Disclaimer: I don't own anything, Dean Winchester and the world of Supernatural belong to it's creators. Trust me if I owned it it would not be as good a show as it is now.
There are some things that Dean never, ever tells Sam about hell.
Things he himself doesn't want to know.
Things he wants to erase from his mind.
(He never can.)
Like the strange fact that he was never hungry but somehow, for some unexplainable reason, he was always thirsty. He doesn't tell him the way it felt as Alistair's blade cut through his skin not that he actually could if he wanted to, not that he wants to, because the words escape him. He doesn't tell Sam – he doesn't tell anyone though he suspects that Cas knows these things anyway – that even after so many months he hasn't been able to wash the taste of blood out of his mouth and he thinks he might never. He doesn't tell him that the first time he ate something – a burger – it tasted like ash in his mouth. The only reason he ate anything at all was because Sam was staring at him and if he didn't he knew Sam would have too many questions. Thankfully after a few days food actually started tasting right again.
He doesn't tell him that saying yes had changed very little.
It gave him rest, as much rest as one could get in hell, for a while at least but in the end he spend just as much time on Alistair's rack than off it. That though he tortured soul after soul he himself was still at the mercy of the worst demon he knows and will ever know. That will never change because it might have been Lilith who killed him and Azazal who killed his mother and Meg will someday kill two of his best friends, Alistair is still the worst.
Not even Lucifer scared him as much.
(He doesn't tell anyone though, it's easier that way.)
He doesn't go into details when he tells Sam about hell, doesn't tell him about the various horrors Alistair inflicted on him, about the horrors he inflected on others. Even if he wanted too, which he doesn't, he would never be able to paint Sam an accurate picture and he knows Sam doesn't know because no matter how terrible he imagines hell was he'll never get close. He thinks not even Castiel – who had seen hell – would be able to accurately describe it to someone who hadn't been there.
He doesn't tell Sam any of this because his little brother does not need to know these things. He doesn't need to have those images in his head.
There is simply no need.
There are many things Dean doesn't tell Sam about hell, like the things that slipped away, the life that disappeared, and the memories that faded away.
He ignores the holes in his memory.
It's far easier.
At first it was the colors.
It was strange too like Dean could remember, he knew, that the sky was meant to be blue and the grass was green – and a million other things – but for the life of him he could not remember what those colors were meant to look like. All colors fade over time and in the end, while demons around him laughed, all he could remember were the colors black and red. Some facts about the colors stick though like he knows the sun is yellow and that pink is the color for girls.
He just can't remember what the colors themselves looked like.
He's not sure why they matter, the colors that is, why when he realizes that he has forgotten them it shakes him but it does. Perhaps, he reasons, it has nothing to do with the colors themselves but the fact that he has forgotten such trivial facts scares him (it makes him wonder what else he has forgotten, things he hasn't even realized he has forgotten.) He doesn't even know how long it took before he forgot and he has no idea, none at all, if this was Alistair's plan all along or if it was just a side-effect of all the torture. But then he doesn't think that really matters.
He forgets things.
He remembers other things.
This is what he remembers: blue is the color of the sky, pink is for girls, the grass is green and the sun is yellow.
And then, after years and years, even that fades away.
(Yet for some reason, some very strange reason, he never forgets that the sun is yellow, he's not sure why though.)
Eventually, by the time he's the torturer he has forgotten that he's forgotten something.
So really, in the end, it's not like it ever really mattered.
Then the sounds faded away.
There was no logic behind it either, some things faded away quickly others took longer. Some sounds, some memories, stayed forever and others faded away instantly. At times it almost seemed like Alistair had control over it, like he chose what he remembered and what he didn't, but mostly he thinks that it was all just random. If there ever was a point, a reason behind it all Dean never found out about it. After the colors faded, or with the colors or hell maybe even before the colors faded – he can't keep things apart anymore, not really. But this is the way he tends to think about it – otherwise it becomes too complicated – the colors faded first and the sounds faded next and who knows maybe it did in fact happen that way. The point is the sounds faded away next – birds and speaking and laughter and many other things.
The sounds of birds faded away, voices disappeared and music faded.
This is what he remembers: Sam's voice, Lisa's laughter, the howling of wolves, the sound of a gunshot and a voice he can't place singing a song he can't remember.
(In the end, right before he wakes in his grave, he only remembers the sound of someone pleading for his life followed by a gunshot. He's never been sure if the two things are connected.)
Sometimes he thinks Alistair did it all on purpose.
Mostly it just seems like Alistair enjoyed the consequences of his torture.
(If he knew about it at all.)
Memories fade too, randomly, with no real reason, but then nothing had a reason in hell.
Some are somewhat logical like he remembered that Sam was his brother and that they had lived together for a long time but he could not remember a specific moment of their lives (just random flashes, seconds, scenes with no real explanation.) He remembered that Ash was a genius and he remembered he lived in a bar and he could vaguely remember that there were other persons in that bar but he could not remember who they were or where and when they met. The name of the bar has faded too, the books he's read, the people he's met, and it's all pretty much gone by the end.
He remembers Lisa's laughter but it's all he remembers about her – he doesn't even remember whose laughter it is just the sound of it – he remembers his mother's name but nothing else. Though he realizes later that the sound of singing was his mother signing Hey Jude but he didn't know that then. He forgets his father's name but not his face, he forgets all the towns he's lived in but he remembers his car – no details about it though – he forgets the names and faces of the people he's saved but he remembers, with absolute clarity, the names and faces of those he could not save.
He remembers Jessica – so clearly in fact it almost seems he knew her extremely well but he only met her once – and his memories of Ben are also still intact.
He remembers Sammy once broke his leg as a child.
He doesn't remember when that was or how he broke it.
He forgets some things, he remembers others and the sad thing is that after a while he finds it normal.
Now he thinks it's strange he remembers so much.
He remembers the most random things too he remembers his P.E. teacher from when he was eight but he can't remember the name of the man he trusts the most. He remembers the random neighbor in a random hotel from five years ago but he couldn't tell you the name of the demon that was working with them – and especially his brother – in the end.
It's strange, it's annoying, and it's terrifying, it's normal.
It's his life, it's his reality.
As the years passed and his torture continued he began to forget he had forgotten something and in the end he could no longer remember there was something missing.
Feelings are the last things that fade.
Of this he is sure. Or maybe he isn't, maybe they fade first or somewhere in – between, who even knows, hell who even cares. That's the truth really: nobody cares about these things because nobody knows and nobody ever will. A harsher, more terrifying truth: sometimes Dean himself isn't sure if he cares about the why or how these things happened. Sometimes he's not sure he cares they happened at all.
He remembers he was afraid once, very afraid when he was a young child but he doesn't know why, he remembers someone begging for their life and feeling nothing.
This is the worst part: remembering a moment in his life and not feeling anything and not knowing if he truly felt nothing while someone begged for their life or if the feeling simply faded away.
Sometimes he wishes he could remember everything.
Sometimes he wishes he'd forgotten everything.
All the things that made him, everything that mattered to him, everything that made his life important; because if that had happened hell would have been so much easier for him. But they, the demons that surrounded him, the demon that tortured him, never let him forget who he was.
They kept whispering his name so he would never forget.
They whispered the name of his brother and kept reminding him of the reason he was there with them.
(They also whispered his brother had forgotten about him and though he knew, in the beginning, that this was not truth he's not sure how long that knowledge would have stayed with him.)
They reminded him he had chosen to come here, sold his soul by his own choice.
They reminded him his father had once hung where he did now.
He knows, with absolute certainty, that if he had stayed longer by the end he would have forgotten everything but his name and Sam's.
He thinks that was probably the point.
Or maybe, perhaps, there had never been a real point to it all, maybe Alistair made it all up as he went along.
(Here's another thing he never forgets: the name Azazal. He has no idea who that is or why he is important but the name sticks around.)
Ruby – though for the longest time he could not remember her name and kept thinking about her as the blonde demon that hangs around his brother – once told him that hell was all about forgetting who you were.
He hadn't understood it then, though he pretended he did.
He does now.
It's too late for it to matter.
One of the things he never forgets is the sound of howling hellhounds.
Strangely enough – for some extremely bizarre reason – he is now capable of distinguishing between the howling of hellhounds and the howling of wolves. It was a skill he did not have before; at least he doesn't think he did.
Maybe he still doesn't.
Maybe it's not that he can distinguish between the sounds, maybe it's just about the fact that he only remembers those sounds.
One day – morning, afternoon, night, who even cares – after many years on the rack, he has no idea how many he'd lost count by then, he sees her.
She's being dragged by demons when he sees her – maybe she's a demon by now too – and he recognizes her and yet at the same time he doesn't. He remembers her name, Bella, but nothing else, not the reason he met her, not if they were friends, not how he felt about her, nothing.
Nothing but her name that is.
And she looks at him with a strange look in her eyes, like she remembers him the same way he remembers her. She shakes her head as if she's trying to dislodge the memory but she never says anything, neither does he, and then they drag her away. He never sees her again. Sometimes he thinks Alistair did that so he could see how he would react, he never figures out what he saw and what it meant to him.
He doesn't actually remember Bella until years later, after the apocalypse is over, after the leviathans have infiltrated the world. There's no real reason behind it either one night he just wakes suddenly and remembers everything about her. But by then it's of course far too late.
One day he wakes up in a coffin.
He has no idea how he got there or why he is there, he remembers nothing but the pain and the fear and Alistair.
It's not until after he sees the flame that he remembers he has to get out.
It takes him a while to remember where he is and who he is.
He never figures out why he woke in his grave.
(Seriously why did Castiel make him dig himself out?)
If he'd ever thought about it, not that he ever truly did, he'd somehow imagined that once he was back in the world of the living his memory would simply come back.
It didn't.
Apparently it's not that easy.
Some things come back instantly like the second he sees the sky he remembers what the color blue looks like and when he sees grass he remembers green as well. Some memories are simply there – laughter and singing and that one time Sam broke his leg when he was a child – those are the random moments of his life he still remembered at the end.
He doesn't know what's missing, doesn't know what he's forgotten, but now that he's not being tortured or doing the torturing he realizes something is missing.
But if he'd ever believed that his memories would simply return he's been proven wrong.
Some memories come back randomly; every time he wakes he's remembered something else.
Some come back because he sees a person again or because he fights a demon or reads a book he's read before.
Or he reads about them in his father's journal.
There are things he remembers because he sees Castiel and he has no idea if that is because he's an angel or if the angel does it on purpose, perhaps it's all just a random coincidence. But it does happen this way. Like after he meets him for the first time he suddenly remembers all the things he had forgotten about his mother.
It doesn't always work though, sometimes he sees him and nothing come, sometimes the things he remembers are so random he doesn't understand them at all.
Like he remembers the name Gordon and an explosions and vampires but he has no idea what the connection is (though he eventually does remember.)
He never figures out, not really, if the memory of the kid begging for his life and the shot that followed – and the not feeling anything in that moment – are connected or not.
He never asks.
He's far too afraid of the answer.
The second he realizes the girl is Ruby he remembers her name.
He remembers she's the one who once saved his life and the one who told him about hell.
He can't remember if he ever trusted her or even liked her, there are times he can't remember if he trusts his brother.
That is the problem, Dean figures, with the angels and demons telling him only parts of the story: he has no idea who to trust and follow because he can't remember what he felt before.
He thinks that might be the reason it was so easy to trust Castiel – to an extent – because he didn't know him in the before so there was nothing about him he could have forgotten.
He never forgets Ben – though he suspects he would have if he'd spend more time in hell those memories too would have faded – nor does he forget Lucas, which is really random. It's years before he remembers Bella and he never, ever, remembers the name of Lucas's mother.
He's forgotten half of the people he's saved.
He remembers all the ones he failed.
He remembers everything, or a lot at least, about Bobby the second he sees him – remembers his number and his importance before that but no real memories.
He never remembers Rufus not even after he meets him (again.)
He holds the phone after he crawls out of his grave and remembers Bobby's number as well as half of Sam's. He doesn't remember his own number – he has to relearn it – and he doesn't remember his father's – though that one doesn't really matter anymore.
He doesn't recognize his own ringtone.
One day he picks up his father's phone but he can't tell if he's ever heard the voice on the other hand before. He doesn't know about Adam but he doesn't remember if that's because his father never told him or because hell stole the memory (he suspects it's the first thing though.)
They're hunting a ghost in one of their old high schools and for the life of him Dean can't remember ever going there.
Nothing about the place is familiar to him – actually it's all kind of familiar to him but in his experience all high schools look pretty much the same – there is nothing about it that truly calls out to him. He spends his time pretending he remembers going there because he doesn't want to explain to Sam why he's forgotten it.
The thing is he doesn't really know if forgetting parts of his childhood has to do with what happened in hell or simply a normal part of growing up.
He supposes he could ask Castiel.
He never does.
He thinks Castiel knows what he wants to ask anyway.
(To the angel's credit he never brings it up.)
In the darkness, at night, he dreams of hell, of hellhounds and the pain he endured.
He dreams of the things that were done to him in hell.
He dreams of the things he did.
He never dreams of the past.
One day, while they're dealing with War, Ellen hits him, hard, angry because he did not call her to tell her he was alive and allowed Rufus to be the one to tell her.
(And for the life of him he still can't remember where he met him.)
She asks him why but they're dealing with war and there's no time to talk about it, not really, and afterwards she never brings it up again. Neither does he because he doesn't want to explain, doesn't want to think about it. He's grateful because now at least he never has to explain the fact that he didn't remember her that he'd forgotten all about her and Jo and the bar they lived in – the name of which he still hasn't recalled.
He hadn't remembered them when he crawled out of his grave.
It took many months – until he met Anna actually and he doesn't know if it has something to do with being near an angel or if it's another coincidence – before he even remembered Jo's name and many more before he remembered where he met her. It took longer before he remembered all the times he saw and talked to them and how much he cared about them.
He didn't actually remember Ellen's name until the moment she hit him.
He never tells her that.
It would just hurt her.
(Sometimes he thinks she knows anyway.)
He drinks too much, he knows this, but he can't really stop.
He needs it to drown away the memories of hell (though it doesn't really work.)
He also drinks because in some way he wishes it would make him remember what he has forgotten.
It never really does.
He remembers Azazal – though it takes a while before he remembers all the details – he remembers Lucas who almost drowned in a lake and he remembers Sam getting stabbed in a small abandoned town.
He doesn't know who stabbed him.
He does remember what he felt right after and why he made the deal to bring him back.
The years pass him by and every day he remembers a little more.
As he runs through purgatory he'd like to say, like to tell the whole world – anyone who wants to listen – that he's remembered everything.
But he never can.
After all how is he supposed to remember all the things he has forgotten?