Title: If a link is broken, the entire chain breaks
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: Up to 4.10 (i.e. what has aired)
Word count: Approx 950
Disclaimer: Own nothing, not being paid.
Author's notes: Title is a Yiddish proverb. Thanks to pdragon76 for the wonderful beta and erinrua for the American check.
Summary: When I was in the pit, hanging around, you might say, I heard about a man. They say this man had been there for almost thirty years and had never broken.
He could smell the sulfur, sharp and pungent in the air. The nearby street light flickered and buzzed, before settling back to its constant brightness. There was no sound other than twin sets of breathing, and Sam was back at the motel. Dean slid his hand subtly into his jacket and pulled out Ruby's knife, keeping it out of sight. No demon had been stupid enough to come up alone against the Winchesters for a while. He quickly scanned the area around him; nothing but silent, sleepy houses hiding from the big bad behind their picket fences. He turned, ready for a fight.
The demon had chosen to possess a man, skin colour and eye shape immediately giving away the Asian ancestry. Tall, thin and immaculately dressed — grey was the new black it seemed — there wasn't a dark, glossy strand of hair out of place. This demon was anal about his appearance.
"Dean Winchester." The lack of accent indicated American born. Although, whether the accent reflected the man or the demon Dean didn't know.
Dean cocked his head and settled into a battle-ready stance. "You sons of bitches all start with the same old, tired material. Where's your originality?"
The demon held Dean's eyes, oily black almost inquisitive. "Back in the pit." His voice became sing-song, his head angling in time with the words. "Where it was ripped, and shredded, and carved out of me." The eyes didn't move from Dean's own, not even when he flinched ever so slightly at the first description. "But then, you'd know all about that, wouldn't you Dean?"
"Don't know what you're talking about." Dean didn't back down, keeping up their staring contest, his tone casual, his grip tightening on the knife.
The demon smiled slightly, condescending and knowing. "When I was in the pit, hanging around, you might say," he gave a sardonic grin, "I heard about a man. They say this man had been there for almost thirty years and had never broken. Thirty years of the worst things that you could ever imagine happening to you, and some so terrible you couldn't imagine them, and he hadn't turned into a monster."
Dean twitched, his shoulders and back stiffening, jaw tightening. His hand flexed around the grip on the knife.
There was a fanatical light in the demon's eyes. "Dean Winchester, they said his name was. He was a hero, an inspiration, an angel sent to guide us." His face hardened and he spat out the words. "And then he fell, gave up. He let us down, betrayed us. A knight in blackened armour, fighting for the bad guys. Torturing in their name."
"You don't know what you're talking about," Dean whispered, his throat choked with his remembered screams. A flash of dark eyes pleading in terror made him sway slightly. Tear tracks formed furrows that were turning into canyons, red light bathing the salty water red, eyes screaming words the voice could not. His vision returned and the demon was closer.
"Then I was pulled down and put on the rack, terrified and in agony and guess who I should meet? Why, it was the great Dean Winchester, my torturer. An apprentice in training, so very, very good at his job." The demon's voice rose in pitch, anger and fear bleeding into his voice. "Rending and ripping and tearing and breaking, creative in his approach. No apology in his eyes, no apology in his words, just nothingness. And at the end of every day, before I miraculously became whole and waited for it all to start over again, he told me how I could stop the agony. The only catch, I had to do the torturing myself. And one day it was too much. Dean Winchester broke me and I stepped down off the rack."
The demon stopped speaking. Dean's breathing was ragged, the knife held defensively in front of him, his composure clearly shaken.
"I'm sorry," he breathed, voice close to breaking.
"You made me what I am."
The demon stepped closer and Dean's stance firmed, his instincts and muscle memory coming to the fore, blanking out the words and the emotions they evoked. Self-preservation of mind and body, shelving what was unneeded or detrimental to survival.
"Come any closer and I will kill you," he warned the demon, circling to the left and trying to keep distance between them.
"Father to a demon. Aren't you proud?"
The demon's preternatural speed gave it an advantage. Bare seconds and the demon was upon Dean, trying to rip him open with its bare hands, no finesse or skill. It was almost too easy to sink the knife up into the flesh, and aim for the heart, the dying man and demon now a dead weight supported by his own body. The entrance wound and the demon's eyes flashed with light as the body jerked, relief in the black depths. The body collapsed to the ground, empty of both man and demon.
Dean stood over the corpse, blood dripping off the knife, his face blank.
"Go all right?" Sam asked as Dean closed the motel room door, the latch snicking quietly.
"Yeah, fine. We can check it out tomorrow," Dean answered, making his way to the bathroom. "Ida and Rob love visitors, so shouldn't be too hard to see whether anything shows up. There were no cold spots, but EMF might show something."
Dean looked into the mirror above the sink and a demon stared back. Cruel lips smiled, black eyes held his own. He blinked and the demon was gone, normal green returning as he turned on the tap, washing the blood off his hands.