.”  He rolled his eyes.  “Doesn’t she know how rude that is?”
Self-hatred and grief pounded out a rolling crescendo, crushing Dean’s chest,
devouring his soul.  Sammy.   Jo.
“She was in love with you, you know.”  The tip of the blade moved down, point
drilling with deliberate lassitude into the skin over Dean’s heart.  “Thought
you were some big hero. Expected you to come riding in to save the day.”  
Dean fought the urge to cry out as the blade impaled him, knowing he deserved
this.
This, and so much more.
John stood over him, watching Sam work.  “This wouldn’t have happened on my
watch, Dean.  I gave you a job! One job!”  He squatted down, and their two
faces filled Dean’s vision: Sam, pupils blown, mouth open, vibrating with lust
as he watched his blade penetrate his brother;  John, enraged eyes hooded, lip
twisted in loathing.  “I should have let you die.”
Dean closed his eyes, tears burning his skin.  “I’m sorry.”
“Then do it, Dean!”  It was a barked command.  “Take the blade away and kill
him!”  He reared to his full height, over-shadowing both sons.  “Kill him,
Dean!  Kill your brother!  Do it now!”
Dean felt the handle of a razor in his palm.
Tears blurred his vision, but it didn’t matter: he’d know that shaft anywhere.
Alastair.
His arm quivered.
“Do it, Dean!  You know he deserves it!  He’ll never stop killing!”
Sam’s face was lit with a nearly boyish glee as he continued to twist his
knife, pressing it deeper into his brother’s chest.
“He’s a demon, Dean!  You can’t save him!  No one can!  Now kill him, son!
 Just kill  him!”
Each sob drove Dean’s chest up to meet his brother’s blade, but he couldn’t
stop them from coming.
“Sammy.” The name on his tongue tasted like a lifetime of unwashed despair.
“Yes, 'Sammy'!  He’s your job, Dean!   Your responsibility, and you let this
happen!” John waved a hand, encompassing the broken bottles, the overturned
chairs, and Jo. “ Everything I warned you about!  You knew , and you
stillcouldn’t kill him!"  He kicked a fractured  bottle, sending it skittering
across the floor.  "You’re a coward!”
Dean sobbed.
Sammy cackled.
“You’re weak, Dean!  Selfish and weak! You disgust me!”  John paced away,
pushing his hands through his hair, returning to drop to one knee, face inches
from his son’s.  “You are a disgrace, Dean.  A coward and a fucking disgrace.”
 He regained his feet, turning his back on the scene.  “You kill him, boy, or
you’re no son of mine.”
“Kill me, Dean,” Sam lilted, and now the widest part of the blade was in him,
grinding against Dean’s ribs as it progressed with agonizing deliberateness.
 “Kill me, kill me, kill me,” the younger man sang, as if it were a nursery
rhyme.  
A short, sharp cry escaped Dean’s lips as the tip of the knife penetrated the
nerve-rich pleura lining his chest cavity.
John turned back, sneering down at his older son.  “For the first time in my
life, I’m glad your mother’s gone, Dean.  She would be so disappointed in you.”
 He spit in his older son’s face.  “She would have killed him, Dean.”  He
folded his arms over his chest, visage contorting as if the very sight of his
oldest child was making him nauseous.  “I would have killed him.  Bobby would
have killed him.  Anyone else I chose would have killed him.  But not you.”  He
spit again, and Dean flinched away, struggling to hide his shame from the thing
pretending to be his father.  “You’ve disgraced us both, Dean.  Disgraced the
family name.”  He knelt beside Dean’s hand, curling his fingers around the
handle still gripped in his older son’s fist.  “But you can redeem yourself,
boy.  Prove that you’re a Winchester.  The blade’s right here in our hand.”  He
lifted their entwined fists.  “I’ll help you.  Let’s end this evil prick.  This
monster.  This freak.”
Dean blinked away a blur of tears to meet his father’s eyes.
 
“No.”
 
He smiled as his little brother’s blade finally pierced his heart.
 
***** Fight Fire With Fire *****
===============================================================================
“What’ll it be today, Dean?”
After more than twenty years it was getting difficult to come up with anything
witty for the ageless hunter to say.
And he was forgetting why it was important for him to do so.
“You’re the fucking tour guide here.  How about if you make some
recommendations, there, Tattoo.”
Alastair lifted his eyebrows.  “A ‘Fantasy Island’ reference, Dean?  I didn’t
think you were old enough.”
“Yeah, well...motel TV.  Unless you pony up for the pay-per-view, the selection
ain’t exactly stellar.”
“Well, this is not something I ever would have come up with on my own, but I
think I can work with it.”
He snapped his fingers.
 
===============================================================================

Dean found himself strapped into a very small plane.  His hands automatically
tightened on the armrests and he looked out the window, seeing nothing but
blackness past the raindrops silvering the glass.
A warm hand squeezed his, and he jumped, startled.
“Cassie?”
She smiled, cheeks dimpling.  “Relax!  We’re almost there!”
But she had to shout to be heard over the combined noise of the engines and the
storm, and he was not comforted.
Dean was seated directly behind the pilot.
The profile of the copilot was all too familiar.
Dad was in the Marines, not the Air Force!
As if he’d read Dean’s mind, John turned and winked.  “It’s no SeaCobra, but I
can adapt.”
The back of Dean’s seat began to shake, and his grip tightened.
“Knock it off, ya idjit!” cut through the alarming din, and Dean snapped his
head around.
Bobby was in the seat behind Cassie.
Dean twisted, straining to look behind him, confirming his suspicion:  Sam. 
His little brother grinned back at him, perfectly aware of his brother's flying
phobia, delighting in his distress.
My favorite people, all in one place.
A flash of lightning lit the cabin and open cockpit through the window beside
Bobby, and the pilot’s face was momentarily reflected in the windshield.
Alastair.
Dean squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the feminine fingers that stroked the
back of his hand.  It’s not real.  Not real not real not real.  None of them
are here.  It’s NOT. REAL.
He wasn’t at all surprised when the turbulence hit, causing the fragile
aircraft to buck and thrash like a mechanical bull.
Dean fought to control his rising panic.
We’ll go down, and I’ll have to choose who to save, and I won’t be able to save
them all.  And I don’t even know if it’ll be water or land, sharks and drowning
or injuries and fire, I can’t even plan --
IT’S. NOT. REAL.
His heart was racing, breathing so rapidly it was making him dizzy.
“It’s okay, honey!  We’ll be landing soon, and we are going to have such a
great time!”  Cassie held out her left  hand, waggling her ring finger.  A
large diamond mocked him with its cheerful reflection of the lightning that
continued to target the plane.  “I’ll have an entire week to show you what to
expect every night for the rest of our lives.”  She leaned across the narrow
aisle, sliding her palm over his thigh to stroke him through his jeans.  Her
breath was hot on his ear, her voice in a normal speaking range rather than a
shout.  “Good thing you’re already bow-legged.  Maybe no one will notice when I
fuck you raw.”
Fan-fucking-tastic.  Now I have to save four people’s lives while dealing with
a raging hard-on.  Awesome.
An explosion rocked the tiny aircraft, and her hand tightened on him painfully.
An orange glow colored her high cheekbones.  Fire glinted in her eyes.
Dean turned his head, already knowing what he would see.  Wing is on fire.
Here we go.
 
Suddenly, his fear was gone.
 
===============================================================================
 
Dean’s body remained relaxed as the plane plummeted, heading straight down.
 Cassie screamed, John bellowed, and Sam called out a frantic, “Dean!”
He ignored it all.
He’ll set me up in a no-win situation.  Make me choose between watching them
all die or taking up his blade and rescuing everyone.
But I have a third choice.
 
===============================================================================

They hit water first.
Black liquid, hard and cold, that shattered the thick glass of the cabin
windows, pouring in to the small space.
But instead of sinking, the light craft bounced, skipping along the surface
like a stone until it hit solid ground and burst into flame.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Scalding heat.  Blinding flames.  Smoke, demon-thick, choking him.  Masculine
screams.  Cassie eerily silent.  Thick taste of diesel fuel in the air.
 Metallic scent of vaporized blood.
“Dean!  Help them!”  John Winchester, giving orders.
“Dean!  Sam’s in trouble!”  Bobby’s frightened growl.
Cassie limp, blood trickling from a cut on her temple.
A pained moan from Sam.
Alastair leans around his seat to smirk at Dean.  Flames dance along the blade
that he holds aloft.
Dean looks around calmly, ignoring it all.
Fire licks at the open door between Dean’s seat and the cockpit.
Dean unbuckles his seat belt.  
Pushes himself to his feet.
Steps out the door, and is immediately engulfed in flames.
Finally gettin’ my hunter’s funeral.
 
===============================================================================


Alastair stood in the fire with him, laughing.  “So predictable, my dear boy!”
 He shook a long, bony finger at the hunter.  “But you forget, Dean: this is
Hellfire.  It burns for eternity.”  He turned to walk away, calling over his
shoulder, “Let me know when you’ve had enough.”
 
===============================================================================
 
 
Dean was back in the cabin.  
John struggled  to free himself from his seat.  
Flames crept up his pant legs, reflecting off the sweat slicking his face.  His
motions became more frantic.  He gritted his teeth, fighting back a scream.
As the fire reached his thighs, self-preservation won out.  “DEAN!”
It’s not real.  Not real.
But he couldn’t stop himself.
Dean’s boot knife was there, and he pulled it, rushing to cut his father free.
The blade was inexplicably dull, and he sawed frantically at the thick strap
while his father’s shrieks sliced through him.
 
A new voice reached him.  “Dean!  Help me, please!”
Cassie.
He glanced back.
She cradled her left arm to her chest.
The hand she had displayed so proudly was gone.
‘S not real not real not real
 
“Dean!  God, DEAN!”  John was writhing, skin from mid-thigh and lower black,
and Dean could hear the sizzle and pop as the flames ate their way higher.
The seatbelt finally parted, and Dean hauled his crying patriarch from his
seat, laying him on the floor in the cabin.  He draped his torso over his
father’s in what turned out to be a vain attempt to smother the flames.
“It’s Hellfire, Dean,” Alastair lisped, his quiet tones somehow cutting through
the chaos to reach is victim.  “You can’t put it out.”
 
“Dean!”  Cassie was sobbing, and the stump of her left wrist bled freely.
He pushed away from his father with a tortured cry.
 
John caught his pant leg with one hand, tugging desperately as he howled out
his agony.  “Dean!”
 
Over Cassie’s seat Dean saw Bobby, eyes wide, hand slapping weakly at a piece
of metal that pierced his chest, pinning the older man to his seat.
 
Dean turned to Sam just in time to see his little brother’s hair catch fire,
lighting up like a halo.
“Sam!”
Not real not real not real None of this is REAL!
 
He pulled off his belt, tightening it around Cassie’s bicep, ignoring her cry
of pain.
 
Moving to Bobby, he ignored the man’s pleading eyes while he plundered the old
hunter’s jacket, withdrawing a flask of holy water.  He poured that over Sam’s
head, cringing as his brother’s shrieks rose in pitch and volume, nearly crying
in relief as the flames receded.
“I’ll be right back, Bobby!”
He knew there was nothing he could do for his old friend.
 
He returned to John, thinking to use some holy water on him, finding his father
convulsing, eyes rolled back in his head, body nothing but ash-covered bones
from toes to waist.
 
Too late.
 
Cassie’s hemorrhaging had not slowed.  Her face was pale and drawn in the
flickering light.
 
Dean returned to Sam, plunging his hand into the flames creeping up the back of
his brother’s seat.  He had tucked the flask into an inside coat pocket,
exchanging it for his boot knife.  He sawed desperately at Sam’s seatbelt,
freeing him.  “See if you can help Bobby!”
He grimaced against the burn in his palm, agony threatening to overwhelm
reason.
 
He moved back to Cassie.  “This is going to hurt!”  He wrapped his melting palm
over her severed wrist, cauterizing the wound.
She shrieked, thrashing wildly against her restraints, clawing his face with
her good hand as she tried to force him away from her.  He pulled back,
watching the flames eat away at her flesh until he was satisfied that the
bleeding had stopped.  Then he removed the flask from his pocket, emptying it
onto her wound, bringing fresh screams to her lips.  
 
He threw the empty flask away and dropped to his knees, searching his father’s
smoking corpse for a similar item.
He was nearly crying with pain himself, but he held the flask close, returning
to his brother and their friend, making certain that the precious liquid was
not needed elsewhere.
His fingers had burned down to bone, and the pain had only intensified.
“He’s bleeding out, Dean!  What do we do?”  Sam’s anxious eyes met Dean’s,
trusting his brother to have a solution, to work a miracle.
 
Dean opened his mouth to speak, and an explosion rocked them, sending a ball of
fire rolling over the three men.
Dean emptied the flask over his brother’s head, tears steaming on his cheeks as
Sam’s horrified screams lacerated Dean’s soul.  
He dropped the empty flask.  “Sam!  Holy water!  Where’s your flask?”  But the
younger man was thrashing, mindless in his agony, and he didn’t hear.  Dean
tried to pat him down, ignoring his own distress as fire engulfed him as well.
 
Sam flailed wildly, shrieking his brother’s name over again and again.
 
Cassie called to him between sobs.
 
Bobby moaned, and as Dean turned to him, he saw the older man’s eyes explode,
dripping gore down his cheeks.
 
No no no no no
 
===============================================================================
 
Alastair appeared, standing untouched amid the flames.  He held up his razor.
 “It’s nice and sharp, Dean.  You could put them out of their misery.”
“No!”  His roar rivaled that of the chaos around him.
 
===============================================================================
 
Dean dropped to his knees, covering both ears with his hands, rocking.
Searing pain consumed him as the fire ate away his clothing, licking at his
skin with a barbed tongue.
He could still hear their screams, feel his brother’s hands tugging at him as
the younger man begged him for help.
Dean scrambled backwards in a crab crawl, wedging himself between two seats.
He wrapped blister-coated arms over his seared and hairless skull.
Not real not real over soon not real
 
And somehow they were all there: John, Cassie, Bobby.  Sam.  
They leaned over the seats, melted flesh dropping down onto him, screaming,
begging Dean to save them.
Not real over soon not real not real not real
The seats melted away.
Their bodies dropped onto him.
They were being consumed: hair, eyes, lips, fingers.
And still they shrieked, they cried, they pleaded with him, with Dean, to save
them.
 
And his own mind screamed, the pain stripping away his sanity, fire down to his
bones, and it wasn’t supposed to hurt so bad once it got through that layer of
nerves in the skin, but this was Hellfire, and it had its own rules, and his
body howled at him, begging him to save himself.
 
But he couldn’t.  
 
Couldn’t save Cassie.
Or Bobby.
Or his father.
Or Sam.
 
And even if he could have saved himself, he wouldn’t, because he couldn’t live
with that: saving himself, leaving them all to burn.
 
He drove his head backwards, slamming it into the wall behind him repeatedly,
crushing his own skull.
Fire rushed in through the fractures.
Dean screamed as the agony exploded inside his brain, his own voice
reverberating inside his head, drowning out the faces and voices of the ones he
loved until he crumbled to ash, and was no more.

***** Damage Inc, Part I *****
Chapter Summary
     Dean runs into some old friends.
     You know: that's a lie. This one is really, really bad. Even for me,
     and that's saying something.
     So... er...enjoy? Read at your own risk? Have a vomit bucket handy?
     All of the above, I think.
===============================================================================
 
 
Dean huffed out pained, nearly frantic breaths, head rolling on his shoulders
as he fought back nausea-inducing dizziness in effort to clear his brain.
Before he was able to force his eyes open, his other senses kicked in.
 
Blood drying on my forehead.  Explains the massive headache.
What is that smell ?  It’s like shit and armpits and unwashed socks and…
Rotten teeth.
Decomposing bodies.
 
His movements stilled, the need to remain unnoticed over-riding his urgency to
move.
He had recognized the odor: Benders.
Dean went limp, allowing his eyes to open to the merest slits as he processed
as much information as he could about his surroundings.
Heard the cheery crackle of a fire behind him.  Hoped it was the same fireplace
that had been there before, not Hellfire creeping up on him.
Felt coarse rope abrading his wrists and ankles.
Realized that the hard wood of the chair beneath him had been warmed by his ass
at the same time that he became aware of a chilling yet not unexpected fact:
He was naked.
 
Of course.  Alastair likes me best that way.
 
The rank odor of rotting teeth and shit wafted away, then back, and Dean knew
that one of the loathsome Benders had moved somewhere near him.
“Might’s well jist open yer eyes, there, boy. Not like yer foolin’ anyone.”
Dean raised his head slowly, making no effort to hide his hatred and disgust.
 He looked around, noting that even little Missy was present, and wondered if
she was real.  “It’s not that I’m surprised to see you sick fucks here,” he
began, and he swore he could taste their rankness on his tongue, “I’m just
surprised that it took so long for Alastair to let you at me.”
The oldest Bender chuckled.  “Well, we had ta earn it, I’ll tell ya that much.”
 He smiled, and Dean noted that the man’s teeth looked even worse than they had
topside.  “Not that we minded, a’ course. It’s the kinda work we’uns enjoy.” He
chuckled the same low, malicious laugh that had turned Dean’s stomach the first
the time they met.
It was no better now.
 
Gonna be bad.  Gonna be real, real bad.
 
“We got a game to play.”  The Bender patriarch leaned into Dean’s personal
space.
Dean gagged.  “Of course you do,” he growled, mouth wet.  “Too bad it doesn’t
involve hot water and about three gallons of scented body wash.”
The old man cackled, head thrown back, mouth open, and the site of those
blackened teeth brought the acid taste of vomit into the back of Dean’s throat.
 “You gotta lotta fight left in ya, boy, I’ll give ya that!” He put his hands
on his hips, the motion carrying a fresh onslaught of armpit sweat and drying
feces to Dean's nostrils.
 
I really am going to vomit before this is all over.
 
“Tha’s why this time we’re gonna hunt ya.”
“Right.  Give me a weapon and a fair chance.  Sure you are.” He rolled his
eyes, and Jared stepped forward to backhand  him.
The dull throb of the blow bothered him less than the return of the
debilitating dizziness that he had awakened with, and Dean groaned, breathing
hard to keep his stomach contents in place.
His vision cleared to the site of a glowing fireplace poker held inches from
his left eye.
“Couldn’t come up with something more original?”
A hand fisted in the hair at the back of his scalp as the weapon jabbed
forward, and Dean’s mind went blank as the most intense agony he’d experienced
thus far consumed him, nausea and odors and fear and hate and everything gone,
no words, no thoughts, didn’t hear himself shriek or feel his body convulse.
 Every crevice of his soul was occupied by a pure and singular entity: pain.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
The first thing Dean became aware of as the agony died from indescribable to a
horrifying, burning, stabbing misery was that he was screaming.  He heard the
sounds, high-pitched and hysterical, but didn’t realize he was making them
until they had scraped his vocal folds raw, roughening the noise and lowering
the pitch.
He clenched his teeth, hating himself for giving them the satisfaction of
seeing his pain, and struggled to control his breathing.
 
Burns burns still burns oh god it fucking burns
 
He couldn’t tell if the liquid on his face was blood or tears or whatever is
inside an eyeball.
Decided he was better off not knowing.
A movement of air chilled the skin of his chest, and Dean realized that he was
coated with sweat.
Beneath that, his body shuddered, a continuous wave of bone-deep paroxysms that
he recognized as a sign of shock, a response to extreme pain.
Like the vomit he also smelled drying on his chest, along with the acrid stink
of terror in the tackiness of  his sweat.  That’s what Dad told me: real bad
pain makes you shake and sweat and puke.
He’d done all of that.
He wrinkled his nose as a new odor assaulted him.  Think I pissed myself, too.
That hasn’t happened since Allie fuckin’ vivisected me.
He kept his eyes closed and his head down, listening to the harsh sound of his
breath as it huffed out onto his chest, feeling the tears flow in a steady
stream as his body tried in vain to wash that eye clean.
 
Burns burns   burns so fucking bad
 
He couldn’t wait for this day to end, to the point that he didn’t care how, as
long as it was quick.
He should have known better.
 
===============================================================================
 
“First things first,” Pa Bender began, tossing the hot iron toward the hearth.
“We gotta make sure ya got plenty of incentive to do yer best to git away from
us.”  He turned to his sons, and the merriment in his smirk was not enough to
disguise the sadism. “Which one a’ you wants first crack at tenderizin’ this
meat?”
The two younger men exchanged a glance, and Jared palmed his crotch.  “Couldn’t
we take ‘im at the same time, Pa?”
 
No.  No no nonononono.
 
Dean was careful to keep his reaction hidden.
The eldest Bender chuckled, and Dean felt his entire body grow cold at the
man’s words: “Now that is an excellent idea.  Go ahead, boys. Have at ‘im.”
 
===============================================================================
 
Dean had started fighting as soon as they freed him, knowing there was no way
he could win -- this was Hell, and the ending here was a foregone conclusion -
- but unable to bring himself to just lie back and take what he knew they were
going to deliver.
So when they cut the rope that tethered his bound wrists to the back of the
chair, he stayed loose and still.  And when they cut his left ankle free, he
chose not to react.
But as soon as the rope around his right leg gave way, he kicked out, knocking
the man holding that knife halfway across the room, immediately exploding to
his feet to drive into the other brother with a shoulder to the abdomen,
launching the side of his bladed foot at the patriarch’s skull, connecting with
a satisfying crunch of bone and the sight of the psychotic pervert’s eyes
rolling back in his head.
And then Lee recovered and dove at him while Jared tried to lock an arm around
his throat, and Dean, handicapped as he was by having his hands still bound
behind him, still brought every resource he had into play, kicking and kneeing,
head-butting and biting, writhing and twisting as he snarled his fury at this
god-forsaken world he had somehow chosen to become mired in.
 
The battle ended with him kneeling on the floor, blood clogging his flattened
nose, sliding in fat drops from his split lips and the charred remains of the
distracting misery that was his left eye.
He ran the tip of his tongue over jagged teeth, feeling them rock in their
sockets, and hoped that one of the boys would make the mistake of trying to
force Dean to suck his cock.  Can’t wait to hear the asshole scream when these
broken teeth tear him apart.
Then the older one stepped into his personal space, the stench of the man
permeating Dean’s senses, and he changed his mind, wanting no part of that
unwashed flesh anywhere near his mouth.
He rolled a swelling right eye up at Pa as the man came forward with a length
of rope.  “Don’t expect ya t’ be real cooperative for this, so we aim to do it
the easy way.”
Dean sat down hard on his heels, grit he didn’t try too hard to identify
digging into the skin over his shins as he ground them into the hard floor.  A
vivid memory of being elaborately bound, calves to his thighs, knees spread,
and hung from the ceiling clung determinedly to the forefront of his brain.
Along with all of the things that had been done to him afterwards.
 
No way is he getting that rope around my thighs.
 
The man just chuckled.  “Sure do like it when ya fight, boy.”
Too late Dean felt the movement of one of the other men behind him and tried to
twist away.  The kick that had been aimed at his kidney struck his lowest rib
instead, and electric agony arched through him, knocking the breath from his
lungs as the thin bone fractured under the blow.
Before he had a chance to react more strikes rained down on his body, this time
coming from both sons, and he fell to his side, curling in to protect his
abdomen while rolling from left to right and back again, lashing out with his
feet.
Pa lassoed one ankle, holding on with an unnatural strength as he cackled and
whooped, “Git ‘im, boys!” the only phrase that registered in Dean’s panicked
mind.
When he felt the rope tighten around his other ankle --
 
hands circle Dean’s ankles like talons and they pull and he fights and
something tears in his leg and he panics
 
his humanity deserted him and he went wild, bucking and howling and thrashing,
curling up to try to bite, and he was so incensed that red foam coated his
mouth and they had to drag him across the floor to stay away as he jerked
forward to lunge at them, strikes to the face and head barely slowing him,
until they ended up in the kitchen, one leg and one Bender on either side of
the table, sharp edges of squared wood digging painfully into the meat of his
thighs, and Dean was crying with rage and terror and frustration, still
fighting, torso bucking frantically, but he couldn't reach them --
Pa dropped a loop around the crazed hunter’s neck, pulling it tight, and still
Dean fought --
Until even the choked sounds were cut off, and his eyes rolled back, body limp.
 
“Bring ‘is legs up,” the patriarch directed.  “I’ll keep this tight so he don’t
wake up.”
Lee and Jared did as they were told, pulling the unconscious man’s heels to his
seat --
 
And Dean lashed out, kicking hard at his attackers.
 
Don’t need to breathe in Hell, mother fuckers!
 
But the lack of oxygen weakened him, and the ropes around his neck and ankles
and wrists provided his captors with too much control, and the oldest Bender
looped his cordage around a thick ceiling beam, hauling the struggling man off
the ground, tying him off before producing more bindings. He passed one loop
around the back of Dean’s thighs while the two Bender sons held their ropes
taught, their victim's face purple from a lack of blood flow, and while not
breathing won’t kill him, cutting off his blood flow can, and Dean continued to
fight, increasing the pressure around his carotid arteries, hoping, praying --
 
Break my neck so I can’t feel what they do or let me die, I don’t care which,
need this to end, end now --
 
===============================================================================
 
 
And the scene changed.  He was back in the stone room, strapped to the rack, a
salivating incubus perched on his chest.  Alastair smiled down at him, that
feral sadism that is his hallmark nakedly apparent. A razor glinted in the dull
candle light, and Hell's Grand Torturer raised an eyebrow.  “This could all end
right now, Dean, just as you’ve asked. All you have to do is take up my blade.
I’ll let you choose which Bender will be your first soul.” He rested the ball
of his thumb against the ruined remains of Dean’s left eye socket, and the
smoldering embers there burst into full flame, but the rope was still
bruisingly tight around his neck, and Dean couldn’t even scream.
Alastair chuckled, touching the coarse fibers, and they loosened.
Dean sucked in a whistling breath, chest expanding painfully, and coughed razor
blades through his crushed windpipe.
“So, what’ll it be, Dean-o?”  Alastair inquired, icy fingers trailing
possessively across the skin of his toy’s chest.  “Have your way with a Bender,
slicing the meat from his vary bones, or letting two of them bone you at once?”
He licked his lips, salivating at the thought of the second option.  “Which
will it be?”
“Not -- “ Dean wheezed, struggling to force uncontrollable hacking into words,
“taking.  Blade.”
Alastair patted him on the head like he would a precocious toddler.  “Alright
then, Dean. Have it your way.” He started to turn away, then changed his mind.
 “I hope they don’t ruin that tight ass for me.”
He snapped his fingers.
 
===============================================================================
 
Dean was on the floor, rope around his neck still looped over the rafter, but
now his ankles had been secured to the tops of his thighs which were then tied
snug against his chest, opening him up, with Lee and Jared in front of him,
dicks waving in his face, and he knew there was nothing more he could do, it
was going to happen and he’d done all he could so there was no shame in it,
shouldn’t be anyway, but somehow there still was, every time someone forced
their dick in his ass there was, because that wasn’t him, wasn’t what he
wanted, and he was a  hunter, it shouldn’t happen if he didn’t want it, and
that was the shame, that he wasn’t strong enough or smart enough or good enough
to stop it --
 
The train of thought derailed as he was lifted into the air by his neck.
 
The Bender boys arranged themselves on their backs beneath him, lying head-to-
toe with their legs intertwined, pressing their erections together, and their
father was lowering Dean, face intent on his work, and they were guiding him --
At the last minute Dean fought, jerking his body erratically -- away get away
don’t touch me get away -- and he hoped his neck would break or the rope would
saw through, cutting his head off, he didn’t care which, but this had to end --
Strong fingers gripped his thighs, nails like talons digging into his flesh,
and he couldn’t stop them, it was happening --
Pressure against his stretched and exposed flesh
 
Can’t be worse than Alastair with that monstrosity he conjures for himself, a
last-ditch effort on Dean's part to control his pain and his terror --
 
But it was: worse than Alastair, worse than his eye, a blinding, all-consuming
agony of tearing and bludgeoning that drove his soul from his body, and he
floated somewhere near the ceiling, watching the eldest Bender’s arms pump as
he raised and lowered Dean’s body furiously, seeing the men’s faces twisted
into grimaces of bliss and concentration, watching the blood and shit and god
only knows what flowing out of him, over them, until they shouted out their
completion, first Jared, then Lee --
 
And Pa let go of the rope.
Dean’s body fell to the floor, lifeless.
 
***** Damage Inc, Part 2 *****
Chapter Notes
     Mystery, this one's for you! Enjoy!
===============================================================================
 
 
When he hit the floor his soul saw fit to return to his body.
 
Not the choice Dean himself would have made, but nobody asked  him.
 
The rope around his neck had not loosened when he fell.  He lay curled in a
fetal position, neurons signalling pain and discomfort going unheeded as his
lungs shrieked in panicked desperation for oxygen.
Don’t need it in Hell, he would have told himself to calm that hysterical
voice, but there was something wrong with his head.  He couldn’t form a
coherent thought; couldn’t hold onto anything for long.
Sharp nails fumbled at his neck, and suddenly air rushed over his tongue,
scraping like sandpaper as it tore down his throat.
He coughed, and bright misery sparked as panic receded, replacing the fog in
his mind with the smothering weight of unadulterated pain.
It held him for a moment, suspended in time, cut off from the world. From
 himself. There was no internal assessment as to what hurt or how badly or why
or whether it was getting worse or abating, no attempt to fight or flee, no
frantic need to examine each piece of sensory information that could be
garnered in an attempt to save this doomed vessel.
 
For that moment, Dean Winchester was pain, would always bepain.  Nothing more,
nothing less.
 
Ice water rained down on him, and the purity was shattered as Dean’s body
instinctively reacted, drawing a sharp gasp from him as he flinched away from
the shock of this new torment.
With it came a rush of information, sensory overload that made the man dizzy:
 
Hard floor
Cold
Aching shoulder and hip where I landed
Burning
Burning everywhere --
Eye
Ass
Throat
Neck
 
And throbbing where it didn’t burn.
 
Pa Bender leaned over him, and the now-familiar scent was too much for a
stomach already rebelling against so many things.
Dean vomited explosively, curling in on himself as certain agonies intensified
from dull aches to electric stabbing, and he was too exhausted, to broken, to
even cry at the hopelessness of it all.
“I’m guessin’ ya ain’t gonna wanna repeat thatany time soon.  Am ah right?”
The words washed over him, unhelpful, thus unheeded, and the broken man did not
answer.
Something touched the glowing horror that was his asshole, and Dean shrieked,
arching his back as he scrambled ineffectually to get away.
“I ast’d you a question, boy!”
The object was removed, and Dean fell back, whimpering.  Hating himself for it.
 
What did he ask?  Didn’t hear don’t touch me please didn’t hear sorry sorry
I’ll answer just ask again please don’t touch me anymore --
 
The older man chuckled, satisfied.
 
Did I say all that out loud? Shame cramped his gut, spread unwanted warmth up
his chest to color his face.
 
“You put up a good fight for us, make this an excitin’ hunt, and I promise
we’ll kill ya quick.  Even leave yer ass alone -- least 'til yer dead.  How’s
that fer a fair deal?”
 
Answer, Dean, answer, he’s gonna do something to you if you don’t answer -
- “‘Kay.”
 
He wanted to say more, respond with something witty or snarky, make up for the
whimpering and pleading he’d done, but he couldn’t think of anything --
 
You  could if you wanted, but you don’t want to.  You’re afraid to make him
angry --
 
He was just so tired, and so much still hurt, and now they were going to hunt
him, and he should be thinking about that, planning, but he wanted to die,
wanted this day to be over, so maybe he should just lay here, but then they
might...they might do this again, and he couldn’t….not that.  
He’d have to try.  To fight. To run. To hide. To kill them before they got to
him.  Before they did this to him again.
 
He’d try.
 
===============================================================================

Ten minutes.
 
That’s how much time they’d given him before the hunt started.
 
Ten minutes.
 
In another time, another place, ten minutes would have been more than enough
for Dean Winchester.  In ten minutes he could have found and rescued the
civilians, set booby traps, and arranged an ambush.
 
Ten minutes was a long time to a seasoned hunter like Dean.
 
A lifetime.
 
 
He counted the seconds, choking back his misery as he forced ravaged hips
through the tight circle of his bound limbs, bile coating his throat as be
brought the knotted rope to his aching teeth, trying not to think about what
bodily fluids the fibers had collected as he dragged them across the screaming
destruction of his ass.
Fresh blood washed the feculent, semen and hemorrhage-mingled fluid from his
mouth as loosened teeth gave up their fight to stay seated in his battered
gums.
 
Nine minutes.
Dean freed his hands.
 
Getting to his feet was another matter, and he lost track of time, lost track
of everything, as the motion required to raise his body sent shockwaves of
unbearable agony through him, like that hot poker was being forced up his ass,
through his guts, into his chest, and he collapsed onto the table, clinging to
the edges tightly as his legs shook and the room spun and his soul tried once
again to flee his body.
 
And then it faded to a more tolerable misery, and he laid his palms flat,
pushing himself up.  Slowly.  So slowly.
 
In the center of the table, a blade winked at him tauntingly.
 
Alastair’s razor.
 
Because this is Hell, and no ordinary blade will kill the Benders.
 
Alastair’s razor.
 
Dean stared, seconds ticking ominously on, at the offering that had been left
for him.
 
If I use it, draw even one drop of blood from one of those putrid sons of
bitches....
 
Why does Alastair want me to do that so badly?
 
I’ll become a demon.  That much I know. But that can’t be all.  The look on his
face….there’s gotta be more.
 
Something thick and wet slicked its way down Dean’s thigh, and the image of his
body, impaled on the two psychopaths as they literally tore him apart, his
blood the only lubricant, flashed through his mind.
 
I can’t.  Can’t live through that again.  I can’t.
 
He picked up the blade.
 
===============================================================================

Seven minutes.
 
It had taken three precious ones to free his hands, force himself to move.
Now Dean set about laying his traps.
 
Six minutes.
He stayed low, adrenaline returning grace and efficiency to his movements
despite his injuries.
 
Five minutes.  
A heavy object would fall here.
 
Four minutes.
Oil would coat a smooth surface there.
 
Three minutes.
A reflection would cause confusion at this spot.
 
Two minutes.
He’d make his final stand right here.
 
One minute.
All he needed was a way to draw them in.
 
===============================================================================
 
 
“Daddy, Daddy!”  Missy’s shrill voice rang out, skeletal arm pointing at him
through the open doorway.  “He’s here! He’s right here! He never left!”
 
Time’s up.
Dean smiled.
 
===============================================================================


Alastair kicked his way through the rubble, thoroughly pissed.
 
He came to the charred remains of Pa Bender and brought his foot down hard,
snorting as the fragile skull crumbled to ash.
 
“Alastair,”  and the pale demon startled, dropping to his knees before his
master.  “You disappoint me. Again.” Lucifer looked down at his number one
torturer, and his face creased into a frown.  
Alastair’s head hung low.  “I’m sorry, Master. It won’t happen again.”
“He brought a whole fucking house down.  Burned the bones of four marvelous
demons.  Burned. their. bones.  In Hell. Without using Hellfire.  You know what
that means, right?”
“Yes, Sire.”  Alastair’s voice was strained.  “They are lost to us.”
Lucifer crouched before his cowering subordinate.
“Lucky for you, his bones were preserved.”
“Yes.  Thank you for that, Sire.”
“And when I came to get him, look what I found!”
 
Lucifer held his hand at eye level, watching the reflection of dying flames
flicker off of the blade that he twirled between his fingers.
 
Alastair trembled.
“I believe this belongs to you, Allie.”  The King of Hell held the razor out,
butt forward, beneath his minion’s nose.
Alastair raised a shaking hand to accept the offering.
“My room, Alastair.  Now.”
Terror and helplessness deepened the lines in the demon’s face as he raised
pleading eyes to his master.
 
Lucifer met his gaze, expression void of any hint of mercy, humanity, or
compassion.
 
“Yes, Sire,” Alastair rasped.
 
===============================================================================


From its seat on the smoldering form strapped to the rack, the watchful incubus
cackled out its glee.
***** The Frayed Ends Of Sanity *****
 
===============================================================================

Alastair stood before him.
Motionless.
Silent.  
 
"Hey, Allie.”  Dean hid his unease behind a mask of bravado.  “Your incubus
take the day off?”
 
The Grand Torturer did not respond.
 
Dean could feel the pressure of the demon’s rage heating his skin.
 
Why is he so pissed right now?
 
In all of the hours and days and weeks and months and years that Dean had spent
at the mercy of this particular demon, Alastair had never seemed angry.
 Sadistic, gleeful, lust-crazed...maybe a little frustrated or annoyed. But
never truly angry.
Panic skittered in the hunter’s chest.
 
Gonna be okay.  What more can he do that hasn’t already been done?
 
As it turned out, there was a whole lot more.
 
===============================================================================

The first new experience was the thin metal spike that Alastair unceremoniously
drove into Dean’s right armpit.
 
He started out pressing: long, slender fingers digging in as the demon kept his
eyes locked on his subject’s face.
Dean squirmed.  “Hey. I’m ticklish, you know.”  
He hid the instinctive wince when those probing digits hit something tender,
but Alastair, alert to every miniscule fluctuation in his toy’s expression,
smiled.  Stabilizing the top of Dean’s shoulder with one hand, he drove the
fingers of the other in deep, and Dean gasped as a sharp ache shot through his
arm all the way to his fingertips, up into his shoulder, and spread into the
entire right side of his body, causing his knee to buckle.
 
That’s when the spike appeared.
 
Alastair pressed the metal into flesh, guiding it with his forefinger until it
penetrated the bundle of nerves he had located at the juncture between humerus
and scapula.  
The sensation was distinctively excruciating, a piercing ache that radiated out
in an explosion of mind-numbing misery.
Dean gritted his teeth,  fighting nausea as his legs buckled and sweat beaded
on his upper lip.
 
Not real won’t last not real
 
Alastair’s smirk didn’t fade as he twisted, driving the metal in deeper.
The agony expanded, burning through the bones of Dean’s shoulder and arm,
pooling with breathless intensity in his elbow, his jaw, the joints of each
finger.
 
Don’t scream over soon don’t scream don’t scream
 
The pike struck bone.
Dean heard the quiet groan that he could not quite control.
 
Alastair stepped back.
A small  hammer appeared in his right hand.
 
No no no god no please
 
Helpless to avoid the coming horror, Dean locked his teeth against a base urge
to plead for mercy, closed his throat to the sobs that threatened to humiliate
him.
 
Alastair dropped his hand to his side, only to bring the tool he held up in a
wide arc, striking the head of the thin nail squarely.
Dean’s agonized scream was choked down to a short, animalistic sound, somewhere
between a growl and a gasp.
His brain shut down, diaphragm cramped in an unrelenting contraction as every
cell in his body froze, overwhelmed with sensation.
 
Time slowed to a crawl.
 
The door of Dean’s mind eased open, allowing calculated bits of sensory
information to breach the threshold, testing out the waters.
His fingertips tingled at the end of a numb arm.  
A pocket of lava seemed to exist inside the center of his shoulder.  
Fire licked down his side.
 
A frantic alert -- Hurts hurts hurts stop please hurts -- replaced the normal
soothing mantra in  his head, but he could think, which was a vast improvement
over the earlier level of mind-numbing horror.
 
He inhaled carefully through his nose.
Exhaled with equal wariness.
When nothing worsened and no sound escaped, the paralysis broke, and Dean
sagged in his restraints, tears leaking from his closed eyes.
 
In the past Alastair would have taken a moment to explain, with pride in his
voice, exactly why the new atrocity he had inflicted was so terribly effective.
Today he simply noted his subject’s vulnerability, gave a tight-lipped nod, and
attached the leads of a battery charger to the protruding end of the spike.
  Careful to avoid touching the rod, Alastair stepped back and flipped a switch
on the small machine.
 
The keening wail that his subjected emitted fell somewhere between a shriek and
a scream.
Dean’s body convulsed, head thrown back, spine arching painfully as every
muscle from the top of his head to the end of each toe contracted
simultaneously.
Urine trickled in a wet stream down his leg.
Alastair watched, appreciating the sharp delineation of the corded muscles and
tendons in his toy’s neck, a warm glow of lust emerging through the ravenous
glut of rage as he listened to the man’s teeth fracture.
Dean’s drawn-out cry crescendoed, then diminished to silence as his lungs
deflated.
Alastair toggled the switch, and the hunter slumped, vomit now joining the list
of bodily fluids bathing the man’s skin.
As before, conscious thought was lost to the tortured figure.  Dean’s soul
separated from its vessel, and its sobbed “Please, stop! Please!” went unheard.
 
This separation was familiar to Alastair, and he watched his toy closely,
waiting for the soul to return.
 
The reunion of spirit to flesh occurred with enormous deliberation as the soul
quavered in fear, prepared to retreat at the first indication of renewed agony.
Alastair waited, expression that of infinite patience.
 
No more please no more
 
Awareness emerged like a ship cutting through a smothering fog.
 
Hurts god what is that hurts fuckin' hurts son of a bitch
 
He felt his chest heave with unborn sobs, each hitched breath lancing through
his pierced limb with barbed agony.
 
Breathe Dean breathe in out slow
Slow
 
Heard his teeth grind.  Felt his muscles quiver.
 
Cold.  so cold
 
An even colder hand fisted in his hair, yanking his head up.
“Open your eyes.”
Dean’s head spun.
“That was an order, Dean.”
 
Dad --
 
He forced his eyelids to part, staring through lashes glistening with desperate
tears.  “Dad. Sorry.”
He didn’t recognize his own harsh, whisper-soft voice.
 
Alastair snorted.
 
Dean registered the contempt in that brief sound, and his soul gave a panicked
flutter.  “Sorry. Won’t,” he swallowed against a dry tongue, “won’ hap’en
ag’in. Sorry.  'M sorry.”
Alastair slapped the boy, mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust.
Dean cringed, grief at his perceived failure biting more deeply than any
place Alastair could reach, no matter which torture device he brought to bear.
 
Lucifer pushed away from the wall, uncrossing his arms.  “He always do that?”
Terror flitted briefly across the Grand Tormentor’s face.  “Do what, Sire?”
“Apologize to his father.”
“Not every time, no,” Alastair admitted.  
“And do you use it?”  Lucifer pressed, massaging his chin with one forefinger
as he studied the man before them.
“I have, yes.  So far it has not been effective.”
Lucifer slanted an annoyed glance at the snivelling demon.  “Obviously.” He
curled his arm across his abdomen, supporting the opposite elbow in his cupped
palm, the forefinger and thumb curling over his lower jaw as he contemplated
the enigma of Dean Winchester.  “You’ve got more planned for him today, I take
it?” He began to pace, circling around their subject, examining his nude form.
“Yes, Sire.”
Lucifer nodded to himself, eyes never leaving the form hanging from the rack.
 “Do it all as John.” He crossed his arms over his chest. A smile teased at the
corners of his mouth.  “Tomorrow, it’ll be my turn.”
Alastair paled just before his neck flushed with suppressed indignation. “Yes,
Sire.”
 
He turned away, slinging a toolbelt around narrow hips as he settled into the
rugged attractiveness of John Winchester’s face.









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