All around him the wails and moans of the damned which had once seemed so terrifying and heart-rending, no longer bothered him. They'd become akin to the buzz of traffic in any big Earth city, a background noise no-one noticed any more, their ears classifying it as an integral part of the city's vitality.
Even the screams for mercy of the souls which writhed on the rack under his razor no longer had the power to move him, the last tendrils of pity having disappeared along with most of his humanity, but not quite all, because the reason he found himself here, Hell had not been able to eradicate.
It was still there, alive and kicking, the only thing keeping him sane, isolated in a tiny indestructible bubble in a far corner of his soul, hidden in the smoke-filled darkness it had now become.
Nothing would ever be able to take that memory from him, not Alastair, not Hell, nor his almost complete transformation into a demon.
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Dean could feel Alastair's pride as he watched him cut and carve; much like that of a demonic father for a demonic son.
He could understand now what Azazel meant when he claimed Meg and her brother as his children; offspring not born of blood or birth as on Earth, but by acquisition; being Azazel the one who had turned those souls into demons, just as Alastair had done with him and who considered him in a twisted way his surrogate son.
Hell was a place reserved for sinners, and yet sins were as real here as they were on Earth, and just as Alastair felt pride in Dean's expertise as a torturer, Dean felt nothing but hatred for what he'd been turned into, and for the demon that had taken such great pleasure in supervising that transformation.
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As he applied himself to the latest unfortunate soul to fall under his hands, Dean's mind went back to the disruption which had spun through the Pit earlier, when a group of angels had for some reason entered and tried to fight their way through the Hellish realm.
They had been pushed back by demonic forces, weaker but much superior in sheer numbers to the troop of angels.
Dean was curious as to why angels would bother breaking into Hell. He'd asked Alastair but the demon had replied with one of his witty quips that low-level demons like Dean weren't to be kept informed about Hell's business.
Dean had just shrugged and gotten back to work. Alastair wasn't going to tell him, but he still wondered.
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As time passed and Dean became ever more proficient with the blade, Alastair began leaving him on his own unsupervised, for longer periods, and Dean would draw back his razor and turn his mind inward to that little corner of his soul where the sole thought which kept him from succumbing completely to his demon-hood, was hidden. The memory of his little brother, of Sam.
Where was he? What was he doing? Was he even still alive?
Centuries could have passed for all Dean knew; he had no way of measuring time. The only certainty he had was that Sam's soul wasn't in Hell, otherwise Alastair would have gleefully let him know.
He continued to ignore the wailing soul on his rack and thought back to how his father John had gotten out of Hell when the Devil's Gate had opened in Wyoming.
If he ever got an opportunity like that, he was going to take it.
It might never come along but if he got lucky, he too would manage to fight his way out of here.
He understood all too well now why demons didn't want to be exorcised back to this. Hell was indescribable...well, it was HELL!
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Dean had learned that the Devil's Gates were dotted all over the Pit and if one was opened by chance or by human intervention, such as the one John had slipped through thanks to Jake, it could be sensed by all of Hell's minions who'd rush towards it like some wild herd of cattle, stomping and crawling over one another to get there first and pass through before it closed.
So if by a lucky chance, a Gate happened to open near you, then it was almost guaranteed you'd manage to get out before the seething horde of demons arrived.
Only the thought of Sam, and the eternal hope that he might be lucky enough to get out through a Devil's Gate kept Dean sane while he went about his work.
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Hope of course wasn't one of the most diffused sensations in Hell, despair was, but Dean's little ray of hope must have paid off as the unthinkable happened and a Gate opened practically on top of him, and so Dean Winchester's soul, now a black swirling smoke, grasped the opportunity it had been waiting for and was the first to fly, free and unfettered through the opening.
His soul soared up through the blue sky, ecstatic at its freedom, at its power to streak through the heavens and look down on the wonders of his home planet.
He revelled in the sensations, but then the carefully conserved little bubble in his brain reminded him of where he had to go.
He had to find his little brother. He had to find Sammy.
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The demonic part of his soul was impulsive, violent and instinctive but Dean still had enough control over himself to be able to reason, and his reason told him he couldn't stay in this form.
If he wanted to find Sam he couldn't turn up as black demonic smoke; he would have to find a body to possess. He had no idea if he could even do it, but he'd been witness to many demons entering and leaving human hosts and if they could do it, then he could too.
His instinct pushed him to possess the first human who passed by, but the part of him that was still Dean refused to do that to an innocent human; he'd find another way.
The black smoke hovered over the squalid alleyways where the low-life hung out. Drug-dealers, criminals and bands of youths roamed through them. Sooner or later someone would be killed and as soon as the soul had left that body, Dean would possess it.
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It felt odd to be waiting around for someone to die.
Once upon a time he'd have been trying to save a life instead of waiting impatiently for a death. He didn't have long to debate the problem however, as a knife–fight between two young gang leaders left one of them bleeding out on the ground.
Dean saw the soul exit the body and hoped for its sake it wasn't destined for the Pit.
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The killer and his followers quickly disappeared from the scene and Dean hovered hesitantly over the dead body.
It was a young Latin-American, not more than seventeen or eighteen. He would do for now, Dean thought as he tried to force his smoky essence in through the corpse's mouth.
It took him many attempts to get the hang of it. Gathering his smoke into a straight line and pulling it in was more difficult than it seemed, but eventually he succeeded.
The sensation of being corporal once again was so strange. He felt as if he was inside some kind of robot and he stumbled off like a Frankenstein which had just been assembled by a mad doctor.
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However Dean Winchester had always been a quick learner, and now that he had a human aspect again, he turned his mind to how exactly he would go about finding Sam.
He rummaged in his host's pockets and found a cell-phone, a wallet with a wad of cash, and a driver's license. He flipped it open. Luis Delgado. He had a ready-made alias. It would do for now.
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His eyes were drawn to a diner across the street.
He'd waited so long to get back to Sam, the time spent eating a hamburger wouldn't change anything.
He whistled as he entered the diner. "Three burgers, and two beers," he heard a voice saying to the pretty young waitress.
Dean knew it was coming from him, but it wasn't his voice.
"Right," he told himself ." This is a brave new world Dean, and it's gonna find out just what's hit it. Dean Winchester is back and there's an whole list of douche-bags due for payback."
He salivated, or at least Delgado's body did at the sight and smell of the hamburgers and Dean reckoned he'd gone from Hell straight to Heaven as his teeth tore through the meat.
tbc