Extended drabble - Mirror
I write in the E/O Drabble challenge and challenge word this week was Mirror. I wrote the drabble below and liked it so much that I decided to extend it. It's a little dark, some themes of abuse and torture and some season 8 spoilers so be warned. Oh and if you are anti-Destiel then don't read the last couple of hundred words cause it could be if you squint right.
Hope you enjoy it.
The original drabble
Minnesota. A week before Christmas and it's cold enough to freeze hell over.
He's laying on his side, unconscious on the concrete floor, it's surface mirror-slick with ice.
His wounds have bled, soaking his t-shirt so it's frozen to the ground and his bare feet are blue with the cold.
Rusted shackles bruise his wrists where his arms are thrown out before him, reaching for the weapon that was wrenched from his hands.
He will survive this time, god knows how but then so will the the one responsible for this and it will forever return for him.
snSNsn
He'd lost track of how long he had been here. He knew it was days but exactly how many he could no longer tell. The room had no windows. No natural light penetrated the darkness so the passing of night to day had become a thing of virtuality rather than meaning.
The hours were long, mostly bleak and cold apart from the intervals when it visited him. Those moments were bright with heat and noise and pain as it ripped and tore and broke him asunder. On the whole he liked those times less than the quiet.
He still fought. Even though now much of him was so damaged that his attempts offered nothing but amusement to the creature.
Well, he assumed it found him funny because now, when it had finished with him it would pause before it left and watch him intently for a few moments. When it did this it would make a distinctive, repetitive clicking-sorta noise which he took to be laughter but really could have been anything. He was pretty sure it wasn't pity though. Yeah, pretty sure on that one.
It was a sound he had come to hate, but for all that, it was better than the sound of his own screaming and that was the other rhythm his heart beat to in it's presence.
He understood hardly at all why it had taken him, for even though it 'talked' incessantly it very rarely bothered to speak any words he could actually understand. It made it really hard to know what to say to it in return but then he figured it clearly didn't matter too much. The words it liked best from him were curses and screams and pleas for mercy and it was more than well practiced at summoning those from him.
What he did know for certain was the one thing it had said to him when he first regained consciousness after it took him. Yeah, took him. Dammit! Cause he had let his guard down for one moment because they were in sight of the bunker and they knew of nothing that was immediately coming for them and they were just carrying the bags in from the grocery run.
It was all so 'normal'. Well, for them. Okay so Cas had fallen and was human but was learning to be so and Sam was better than the walking corpse he had been during the trials and he...Dean...well, he was almost, kinda happy for a second or two. So yeah, as near to normal as it would ever get for him.
And that was when it had found them. With it's talons and teeth and blinding venom and as he had folded boneless into it's crushing arms, his last thought had been 'thank god it took me and not them'.
So he had woken from that to this.
A room.
Spacious enough that he could only see it's walls in the moments when it brought light and in those moments his eyes were always disorientingly out of focus, or swollen closed, or blinded with blood or his own tears. Thus he remained unsure of it's actual dimensions or what lay beyond and his chains prevented him moving to explore.
He suspected he was maybe underground because the room was predominantly cold. The walls he knew ran water. He knew this because when it chained him against them to, toy with him, cold, brackish water tricked over his flesh to make pretty pink pools where it diluted his blood, that it gleefully spilled, onto the concrete floor.
The first time it had chained him there he had tried to drink the water. It had broken his cheek bone, and clawed open his thigh for his audacity so he had not tried that again since. Now he just lapped at the filthy puddles that collected in the pits on the floor, grateful for the meagre moisture despite the grit on his tongue and it's coppery tang.
And what had it said to him? When he had woken here, that lifetime of a few days ago?
It had loomed from the darkness to the circle of light it conjured, it's hooded eyes and dark feathers shining and whispered softly, menacingly.
"Guardian. I am here to teach you to beg for death."
It had spent the next few visits it made carefully and precisely hurting him. Sometimes, it was wanton and abandoned in it's viciousness but more often it was subtle and were the worst times. The times he wanted to beg and sob for it to stop. The times which threatened to break him.
When it craved mere brutality it would release him from his chains and pretend that there was true contest in their sparring. Of course there was not. Whatever manner of creature it was, and remember, he had no name for it and it provided none, it dominated him in every way.
Thus, though he fought with skill and tenacity it out matched him at every turn. Oh he wounded it a little. Sometimes he would be rewarded with a hiss as he landed a blow, or hear the air forced from its lungs as he took it down, but inevitably those tiny victories were short-lived. It's superior power and speed and strength would always result in him curled on the floor, cradling some new broken bone or bleeding wound.
The more measured lessons in agony that it taught him were infinitely more educational. It was a creature that reveled in torment as much as in outright savagery so the quieter, crueler more intimate interludes they shared were infinitely more debilitating.
It would ask him to select a limb and choose a weapon and then it would devise a game for them whereby it would require Dean to wound himself. The first time was his own lighter and his right arm and the challenge was to scorch a slow, straight line of interconnected burns from his elbow to his wrist.
These were the times it would speak to him in words he could recognise. It would explain methodically how he was to inflict each wound. How deep to cut, how wide to burn and what it would do if he refused.
And his first response, of course, had been to tell it to go fuck itself.
It had beaten him unconscious for that and then waited patiently till he woke back up to help him understand why he would, indeed, eventually do everything it asked of him.
It hadn't been difficult. It had simply shown him the child. The child it had fetched, taken as it had taken him and brought to the room to help him understand that if he didn't scar his own body, then it would scar the child's in his place.
He was unsure if the terror he felt then showed on his face. He tried for it not to but the resurgence of memories...foul, twisted, guilt-laden memories of his use of blades and knives, hooks and barbs and of Alastair's happy, hideous laughter made it unlikely that it didn't.
And of course, he picked up the lighter, and next the knife and after that whatever it brought, just so long as the always, wide-eyed children were spared.
And all the time, while they played these games, danced this grisly dance, it reminded him it was because he was The Guardian and that he must beg for death to find some release from this inhuman ordeal.
At first he had no idea what it meant, well none beyond a dictionary definition of the word. However, as time passed some strange, in-built, genetic mojo began to thrum in his blood when it whispered the word to him. Power and old knowledge and renewed courage began to prickle through his veins.
Guardian.
There was a rightness about it. A consuming, strength-giving grace that made his red-rimmed eyes burn with a green-gold fierceness that began to sear the creature's skin and soul if it had one.
Of course, that made it angry. More so than it had ever been. Enough so that it worked to ensure his blood splattered higher and wider than it had before and his screams echoed until he had no breath left to manage even a sob.
So it was then that it knelt beside him and cradled him in it's arms.
"So Guardian..."
It crooned in soft, corrupt triumph.
"Will you beg me now? For your release? Your death?"
It held toward him a small, sharp sliver of silver.
And it was then that he knew.
It could not kill him unless he asked it to.
Without his consent it was impotent.
His laughter bubbled around the blood in his mouth as he called it out and his vision blurred to unconsciousness with the sight of it's fury in it's defeat.
snSNsn
Minnesota. A week before Christmas and it's cold enough to freeze hell over.
He's laying on his side, unconscious on the concrete floor, it's surface mirror-slick with ice.
His wounds have bled, soaking his t-shirt so it's frozen to the ground and his bare feet are blue with the cold.
Rusted shackles bruise his wrists where his arms are thrown out before him, reaching for the weapon that was wrenched from his hands.
He will survive this time, god knows how but then so will the the one responsible for this and it will forever return for him.
For he is The Guardian and he must be taught to beg for death.
snSNsn
He is surprised to wake. Though he has defied it and refused his release he had thought Death had come for him anyway.
But he has met the pale horseman before and as his eyes clear, the face before him is surprisingly not that of reaper.
"Dean?"
Sam's face is etched deep with fear, his amber eyes hollow with grey but for Dean it is a vision of safety and he smiles. Well maybe he does, as he's unsure if it resembles what he is aiming for.
"S...mm?"
It's a whisper in reality but in Dean's heart it shouts his triumph.
"Can you walk? We have to get out of here, get you somewhere safe..."
He can hear the panic in his brother's voice and feel his urgent hand running over his body, trying to catalogue the impossible litany of pain marked on his flesh.
"N..n..."
He mumbles.
"leg...br...kn..."
And Sam nods, taking in the bloody, swollen limb, tears brimming in his eyes.
"Don't worry...I'll carry you."
He rolls his head weakly, too tired and sore to object. Consciousness is beginning to slip from him.
"Please, Sam, let me."
This second voice too is known to him, is music to his ears and he summons enough strength to find the once-angel's face.
"Cas..."
He manages. It's a rough, bruised, a murmur of a noise but brings with it a vast out pouring of need and want and love and the now-human crawls close to wrap him in arms so fiercely tender.
"I thought I had lost you."
Bright blue eyes search his face as he is cradled into an embrace designed to hold him and he smiles.
"Never...I was right here."
He feels a hand cup his cheek and he presses into it, it's humanity warming him.
"I want to go home."
Dean whispers and a warm thumb ghosts across his cracked lips.
"So do I."
Strong arms gather him up, tight and safe about him.
"I love you."
The angel murmurs softly and he nods, knowing it to be the truth as he closes his eyes and sleep envelopes him.
Ends
Thanks for reading. If you have a few moments to spare, let me know if you liked it.