Hell's Bells
There are moments of peace.
No one expects that though and it throws the newbies. Peace can be found in hell, if you know where to look for it. Years of being in the stinking place, knowing each dark and bloody corner, allows Meg to know where to find it. Even when it seems to disappear completely in light of being tortured. But that is the funny thing about peace, it is always in the same place and never moves.
Peace is in the moment she can draw breath into her punctured lungs and expel it back out. It comes to her in the quiet when she is left to heal from the inflictions only to have them reopened for the millionth time. Peace flutters in what is left of her heart and glints off the shards of her memories, the few good ones she has. It is in these recovery moments that she gathers those broken pieces and rearranges them into something comforting and soft.
She selects the pieces carefully, ones of a mental hospital where she stood guard over an addled minded angel and another of her having wounds tended to by the same angel who was less addled minded. She shakes them together, creating a new image that is less memory and more desire. She is the one in the hospital bed, the worst of the damage already healed. She can feel him fussing with bandages and ointment, trying to not disturb her but her unicorn always lacked a little in the grace department.
"Looks like we survived it, Clarence."
He stills at her words before continuing with the bandaging. "I would not call this 'surviving it.'"
"Don't tell me I died and went to heaven?" She opens her eyes and finds him, jaw clenched and eyes tight.
It wasn't one of her better jokes. The lightheartedness was weighed down with the ugly truth of just how opposite they were. Castiel, an angel of the Lord who questioned his orders and fell from the grand splendor of above for a pair of brothers who were too stubborn to let the world end. And her, a twisted up soul from hell who actual saw a glimmer of goodness in the world and suddenly desired to have it. A cracked angel and a demon searching for the nice corner of her heart, there was the real punchline of the joke.
"So how did I get out?" she asks, closing her eyes when he goes back to bandaging the worst of the cuts.
"We laid siege to hell."
"One of the Winchester boys find their way back in the flames?"
"No. Not this time."
She opens her eyes again and smiles halfway. "You came for me, Clarence? You shouldn't have."
He stops with the medical care and carefully sets everything down on the bedside table. "We heard that Crowley had taken you back to hell. It was only right to bring you out, after what you did for us."
Finally, the tension leaves his face but the relief stops just shy of a smile and his eyes finally meet hers. She doesn't remember his eyes being that blue and it feels like her lung is still punctured, air leaking out.
"Well then, you're welcome. Whenever I get out of here, my offer still stands."
He nods slowly. "Pizza and the movement of furniture, I believe it was."
"You do realize we're not actually going to move furniture, right?"
It's his smile that shatters the entire dream. The soft glow of a hospital room is replaced with the dark, dancing backlit flames of hellfire. The clean, astringent smell disappears and gives way to the scent of burnt flesh and old blood. The shards she had carefully constructed are tossed to the far corners of her mind once more.
"Where do you go during those moments, little Meg?"
She bites down on her tongue and tastes copper. "Oh you know, rainbows and unicorns and white fluffy clouds."
Nothing else is said as the blades flash and the pain begins for another round. There is one moment, as she is drawing breath between screams that she swears she hears the soft sound of bells.
"What's...what's that?"
Her torturer pauses in his work and listens. "What?"
"Bells." She can only manage the one word.
"Bells? As in Hell's Bells? Goodness, they haven't rung in ages."
A sudden burst of laughter finds its way from her blood filled throat. Sanity was starting to leave her but she didn't care. The demon put in charge of her repentance could only stare in mild curiosity. But she was too far gone now and didn't stop the words from leaving her mouth.
"Don't you know, whenever a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."
And maybe, just maybe, her angel would find his own wings and come pull her from perdition.