Title: Red
Summary: An eye for an eye makes Dean see red.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: This is… dark. Character death. Images of Hell.
A/N: Written quickly after my second viewing of 4.10. Because this is what Hell is. Not forgetting who you are. Being what you always were.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. They belong to Kripke. Still waiting for him to pull a YouTube on us…
It hurt. Pain radiating from a body that no longer existed, that had long-ago burnt, that was nothing and nowhere and everywhere. Scattered to the wind. Scattered into the fire and the brimstone and the screams and the shrieks and the torture.
It hurt.
He wasn't even him anymore. Wasn't even a person. Being alive, being real, being able to feel all of that wasn't even physically possible. He was everywhere and nowhere, a million tiny pieces of himself.
And like magic, he was whole.
Like magic, it began again.
But today, tonight, this week, this month, this year, this eternity it was different. It wasn't the usual demon with the dark eyes and the malicious smile and the cold voice and the warm hands soaked with Dean's blood and Dean's dreams and Dean's hopes and Dean's pain. It wasn't Alistair.
Today, it was Sammy.
Sammy, with his innocent smile and his wide, clear eyes and his warm voice and his warmer heart. Sammy, who had finally come. After years of screaming, decades of torture. Sammy. Thirty years, and here was Sammy.
Dean tried to tell him to go back, to get out, to run as fast as his strong and whole and good legs would carry him, but Sammy just smiled that smile of his. He put a finger to his lips. He knew it hurt, knew it was hard. After so many years of screaming, blood boiled and bubbled with even the slightest provocation.
So Dean was quiet. Dean was quiet because Sammy had come for him, Sammy would save him, and he'd finally gotten something he wanted. He'd finally found his salvation. His salvation had found him.
Sammy smiled. A good smile. A warm smile. He smiled and he reached out to his brother, to Dean lying prone on the rack, his arms and his legs chained, stuck through with hooks, always in pain and it hurt.
A warm hand slid over his face, leaving a trail of blood. His blood. Dean's blood on Sammy's hand because Sammy was holding a knife and Sammy wasn't Sammy. Sammy was Sam. He'd left, walked away, abandoned everything they'd known, and now he was carving intricate patterns into his brother's false flesh, creating a work of art, writing the story of his betrayal.
And it hurt.
It hurt more than Alistair's punishments. More than the hellhounds' claws. More than all the death and destruction Dean had encountered in life.
Sam's eyes turned yellow and he whispered the words that Dean had known would come. "An eye for an eye, brother." He took a step back and held out the knife coated in Dean's blood. "Make the world see red."
Dean blinked. Dean stared.
This was Sam.
This was Sammy. Chubby and young and innocent. Tall and lanky and jaded. The lines were blurring and he was bleeding and it hurt. It hurt, but he could make it all better, take all the pain away.
He'd never been able to refuse his brother anything.
He didn't even have to say it. A simple thought sufficed and the chains were gone, the carvings his brother had left in him good and clean and whole again. Gone. He was whole again.
Dean slid off the rack, wobbly on his feet after so long. Sammy helped him stand. Sammy held him up. Sammy offered the knife, but Dean knew a better way. He wanted to make his brother proud.
He turned back to the rack and saw a girl, no more than fifteen. Sammy told him she had burnt down her house because she was mad at her parents. They lived. She died. Dean welcomed her to Hell by digging his nails deep into her stomach and pulling hard, ripping out everything that he could grasp.
He saw red.
Sammy was pleased.
The blood was hot and sticky on his hands, the girl's intestines an interesting texture. Always something new to experience here. Always something new. He closed his eyes to savor it. The touch. The scent. The taste.
Metallic. Copper. Sulfur.
Dean opened his eyes and saw red. A horrible color for a motel room, but they weren't picky. Only place in town and Sammy had been tired.
He blinked.
Sammy?
The taste of blood was heavy in his mouth, laced with sulfur. Sweet and tangy, deep and demonic. His hands were tacky, coated, sticky. His brother was dead, lying on his back on the bed, his eyes wide open in shock, stomach torn and ripped by Dean's teeth and nails.
"Stop him," Dean whispered. His tongue slipped out and lapped at one of his fingers. He'd missed that taste, so rare on Earth. "Or we will."
Dean saw red.