"Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings where we had shoulders
smooth as ravens' claws."
- Jim Morrison
Angels had always been watching over Dean, despite how much he thought that it was total bullcrap. Even so many years later, when Dean was damned and sent to Hell, the angels were still watching…
It started when he was three and his mother pulled a coat out of the closet in his room. The wooden door was pulled open and his mother smiled at him as she turned around, a warm jacket in her hands. Dean's legs swung from the bed, his shoes knocking against the bed posts. His eyes were focused on the dark expanse of his closet, and the shimmering little light in the top corner.
His attention was pulled away as his mother drew closer to him and tugged the coat around him, running her fingers through his hair and kissing the top of his head. Dean remembered smiling at that, and watching as his mother left the room, going into the nursery to tend to the squalling baby Sam.
Dean's feet hit the floor with a loud thump and he looked up, back at the closet once more. The light was gone. He didn't think much of it, deciding instead to run outside of the house and play until dark, chasing shadows in the dusky yard until his father finally returned home…
The second time it happened was five years later. Their mom had died in a house fire, and Dad had never been the same since. He went out at night, much more frequently, coming back limping or worse. Dean was eight and Sammy was four, the younger brother playing the bother game, wanting to read a book with Dean.
The older boy scoffed, thumping up the steps to his room, his little brother pouting along behind him. Dean slammed the door, smiling giddily as Sam's small fists pounded on the wooden surface. He might get in trouble later, their dad hated it when they teased and fought with each other.
And then came the glimmer from underneath Dean's bed. Curious, he walked over to kneel beside the bed, grabbing a flashlight off of the nightstand and the baseball bat from the corner. The bed was long and thin, covered in white sheets and surrounded by dark wooden posts. His palms pressed against the floor, his shoulders hunching as he looked underneath. A faint, residual glow of white was all that remained. Dean shoved the bat at it.
When Dean showed his father, the man didn't say a word, only placed a shaking palm on top of his boy's head. The light disappeared for the next three years…
Dean was alone in a clearing, a wide ring of trees standing tall and proud around him. He lay on his back with his hands crossed behind his head, staring up at the clouds, not bothering to wonder how he had gotten there. They were in Nebraska, having moved again for their dad's job. Dad didn't speak much about what he did for a living, but it brought home food, more often than not wrapped in greasy wax paper.
He had known for awhile what it was that their dad did when the sun went down; 'hunting' he called it. Hunting monsters that hunted people, saving the world. Just not their mom…
He sighed as the clouds drifted past him, closing his eyes gently when something began to rustle behind him. His eyes fluttered open again and he groaned, "Sammy?" he called back without looking, "That you?"
Dean wasn't expecting the answer he received. It sounded like a big bird flapping its wings, and Dean, confused, rolled over and looked up. He stared for a minute, and then jumped back, scrambling to his feet, "Son of a bitch, man!"
There was a scruffy looking man, maybe a little younger than Dad, standing in front of him now, dressed in a rumpled shirt with a too-big jacket hanging off of his shoulders. His head was cocked over to one side, making bits of his dark hair fall into his face, which looked much like his own when he woke up too early. The stranger's eyes were an odd sort of blue, narrowed into a confused expression as he stared at Dean. Dean frowned and stared right back, crossing his arms in front of him and demanding, "Who're you?"
The man said nothing, but Dean continued asking, "Why're you here? What do you want?"
Dean stopped talking when the guy looked up, paying rapt attention to the sky above them and nodding soon after. The guy looked back to Dean, opened his mouth to speak and-
The loudest, most shrill and piercing noise that Dean had ever heard slammed into his ears, making him gasp and press his palms against them tightly. He groaned as it got progressively louder, dropping to his knees and curling in on himself. His teeth ground against each other as the sound continued, on and on and on.
And then it stopped. His ears were ringing steadily as he looked back up to where the man once stood. He gasped for breath, wondering what the hell had just happened, when he woke up.
Dean was back in his bed, or what he had designated as his once they had gotten to the motel. He blinked his eyes and stretched his arms as he got up, rubbing at his face as he slid off of the bed. When his fingers touched something warm and sticky, he pulled his hand away.
He frowned. His nose was bleeding, and his dream was nothing more than a blur inside his head…
"An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
legions of angels can't confine me there."
- Edward Young
The knife dug into flesh like it was butter, and a steady stream of blood flowed out. The man on the rack groaned loudly at the pain; he was a tough one, had endured his share of torture for three years as a POW. Dean's mouth twitched upwards. He hadn't had a strong soul in a long time…
Unsatisfied with the knife's effect so far, he placed it back on the tray. He stepped carefully around the space that was considered the floor, the bottom of this Circle. The man's name was not important anymore, now that he was here. All that mattered was his greed. He had stolen from women, from children, and from anyone too weak to fight back against him. He had taken their money and their homes, had chased them away with his gun and taken all that they had owned.
In his group, several men had voiced protest against him, but no one made a move. About a week later, enemy soldiers had piled into the valley where the troops were stationed. Outnumbered, they had fled, but they had left the greedy man behind…
His greed had sent him down to Hell, demons dragging him by his heels to the Fourth Circle and dropping him in its center. The middle was a large crater, filled with avaricious souls like his own. They had been punished by being force to endlessly push weights equal to what they had horded up the crater, unless they wished to be crushed by it. Many had tried to rest the weight upon their backs so as not to be forever straining, but it was not enough and they would lay beneath their weighty sin until the demons tired of their tormented screams and set them upright again. Only to continue pushing…
The man Dean was punishing now had tried to kill himself while in Hell, a suicide, which rightfully belonged to the Harpies of the Seventh Circle. The eventual fallout had sparked a battle between Plutus and the Harpies. Dean had followed Alastair up from the Circle of Violence to settle the matter.
Alastair grinned widely as he dipped his head, "For the matter of Jack," he drawled out, for that was the name of the man in question, "I propose we share him between us, hmm?"
Dean knew Alastiar better than that. Well enough to know that 'sharing' involved Seventh taking one half of the man, and Fourth taking the other. Literally. Plutus snarled, his wolfish features snapping towards the demon in front of him, "I do not share," the demon growled, as his greed had no limits and he would not relinquish what belonged to him, "Especially with these feathered wenches."
The Harpies squawked, fluffing the scaly feathers on their forearms, "Suicide!" they shrieked, "Ours, ours, ours!" Dean rubbed his hands together, watching as the Harpies flexed and snapped their beaked jaws. He had seen those things in action long enough to make sure that he was well out of their way. Alastair simply smiled…
He didn't know exactly what Alastair had said to convince them, but it had ended up with him torturing the man. And so, here he was, rifling through the pile of instruments on the cart for something that would really give the demons behind him a show. He heard Alastair snickering behind him as he ripped something out of the man's stomach, proudly labeling it as a probable kidney.
And that was when the angel found him…
"Gaze not into the abyss, lest the abyss gaze back into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Dean felt Alastair push him down and stand over him, grabbing something wicked off of the cart as he went. The hot ground pulsed angrily beneath his fingers as the very air around them seemed to shake. He chanced a look up before Alastair's growling made his forehead touch the dirt again, and what he saw in those short few seconds expelled all the breath from his body.
The Circle above them caved in, the eternal rains from above screaming its protest as it began to fill in Plutus' crater, and in rushed the brightest creatures that he had ever seen. They landed in the freezing water, exploding like star-bursts when they touched down. The demons that had been flitting above, dropping weights down upon the sinners, suddenly reared back with a unanimous screech and dove for the lights. The creatures themselves rose up, towering over the blackness and wrapping luminescent limbs around the horde.
Plutus howled, long and low as he dug his fanged mouth into one of the offshoots of light. The scream that followed was inhuman. And then Plutus shattered. His wolf-like body cracked, filling up the sockets of his eyes and the gape of his mouth with white before he imploded with the sound of breaking glass and the rush of clattering coins.
Alastiar slashed at one of the lights overhead, and Dean ducked his head down. The lights were tearing through Hell, one demon at a time, and it looked like Alastair was next. Dean found himself being hauled roughly to his feet with Alastair's clawed fingers digging into his naked back. He barely felt it as he was dragged down through the Pit and into the Fifth Circle. Souls screamed harshly as they flailed in the river, tearing at each other like piranhas.
The thin bridge that lead into the Sixth circle and divided the Styx from the sludge of the miserable was filled with demons, all of them charging upwards, brandishing hooked blades and gnashing their fangs. Dean held tight to Alastair as the elder demon pushed and fought his way through the mass of twisted bodies, roughly slamming a few of his own kind into the soul-filled water where the wrathful tore the demons apart with their teeth and nails.
Dean knew where they were going, and he stopped dragging his feet and started running to keep pace with Alastair. They were heading for the demon city of Dis. Built by demons as woeful angels that had fallen from grace, Dis was the epicenter of Hell. Outside of the city was nothing but barren wasteland, the only refuge being within its cold, iron walls. Flaming tombs that encase the heretical souls can be seen even from the river, but Dean had no time to stop and look.
The lights were coming.
"It is easier to stay out than to get out."
- Mark Twain
Alastair bypassed the sepulchers and huffed sulfur from his lungs as they approached the city. The demon jerked Dean to himself, pressing his face into the heaving chest of the thing that had owned him for forty years. He went without protest.
Dean's hands latched on to the spiked shoulders, ignoring the blood the poured out of his hands at the touch. The spines along the demon's shoulders lacerated his palms, but he didn't care. He could see the things behind him, and if they had Alastair running scared…
He didn't get anymore of a chance to think before he was in the air, still clinging to the demon as they jumped the city gate. The city, built in a ring that opened straight down to the Seventh Circle in its center, was a massive collaboration of sighs and sinners. Three towers lined the outer walls, and upon each sat a Furie. Thin as death with snake-like skin and wide-set eyes, they looked almost like women. Dean couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a real one…
Alastair's feet cracked the stone of the city's floor as he landed. He quickly crushed his back against the wall and turned Dean back around, Dean's back to Alastair's chest, hiding as the peek of light glimmered over the first tower. The Furie there waved her arms furiously, swatting at the offending light until one of the beings slammed into it, sending both Furie and light careening down deeper into the Pit through the center gap. A shrill cry chased after them as they fell, something almost familiar, and Dean looked up.
A flicker of light, roughly shaped like a human, but with tendrils of white splitting out of it at odd intervals hovered above them. Alastair wasn't moving behind him, and Dean wondered if the demon was caught up the the same strange feeling that he was. He wanted to go, and he wanted to stay, but Alastair had a firm grip around his waist, nails slotted evenly into the flesh of his side.
Before Dean noticed, another light had swooped down upon them, grabbing onto Alastair and dragging him up with it and away from Dean. The demon laughed as he went, the bladed object in his hands slicing at the light with a ferocity that Dean hadn't seen in a very long time. It meant that Alastair was matched by the light. And he wasn't happy about it…
Dean watched as the light drew Alastair higher, both of them seeming to shout at the other. Alastair in his high wails, kicking and flailing and entwining his body with the light's. The creature took every hit, every cut, returning each with a swat of its tendrils onto Alastair's face, his back, his legs. This was a fight. This was war.
He turned back to the light in front of him, watching as it wafted closer. Dean breathed it in and choked. He hadn't spoken real words in years, never opened his mouth except to scream. He wasn't surprised that he couldn't do so now…
A long tendril, thicker than the rest with five appendages at its end reached for Dean, looking all too much like a hand. It was so close to his face now that it burned, a startlingly calm heat unlike those of Hell, so cold that it was warm. It contrasted cruelly to the burning inferno winds of Hell. Dean grabbed the hand with his own, expecting to hear the sizzle of his own flesh, and squeezed it tightly. Nothing happened, and the creature stopped moving. Dean applied pressure to the digits of light, using enough force to break a human's hand, but not a sound escaped the thing in front of him.
He growled at it, his instincts from Hell telling him thus, and another limb reached for him, catching him around his shoulder. He frowned, there was nothing vital there, so why? His stomach seized and he gasped when the light trilled loudly, arching the head-like shape atop its shoulders back in victory. Dean struggled then, scraping his nails across the light's nonexistent flesh. He echoed the scream with one of his own as he ascended the city of Dis with the creature clutching his arm, dragging him higher and higher, the other lights following and repeating the leader's battle cry. They went on until the light from above was just as bright as the reflection of the creatures below him.
His black eyes burned, and his body slumped over into submission, feeling something cold run across him. From far away, he heard something, but he remained complacent in the thing's grasp…
"Righteous man?" a voice snorted, "Not so righteous now, is he, brother?"
Author's Notes:
This is the first time this work has ever been posted, despite it dwelling on my computer for years now, and I've always been fond of
the idea of demon!Dean becoming a thing (I suppose series-wise I've gotten my wish...)
I've taken some heavy inspiration from Dante's Inferno in regards to the inner workings of Hell and its denizens (such as Plutus, the Furies, and the city of Dis from Hell's various Circles).