Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or anything affiliated with it.
A/N – This was formed from the bones of a song, and thinking about Bela and her deal, which was revealed in "Time Is On My Side". The song, I found on Youtube - :) – and was created by Clint Mansell. I used the video version entitled "Requiem for a Dream" by Toytown (and, by the way, I don't know what the video itself is of, I just found that version of the song to be the clearest and longest). :)
This is a story about Bela, her decisions, and a bit on how she became the character we saw on the show. Warnings: Implied rape/child abuse.
Requiem for a Dream
When Abby was a little girl, she knew some very simple truths.
Mommy was a cold, calculating woman. She wouldn't stay and play. She wore knee-length skirts over sheer tights that made her legs look perfect, and on top of that came a series of sweaters and button-up, collared shirts that were stiff and formal. She never wore anything like the maids did, soft material that was worn and a tiny bit frayed. Always, she wore 'new'.
Mommy wore jewelry. She had a pearl necklace that felt soft to Abby's touch whenever she snuck into her mommy's dressing room to see how they felt. She had silver and gold chains upon which stones set in metal were hung. Her earrings were tasteful and dangling.
And her mommy's hair was always perfect – whether it was straightened or curled. It was never left to hang the way it did when she came out of the shower. And her mommy's makeup made her look like a porcelain doll, so smooth and pale and clean.
Abby only knew that her mommy's hair was naturally wavy because she had snuck into the gigantic closet to touch the pretty, silky pearls. She only knew about her mommy's makeup because she had to hide in there until her mommy was completely made up and gone from her rooms, a silver strand of tiny jewels around her throat.
Daddy was a stiff, distant man. He disappeared for weeks at a time. He wore nice pants all the time and shiny shoes that he had the butler clean every evening – and Abby got to watch, but her daddy didn't know that. He also wore stiff shirts with collars, which buttoned up. The butler said they were 'suits'. He, too, always wore 'new'.
Daddy had cold, hard eyes and Abby had never seen him smile her way. At the fancy parties that she attended all dressed up, he did smile at their guests. He placed a hand on her shoulder and she felt like she was important. Then, when everyone was gone, he didn't smile at her anymore. In fact, she never, ever received his smiles.
And Daddy's hair was gray and dark, mixed together like the marble on the front steps. He didn't wear makeup, nor did he try and cover up the gray hairs the way she knew other men did. He smoked cigars and drank from glass bottles full of liquids that Abby instinctively didn't like, because they made her daddy angry and sometimes, he slapped her mommy.
Yes, when Abby was a little girl, she knew these things.
When Abby was a pre-teen girl, she knew a few more things about her family.
She always got what she wanted when she was younger. She had no siblings, and she didn't really have any friends. She was freakishly rich because of her parent's wealth. But it wasn't her money, and she knew that very well. She knew that it was Father and Mother who owned the checkbook and bought the things she wanted.
Before she was ten, she knew that she could get anything she wanted. She knew that she wanted the best of everything, and she got that in every way. Her school was one of the best. She had the best clothes. She had the best school supplies. She had the best of everything.
At eleven, she began to go through those typical changes that young adolescents go through on their way to adulthood, and it didn't bother her. Abby knew what was going on, and she knew it was normal. And for her, all it meant was that she could get the best of everything in a new arena of womanly mysteries that she was just beginning to discover.
By the time she turned twelve, her days had turned into zombie hours as she struggled to stay awake. Her dreams – both goals and literal figments of her imagination – had become nightmares. She was afraid and alone, and Abby didn't know who to go to for help. She didn't know how she was supposed to fight of the awful pain of cigar-scented terror.
Abby didn't know what to do. Abby didn't know who to go to or who to ask for help. No one in the house seemed to notice – and if they did, it was worse because that just meant they didn't care. Abby was completely alone, and freedom from the torture wasn't something she could demand. It was the first time she couldn't get what she wanted, and she didn't like it at all.
Then her mother found out. That day, Abby had hoped that her mother would finally step up and show her that there was love – not just the buying of items that didn't give her a hug when she wanted it the most. She was just a little girl, and she wanted to be her mother's little girl. Not her father's – never again, her father's.
Instead, her cheek was left stinging and red. Words that she had never heard before that day – but would always float in her mind now – were echoing inside her skull. Tears fell down her cheeks as she clutched at the metal bars of the swing, feeling them the bars to her prison instead of rungs of a ladder that would lead her to escape.
But escape it was, because someone showed up beside her and hissed words over her shoulder, a fallen angel offering sweet escape. Ten glorious, pain-free years of freedom, and she didn't have to do anything. All she had to do was give up something that she was certain was tarnished and sullied beyond recognition by the nighttime horrors.
As a pre-teen, Abby had found out what to do with her new knowledge.
When Abby was a teenager, she changed her name.
She wasn't a little girl the day her dreams first turned to nightmares – the very moment she found herself irreversibly sullied in the most primal, horrific way. She was a young woman now, wise beyond her years as she was forced to be by something that was not her fault.
But just because she lived in high society, that didn't mean that she was willing to fall into the pit of despair over thinking a man would not wish to be her husband. She did not allow herself to wonder what others would think of her, now that she was an orphan.
She had a job to do. Abby knew that the deal she had made was real, and now – although they seemed long and blissful from now – those ten years had an end in sight. And Abby was not going to allow her freedom to be cut short. She simply couldn't. Maybe she could find a way to do something about the legacy she'd leave behind, or find a way to save herself as she went.
Because although her old dreams were aches that hurt to think about, Abby knew that she was not going through the rest of her life without a plan. She had a big plan, one that would contradict everything that he had whispered in her ear as he took her and ignored her pleas and screams.
It was simple. If she was going down – if she hadn't found a way out of her deal – then she was going to make damn sure that she left something behind to be remembered by. She would make sure that others knew her name, and she was pretty sure where she wanted to be known.
The normal world could remember aristocracy with ease, but she didn't want to be known because of her last name. She never wanted to be associated with that name, every again. Abby wanted to forge her own path, free of the confines that the old name left branded to her skin. When she was old enough, in her teens, and could collect her inheritance, she left her old home – selling it to the highest bidder. She moved out of the country, to a new continent.
And Abby became Bela.
When Bela was a young woman, she was on the fast track to her destiny.
Once entering the new country, where her family had not lain down roots and she was completely free of all restrains, Bela had bought herself a new home. She bought herself anything that she wanted, and even got a cat in direct defiance to the man who was now slain and lay in England. She was glad she'd dug up his body, because it had been such a pleasure to burn those bones to ashes so he couldn't try to hurt her again as a spirit.
She began working right away. Bela wanted a reputation, and she wanted it fast. She wasn't interested in putting her life in unnecessary risk – it was already on the line and due in ten years time – but she did know that she had to immerse herself in the uncouth subculture to sneakily pick up on hints and details.
To be completely honest, Bela wasn't all that interested in finding a way out of her deal. That was just bound to happen, and she didn't really care for it, either way. Whatever would happen, would happen: first, she was bound and determined to make herself a legend and a threat. To wield power over people, so they couldn't control her like he had.
And indeed she did make a name for herself. The infamous Bela Talbot became a story around hunter campfires. She smirked every time she overheard her name or one of her aliases. She felt like dancing when she knew that there was a prize close by.
Because of her childhood life – even though she hated thinking about it – Bela did know how to handle the elite. She knew how to persuade and keep her neck from being put on another line. And she knew how to manipulate her 'bosses' and their chess pieces so that she came out ahead and unharmed.
As a young lady, Bela was a strong powerhouse of a woman, immersed in a business she excelled at.
When Bela was approaching the end of her time, she learned some more.
She thought that it wouldn't matter all that much that the person she was trying to steal from was the late John Winchester. Certainly, she'd heard stories about the great, insane, driven and utterly god-like hunter. She'd heard all about his sons, but there was less information about them since they weren't part of any hunter circles. That alone was enough to put them on the map and make the others gossip about them like crazy.
The rabbit's foot had probably been a bad idea, looking back on it, but it certainly gave her some insight. And a bit of a jolt in the heart when she realized that she didn't have all that much time left.
Bela had known that Dean Winchester had made a deal to bring his baby brother back from the dead – everyone knew that, just like they knew that Sam had to be watched, carefully, so that he wouldn't turn to the demon side.
But what Bella had failed to comprehend was just how much raw passion was in the hunter. She'd stood by her beliefs and actions, knowing the purpose behind them even if the means and the immediate whiplash were obviously less than desirable.
However, no other hunter had ever tried to argue her down. No other hunter had ever badmouthed her, to her face, about her callousness and cruelty. And no one had ever threatened to kill her, either, for doing her job and procuring a unique item for some very select clientele in return for mere information.
Ironically, it was that passion and spirit that had her begin to seriously start looking for a way out of her deal. She'd had nine-plus years, and was only starting now, but she simply had to know and push her way through. Simply knowing that there was more to life out there was making her push.
Truthfully? She did fancy Dean, which was more major than he would ever know. After her father's abuse, well, she'd never laid hands on a man again. The memories were enough to make her cringe at the thought. And yet, she'd somehow found herself telling him that she desired him in that whole bloody business with the dead sailor and ghost ship.
That he'd refused had hit a weak spot that she was reluctant to expose to herself. She hated that he managed to make her feel ashamed over something he had no knowledge of, just with a simple comment that, frankly, she had deserved to get in return for taunting him.
But it was still more than she'd ever known, and that scared her.
When Bela was a young woman, she knew that she was never going to grow older.
She'd mangled things up horribly. Getting the information she sought was easy – money can buy you many things, even if it can't buy you happiness. She had her information, and she had her knowledge and hopes.
Bela hated that she had to play assassin as her last act. She hated that she felt that there was no other choice. To kill Dean and Sam was a task that she felt shivery and trembling at the idea of performing. She hated it, loathed it – and yet, if it would save her…
Giving up the gun had been hard. If only she could have slaughtered that damn demon, she could have saved herself and Dean in one fell swoop. To save him would be to finally do something that was worth more than leaving behind a legacy of betrayal, dirty money and lies – even if it was all her own, and not connected to any of her old life.
On one hand, it was hard to pull the trigger. But on the other, a fire burned in her belly as she remembered Dean's words. As she remembered what it had felt like to hear her old name come from his lips, so full of vile rage and practically whispered into her face. Thank goodness he hadn't used his body to press her to the wall and stop her from retrieving a gun. If he had, she would have trembled like a leaf, been weak beyond comprehension. Been unable to think from the unutterable fear…
Instead, she was trembling like a leaf in a gust of hurricane wind as she answered the phone and sat down on one of the beds. As she said her final words – what would really be her legacy, at least to one of the men she'd come to respect. And that was a hard thing for a man to get: her respect.
And as she stood to face the pain, Bela knew that this was the end of human life.
When Bela broke out of hell, she knew that things were never going to be the same.
It was by mere chance that she happened to be in the same area. It had only been a week that she'd been locked away in that pit, and she had been certain that she would never come out of there. She had been certain that she would soon join the unspeakable horrors as one of them. She was certain that her mind was already lost.
But once that doorway above her was broken, oh – she could breathe, think, see all over again. And she shoved herself free, tumbling out after many of the others. Only, as they were turned back she kept moving through the purification, demon-repelling herbs. She was no demon, at least not yet.
Upon seeing the faces before her, she felt weak at the knees and collapsed to the ground just inside the door. Another spirit stepped over her, propelled by a corporeal man, and she knew who they both were. Yet, Bela couldn't find it in herself to care and simply curled on the ground, head in her hands.
That spirit had been with her most of the time. He was locked in a world of unimaginable loneliness, while she was caught in her childhood all over again. Her legs felt strained and weak at the thought of her personal horror and she curled her arms even more tightly around herself.
And then, suddenly, the other spirit was gone. She knew that he was in that body, just over there. His own body, for it must have only been a short while that he'd been gone. Her own body was torn to shreds by the hounds. She imagined that his brother had kept his body whole.
Footsteps in front of her, and someone crouching down, and she looked up and saw his face. Tears watered in her eyes and she smiled through them. He was alive again, he was reunited with his body – which, okay, looked a bit worse for the wear, but he was alive. And his brother was with him, so he was okay. He was no longer curled in a ball, unable to recognize her as he thought he was alone.
It was then that she realized that she must have thought that she was alone with father dearest, and he might have been awake for that. San, the way she had been as she'd been unable to get to him, unable to make him realize that no, he wasn't alone. No, he wasn't stranded alone: she was with him. He'd never understood what she was saying.
A look at his face gave her an answer. There was sympathy. There was pity. She hated it, and told him so. "Don't look at me like that."
"You never said anything." He winced. "Not to me, that is. You said plenty to…to him." Bela turned her head away. He spoke on anyway. "You know…you shouldn't hold on to that. It's keeping you back now that you're free."
"I spent over ten years with it hanging over my head," she spat at him. Like he understood. "It's the reason I agreed to hell in the first place. How do I let go of something like that?"
He leaned in, whispering so only she could hear. Straight into her ear, his voice solid and sure. "Remember that it's not your fault. Remember that you deserve happiness. Remember that…that people do love you. Here."
She looked up at him, shocked, and he gave her a grin that she knew was a trademark. It was haunted, slightly, by the memories of that time in hell. But there was sincerity in those eyes, and she knew very well that he was serious.
Even if he was lying to her, she couldn't help believing. Hoping that it was true. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough for her. Because soon, she felt herself beginning to fade out… She could feel herself sinking into the oblivion of comfort beyond anything mere luxury could have given her.
And her dream of a place where she was absolutely, completely free…well, it was reality now. This was what freedom was, and this was what she had desired for all those long years in the human world. His smile disappeared from her view as her sight blacked out – and then cleared.
As soon as she was in a new dream, all her knowledge became obsolete and she wasn't the same person anymore.