Opening Note: Hi there! Welcome and thanks for giving this little experiment a go! This story was previously posted under the same title, however, I found that I wanted to take it in a slightly different direction from what I had written in the previous version and rather than going back and re-editing it, I decided to redo certain aspects that weren't necessarily fitting my original vision and re-upload altogether.

If you're anything like me and want to know what you're committing your time to before you begin reading, this is a Dean/OFC story. There will be romance and the classic "trapped in TV land/trapped in another world" tropes are what this story heavily relies upon. The story technically begins following the conclusion of episode 3.16 No Rest for the Wicked, but is set into motion with 4.01 Lazarus Rising. The idea is to follow this story through with seasons 4 and 5 of Supernatural. I'll be honest, the plan is to make it pretty romance-heavy because I'm not interested in rewriting episodes of the show just to jam my original character in them; I'm interested in developing the relationship between Dean and said OC while exploring how it affects the unhealthy dynamic between Sam and Dean.

If you hate Mary Sues, then hopefully you will find yourself enjoying this piece because that is the biggest thing I've tried to avoid here, in addition to capturing Sam and Dean's characters accurately. This is my first time writing a fanfiction in general so I'm expecting there to be slips and definitely aspects of this story that could be heavily improved, but hey, first time for everything right? (Also, I am doing some beta searching and if anybody has any recommendations/would like to beta then that would be wonderful, as I do wish to put out my best work possible.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural, its characters or anything associated with it. I only own the protagonist of this story and have merely taken liberties with the universe Eric Kripke created.

Trigger Warning: Much like the show, this story does heavily reference and explore religion within some chapters and while the female protagonist of this story is agnostic, the character does contemplate the idea of religion and the beliefs of different religions during Dean Winchester's time in hell and following the introduction of the canon character, Castiel, within this story. Religion vs. science is also a recurrent theme – if exploring the reality of such things makes you uncomfortable, then this story may have a similar effect. This story is not, however, about exploring either religion or science. The themes are present due to the nature of the show and the protagonist's own background.

Specific triggers for this chapter are descriptions of torture, mutilation, gore, etc., as Dean's time in hell will be described.

Chapter 1: Unconscious Selection

August 1st, 2008

Toronto, Ontario

I honestly regret a lot of things on a daily basis. I mean, by the time I'm in bed at night I can list the top ten most regrettable deeds I've committed in just one day, but hell even I couldn't have predicted this. Admittedly, I am an embarrassing person. That much I can and am willing to accept. My tongue works before my brain does and I have a bad tendency to phrase things in an awkward or insensitive manner and only realize how bad I sound after I have already said them. Just about any time I open my mouth is followed by me wishing there was some kind of ctrl + alt + delete button for life and most of my day is spent verbal backspacing. I sure don't make the best choices either but does that really warrant the crap my brain has flung at me these past three months?

Out of all the bad choices I made, this one definitely takes the cake for the worst one. Boy do I regret watching that stupid show. I mean there were some pretty heavy influences, but neither my friends nor my mother taped me to a chair and forced me to commit the awful chore of having to watch two hot men driving across the country in a '67 Chevy, slaying whatever supernatural creature crossed their paths. Nope, that decision was all me. Mom might have made me watch the pilot with her, but I'm the moron who finished the other 59 episodes that were out and liked them. Definitely nobody forced me to care about the protagonists, yet here I am. An embarrassingly dedicated Dean girl who allowed the television to get to her brain – literally.

The Bible calls Hell a conscious torment that is eternal and irreversible. The Quran states that Hell is a real place, not a state of mind nor a spiritual entity. The horrors, pain, anguish, and punishment a soul faces within its fiery depths are all real. Religion has always been a huge part of my family and the very possibility of eternal damnation ingrained into my mind by my so very conservative parents. Yet there was no Book of Revelation or Psalms that could have prepared me for what I saw in my dreams every time my eyes closed. Each night the same picture would paint itself within my unconscious mind. A prison made of bone and flesh; of blood and fear.

Like any other fan, I was pretty torn about my favourite character being ripped to shreds and sent to Hell. However, I doubt many other fans actually have nightmares about what happens to said favourite character, in Hell, each night. I keep blaming it on either the show, my intense dedication to fictional characters, or my brain. In all honesty, I don't know what else to think of this whole ordeal. It took me about 0.2 seconds to fall in love with the classic rock obsessed martyr as he hit on his younger brother's girlfriend and proclaimed his love for The Smurfs in those first ten minutes of the show, but even I wasn't that dedicated? Sure, my tumblr mostly consisted of his face and text posts proclaiming my adoration for him, but he had never made an appearance in my dreams prior to the season three finale. Nothing like this had ever happened before and I practically drowned myself in fiction, from the TARDIS to the world of Ice and Fire, and never has my mind conjured up any form of unconscious thoughts or images about the characters in those worlds.

It all began with that season finale. Sleep had quickly become something I dreaded. What was once a relief from the hours spent studying and drowning myself in textbooks had now become something I tried my best to evade. Peacefulness is a feeling that is even more foreign to me nowadays, along with a good night's rest. For three consecutive months, I've drowned cups of coffee like shots and popped stimulants as if I would not live to see the next day. No way is any of this helping my health or my academics, but what other choice did I have? I would become a prisoner to my own mind each time I lost consciousness and it is always the same cycle each night. The psychoactive drugs lose their effect and the caffeine in my system fades as my eyes lose yet another battle.

In my unconscious state, I drift back to that awful place. Nothing about it ever changes aside from the level of fear that arises within me with each visit I unwillingly make. My ears hear the screams of the tortured before I see the long dark chains that are connected to the bodies from which the voices come. The noise of the red sky is thunderous – but never loud enough to drown out the cries of agony – and the sky itself is always full of lightning and chains, while the poisonous green fog in the air is suffocating and the strong scent of sulphur overcomes my senses. It is always the same, this setting of my nightmares, as well as the man within them. Interestingly enough, the show never showed much of Hell, other than a single image of Dean attached to multiple chains, fear marring his features. I try to push this little fact to the very back of my mind because it certainly doesn't help the theory of my nightmares being induced by what I've seen on the show.

His green eyes – that were striking once and one of my favourite parts of him, I can't help but think – are clouded with pain and there must be more blood on his body than in it. Yet the blood and the pain cannot mar the beauty he possesses. Were it not for the fact that hooks are in his ankles, wrists and chest, or that his shoulders stretch far beyond what is physically possible, I imagine I would find myself staring at him for entirely different reasons. The same entranced expression on my face that would be present each time his face graced my television screen would be the expression I would wear, yet the blood and hooks and torture can't disfigure his appearance. Nobody enjoys watching their favourite character hurt is the justification I would give myself every time Dean endured a stab wound and I felt the pain as if I had been the one harmed.

The two sub-categories of torture are physiological methods and physical methods: in my dreams, I have seen all two thousand and sixty five physical methods that may be used to make a man's insides his outsides. Each one is demonstrated upon him. The other man, who calls himself Alastair, mercilessly tortures Dean without hesitation. He's new. I can tell that Alastair is a demon from his black eyes, yet I have never been able to understand why he's a recurring character in my nightmares. The demon rips Dean apart and then puts him back together at the end of each "session", only to tear him apart once more. Alastair is not a character that has ever been on the show and why my brain would conjure up such an awful apparition with the sole purpose of hurting somebody I loved – no matter his status as very fictional and definitely not real – is beyond me. Some scientists say that dreams are our unconscious desires making themselves known to us or our most private fantasies. I have no desire to hurt Dean and the only fantasies I have involving him are of a very different nature.

Despite his obvious pain, Dean merely howls a single name at the sky with each incision inflicted upon him. I can only watch with an ache in my chest and an increasing need to hug Dean close to me, while whispering in his ear that Sam is safe and alive on Earth.

"Have you changed your mind yet?"

"No."

Time passes differently within the Hell my subconscious has conjured up. This is something I realize halfway through the second month. It is actually one hundred and five times faster there than it is on Earth. This makes three days on Earth roughly equivalent to a year in Hell. I did the math. For twenty years I saw Dean get tortured in unimaginable ways before I realized how long he had truly been in the Pit and the thought creates a pit of unease within my stomach for some odd reason. Nothing I ever saw on Supernatural ever made my stomach knot this way and hell, I've read every A Song of Ice and Fire book to date. That world is crueller and yet I don't blink an eye as I read those books. Perhaps my adoration for Dean as a character was merely stronger?

Tonight marks three months since my recurrent nightmares began and in Dean's case, thirty years spent in hell. Thirty years spent watching him fall apart and being built up again to only be torn down once more. Dean has never seen me and is not even acutely aware of my existence. At least, that's my hypothesis. I see the hooks pulling at him; I hear the taunts that leave Alastair's mouth and my protests ring loud in my ears, but never his. It's as if a two way mirror separates us. I am invisible to him as much as he is visible to me. There are times when I will be directly standing behind Alastair and Dean's eyes never hold any recognition of the fact that a stranger is standing behind his torturer, begging him to stop.

Each night it is the same cycle. Dean is strung up like a prisoner and Alastair is the predator who stalks towards his prey with a glint in his eyes that makes shivers run down my spine.

It baffles me – it truly does – as to why my subconscious would create such a terrifying individual. Henry David Thoreau stated once that "dreams are the touchstones of our characters." I'm not in a cult or anything, my horror movie choices are limited and I definitely have no interest in torturing anybody. Despite this, my dreams were full of a stranger inflicting pain upon somebody I adored. I wonder what Thoreau would say about me.

The only new development in my dreams has been Alastair's offer, which he now makes at the end of every day. Dean would be granted freedom for his torture if he would start torturing souls himself. The very thought of Dean doing to others what Alastair does to him makes bile crawl up my esophagus. No. The word repeats like a mantra inside my head and I tell myself that he would never. If there was one thing that Dean Winchester was, it was a well-intentioned extremist. The one thing that three seasons of Supernatural had taught me is that Dean is willing to do whatever it takes to kill demons and monsters as long as it means he saved somebody in the end. Saving people, hunting things. The family business. I had faith in Dean; he has refused Alastair for thirty years, his resolve won't break now. These are the words I tell myself each time Alastair makes the offer and they sound much more convincing than they feel.

Tonight marks three months of my nightmares and thirty years of Dean's torture. Anxiety has riddled me since I woke this morning and I am unable to rid myself of the feeling that something terrible will happen tonight.

The day had started off more peacefully than others, I realize wearily as I drown my morning coffee. The liquid does little for me now, but I haven't been able to give up my dependency on it just yet. Since my dreams had started, I would wake up screaming more often than not and sweat would have drenched my clothes. Thank god I wasn't one of those living-at-home university students because there was no possible way to explain my current state to my family. What was I supposed to say? 'Hey mom, that show you showed me? Yeah, I watched the rest of it and now I have nightmares about the main character in Hell!' I would be lucky if I only ended up with a therapist with that one and knowing my superstitious mother, she would probably think somebody cast the evil eye on me and have a complete exorcism performed. These nightmares were the entire reason I had avoided visiting home this summer – it's easier to wake up screaming your lungs out when you're alone. I had lied about wanting to take the summer for tuition and spend it studying for the MCAT. The only good thing to come out of my deteriorating mental state was that I was staying up longer and studying more during that time.

This morning, there was no screaming and only a thin layer of fluid had dried on my skin by the time I had pushed back my desk chair. It had been half-way around the second month that I had completely renounced sleeping on the bed, opting instead to spend my nights drowning coffee and studying until my body decided it couldn't go on. I could have sworn that I had once again passed out in my desk chair with my head on my biology textbook, yet I woke up in my bed. It was almost peaceful, a feeling that I haven't been familiar with since these night terrors began.

These little changes in habit and causes of confusion should have set off one or more warning bells within my mind, but I let the alarming thoughts go much easier than I should have and reveled instead in the fact that my nightmare the previous night had been rather short-lived before it completely faded to black.

My days are no more peaceful than my nights. In the darkness of the night I see Alastair carving up Dean in every way humanly and inhumanly possible, while during the light of the day the unimaginable pain in Dean's lifeless eyes flashes before my own and his cries echo in my ears.

I keep reassuring myself repeatedly that nothing my brain showed me at night was real. This should be the easy part, considering the man in the starring role of my nightmares wasn't real and his actor was probably hitting up cons or something in LA; not being tortured in Hell. I felt stupid for even considering the possibility in the first place, but stupidity I blamed on fear and fear I blamed on shock. The first night, with the dream that began it all, my shock had stupefied me to the point where any screams I might have wanted to let out were caught in my throat and all I could do was watch. As Dean struggled against the chains and the hooks and cried out for Sam again and again, I stood there frozen in shock, but that first night was also the easiest to recover from. The scene of Dean attached to chains, it was one that was in the show and I was able to blame it on the shock induced from the episode. The rest of the nightmares have been, and are, much harder to recover from. Its a lot harder to admit that the screwed up things you're seeing were created by your brain rather somebody else's.

Researching into dream psychology became one of the healthier habits I have obtained out of this whole ongoing ordeal, as I pondered the purpose of my dreams. There was none, as far as I'm concerned, and some research agreed with me. Other research told me I was an idiot and that all dreams had a function. Whether that function be coping or warning. This one I couldn't explain. What possible reason could there be for me having nightmares about somebody that I knew was not real? I never had nightmares about Chucky the Doll and that movie freaked me out more than any episode of Supernatural ever has. Why couldn't I be a normal person and have nightmares about the MCAT like every other student taking that exam?

Dean Winchester refused Alastair for ten thousand nine hundred fifty-seven point three days before he broke.

The revolting scent of sulphur invades my senses before I even open my eyes. It is always the same scene; the last thing I remember is reading a passage in my textbook on amino acids, the next everything is black and then I am standing. I'm always standing before Dean, but he is never aware of my presence. Sometimes I arrive before the torture begins, times when Dean's head is hung low and tears drip down his face, and other times I arrive when Dean is already bloody and bruised. Today it is the former. His arms are strung up and his head is hung too low for me to see those magnificent green eyes that have lost their life. Scarlet stains his shirt – one spot in his chest, another in shoulder and the further I go down his body, the more blood I see where the hooks meet his skin. I never know which is worse: the chains or the table. Alastair straps him down sometimes, but he never covers Dean's mouth. He enjoys hearing him scream and cry out for Sam too much.

For a rare moment it is only Dean and I in the private torture chamber. No Alistair, no screaming souls begging for peace. Of all the sarcastic text posts I reblogged and made on tumblr of what I would do if I ever met Dean Winchester hypothetically, I never imagined that it would be in this manner. Of course, Dean doesn't know I am there. He never does. At times like these, where Alastair hasn't arrived yet, whenever I enter this place I can never look at Dean. Not in the eye, despite his ignorance to my presence. My feet shift and I nervously rub my arm; I always feel too much like an invasive outsider, which is ridiculous considering these nightmares are figments of my own imagination and brain.

The sound of heavy footsteps meets both of our ears and while Dean keeps his head down, I turn due to my own anxiety. He has arrived and he is going to hurt Dean again. Whether it's the screech of the old door opening that makes me cringe or the thought of Dean being in pain again, I don't know. I do know that I fear those awful eyes as much as he does and hate those hands that have inflicted so much pain upon an already broken soldier. 'His smile is the worst,' I think to myself as he stalks into the room like a predator, that arrogant smirk I know all too well gracing his features and a rusted knife twirling between his fingers. Dean winces and so do I; we both know what is coming.

"Ready for another day, Dean?"

The question is too casual, as if he's discussing something as insignificant as the weather. Dean usually responds to Alastair's taunts with his own verbal attacks, the only defense he has left here – they've already used Sam against him – but today there isn't even a disgusted smirk in response. Dean stays silent while my heartbeat picks up its pace. Somewhere in my mind it briefly registers that my hands are sweating and slipping against one another, but I can't breathe. There is no oxygen for me to take in, only one word ringing through my head like a mantra. No, no, no, no.

Alastair's voice lowers to a whisper as his lips close in on Dean's ears and I barely hear what he is saying over the sound of blood rushing in my ears, but I don't have to strain my hearing to know what it is. It's the same speech he gives Dean each day, the one with the taunting and constant reminders that he was damned.

"You know that refusing me does you nothing. Nobody is coming to save you. Not Sammy, not daddy. You can continue saying no, but nothing good will come of it."

Chills going up and down my back make me shiver and there is numbness in my shaking hands as anger flares up within me once he begins tracing the knife along Dean's jugular vein. He pricks it and the blood begins to trail out like water out of a cracking dam as Dean's eyes begin to close from the lack of oxygen. I can't watch this anymore, but I can't bring myself to look away either. He's hurt, he's hurt. The injuries gained here do little to sever the body in any way; I've learned that from my time spent watching Alastair torture Dean. The demon knows the human body as well as I do. He knows every weak spot, which muscles to puncture and which bones to break. I have seen him practice all of his knowledge on Dean, but the fact that Dean's body will regenerate itself never stops me from wincing each time Alastair moves closer to him. Be it with or without a weapon of torture.

"What do you say, Dean? This can all stop. I'll never touch you again." He trails the knife against Dean's left cheek now. "All you have to do is accept your turn." Another cruel smile. "You know you deserve it, after the thirty years you've spent on the rack." The knife is no longer touching his face, instead, Alastair is extending it towards him.

No, no, no!

My mind is screaming and my heart is racing. I know it before Dean responds. They've broken him.

Dean does not speak nor does he raise his head to meet Alastair's eyes. Words are caught in my throat once more and the fear blooms in my chest as Dean slowly raises his hand and grabs on to the hilt of the knife. I no longer think about my racing heart – I'm surprised that nobody else can hear its rhythm drowning out the sound of everything else –, but the terror overcoming my body as it overrules any other senses I possess. This time, despite the frog caught in my throat, I can't hold back the scream. Not anymore.

The piercing sound rips through the air before I know that I am the one making it.

I can't remember the exact moment my mouth opened and the sound left my vocal cords, but I do remember a distinct feeling of glass breaking, as if the two way mirror that separated me from them had broken. Both men turn to me in an instant and Dean's hand instantly drops from the knife, his head shooting up.

Now that I look back upon the moment, I realize that it was his eyes – I mean, it was everything, but it was his eyes first. Even in that awful place, his eyes had the power to make me feel as if I were being swallowed into a storm that spoke my name and swept me from my home and ate me up and knew every single one of my flaws, yet still managed to sing so loud that I couldn't block it out. For the first time in the three months I have been seeing this man, his eyes meet mine and I am no longer invisible to him. He didn't need to call me. Not then or ever because that first time that I met his gaze, I was already too far gone.

Shock clouds his features and I'm certain that our expressions must be mirroring one another's. Faces red from fear and eyes bugged out like some cartoon character. I am distinctly aware of the demon still in the room and the fact that I am still in some form of Hell, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm dreaming and despite every cell in my body calling for me to do so; every survival instinct evolution ever gave me telling me to look away and be aware of my environment, I can't tear my gaze from him.

"Well, now what do we have here?" It is the demon's menacing voice that finally forces my eyes away from Dean's, only to be met with terrifying black ones. Dean is not the only one who can see me, I realize, and my heartbeat increases once more if that is even possible at this point.

He begins stalking towards me with the rusty knife raised and a threatening look on his face and fear strikes my heart once more.

Its just a dream, its just a dream. Count your fingers, its just a dream!

I'm only half aware of the heavy panting that is echoing throughout the room as I quickly look down at my hands. Five fingers on each hand. Ten in total. No, no, no! There was always an unequal number of fingers in dreams! I shouldn't have been able to count them so easily, it was meant to be difficult while dreaming!

I can only look up in terror before the demon is in front of me and there is a burning pain in my left forearm.

Closing Note: Thank you for reading! I hope liked this chapter and where this story is headed. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!