Pieces of her Heart
prologue
HELL
Consciousness stole over him. He could feel it all around him, the fiery darkness. Sulfur, shrieks and wails of horror and pain. The memory played over and over like a bad horror movie on an endless loop. Complete the cycle and it would start all over again.
He tried to open his eyes to change what he was seeing but to no avail. He simply did not have the strength. Aside from that observation he couldn't make much sense of anything. And there was the other smell-the coppery scent of fresh spilled blood. He was unsure how he knew it, but there was no doubt the blood was his. Then slowly the memories would come into fuller focus.
Of course some of the confusion was probably because of the pain. It was a full portion of the memory. The agonized sound of someone begging for him to be spared. The sound of Lillith's countering laughter as she unleashed her pets, the pain acute and constant as unseen claws ripped his body to shreds.
There was no place that he didn't hurt. Breathing was sheer agony. He struggled against the pains praying for death and then realizing that this was to be his torment and eventually remembering why he was here and he would realize that a simple death was a luxury that he would never be granted.
Then HE would come. Allistair. His tormentor. And that pain was even more excrutiating than the Hellhounds.
Periodically faces of his loved ones would appear before him. He grasped onto the remembered images to try and buffer the pain. Reprieve was momentary and he would cry out their names before the pain made him lose focus on the cause of an instant of validation for the sacrifice that he'd made.
Sam. His brother for whom he'd given everything.
Then the other momentary glimpse of regret. The woman to whom he'd not given enough. To whom he'd never given the full truth.
While Alistair's crazed maniacal laugh rang in his ears as the demon carved the last piece of flesh from his bones and everything went black before the loop started over, Dean cried out her name,
"JO!"