This is a disclaimer.
AN: For further reading concerning this insanity, look for my fic "Thicker than water"
Use and old age
Somehow, John Winchester's not in the least bit surprised to find that his Hell involves being trapped in nothing.
Sometimes it's a room, a square blank room he paces from corner to corner, first clockwise then widdershins then back again. Sometimes it's a cage, and he's cramped and helpless and vulnerable. Sometimes he's bogged down in the rich warm mud of a jungle river with men dying all around him, their blood pooling in the muck around him. Sometimes it's nothing more than a rope that ties his wrists and ankles.
Every time, the point is: he's trapped. He's helpless. There's nothing he can do.
Helpless, impotent, vulnerable, useless, inadequate, ineffective, powerless.
Of all the ways Azazel could have picked to torture him, it chose the one thing it knew John hated the most: inability to take action. John can't stand to be incapable, fearing the loss of control that comes with wet green jungles and the ear-splitting clatter of machine-guns. He was never what you'd call diffident, but the harsh desperate anger with which he clings to his mastery – of himself, of his life, of his surroundings – was born in that long living nightmare of blood and death and fire.
In short, John values control above all else, and Azazel takes it away from him as easily as taking candy from a baby. Bastard doesn't even have the common decency to drop in and gloat occasionally.
John rages against, it, of course. He wouldn't be John if he didn't. He gave himself up once, just once, to one other person, a girl with laughing hazel-green eyes that held a grief that matched his own and he'll never surrender to any other again. Mary broke him with a lazy smirk and the press of her mouth against his, broke him and then put him back stronger than ever with the sound of his name on her lips as she shuddered against him, but now she's gone and John knows only one way to exist without her quick deft hands wrapped gently round his very soul, so he rages and struggles and fights with everything he has, everything he is, till he's hoarse with yelling, barely able to breathe, let alone move, for sheer exhaustion, which in itself is madness because he's dead, he doesn't even have a physical body anymore.
But then the nothingness around him shifts, tilting off to one side, and it starts all over again.
It's a bit like the labour of Sisyphus. The king will never reach the top of his mountain. John will never break free of his bonds. Remains trapped in an unbroken cycle of imprisonment that will last into eternity.
Panic chokes his throat and desperation rules his movements and he can't can't can't go on like this, not again, it's too much, it's worse than eternal burning, than the unending agony usually associated with this place. He can fight pain, after all. Pain means feeling; pain means enemies. Pain means anger and hatred and defiance and a white-hot burn of vengeance in his gut that can fuel him, spur him on, keep him fighting.
Pain means being treated as a person. What they do to him resembles the caging of an animal more than anything else, the trapping of a great lion inside concrete walls for visitors to gape at. What they do to him reduces him to a beast mindlessly fighting to escape a snare. All he is now is reaction, struggle, endless exertion. He has no other purpose beyond escape, no thoughts nor emotions except fear and panic.
When they subside, he's agony and exhaustion and please God just let me die now, but of course he already has.
"But you have to understand that he underestimates you," Mary says. She's sitting next to him, on the cold floor of that cell made of nothingness, legs drawn up to her chest, arms around them, chin on her knees. "He thinks you'll break. He thinks this will break you."
"Maybe he's right," John says. He's lying on his back, staring up at a ceiling that doesn't exist, aching in muscles he doesn't even have anymore. His hands are red and raw with beating on the walls, his voice so hoarse even he doesn't recognize it. He thinks maybe he dislocated one non-existent shoulder, flinging himself against that unyielding stone. "I'm talking to you, after all."
She quirks an eyebrow. "You really think I'd be here if you'd gone over the deep end?"
He thinks about that. It's a little difficult, thanks to the red haze of pain blanketing his entire being, but in the end, he has to conclude she's probably right.
"I guess."
"There's no need to sound so grumpy, my love."
"Mary, I'm in Hell," he points out, a little acidly.
She huffs. "I know. I'm trying to help you out!"
He coughs a bit. "How?"
She unfolds herself, graceful as a lioness, and crawls forward so she's looking down at him, hands on either side of his shoulders, knees by his hips somewhere.
"He underestimates you. He underestimates us all, us puny mortals, us breakable vulnerable humans, trapped as we are in our cages of blood and flesh and skin, bound to the earth and tied to each other. But why else are cages built other than to hold in creatures that by rights can reach so much farther than their captors?"
John's eyes flicker openshutopen as her hair strokes across his neck, his shoulders, his face. He can smell her too, musky and warm all around him. He wants to sink into that scent and never come out, lie wrapped in her for all eternity. It's far too great an effort to speak, but he does anyway.
"I'm in Hell and you're asking me riddles?"
She laughs out loud. "Darling. It's not as if you've got anything else to do. You're just stuck here, after all."
"You bitch," he says, insult and endearment all at once.
Mary grins. "You know it."
"So now what?"
She leans even further over him, her breath ghosting across his face, so close now that all he can see is green. He's not complaining. The kiss is perfection, ecstasy, homecoming, lending strength and comfort, and John knows he's a little confused at the moment, but spectacular as their physical relationship always was, none of their kisses have ever been like that before.
"Mary," he says hoarsely when she pulls back.
"You've come too far now to give up, John," she says.
He wants to hold her, to bring his hands up and tug her down to lie across his chest, feel her weight anchoring him, but his arms are made of lead and stone and they won't move, no matter how he tries to make them.
"Who said I was giving up?"
"Remember me," she says as the ground tilts and softens beneath him and the screaming starts.
At last he struggles up enough to catch at her, hold her still. "That's all?" Incredulous, angry, disappointed.
She kisses him again, and it's practically orgasmic, brain overloading with sensation as her tongue pushes into his mouth, every nerve he has on fire, a bone-deep shiver running through him. He pulls her closer and they're naked in bed, her legs wrapped around him, one hand in his hair, the other digging into the small of his back, moving together in perfect rhythm. John groans into her skin and Mary gasps encouragement, urging him deeper, arching against him. He's not entirely sure they're two separate people anymore. He's not sure they ever were as he leans up to take her mouth in a deep fierce kiss and just like that she's gone.
There's fire and darkness and the stench of death all around him. He can barely move anymore, every breath dragging through his lungs is smoke and ashes, but her taste and smell and touch linger in his very blood like a drug.
And the thing about drugs is... they tend to be kinda addictive.
That's enough, he realises. And then with that, like a revelation, I've had enough. I've paid my dues.
Time to go.