Summary: Once there is a demon. But before that, there is a man. Demon!Wes AU. Oneshot.

Warnings: Demon!Wes AU. Backstory. Nothing but backstory. Mentions of violence. Mentions of torture. Mentions of suicide.

Disclaimer: I neither own nor am affiliated with Common Law in any way.

A story of how Wes came to be.

OOOO

Deals With The Devil

"We all start from somewhere. Where you end up, well—that's your choice."

—Unknown

XXXX

Once, there is a demon.

But before that, there is a man.

He is not a particularly good man, nor is he exceptionally wicked. He is simply a man, caught somewhere in the middle.

The one thing this man has is a constant, aching desire in his heart for more. More than what he has, more than what he can earn on his own. He wants love, fame, riches, all the earthly wonders of the world. He works hard, constantly struggles, but it's never enough, and everything he desires continues to slip just out of his reach.

One dark night, as he mourns his empty life over a mug, a woman slides into the seat next to him and whispers in his ear, promises of gold and power and women, everything he's ever wanted and more.

For what price? he asks, of this woman with midnight eyes and a serpent's grin.

For naught but a kiss, she croons, a kiss and your soul, and he thinks that his soul has never done much for him anyway, so he leans in and presses close. She tastes, he thinks, of ashes and wishes.

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them she is gone with a puff of whispered laughter in his ear.

A dream, he thinks, brought on by too much drink, and he goes to sleep it off.

But the next morning, and the morning after that, and for all the mornings beyond, he finds his fortunes changing, slowly, but gathering speed. He gets a job, then a promotion, quickly rising through the ranks until he's one of the most powerful people there. He earns fame and money and the attention of a lovely young woman who joins with him to grant him a son.

I am the luckiest man in the world, he thinks, looking over everything he's gained.

And for ten long years life is perfect, until one dark night a woman comes to him with midnight eyes and says she is there to collect his debt. What debt? he demands, I owe no one.

And she smiles and laughs, smoke seeping from the corners of her mouth, and says, All this, for naught but a kiss and your soul, and I'm here to collect.

The man runs, gathers his wife and his child and takes off into the night. But the woman with midnight eyes follows, and smoke wraps around his throat and drags him down, down, down.

It tastes, he thinks, like ash and broken wishes.

XXXX

Once there is Hell. It's a place, and a thought, and an emotion that never wanes. It's agony, endless and immense, so exquisite it brings tears to his eyes and screams to his lips. It is mere moments of relief, of a cold, sudden absence of pain, just long enough for him to begin to hope, until they dash it to pieces. Eventually he learns to stop hoping at all.

They tear him apart, cell by individual cell, down to the very essence of who he is, and when he is as broken as he can be, they rebuild him once more, over and over again. But every time they put him back together, he is a little different, a little less of what he used to be, until he can no longer remember what he'd once been, only what they're turning him into.

He becomes pain, living, breathing, dying agony, until it runs through his veins and beats in his chest. Until he aches for it, craves it, needs it, until it's been so long that there's nothing else.

That's when they make him an offer, these black-hearted creatures with soot-dark eyes. They offer him the knife and say Take it, and he, twisted black thing he's become, thinks of how good it would feel to release some of this fire inside of him unto others, and he reaches out.

He takes the knife, and when he grins, his eyes are dark as coal.

XXXX

Once there is a crossroads. He learns to twist his words into a silver cascade, half-truths woven with deception. How to coax and cajole people to walk right into his arms, tempting them with their deepest desires. He writes contracts, and he's very good at writing contracts, making the words dance into clauses without loopholes, binding deals without escape. He can give them just enough hope that they become complacent, and when it's far too late, he will be there with the hounds.

He is not the best contract writer—there are demons who have been doing this for centuries longer than him, who have had millennia to hone their craft. But he is very, very good, to the point where he routinely becomes the one heading for the surface, when someone calls at the crossroads.

There are many crossroads, in many cities, but it is all the same in the end, a desperate soul at a junction needing a miracle. It should have become boring a long time ago. It is, in a way.

But every time he's summoned, he lifts his head to the sky and takes a deep breath of air that doesn't reek of brimstone and smoke, and for one brief shining second, he thinks that this is what peace must feel like.

XXXX

Once there is a boy. There is nothing special about this boy. Absolutely nothing. He is just another young man standing at the crossroads, making wishes because he's exhausted all other options. Nothing special at all, and yet…

He's worked with children before, given them their heart's desires in exchange for their soul. He doesn't do it often—there's something about children that disquiets him, leaves him feeling…dirty, slimy, unclean in a way that has nothing to do with being a demon.

Nothing special about this boy, just a kid selling his soul to heal his mother. He does it, of course, kisses the boy and seals the deal, because there's no reason not to, and this boy's soul is young but in ten years he'll have ripened to something fresh and ready to be plucked.

And yet…

In the end, it doesn't make a difference. The boy's mother is healed from a sickness she should not have survived, and they live in a time when miracles are less believable than consorting with the devil; the boy and his mother are condemned. The woman is dragged away, and the boy, left to rot in a prison cell, he…

In the eyes of the Catholic Church, suicide is a mortal sin, but as far as he knows there is no real basis for that in any way. People have been killing themselves a thousand ways long before the Church rose to condemn it. The suicide isn't what makes the boy's soul come to him—it's the simple fact that he's the contract bearer.

He holds this tiny, fluttering soul in his hands, a boy who had been granted ten years and had barely made it one before he died—and looking at this glowing, trembling thing, he feels something inside of him twist, a place so deep inside of himself he never even knew it existed until now.

Just a boy. Nothing more. He looks with eyes that can see so much more than the fleshy trappings of humanity, and he finds nothing special about this boy at all. And yet.

Without quite understand why, he releases the boy's soul, burns the contract, and watches that glimmering, shining thing rise.

XXXX

Once there is…discontent. There is no cause for the feeling, at least none he can see, and yet…

He doesn't fit in with the other demons. They love what they do, take joy in making deals and collecting souls. He enjoys making contracts, yes, enjoys the intricacy of weaving words into something as solid as stone, but…

Most of the time it doesn't bother him, what he does. Most of the time, the people looking to make deals are doing it for themselves, for fame or power or wealth, and all that. Well, that's just greed. He understands greed—it's a very demonic thing, to want so badly you'd lust after it, you'd give anything to obtain it.

It's the others that bother him, the ones that make deals not for themselves but for other people. Their spouse, their child, their friend. (There was one man who sold his soul to save the lives of everyone in his village, from some plague or influenza. That one stayed with him a very long time.)

It's the selfless ones that unsettle him, that strike something deep in his core. He'll look at these people, willing to give up everything they are for someone else, and as he leans in to seal the contract, he'll wonder Why? Why are you doing this? He just can't understand.

He starts losing contracts.

Not many, not enough to raise attention. One every few decades—the selfless ones aren't as common as the greedy ones. But when a selfless one came along, he will…misplace the contract, and when their time comes, he'll feel those bright, shining souls rise, and he'll stand with his face turned towards the stars and watch it go.

He is…not like the other demons. He knows that instinctively, knows not to talk of his doubts, his discontent, his rebellion. Letting souls go? It's unheard of.

But when he hears his kin talking of the humans, laughing at how stupid they are, how shallow and greedy, he has to bite his tongue to keep from crying out, Look at them! How can you not see? They are astounding.

Astounding in every sense of the word.

XXXX

Once there is a war. It is a war that shakes the world above, that spans the globe, so much fear and chaos in the air—it's ripe picking for a demon.

So many of them go to the world above, to play, to instigate more chaos, to reap what souls they can, making deals left and right in these desperate times.

He goes above, and he sees these young men, these children, fighting and dying and so, so scared, and something deep inside of him twists painfully.

There is one young man, lying in the mud and muck, dying, and with his last breath he prays, prays for salvation, for life, for…

The child prays not to die alone.

And deep inside, in the dark, hidden places beneath his smoky shell, he feels—something. Like pain, except he knows all forms of pain, and this isn't it. This is something else, painful but not pain itself.

There are no angels coming, so he slips down the child's throat and does what he can.

It isn't enough. The child is too far gone. But before he fades away, the demon wrecks vengeance on the ones who did this, and when the child is finally gone, the demon holds the glittering ashes of his soul and clutches them tight.

The war goes on for years, and he stays. He goes out into the fields and he fights and he never seems to get injured, nothing so bad it would send him home. The men of his unit call him 'Angel'—luck of the heavens, they say, and he wants to laugh at the irony.

When he goes with them, he does what he can without revealing himself, does whatever he has to, to keep these boys from dying. They are children, and they are the selfless ones, and—he can't simply let them die.

From the time he takes this body, his unit only loses two men. Oh, so many more are sent home with injuries they can't fight with, but they don't die.

Angel, they call him, Luck of the heavens on our side. And he isn't, but he doesn't correct them.

When the war is over, and all of his kin return home, he digs his toes into the earth beneath his feet and sinks his claws tighter into this body and he stays.

XXXX

Once there is a home. In it, there is a woman, and a child, so much smaller than the ones he'd fought and died with on the battlefield, and a baby on the way. There is a dog, too, but the dog can see what he is, and keeps trying to attack him. They don't keep the dog for long.

In this home, the demon learns. He never needed to act incredibly human before—those who called him at the crossroads knew what he was, so he'd never had cause to learn.

But now he learns how to hide what he is, to keep his eyes blue instead of flashing black, to bite back the old, ancient words that spring to mind when he's angry, to carry himself in a manner that hides the unearthly line of his spine, the crook of fingers that remember being claws.

He learns to be human, to walk among them without them drawing instinctually away from his wrongness. Dogs still don't like him, but the humans never realize.

He can't rid himself of everything—he can still weave words to do his bidding, he will still get caught up in the numbers and routine and ritual of things around him, because demons are ritualistic by nature and that doesn't just go away.

But lots of soldiers come back from the war different. So the woman who is this body's wife merely smiles and takes his hands and says I love you.

Love. That is another thing he learns of. He knew the word before, but it was a foreign concept, something he could not comprehend. He had no frame of reference. Love is soft and warm and gentle, and nothing in Hell was ever soft and gentle.

But in that little house, with the woman and her two small children, he learns…not to feel it, but to recognize it, to at least understand what motivates the people around him.

He is finally able to put a name to the reason behind the selfless ones, the ones who gave their souls for the people around them.

Love. What a strange, fascinating, amazing thing.

XXXX

Once there is a cataclysm. It involves angels, and demons, and in the end the world's eyes are opened to the supernatural. Not just the hunters and magic-users and possessed, but everyone sees the truth of things, and the world is thrown once more into chaos.

He walks away from the life he built, because he may have learned to fake humanity but he isn't human, not in the slightest, not anymore, and he doesn't want to be found out and killed. Or worse, sent back.

He goes somewhere quiet, deep in the mountains, far from people, where he can watch the world change from a safe distance. He doesn't need to eat or sleep, which is a help—it means he doesn't need to buy food, doesn't have to deal with curious, suspicious questions from others. Because another thing he's learned is that humans are social creatures, and the ones who isolate themselves are outliers, considered different, and strange.

So he stays away, watching from afar as the world changes into something brand new.

And when the dust finally settles, and he sees what the world has become, he emerges from the mountains and steps into the light.

XXXX

Once there is a law firm.

Demons, it turns out, are really fantastic lawyers. It's spinning words, writing and maintaining contracts and finding loopholes, and convincing a judge and jury to see their point of view. It's a profession made for demons.

He starts in contract law—crossroad demons are particularly good at that. He's no exception. But contact law is dull—it's basically the same thing he's been doing all along.

So he moves, becomes part of the long branch of defense lawyers. And he hates it—he can do it, but he doesn't enjoy it, defending people whose guilt he can taste seeping from their skin, who lie as easily as they breathe while they claim 'Not Guilty'.

Maybe he's been on this earth too long, played at being human too long. Or maybe not—he's always been a little bit different from his kin (no one else had ever lost contracts before).

He hates his job, but he doesn't know anything else.

Then he hears his coworkers talking, laughing at the pro bono lawyers fighting for the poor, the needy, the helpless. His coworkers—some demons, some not, but all the same inside—can't understanding fighting for nothing.

But he remembers people selling their souls for love, and he can't help wondering if fighting for nothing is something similar.

So he goes, and he finds the pro bono firm, a tiny building in the poorest part of town full of harried, desperate people. They are reluctant to hire him—he no longer has to hide his nature, but this is not the sort of work demons do. But they're desperate, and short on people, and also, he is a demon; he knows how to convince people.

And it is…good. These people don't reek of guilt and sin the way his other clients did, and defending them, even when they lose…

Yeah. It's good.

He becomes something of a black sheep among his kin, the demon defending innocents. They withdraw, pull away, as though his strangeness is contagious.

He finds he doesn't actually care.

XXXX

Once there is a man. He shines with a golden light, a radiance so bright it's a wonder he doesn't glow in the dark. His edges are colored with sorrow and anger, emotions carried so deeply they're etched into his very soul. He's suffered pain, but he never lets that twist him, never allows it to turn him cruel. He is not innocent, but he is pure.

He is, above all else, a good man.

And the demon decides that this man is a precious, shining example of all humanity aspires to be. It's something that he, black and twisted thing that he is, aches to possess but can never have.

If he cannot have this glowing radiance, the demon decides, then he will protect it, will claim it and hold it close and never let it go.

So he stays, guards the man made of golden light, claims him and vows terrible revenge on all who would do him harm. He will do whatever it takes to keep this man safe, and he himself will never cause him pain.

It's possessive and destructive, an all-consuming passion—it's the only way he knows to be, but the man sees him at his worst and still smiles and calls him 'partner'.

He will never, ever destroy this man. And he will never let anyone else destroy him.

He warns his kin off, tells them exactly what will happen if they touch this man, and the other demons stay away—he keeps to himself, but his wrath is mighty when provoked. (And pity the fool who tries to take what belongs to him.) As for the rest of the world, all he can do is be there, to keep him safe.

He would give anything to keep him safe. Even, he realizes, after years have passed, his life, if that is what it took.

It is, he thinks wonderingly, like the selfless ones from so long ago, the ones who gave their very souls for someone outside of themselves.

And maybe, he thinks, this is the closest a demon could ever come to loving another.

XXXX

Once there is a man.

But before that, there is a demon.

OOOO

I found the quote online in three different places, from three different sources, so I just said it was unknown. If anyone has an original quote speaker/author/whatever, please let me know.

I really wanted to write a story about how Wes came to be the way he was, a demon who cared about a human. And what I realized…is that he's never quite been the demon he's supposed to be, not from the beginning. It'll be interesting to see if this comes back in later stories or not. Who knows. I don't! Hahaha.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. Comments, reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome.

Until next time~!