Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. I hereby disclaim all.
Warnings: Graphic description of torture
Spoilers: Season 3 finale and all of Bella Talbot (especially Time is on My Side)
A/N: This will be a part of a series called The 7 Deadly Sins & The 7 Heavenly Virtues. On the seventh of each moth I'll post one new sin or virtue util I've written for all of them.
Beware that I have no beta and that my first language is not english.
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"Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:
Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;"
- 2 Peter 2:14-15
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When Dean broke in hell, Alastair rejoiced. He handed him the torture instruments and put him in front of a rack. He watched Dean carving, prompting him into being more creative, praising him and proclaiming him his start pupil. For every time he showed progresse, it was a day that Alastair didn't cut into him.
So Dean cut and carved and tore and shredded and some twisted part of him liked it. The way he could reduce someone to nothing, seeing how far he could push before the person passed out, before their soul shut down and re-made itself, getting ready for another round.
At first he'd hesitated into doing it, hesitate with every cut, hesitated with every plea that came out of the man or woman's mouth. But thirty seven years had passed in hell and no one was coming for him. He was stuck down here for good and after thirty seven years Dean had perfected it to an art, hating himself every time he rendered Alastair speechless with his handy work.
He remembered how he had been, all black smoke curling around Dean, taking the form of a man when needed, tugging at his skin and his nerves and curling around his neck, almost choking him with the intense smell of sulfur as he whispered praise in his ears.
In the thirty-eighth year he was in hell, Alastair brought him a gift.
Those were his exact words. "A gift to show you how much you've accomplished, Dean." He had whispered, faint lips brushing his ear, before he chuckled darkly and fetched the demons that sometimes came in and stared at him, helped Alastair cut into him, eagerly awaited for Dean's soul to darken until it was pitch black.
They dragged someone in by the hair. A woman by what Dean could tell with blonde hair and frayed clothes. They eased her into the rack and spread her arms and legs like the Vitruvian man, binding her tightly.
Her head was slumped forward and Dean couldn't see her face but something about her was definitely familiar.
He eyed her carefully, planning ahead all that he could do to her. The ways he could cut and bruise and make her beg him to stop. The ways he could break her. A single sniff to the air told him that this one hadn't been broken yet. She was still human to some extent, although she had been here for some time.
She smelled like sulfur and expensive perfume and burned flesh, like the ones that were bound to the walls and suffering from the plague and a million and one different deceases smelled like. Except she was clean. Not a single mark on her. No burnt flesh and no scars and no nothing. She hadn't been touched yet and Dean licked his lips appreciatively.
"Do you like it?" Alastair drawled close to his ear again. "I've been keeping this one just for you, Dean. Hasn't ever been touched before. Just think about that. About how it'll feel to be the very first to touch and break and tear. She'll be your special project." He chuckled again "And I'm feeling charitable today, so if you cut her real good, I won't touch you for a week." One of Alastair's smoke fingers traced his cheekbone and curled around his chin, snapping his attention back to him.
His mouth curled with what could barely be called a smile and he stepped back with a cheery "Have fun!"
Dean's attention went back to the rack where the woman was still unconscious and he wondered what she had done.
Homicide? Rape? Infanticide? He squinted at her and he could almost smell the expensive lipstick and the wealth. Crossroads deal, then. He wondered what she had done? What she had traded for her soul.
Dean didn't talk much during his sessions. He was all about actions, not words. But still he liked to dig deep into their brains and discovered what their sin had been. He liked to reduced them to their primal sin and figure it out. Discover what made them tick.
He took a hold of her chin and jerked her head up, blonde hair spilling all around her face, he gently pulled it aside, safely tucking it behind her ears. And then he stopped.
Took a deep breath in and let a deep breath out. Made himself not hesitate because Alastair was still watching.
She stirred and blue eyes flew open, fixing on Dean's face immediately.
"Dean." She breathed out shocked, her british accent twisting the word a little bit, giving it inflection.
He smirked carefully "Hello, Bella."
Bella tried to break from Dean's hold, but he was gripping her jaw tightly so she couldn't move her head.
"Where am I?" she asked shakingly, trying to take control over the situation, gain the upper hand, do something. Dean could almost see the wheels turning in her brain and it was beautiful.
He stepped back and smirked, opening his arms wide "It's hell, baby."
He twisted his head around regarding the room they're in, even if room is not quite the word for it, for that there are no walls and no floor and no nothing, but the rack and carving instruments, and even those are only there because Alastair wishes it so. He has full control over this plane of existence, this secluded part of hell where he likes to torture and teach.
Dean can recollect a couple of times where he had used it for his purposes, as torture. He could make it look like a warm night of july, Sam out in the field throwing fireworks and watching the million colours explode across the sky, before he's the one burning, burning and screaming for Dean who stands motionless there.
Or he can make it look like a peaceful dock, where Dean can seat calmly with a fishing rod on his hand and watch the peaceful waters before he's drowning or Sam' drowning or Dad or Mom or Bobby or Jo, and the list keeps going.
Bella's eyes are blown wide as she tries to break free from her restrains. She can't. She won't be able to. Her soul is too weak for it still.
Dean keeps talking, because talking his good, as long as he's talking he's not cutting into Bella's soft flesh, he's not making her scream and beg for mercy. At least he'll have some time to compartmentalize and detach himself from it.
"What?!" he quirks an eyebrow and circles her slowly, grabbing a knife along the way and playing with the tip of it, digging it softly into the flesh of his pointing finger and drawing a single droplet of blood "You hadn't realized you were in the pit, Bella? Those fluffy dogs didn't get you the memo?" his voice his dripping with sarcasm and he knows it.
Dean starts unbuckling his belt buckle being careful to keep out of Bella's line of sight. He slips it out of his belt loops audibly and Bella starts twisting around, trying to see.
"Dean." She starts, her negotiating voice. Trying to reason him. Offer him something better, anything.
He loops the belt around her mouth, using it as a gag.
She can't talk with a gag, she can't scream and she can't plead. And it's a small mercy, giving her something to bite on when he starts working on her.
Dean goes around again, putting himself directly in front of her. He takes a deep breath and starts with the knife, cutting out her clothes first, leaving her bare before him. And the first thing he thinks is, so much for me to work on.
It's not poor Bella, not being sorry about what he's about to do. He only thinks of the soul in front of him and all the ways he can break it.
"Do you know what your sin is?" he asks conversationally, carefully digging the knife into her thigh and sliding it down to her knee, blood pouring out as Bella's screams are muffled by the belt.
He cocks his head and looks at his work. Deep cut, but still clean. Not enough. He puts the knife down and takes a bigger one, thicker. He drags that down the cut he had previously made, deepening it, feeling the knife nick bone and open the wound.
Bella screams and trashes above him, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Greed. Your sin was greed, Bella." He says softly like he was tutoring a child.
He drops the knife he's currently holding and digs his fingers into the cut, feeling the main artery he just severed. Blood spills over his hand and forearm and he wiggles his fingers around a bit, feeling nerve and muscle around it. Dean slides his hand down along the cut, fingers still jammed inside Bella's leg, nails scrapping bone.
She's screaming, he knows it. She'll scream until her throat his raw, until she can't stand it anymore.
He takes his hand back and watches the blood flow down her leg hotly, fast as damn breaking, spilling liters and liters out of her. She won't bleed out, though. Not in hell. Here they aren't given the mercy of exsanguination.
"When you were only fourteen and went by Abby, it may have been to get away. But there are better ways. You didn't have to outright kill your momma and dada. The ten free years you got were filled with greed. So much greed."
He grabs the knife again and Bella trashes her head from one side to the other, begging no no no.
"Family is important, Bella. You never got the chance to learn that." He lectures her even as he carves a circle onto her belly, running right over her belly button.
"There were other ways, and you still killed them. Payed someone else to kill them. With your soul." He laughs at her "Talk about dumb moves."
He draws a pentagram inside the circle. A mock to the anti-possession sign he has- had tattooed on his chest.
"It's always about more, isn't it?" he raises one eyebrow at her "Greed, I mean. The need to have more more more. Money, art, whatever material possessions. It's a deadly sin, you know? I heard you got to hell for it." Dean snorts at his own joke, and distantly registers Alastair moving around the room, not more than black smoke curling in corners and stretching out through the entire room.
"For you it was money and supernatural artifacts. You stole and lied and conned."
He grabs an aluminum bat and swings it in the air a couple of times, feeling its weight, getting adjusted with its balance.
"And you were just a kid. Just a kid." He shakes his head "I'm not an overly religious guy. You know that, but I remember pastor Jim reading some passages of the Big King James Book sometimes. I remember one: 'cursed children: which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray'. I like it."
He swings the bat and smashes it against her right hand, hearing the fingers snap and break and shatter. He swings it again and again and again until it's nothing more than a bloodied mangled mess. He gives the same treatment to her other hand.
He drops the bat, leans closer to her and sweeps the hair off her face, pulling it behind her ears carefully. He whispers "Hands that you used to steal."
Dean picks up the knife again and cuts her throat open. Making a cross in the center and peeling its skin back to get a good view at the vocal cords beneath. He picks up a little bow cutter and carefully cuts them out, as if he was disarming a bomb.
Bella gurgles blood and tries to swallow down.
He reaches his hand in and rips her tongue out through her throat, weighting it in his hand and presenting it to her.
"Tongue and throat you used to lie." He says dumping her tongue carelessly on the floor.
He picks up the knife and waves it in front of her "In Dante's purgatory, they say that the greedy people are laid down, bound to look at the floor forever, so they can't covet anything. Though shit that Purgatory isn't real. I guess I'll just have to settle by carving your eyes out." He shrugs carelessly and cuts her eyelashes off.
"Won't be needing those." He mutters, letting them drop to the floor along with her tongue.
He digs the knife into her eye socket while she tries to do something. Anything. Except she has no vocal cords to shout and she has no eyelids to blink and she's losing a substantial amount of blood, which his pooling at Dean's feet and making his boots slosh around a little bit, making wet noises.
His carefully with her eyes, extracting him from their sockets with minimal damage, setting them on the tray and rearranging them so they're looking at him.
"I always had a thing for blue eyes." He mutters pensively. He turns back to Bella "Now Bella, I'm going to live you here for a couple of hours, maybe a couple of days. But don't worry I'll come for you later. I'll check on you every hour and see if all the things are still open, bleeding and broken like I left them." He assures her, stroking his blood soaked thumb through her cheek.
"Greed amounts to nothing, Bella. You can have all the money you want, but in the end you end up here and you end up with nothing. You're stripped of everything you are and rebuilt to someone else's wishes. You become nothing more than black smoke who doesn't have its own body to live on."
Dean takes the belt from her mouth and loops it back in his jeans.
Alastair comes forward, waves of satisfaction and what may be smug pride rolling off of him. He circles Bella whose torn and frayed and shredded with an approving smile.
"Well done, Winchester." He whispers against his ear, ghost hands latching onto his hip and gripping tight. Hard enough for his sharp nails to dig into Dean's flesh and scratch his hipbone, although he barely registers the pain, looking at what was once Bella Talbot and was now a pitiful soul that he would break and re-make. Just like Alastair had done, turning him into his star pupil, pissing off some high ranks demons who still wanted first dibs at being his trainees.
"Smile Dean. You are a rising star."
Dean smiles.
