Save Me From Myself
Chapter One: Prequel: When The Tortured Meets The Innocent
The first time that Dean saw Lacey down there he didn't recognise her.
The first time that he saw those fearful green eyes looking up at him he didn't see her.
The first time that he rose the blade in his left hand and allowed his familiar sadistic thoughts to take over he didn't notice.
He didn't really see who she was, he just saw through her, the same way he did with all of them.
He was too used to it to really look at her. He had seen them all before—old, young, men, women—it no longer mattered.
He had heard them all beg for their lives, he'd heard them all plead with him for compassion.
"Please don't hurt me."
"I can't take anymore."
"Please stop."
"I'm begging you."
He had heard it all in his time, half of the time he barely listened to it anymore.
Along with the anguished screams and tortured cries, it had all just become background noise to him.
But for the first time since he had raised a knife there he stopped. He stopped at the one word that slipped through the girl's chapped lips.
"Dean..."
It snapped him out of his thoughts, stopped the breath in his throat, the heart in his chest, it brought him crashing right back down into sanity. He was sober of the cruel and callous mentality he had become so accustomed to. At least, for a moment.
He hadn't heard anyone speak his name like that for a long while.
His hands shook at his sides, uncontrollable. There was something inside him, something dark and deep within his very soul that just wanted to tear apart flesh. He wanted to inflict pain, he wanted people to hurt, he wanted them to suffer. He wanted people to know the pain he had felt. After everything he had been through there, after everything they had put him through, he wanted to take back the control.
And, for the smallest second, he pictured himself making her scream. He could see himself hurting her, making her bleed, and he didn't care. But then those thoughts subsided.
Slowly, his eyes moved down to lock with hers. And he saw it all right there in her face—fear, anguish, distress, alarm—every emotion he knew he shouldn't be seeing in the face of his youngest sibling.
The knife slipped through his shaking fingers, and somehow, somewhere, the small sliver of humanity that still remained within him seemed to gain control once again. It was a feeling he hadn't experienced in a long time. Years. Decades. He didn't know anymore. He'd lost track.
"Lacey?" His voice cracked as he spoke her name, broken. "You're—"
No. She couldn't be. She couldn't be dead. It had to be some kind of a mind game. Alistair wasn't done screwing with him. Making him torture wasn't enough. He had to go one step further. Just to push him. But that was where Dean would draw the line.
He would have himself back on the rack before he raised a blade to the flesh of his own family.
He hadn't cared, he hadn't given it a second thought before, he hadn't wanted to—but that was too far. That was enough to make him pull back.
Whether she was real or not, he couldn't do it.
"Dean." she spoke his name again, her voice shaky, terrified. "What are you doing?"
Tears rolled down her dirty cheeks, her eyes pleaded up at him, he had never seen her look so afraid before. Of anything. It hurt to think that she was looking at him like that.
"Lacey." Dean shook his head and took a step back. She knew. His own sister had seen what he had become, she had seen what hell had made of him. "Oh god."
His hands wrapped in his own short hair, his breathing stopped, how had it gotten so bad? How had he allowed himself to become that? What was he doing? What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to know if it was her? Hell, did it even matter anymore? He'd lost track, he'd lost himself. He had forgotten who he was.
"Dean, please." Her small voice drew him back to her. "I know you can hear me." she pleaded. "Please."
Tears welled up in Dean's eyes, for the first time in years, as he looked down at her. Chains held down her wrists and ankles to the steel table beneath her, all covered in the blood of the previous souls that had been layed before him, completely at his mercy. Anyone else and she would have been screaming in agony by then, and that was when he truly realised just how fucked everything had gotten.
"It's okay," he whispered. His voice was barely audible. "It's gonna be okay, Lacey." His eyes lowered to hers. "I'm still here."