I twirled the glass in my hands, watching the clear liquid swirl before knocking it back, wincing at the fire in my throat. I set the glass on the bar, a couple of notes down next to it, and headed outside.
I walked for nearly an hour until I came to a crossroads. I paced slowly into the centre of the cross and knelt, digging with my hands a hole big enough for the box in my pocket, with everything in it that I needed to make a deal. And Hell, I really needed to make a deal. I scraped the dirt over the box and patted it flat, closing my eyes briefly and taking in a steadying breath. I stood, brushing the dirt from my knees.
"Hello, Darling." A smooth British accent spoke behind me, and I spun to face the man that matched the voice. He was short, but taller than me, and well-dressed in an expensive black suit and overcoat. He was handsome, a little scruff on his face and neck, and with a relaxed aura about him. I eyed him carefully. I knew from my brothers that deals never end well. And I knew from their endless complaining about him that I was dealing with none other than the King of Hell himself. Dean mocked him every now and again for his love of black suits.
"Crowley." I nodded, and his eyebrow rose in an amused smirk. He walked in a slow circle around me, looking me over as he went, murmuring to himself.
"Not dying, and those brothers of yours are fine because they just killed a small army of my demons a couple of hours away from here. So the question is… What do you want from me?" He asked, stopping again in front of me. I drew in a deep breath and closed my eyes, hanging my head. The boys were hours away. There was no way they could stop me if they worked out what I was doing now.
"I want to forget." I mumbled, knowing full well that he could hear me. He furrowed his eyebrows and stepped closer to me.
"You want to what?" He asked, and I grit my teeth, still studying my shoes.
"I want to forget." I said again, louder this time. Crowley tilted his head to the side, slightly taken aback by my request. He took another step closer, ducking his head a little, trying to see my face. I shuffled away from him, uncomfortable with anyone so close to me. He straightened up, now with a genuinely unhappy look on his face.
"May I ask what needs forgetting so badly that the youngest Winchester would sell her soul?" He asked, and I raised my gaze to meet his.
"No. You may not." I replied, my voice defensive, if a little shaky. He narrowed his eyes and closed the distance between us. I tried to shuffle away again, but his hand caught my wrist in a firm grip and I hissed in pain, jerking my arm as I attempted to break his hold. He stared into my face for a moment, then gently rolled back the sleeve that I always kept so carefully tugged down over my hands.
As the material peeled away, the white criss-crosses of months of unhappiness were revealed, the thin slices scarred and overlapping, making an ugly web across my forearm. Crowley's thumb traced the newest additions, fresh from only a few hours before. I winced as he brushed over them, and he let my wrist fall. I immediately yanked my sleeve back down over my hand, clenching it in my fist at the end.
He stepped back and surveyed me more closely this time, his smug gaze replaced with a concerned-looking stare.
"What are you forgetting, Erin?" He murmured, and I set my jaw, refusing to tell him what he wanted to know.
"Nothing at the moment, we haven't yet made a deal." I replied, and his mouth twitched a little at my remark. He tucked his hands into his overcoat pockets and shrugged.
"I can't erase it if I don't know what I'm erasing, now can I?" He asked, and I screwed my eyes shut and dragged my hands over my face. I was desperate to escape the torment of those memories, so I took a deep breath and looked over his shoulder, staring into the distance as I told the King of Hell exactly what I wanted to forget.
"I want to forget the last 8 months. Specifically, I want to forget the nineteenth of November last year." His frown returned as I continued.
"I need to know more than that, Mooseling." He prompted. I pinched the bridge of my nose against threatening tears. I glared at him and resumed my story.
"I'm not going to get all emotional on you, Crowley. I want to forget being raped. That's what happened that night. I want to forget it, and I want to forget the failed attempts I've made at making the hurt of it go away." I said in a brisk tone, fighting to keep my voice from wobbling as I bared my forearms, and the evidence of my attempts to rid myself of the hurt. The scars and the fresh cuts were stark against my pale skin. Crowley's face fell into a grimace.
"Just take it all away and you can have my soul. You don't even have to give me the whole ten years. I just want whatever time I'm given to hurt less." I said, my voice finally cracking on the last two words. I bit my lip hard, trying to keep myself from crying. I didn't need to look any weaker in front of the King of Hell. One stupid, disobedient tear rolled down my cheek and I dashed it away angrily. Crowley watched me intently, a thoughtful look on his face.
"Who was it?" He asked. His voice was low and controlled. I dragged a hand through my hair.
"That's none of your business. You know what you're erasing, so seal the deal and get rid of it." I retorted. He continued to stare at my face. I was unaware of the tears now silently spilling over, but he saw them and they made him angry. He stepped in close to me, and I sucked in a steadying breath, ready to sell away my soul for some peace of mind. I closed my eyes and waited, but his lips didn't touch mine. He leaned forward so that his mouth was next to my ear, and I felt his stubble rub against my cheek.
"Tell me his name." He whispered, and my eyes shot back open.
"No." I replied, and the King grabbed my wrists in his hands, putting just enough pressure on the new cuts to make them sting.
"Tell me who reduced a Winchester to this." He growled, his warm breath almost comforting against my ear.
"No." I said again, and he growled in anger, releasing me and stepping back.
"You're ready to sell your soul to forget what that ass did, and yet you protect him? Are you stupid, or do you- Wow. You loved whatever bastard hurt you, didn't you? Still do, I think. Tell me I'm right, Mooseling." He said, his voice rising in volume just a little with his incredulous laugh. His painfully accurate assumption had me feeling defensive. I straightened my back and glared at him.
"I'm not protecting him. I'm keeping you from sending him a damn fruit basket. You must be so proud." I snapped, and the disbelieving half-smile on his face vanished in a second.
"Proud? I guess you would think that. I'm not proud of the fact that some human dickbag has reduced you to selling your soul to forget him. I'm rather upset that my favourite toy has been broken by another child." He said. I could have sworn I detected anger in his words, directed both and me and the man that hurt me.
"Whatever, Crowley. A Winchester soul has to be worth something to you. Take it, please, I don't care anymore. Whether you say yes or no, my soul is gonna end up in hell sooner than planned anyway." I muttered, and in a flash there he was, an inch from my face, angry fire glinting in his eyes.
"You would kill yourself? Send your soul to unending torture to forget?" He growled, and I gave him a level glare that could only have meant Yes. His eyebrows furrowed and he pressed a hand to my temple, the other hand holding an iron grip on my waist, keeping me there. Suddenly, I could feel him in my head. The past eight months replayed as he watched me get raped, fall into depression, and begin to cut. I felt his hand tighten on my waist as he watched me in my memory from a week ago, sat on the edge of my bed with a gun to my temple, dropping it with a start when Sam walked in, suspecting nothing. I did my best to throw him out of my head, but he delved deeper despite my resistance.
The months before the rape played out like a hurtful film. My abusive boyfriend beating me every other night. One night so bad that I ran away, going to my brothers and claiming that a wendigo hunt gone wrong has bruised me, and not another human. The King watched me join them in the hunting life, flinching whenever one of them touched me. Crowley saw all of my hurt and fear going unnoticed by my family. Then a sudden fast forward to a few hours ago, when I packed the box with all I needed to make a deal, and wrote a letter to Sam and Dean apologising for what I was about to do. What I was doing now. Then his presence in my head withdrew, and I shoved him forcefully away from me.
His face was a mask of rage and hatred. He paced in front of me, ignoring me when I asked him if we had a deal or not. I asked again, and he glared over at me, then vanished with a snap of his fingers.
I sighed, pulling a gun from the waistband of my jeans. If nobody, not even the King of Hell would help me, then I would end the hurt myself. Permanently. I closed my eyes and brought the barrel of the gun up to my temple, letting a last, shaky smile grace my lips as my finger tightened on the trigger.
"Sam, Dean. I'm sorry." I whispered to the empty air. "I'm so sorry I couldn't be strong like you. But I can't live with this anymore." I took a deep breath and tilted my head back, ready to die.
"Erin!" The rough, scared voice jolted my eyes open, and I looked forward to see my two brothers, Crowley between them, stood a few feet away. Dean began to run toward me, and without thinking, I turned the gun on him. He stopped dead in his tracks, and raised his hands, palms out, staring at my face with a mix of fear and confusion.
"I'm so sorry Dean. I'm so, so sorry. I can't… I need to, Dean. Crowley was my last hope, and he won't help me. I'm so sorry. I love you, Dean. And Sam, I love you both so much, but this is killing me and I can't take it anymore." I said, tears flowing again and my gun hand shaking violently.
Sam turned to Crowley with a look of terrified rage.
"What is she talking about?! What did you do to her?" He shouted, and the demon shouted straight back.
"She came to me for help, you moron! Maybe you should have paid some attention to her, when she was depressed, cutting, or pointing a bloody gun at her head, and then she wouldn't have begged me to take her soul! Ask her what she's been dealing with, for Hell's sake!" He yelled, and both Sam and Dean turned with ashen faces to look at me, searching for an explanation for Crowley's outburst.
I sank to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest and burying my face in them, one hand still outstretched and pointing a gun at my brother. I shook and sobbed, and the boys turned to Crowley, helplessly looking for answers.
"What did you think, when she turned up bloody and beaten at your motel door? A wendigo, she said, and you two idiots believed her. She didn't hunt, before she came to you." He said, keeping his voice level, but not containing the rage. My brothers frowned, glancing at me where I cried in the dirt. Crowley continued, his voice narrating my pain as I relived it all.
"Her boyfriend was beating the stuffing out of her every other night, and one night when he had her so bloodied and bruised that she finally ran away, she came to you, fed you a pathetic lie, and you goons swallowed it all. She began hunting with you, but she flinched every time anyone touched her, and you didn't notice as she fell into depression as her pain evaded you both. You failed to catch on when her ex hunted her down and fucking raped her for leaving him, and she got worse, cutting to escape the pain you two didn't see. For eight months, your baby sister sliced her skin, bleeding to distract from the pain of it all, and you, Moose, walked in on her with a gun to her temple, and noticed nothing odd when she said she had only been cleaning the damn thing. So tonight, when her head was about to explode from everything hidden inside it, she begged me to take her soul in exchange for removing the last 8 months from memory. Did you not find it odd that she ducked out of the easiest hunt you'd had in weeks? Are you really so painfully thick that you saw nothing at all out of the ordinary while your sister contemplated Hell as a preferable alternative to her life?!" By the time he had finished, Crowley was red in the face and screaming at the boys, who in turn, had both gone paper white and sported identical looks of horrified guilt.
Dean turned to me and began to slowly approach my curled up form. Hearing his steps, I jumped up and backed away from him, gun aimed at his chest, hating myself for pointing it anywhere near him.
"Dean, back up. I don't want to hurt you." I said in a voice thick with tears. He stopped for a second, and then slowly continued toward me.
"You might as well shoot me Erin. I'm not gonna let you do this. We need you. Sammy and I need you, Erin." He said, and his voice calmed me a little, enough to lower the gun. I still kept the same distance between us, taking a step backward for each one my brother took toward me. I didn't see Sam as he crept in a wide circle around me, coming to a stop in my backward path. As Dean crept forward, I backed away until I stumbled right into Sam's chest, and his gentle hands caught my upper arms as I flinched away.
Sam turned me to face him and immediately wrapped me in a crushing hug as Dean walked up and gently tugged the gun out of my hand, swiftly disassembling it and tucking it away into his jacket pockets. I sobbed openly into Sam's shirt as he shrugged off his jacket and hung it around my shoulders, his warmth surrounding me and calming me a little. I breathed in his scent of grass and the Impala and Sam and my sobbing slowly subsided into sniffling, and I shook violently, suddenly feeling the cold outside.
Sam scooped me up, tucking his jacket around me as he carried me over to Crowley, who looked at me in Sam's arms and shocked me by smiling reassuringly.
"There's a special place in Hell for men like Matthew Avery, and I will take care of him myself- once your brothers have sent him down to me." He said, nodding at Dean, who was already tensed and ready to hurt someone. I smiled at the King of Hell, who took my hand and kissed my knuckles gently. Then Sam held me and talked to me while Dean walked the same route I had taken back to the bar to fetch my car.
"Erin?" He asked. He sat on the ground, leaned up against a tree by the roadside with me in his lap, my head on his shoulder.
"Mm?" I replied quietly, still shaken by the whole evening, and scared that my brother was angry at me for going to Crowley.
"Why didn't you say anything? About… you know?" He asked, his voice quiet. I sighed, snuggling closer to him and feeling his protective arms around me.
"I don't know. We deal with monsters all day, every day, Sammy. I couldn't bear the thought of giving you human monsters to deal with too, I guess." I murmured, feeling the reassuring beat of his heart against my side. He was silent for a moment.
"When I walked in on you, the other week, were you really…?" He let the unfinished question hang in the air, and I sighed.
"Yeah." I barely whispered it, but Sam heard me, and I felt him take an unsteady breath. I lifted my head off of his shoulder to see he had tipped his head back and was staring at the sky, eyes wet with guilty tears that hadn't fallen. I touched his cheek and guided his gaze down to meet mine.
"Sammy, it's not your fault. None of it is. I deliberately hid it all from you. I pretended to be sick, or tired, and because you had no reason to suspect anything else, you believed me. Everything that happened was my fault, and everything I did was my fault. Please Sammy, don't blame yourself, I can't handle that." I murmured, leaning my forehead against his mouth as I spoke, avoiding his eyes and silencing his reply. He wrapped his arms around me a little tighter, and I let silent tears drop from my cheeks onto his shirt, hoping they too would go unnoticed.
But now that that damned Crowley had enlightened him, Sammy saw me crying for the first time in my life, and he wiped away the wetness on my cheeks with the pad of his thumb. He tipped my chin up, and looked me in the eyes.
"Erin, I'm so sorry. I should have known you were… What he did… Why didn't you tell us? We could have helped you… Stopped this…" He pulled up my sleeve and ran a thumb over my scars, avoiding the tender, freshly sliced skin. I pushed his hand away and made to pull the sleeve back down, but he caught my hand.
"I know you must be going through Hell right now, but this… You're letting Avery hurt you when he's not even here. I need you to let me help. Let Dean help." I ignored his soft words and pulled my sleeve back down, hating the scars my brother could now see. I climbed up off of his lap, and he stood with me as I paced, unconsciously feeling the lumpy scar tissue of my forearm through the thin fabric of my shirt. Sam's jacket lay forgotten by me on the floor, and he picked it up, moving to wrap it around me again, but I shrugged him off.
"Sammy, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I panicked you guys, I'm sorry I went to Crowley, I'm sorry I ever tracked you guys down, cause God knows you're dealing with enough. When Dean comes back, I'll… I'll pack my stuff and go, maybe move into the safe house Bobby left me or something. I can-" I tried to stay brisk, keeping my tone light and easy, despite Sam's grave face, but he interrupted me almost straight away.
"What? Why? No, you aren't going off on you own, not until we've found that bastard. Why would you want to? Your our sister, we'd go to Hell and back for you, Erin." He said, eyes wide with disbelief.
"I know you would Sammy. That's what I don't want. You're dealing with so much crap right now, you don't need mine. Other people need you more than I do." I said, reaching up to brush a tuft of moss from his collar, where he'd leaned against the tree. He caught my hand and held it tightly in his.
"Whatever else we've got going on, whether it's a salt and burn or another damn apocalypse, you come first." He said, looking sternly into my eyes. I redirected my gaze to my shoes, and he tipped my chin back up to face him.
"I mean it. The thought of anybody hurting you like that is worse than any demon. I promise, Erin, Dean and me, we'll always be there to help, but you gotta tell us what's happening. When Crowley said you were going to… When he told me about the gun, I thought about what would have happened if I hadn't walked in, and it's not even worth thinking about. Promise me you'll never let yourself suffer alone like that again. We've lost so many people, Erin. Don't make me add you to the list. Please." He said, stroking his thumb along my cheekbone, catching the single, overwhelmed tear that escaped my eye. I bit my lip, not trusting myself to speak without bawling, and nodded. Then his arms came around me in a bone-breaking hug, and I returned it with interest.
The familiar rumble of the Impala rolled up behind us, and Dean jumped out, slamming his door and walking calmly over to me. Sam saw him and stepped back, and I barely had time to breathe before my eldest brother clamped his arms around me, burying his nose in my hair with one hand around my back and the other on the back of my head. I mumbled stuttering apologies for aiming a weapon at him, begging him to forgive me as he stroked my hair. I fisted my hands in his plaid, burying my nose in his chest and smelling the comforting combination of leather, spice and car grease. Thanking God I hadn't pulled the trigger when the gun was aimed at him.
I had always been closest with Dean. When we were kids, and John Winchester had found me in a vampire nest, Dean had been my carer, singing to me when I was sad, and sharing my laughter when I wasn't. Sammy, after the whole deal with Azazel, had always been on a pedestal, loved and protected, where Dean and I had been trained as soldiers from the start. He planted a gentle kiss on my hairline, and then he pulled away and gave me a stern look.
"You. Never. I mean never. Do that again. You hear me?" He said, gripping my upper arms tightly. I gave him a small, apologetic smile, and his eyes softened at the expression that hadn't touched my face in weeks.
"Yes Sir. No more deals with the King if Hell. Got it." I gave him a mocking salute, and he raised his eyebrow at me. My smile fell.
"That's not what I meant, Erin. You can't keep secrets like that from me." I ducked my head and nodded at his feet, knowing he was pissed at me. He drew something out of his pocket and held it under my gaze. I gasped. Apparently he had stopped at our motel room and dug out my small wooden box that held the various blades I kept for only one purpose. I whipped my head up and looked pleadingly at him.
"Don't look at me like that, I'm throwing all of these away, and we're only taking on one-man hunts for a while, so one of us can stick around you. Hate us for it if you like, but until I can trust that I'm not gonna lose my baby sister to anything other than old age, you're going back to the bunker, and we're keeping an eye on you. Understood?" He said, and I nodded. I felt thankful, despite the fact that he had taken away my release, because I knew that they both really wanted me to get past this.
"Yes Sir." I smiled gently, and Dean tucked me under his arm and we walked back to the Impala. I slid in the backseat, and as we drove home I fell properly asleep for the first time in a long time, to Dean's rough voice singing along to Stairway to Heaven.