Hey all - just a few things before you read...

1) This is my first fanfic in about six years. :P Please keep that in mind!

2) Dean will not be nice in this. If you have problems with non-consensual acts between adults, cursing, torture and rape, please skip this story. I don't want to offend anyone.

3) I don't own Supernatural, obviously. I'm pretty sure Jensen Ackles wouldn't give me the time of day after reading this story!

That having been said, I hope you enjoy!

Redemption

It's up to thirty-nine years. The timeline is foggy in Dean's mind; every day in Hell is the same before, played over and over like a broken record. He can't exactly remember when he arrived, or how, but he knows that soon, forty years his eternity will soon be behind him.

It might be the souls that help him keep the days in order. Yes, the souls change. Maybe it's being able to tell the black ones from the red ones that help Dean remember how long he's been in the Pit. Sometimes it's easy to remember the days when a soul is black, scorched by their sins on Earth who beg like the cowards they were when alive. It's easy to remember how much Dean likes slicing into them, hearing their pleas turn to screams under his capable hand.

Dean can usually remember the red souls too. It's rare that a red soul is on his table so it's easy to remember those days as well. The red ones are twisted and ugly from being in Hell so long. They're not demons yet though, give it a few more years. They are like him; they've made their own deals in the Pit. They torture and rape and watch silently as their humanity is cast aside.

Actually, it's the white souls that Dean remembers best. The white souls make the days stand out. Hell is something Dean is never going to forget, no matter what color the soul is, but it's the white ones that will haunt him. He hates them, but at the same time loves them. They're the ones who are fresh off the boat, who are all whimpers and wide-eyes because they are too afraid or too proud to scream.

Dean's soul used to be white. He almost remembers what it felt like… Something pure and clean inside of him that was slowly cut out over the past thirty-nine years. He wonders when his soul will turn red. He wonders when he will no longer hate cutting into the white souls before him – when he can fully embrace and love to torture until every soul turns to ash in is hands. Now he can only wait because part of him still remembers what it means to have that light inside of you. He can remember how it hurt when the blades flayed your skin and your memories from Earth haunted every moment.

Because Dean remembers this, sometimes he feels as if he has been split in two. The part of him that remembers the light is white hot. It cries. It begs the other half of him to have mercy. It hates the other white souls whom he his forced to break. It hates the way they look at him, pleading with their eyes while he scrapes the flesh from their bones because it knows he can't stop. This is the part of Dean that hates himself for not being stronger.

His other half is twisted and black. It's the part of him that loves the white souls. It loves the screams they make. It shudders with pleasure every time their lifeless eyes cry bloody tears and their voices, hoarse with screams, curse him. It's the part of him that compares screams to orgasms.

Dean's soul is grey, but as each day passes, it grows more and more black.

It's been thirty-nine years when a white soul is pushed into his cell. It's just arrived, still shivering from the hellhounds that brought her down. Physically the soul is female – Dean guesses that she was around twenty-five when the hounds found her. He watches her with his arms crossed as she collapses before him. The white soul doesn't speak or cry. It emanates a light that is so bright, so hot; Dean can hardly stand to look upon her.

The door creaks open and Alistair looks in.

"Problem?" His ragged voice barks. Dean shakes his head. The demon smirks, his face ugly. "See that our little girl here is comfortable." Alistair's voice has that mocking tone that makes Dean's blood boil and it's enough to get him moving towards the girl. The door slams shut.

The soul before him is shaking and silent. Dean kicks her, hard enough to make a bone crack and the soul to tip over. Dean sees that her mouth is moving, and he laughs out loud when he realizes that she is praying. The sound of his laughter makes her look up in a daze.

"You sound alive." Her voice is little more than a whisper. Dean kneels down smoothly, and with a swift movement, entwines his fingers in her hair and pulls. Her mouth opens wordlessly in the pain and Dean holds her face close to his.

"Not even close sweetheart." He almost wishes he had a pair of sunglasses; her soul is so bright. He runs a finger along her jaw line, watching as some of his blackness rubs off on her. That's better for his eyes. He leans forward; close enough to feel her tremble as he breathes in her terrified breathes. He can see her life now, watching it through her eyes. He sees the deal she made five years ago to kill her abusive husband. He can feel how terrified she is of him, how he beat her consistently and killed their unborn child by punching her one time to many. The random thought flitters through Dean's mind that she is someone he would have tried to save, once. But he can't remember what that means and he brushes it off with a smirk.

She's praying again, eyes now closed and voice trembling as he made her remember her previous life. She opens her eyes when he slaps her across the face, a black handprint smudging out some of the white.

"God isn't here," He hits her again, "Shut up." The black part of him is relieved when she stops praying and the white light inside of her is turned down a notch. He really needs to invest in some sunglasses. The white part of him cries.

"What are you going to do to me?" She whispers, horrified as she comes to the realization that somehow he knows what she is afraid of. She's surprised to find that she is crying, only her tears are blood instead of salt water. Dean leans forward and roughly licks the blood off her face.

"Gonna do the best I can, baby." She flinches at the pet name he got from her memories and he laughs. She cries harder, confounded that he knows.

Dean can feel Alistair's eyes on him and he feels compelled to get started officially. He stands swiftly; he pulls her by the hair as he walks to the back wall. Quickly, he fastens her wrist in the rusty manacles and locks them tight. She has her eyes closed as tight as the manacles, blood dripping down her face as her lips move mechanically. A white-hot light flares up suddenly until Dean punches her so hard that her jaw becomes dislocated. She yelps when he shoves the bones back in place.

"Pray again and I'll gag you with barbed wire." His eyes motion towards the table in the center of the room, and she shudders to see that he wouldn't be lying. He has a finger in her face, tutting her like a displeased father to an unruly daughter, and his eyes rejoice as the light fades again. She has closed her eyes, and he leans forward until they are face to face. He wipes the blood away from her cheeks so gently that her eyelids snap open. His touch is so gentle, so sensual that she thinks for a moment that this is a bad dream. The light flares up again and Dean sighs.

"It's not." He says, as if he can hear her thoughts. She's terrified that maybe he really can. "Don't let yourself think it's a dream." His voice is gentle now also, a change coming over the grey being before her. Speckles of white begin to show through the grey.

"It's easier to forget about God and dreams and deal with what you've got." He looks her in the eye and she gasps when a black cloud suddenly covers his pupils.

"Don't let me catch you thinking about that again." He says, his voice rough. He turns his back on her and she allows herself to look around the room. She finds that it is windowless and completely metal. Dim fluorescent lights flicker on and off occasionally and when they are at their brightest she can see that every corner of the room is rusted with dried blood.

She focuses back on the man who still has his back to her. At least, she thinks it's a man. He is tall and she can imagine him to have been handsome once. Maybe on Earth. She doesn't understand why he squints when he looks at her. His skin is pallid, like someone covered in a fine dust of ash. His eyes are black, but she imagines them to be green.

Suddenly his eyes are meeting hers, seeming to take her in as she was examining him. There is a smirk on her face that makes her shudder and she had to fight so that she doesn't pray again.

He is so quick that she barely sees him move and suddenly he as knelt down in front of her, straddling her legs. She stifles a scream when she realizes he has a jagged knife pressed against her skin. He doesn't bear down – only begins to trace it along her flesh in some pattern that she doesn't recognize. She tries not to tremble, thinking that if she does, the blade will slip and cut her. He laughs.

"I'll cut you if I want too. Tremble away." That bastard edge is back in his voice, scaring her until she can't stop shaking. He laughs again.

Something builds inside of her abruptly when he laughs – like a cough in her lungs that she tries to hold back until finally, not realize what she is doing, she spits in his face. Dean is shocked and momentarily blinded by the flash of white light as her bloody saliva hits him. When he can finally see again, his face hardens and he casually wipes away the blood. He stabs the knife into her armpit and she screams.

Dean smiles grimly and he slides the blade down her side, cutting through her flesh and clothing like a finger through melted butter. She feels the jagged edge slice though her bones and organs, the pain so intense that she feels like vomiting. He pulls the blade out when he reaches her hip.

"I wouldn't do that again." His voice is demanding but she can almost hear part of him begging her not too. She nods cautiously, fighting the bile rising in her throat. It's then that she realizes he has cut her shirt off. He's smirking at her and she shrinks into herself, trying to hide her naked torso from his view. She finds this is hard, considering her arms are chained above her head and he is pinning her legs down with his. She whimpers, closing her eyes.

The white part of Dean's soul is such a bitch, the black part decrees. A sniveling, whimpering bitch. It's the black part that runs the blade down the girl's breast, delighting in the fact that each time she flinches the knife nicks her skin. The black part of Dean's soul wants to taste more of her blood and is turned on by running his fingers over her skin, turning the white soul grey.

Ruled by the black part of his soul, which is silencing the white part momentarily, Dean leans his face down to the girl's chest and places his mouth on her nipple. His tongue swirls around the very tip, making part of him very hot. He holds her nipple between his teeth, alternating between biting down and gently grazing.

The soul chained to the all is grim faced and her dead muscles are tense. Blood leaks out of her eyes as she struggles to keep them closed. He teases her with his tongue and the soul is torn. She is so afraid, terrified of this man, horrified that he is doing this to her and even more shocked that somehow, her body is responding to his touch. She almost laughs, thinking how she knows she is truly in Hell now, as if she had any doubts before. Self-loathing makes her body shake; hating that she can't help but enjoy the fact that his tongue feels amazing.

That's when she feels it again, that sensation that she needs to cough, and it's so overwhelming that she can't stop herself from bringing her knee to his groin. It's this flash of rebellion that makes the soul beneath Dean so hot that he burns his tongue and he can barely feel her knee jabbing between his legs. He recoils from her, closing his eyes tight against the light radiate from her. He can't even feel the pain that should be coursing through his lower abdomen.

For the first time in thirty-nine years, Dean's eyes tear up with something other than blood.

Relieved to have him off of her, she pulls her knees up to cover her breasts, wincing at the cut in her side. She watches him, holding his eyes in what she can only guess is excruciating pain. She is confused; thinking her knee to his balls would have a different effect.

When he can finally open his eyes, she gasps to see him crying. However, unlike her, his tears aren't red. Black smoke pours from his eyes, and Dean instantly feels changed. The black part of his soul has retreated somehow. The girl before him can see the white speckles again, and they are bright enough this time that he can see them too. He looks incredulously at his hands, several white spots shining through the grey until he finally looks at her in disbelief. She feels as though she should be afraid, but there is something different about his eyes. The black cloud is gone and she knows why she imagined his eyes to be green.

The stare at each other for several seconds, and when Dean opens his mouth to speak, Alistair opens the door. Dean's mouth closes, his eyes harden and he shoves his hands into his pockets. He turns.

"Finished?" The demon's voice is eerily cheery; it makes both of the cell's occupants shudder. Dean pauses, but shakes his head no.

"She's difficult. I want to try again." The white soul's heart falls at that, and she feels blood trickle from her eyes again. Alistair shrugs.

"Fine. Tomorrow then. Unchain her." Dean turns and walks stiffly to her. He unchains her wrists easily and hauls her to her feet. She wonders where the green in is eyes have gone, until she sees it flash when Dean looks at his feet. She covers her breasts with her arms and backs against the wall. Somehow she feels safer with Green Eyes than the ugly one at the door, but Alistair crosses the room in two steps and roughly pulls her out.

She catches a glance at Dean's face before the metal door is shut. The green in his eyes is bright as his tears turn to blood.

Chapter two coming soon. Thanks for reading! Any feedback would be appreciated. :)