Title: Renegade Atlas
Rating: M
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Spoilers: through seasons 4 and 5, tiny tiny parts of 6; it's mostly canon
Warnings: insane!Dean, violence, gore, language, torture, thoughts of self-harm/suicide, cannibalism (um what), angst like whoa, and probably a giant bastardization of angel lore
AN: I have this image of myself in my head where I write, y'know, happy things with sad bits but mostly happy things. Recently, I've had to reconcile that with the fact that I never really have written "happy" things. Read them, sure, but not write them. And somehow that morphed into this story. Tl;dr, I like to write angst.

Anyway, I love writing this story—it's basically awesome, okay—and MusicDefinesUsAll (go check her out! she writes! she plays guitar! she fangirls!) gets all of that love too. I sent her a chapter the other day and she told me it was good and didn't kill me when I demanded she find something wrong with it. And she did. Girl's a miracle, I tell you. Onward!


Dean is almost disappointed when he wakes up in Hell. Almost, but not quite, because Alastair is there, dragging his hand over Dean's chest and saying "Wakey, wakey!" into his ear like Dean is five years old and Dean is obscenely glad to see him. "You gonna come play with me today, sweetheart?" he asks, pinching Dean's nipple sharply.

Shuddering, Dean breathes, "Yeah."

"You and I have separate appointments today; I know how long you've been waiting for that," Alastair says. "But we'll see each other later, baby, not to worry."

Dean licks his lips as he sits up, looking at Alastair warily. "Is this because I tortured Sam?" he asks, rubbing his wrists where the manacles chafed him last night. It usually takes decades before demons are allowed to torture souls without their makers looking over their shoulders.

"You broke down remarkably quickly, Dean. Usually when I do that, they say no the first time or five." Alastair laughs and drags Dean's leg up around his hip. "But you're not quite like the others, though, are you, baby? You want to hurt these people; you want to turn little Sammy's insides to soup. You'd probably drink them, too, if I made you. Would you like that? Would you like me to bring something like that back for you tonight?"

Dean nods frantically, already salivating at the thought. He's had a taste for flesh since Alastair cut Dean's chest open and fed him his own lungs piece by piece while he fucked Dean. That was damn near twenty-five years ago, and the taste still lingers thick and heavy in Dean's throat when he remembers it. It's addicting, the rush of power it gives him even tied down at Alastair's mercy. It makes him wonder why he ever felt vindicated in getting rid of the wendigos back on Earth; hell, if he was still there, Dean would probably be one of them.

"Good boy."

Alastair tucks Dean against his side as they make their way through Hell's streets to the building Dean will be working in today. It's in the fifth circle where torturers usually have years of practice under their belts, far more than Dean who's never worked alone in his afterlife. It's louder down here, full of souls and nothing to keep the screams enclosed.

"You're special, sweetheart," Alastair tells him smugly. "I broke you far better than most; it's easier to build you back up, baby, when you've already snapped in half."

Dean says nothing. He doesn't like to talk about how he broke in Hell any more than he likes to dream about living on Earth, the handful of times he gets the chance to dream. They remind him of being human and how he used to be strong. There is no strength or honor in what he does anymore; it's purely cowardly. But Dean isn't a good enough person anymore to put himself back on the rack. The other souls, they're gonna get tortured anyway. He may as well do it and avoid the pain himself.

Dean is selfless like that.

He starts the girl on his rack off easy—she's new, a fresh soul who hasn't seen this end of Hell yet, and she has questions for him. Besides, instilling terror in the new ones is a ritual honored by all of Hell's torturers.

"What do you think you're doing?" she shouts at Dean, attempting to tug her wrists out of the ropes holding them. Dean knows from experience that she'll never get out of them and it isn't worth trying. He isn't opposed to watching her struggle, though; there's a certain sort of pleasure in watching her try.

"Well, Claudia," he says, reading her rap sheet and shining his favorite knife. "I think you know exactly what I'm doing. You've got a lot of shit listed here. Apparently you hated a lot of different groups and even managed to drive your own son to suicide because you hated him so much for being gay." Dean laughs at her and twirls his knife around his fingers. "He's here too, you know. Suicides, they don't get into Heaven. Then again, neither do dicks like you."

"You can't do this to me! I am an upstanding member of my community and—"

"Yeah, you had a dog, two kids, a rich husband—we know about the money you stole from him, by the way—and were on the 'Community Clean-Up Committee!' You even named it, and I promise," Dean says with a roll of his eyes, "part of the reason you're here is for that obnoxious fucking exclamation mark you put at the end of it."

She's still spluttering about the money thing, though. "I can't believe you'd even suggest that I would ever steal from my—"

"Shut up," Dean says, pressing his knife against her lips. He likes this one. She argues and babbles in protest, still convinced there's a way for her to get out of here. Most souls are a lot more resigned. "Trust me, we know everything you've ever done. And before you tell me, you're angry, of course you are. Why do you think you're here?" Chuckling, Dean puts pressure on his knife and watches as it slides into her lip. Claudia whimpers. He loves the ones who come from painless, comfortable lives—they make the prettiest noises. "Tell me," he whispers into her ear, "why?"

"I don't know!" she snaps at him. "I don't deserve to be here; I lived a good life!"

Dean backs off, reaches for her sheet, and holds it right in front of her. "I'll tell you, then," he offers diplomatically. "You have about fifteen different anger issues starting with racism and ending with paying an assassin to murder a man who stole from you. They're not psychotic problems, is the thing, so you can't get a free pass to heaven. Plus there's your son, and the stealing—really, you shoulda been some kind of mafia lord. The contacts and the charisma are all here, but you're too lazy to get into all of that work."

Claudia is silent, her wet mouth opening and closing compulsively. Dean tilts his head, waiting for a reaction.

"You got anything to say for yourself, gorgeous?"

That seems to snap her out of it. "I demand you to let me out of here!"

Dean contemplates that. "I could saw your feet off and release your bindings. Then you could run and I could chase you. It'd be just like I was back on Earth, hunting down sons of bitches like you and ganking them." He brushes off the unease that spreads through his stomach at the thought of his life on Earth being similar to the one he has down here.

Claudia snarls. "Eat me, you freak."

Throwing his head back and laughing, Dean says, "Filthy mouth. Sweetheart, you're gonna wish you never said that." He drops his knife on the cart carelessly and pushes his shirtsleeves up. "You probably won't taste as nice as an outright murderer," he murmurs, trailing his fingers through the blood staining her lips and licking it delicately from his fingertips. "The more despicable you are in life, the better you taste after death, I've noticed. You'll be alright, I think."

Realization dawns on her face, widening her eyes and drawing her brow together. A perturbed feeling stabs into Dean's throat as it reminds him of Sam—his Sam, not the younger lookalike he tore into yesterday and now even that memory is turning his stomach. He pushes it down as Claudia screams for mercy, to take it back, anything, but this is Dean's time to prove himself to Alastair. It's time to show he can do this without being watched like a child.

Dean leans down to breathe on her neck hotly. She squeals beautifully, and Dean rewards her with teeth scraping down the firm column of her throat. "You ready, baby?" he asks.

She cries out again. Dean forces his mouth into a smile to wash away the unhappy lump settling in the pit of his throat and bites down before he can contemplate it any longer.

At the first flood of blood into his mouth, thick, coppery, and sweet, the switch flips and everything is gone from Dean's mind except the frenzy of desire for power, for flesh. He's mindless, the taste of blood settling in nicely against the hole in his soul, stitching him up temporarily, and Dean growls as he bites down harder. The first taste of flesh is sweet, the blood still pounding against his tongue and the meat warm and alive—

Then Dean wakes up.


Balthazar's capture weighs heavily on Castiel almost constantly. He always used to talk to Castiel when they were on separate missions, and whenever they were assigned to work together, Balthazar would never stop talking. Uriel is amusing because he thinks about his jokes before he tells them—Balthazar just says whatever comes to mind the instant it pops into his head.

In two thousand years stationed on Earth with no more company or purpose than the rest of their garrison, Castiel and the others are more than used to Balthazar's near constant voice in the backs of their heads. But now...now it's just silence.

Castiel, I can feel your sadness from Heaven, Inias says.

Closing his eyes, Castiel tells him, I'm sorry. I will attempt to be silent.

Don't worry, brother. I miss him as well.

It's strange without him here, isn't it? Castiel asks, though he full well knows the answer to that. He's not talking, and I keep attempting to reach out to him.

Me, too, Inias admits, his sorrow curling around the words and touching Castiel's grace gently. We have no mission now, and usually I would talk to him while we waited. Hester won't speak to me yet—I don't believe she's talking to anyone. She's angry that she was so close and still unable to save him.

That's an emotion Castiel understands, and he shows Inias that without hesitation.

I feel guilty I wasn't there to help protect him, Inias admits after a pause. I shouldn't have flown away like a coward.

No, Inias, Castiel says loudly. Regardless of what happened, you wouldn't have been there. At least this way you made it out of Hell. Balthazar can't say the same.

Inias hesitates. Uriel told me Balthazar promised you he would climb back out of Hell.

Castiel shows him just how absurd he thinks that is, but Inias presses for more, saying, You don't think there's a chance? They're only demons.

You didn't see the chains they bound him with, Inias, Castiel tells him. If Balthazar had seen what they are inscribed with, I don't think he would have made that promise.

Inias says nothing, just lets his grief flow freely over his connection with Castiel. It's comforting to share his sadness like this, Castiel thinks as he meets Inias halfway. Angels are tactile with each other in this way, sharing unhappiness and triumph with each other when they feel it. In the aftermath of so many angels' deaths, Castiel knows there must be many angels doing the same thing now.

How is the Righteous Man? Inias asks after a long while.

He is stubborn, Castiel says. He refuses to believe I am an Angel of the Lord. He has no faith. He was convinced that a demon raised him from Hell.

An interesting theory, Inias says.

He is a hunter, Castiel says as if that explains everything. He has already stabbed me and shot me, though I believe he has learned that his weapons do not work on me.

And the abomination?

Shoving his disgust at Inias, Castiel says, I have hardly seen him, though Dean has joined back up with him. He leaves every room he enters smelling of demon blood. Dean doesn't suspect what his...extra activities might be.

He's lying to his brother and drinking a demon's blood, then, Inias says scornfully. Balthazar wouldn't wait a moment to start mocking him, I'm sure.

It is sure to end badly if they are not honest with each other, he agrees, Uriel appearing at his side. But Dean is the only one who can end this, now that he has started it. He will make the right decision when the world hangs in the balance.

Zachariah is more than ready to move this along, Inias says. Dean still knows nothing of the 66 Seals or Lucifer—

We can do nothing until a Seal is threatened and the humans manage to notice it, Uriel says, sliding into their conversation effortlessly. I understand that Zachariah is impatient, but our actions are currently at the mercy of demons and humans. His disgust at that fact is clear.

We failed to stop the Rising of the Witness and it is happening as we speak, Castiel reports. The Winchesters have taken notice, though they do not yet know what it means.

See to it that they do, Castiel. I have no patience for them.

Uriel, Castiel sighs, our mission is to convince Dean to end what he has started. He is a human; he was not blessed with our certainty in what must be done and it will take time.

Annoyed, Uriel says, That is your mission, Castiel. I am here to provide extra...incentive, if it should be required. In the meantime, I would prefer to spend as little time as possible dealing directly with the humans.

Castiel says amicably, I'm sure that can be arranged.


"So, the apocalypse," Dean says. He has his hands wrapped around a bottle of Jack and he doesn't see the point in taking his boots off before he gets on the bed. It'll be gross later, but Dean isn't a pussy like Sam, and he can put up with a little dirt.

Castiel, on the other hand, looks vaguely disgusted, or as disgusted as he could ever look being an angelic robot dickbag. Dean isn't sure why he's here because Lilith can't seriously have broken another seal already; they just got rid of the damn witnesses not two days ago, and Dean was sort of hoping for a bit of a break before he had to put up with more of this shit. He used to gank ghosts like a respectable hunter. Now he gets picked to stop the apocalypse by a bunch of mythical creatures with giant wings.

Maybe Dean is drunk.

When Cas doesn't say anything Dean sighs and says, "You got anything else you're hiding up there? 'Cause I'm thinkin' that if you want me to stop this—" he waves the bottle at Castiel to show what he means "—then you're gonna have to stop keeping secrets from me. I don't work like that."

"I have told you everything I know," Castiel says.

Dean snorts. "What, you can't even tell me how many seals are already broken?" At Castiel's blank stare, Dean rolls his eyes and says, "Of course. You usually run with a lack of information?"

"Heaven tells me what I need to know, Dean, nothing more."

"Yeah, well, sometimes full disclosure is—y'know." Castiel doesn't look like he knows, but Dean doesn't particularly care, and he takes another swig of Jack to prove to Cas just how much he doesn't care. "All this 'show me some respect' shit is just that, Cas—shit. It doesn't mean a damn thing unless you do something I should respect you for. You let people die, man. And yeah, you lost the seal, whatever. You could have saved a lot of good people if you had just told us how to do the damn ritual."

"Dean—" Castiel says.

"You can throw me back in the pit if you want," Dean says, staring right back at him. "Hell, I might even like it. Everything's a damn sight easier down there, you know." Holding up the bottle, Dean stares contemplatively at the label.

When Dean looks up again, Cas has vanished. He throws his head back on the pillow with an aggravated noise.

It's just—Dean wants to save the world, he does. But he's lived in Hell longer than he's lived on Earth. Sam would probably call it some kind of Stockholm syndrome, knowing him, but he doesn't understand. Worry doesn't exist in Hell, because as much as it hurts, it's equally predictable. If he says no to Alastair, he will be tortured; if he says yes, he will do the torturing. All very clean cut lines and if it hurts, it's not exactly a surprise.

Here...here Sam is off doing god knows what. Angels are hounding him to stop the apocalypse. Dean actually has a conscience to give a shit about what he did in Hell, and he seriously isn't drunk enough if he's still remembering that lovely scenario. Earth is a thousand shades of gray. Hell is black and white and there is absolutely no in-between because something either is or isn't. Easy.

Dean misses that. He's always been a soldier, never any sort of commanding officer, and it's so much easier to hand the reins over to someone else and follow as they give him orders. He can live that life even if Sam can't stand it because that's just what he's always done. Hell was all commands, simple and obvious. The most he ever had to come up with on his own was when Alastair told him to take the lead on cutting up a soul, and even then the only question was to slice off the toes or fingers first. Not much of a decision making process involved.

He wants the memories to stop. He'll live on Hell or Earth—he can't bring himself to particularly care which sometimes—but he can't handle this little bit of both shit. Even in Hell, his dreams of Earth were confined to dreams whenever he was asleep and Alastair didn't need him. But here, Hell is in his every waking second, when he sleeps, and when Dean looks at Sam, a flicker of his mouth torn wide around Dean's arm always appears. It won't leave him alone.

The drinking—it doesn't help much. Not really. He's reached total oblivion once already, and the hangover and subsequent beating from Bobby isn't worth going down that road again. When that happened, Bobby almost called an ambulance so they could pump his stomach, but Sam talked him down.

Good old Sam, with his perfect flayed skin.

Dean laughs harshly at himself. Sam doesn't look like that anymore, thank god, because Dean would not be able to handle it. It's alright as long as the image stays firmly in his own mind and nobody else ever knows ever. He can barely think about it without wanting to scrub his own skin clean off to wash away the blood.

There's that one other person who knows, though, because he knows almost every damn thing about Dean that there is to know. Dean doesn't really remember being raised from Hell—doesn't remember much of Hell period, just the highlights—but he knows Castiel must have turned up about the time he was splitting Sam open and screwing Alastair. That's when his memory goes all fuzzy with this bright light before it fades into the darkness of waking up in a coffin. Which, thanks for that, by the way, because that was just a great way to be welcomed back onto Earth, digging his way out of several feet of dirt.

"Fuck," Dean says to himself, "I need..."

Well, he needs something, sure, but even he isn't sure what that is. He needs a mom, for starters, and possibly a brother who tells him what the fuck is going on. Maybe even a hot girl or two, just to provide some entertainment.

But those won't fill the gaping hole in him, the thing that he can't quite acknowledge unless he's somewhere between gently tipsy and completely shitfaced, the point where his inhibitions are gone but his memory is still intact. That kind of thing won't make him feel better about the people he tortured in Hell just to save himself.

And that's what it all comes down to, isn't it? The fact that Dean doesn't deserve to be saved. He made that deal to get Sam's life back; he knew full fucking well what he was getting into. And he...he turned into something down there, something dark and wrathful that makes his stomach turn in the light and his fingers itch for a carving knife during the nighttime. There is something lingering inside him still, a tiny, almost nonexistent seed in his soul that wants to slip his fingers back through Sam's skin and feel the warm mess inside of him. He wants his fist inside Sam in ways he really shouldn't be considering because some of them are even filthier that the things he actually did in Hell.

Hell is full of possibilities. A lot of them get less realistic in the living world, now that Dean thinks about it, but he still knows six different ways to tear Sam's tongue out of his head without disrupting his screaming until it's done. Alastair taught him a lot about that sort of thing, taking people apart according to preference while still dealing out an appropriate amount of pain. Dean was good at that.

And then the memories melt away and Dean maybe falls asleep with the lights off and the moon shining directly on his face from the single window in their motel. All he knows is he wakes up with one mother of a hangover and most of his memory of last night in tatters.

Sam got back sometime during the night. He's snoring like it's his only job now, loud and unapologetic. Dean contemplates hitting him, but just thinking about sitting up makes his head scream louder.

"Dean."

What happens next is a series of unfortunate events. Dean automatically reaches for the knife he keeps under his pillow. It isn't there, of course, because Sam always takes away his weapons when he's drunk and the little bitch knows where Dean hides all his shit. As Dean fails to grab the knife that isn't there, he gets his feet—boots on, of course—tangled in the blanket Sam apparently threw on him and promptly rolls off the bed as he flails.

His knee throbs sympathetically after his head.

There's a sigh from somewhere above him, and Jesus fuck Dean really hopes that it's Castiel and not some other freak. Cas is mostly harmless, at least.

Looking up blearily, Dean sees the bottom edge of a tan trench coat and puts his head back down again. "What the fuck, Cas?" he growls, voice rough with dehydration.

"Would you like me to heal you so we can talk?" Cas asks.

"No," Dean tells him because he is a man and he can deal with a hangover. Castiel, however, doesn't seem to understand that this is part of the man code, and he presses two fingers to Dean's temple anyway, getting rid of his hangover like no greasy breakfast Dean has ever met.

"Well. Damn," Dean says, blinking against the sunlight. Sam grumbles a bit and rolls over like the great hunter he was raised to be, completely oblivious to what's going on around him.

"You are still dreaming of Hell," Castiel says, his tone almost implying that he knows this better than Dean.

"Can we not talk about this?" Dean says, scowling.

Cas just stares at him. He stares a lot, Dean is noticing, like some sort of bug-eyed freak

"Right," Dean says dubiously. "I'm going to go get breakfast."

Dean gets one more hard look before Castiel disappears.

He doesn't like it when Cas looks at him like that. There's a weird resonance of Hell in that gaze that Dean doesn't get anywhere else. It's different from the feeling Dean gets in his dreams and memories where he has blood all up his forearms and soot staining his clothes. Castiel feels like something less than peace but more than despair. Unsettling is the most accurate word.

Pulling on a clean shirt, Dean throws his dirty one at Sam's head. "Get up, Sasquatch, you need to start looking for a hunt," he says loudly, kicking at the foot of his bed.

Sam groans and rolls his face off his pillow. "The fuck, man," he says, prissy bitch expression already firmly planted on his face.

"Start research. I'll be back." Sam just blinks at him as Dean swings his jacket onto his shoulders and struts out the door, taking a swig out of his flask with the Impala's keys jingling merrily in his hand.

The sun is warm on his face when he gets outside, and birds are actually singing somewhere off in the distance. It's a May day, all green and breezy with Castiel sitting in Dean's passenger seat, looking vaguely like a nervous squirrel.

"I told you," Dean says as he starts the car with a scowl, "I don't want to talk."

"You're still having nightmares about Hell, Dean. I need to know why."

Dean stares at him in disbelief, because seriously? "It was Hell, dude," he says like Castiel is some sort of brainless asshole. "Fire and brimstone and shit. What do you expect?"

Castiel just gives him this look, and it's weird because he looks genuinely anguished for a brief moment. He never shows emotion, not as far as Dean has seen. "You are...not supposed to remember your time there," Cas says slowly, like he has to be careful with his words. Dean parks the car near a diner and waits for him to finish. "I tried to keep most of it from you. You should not be experiencing those memories."

Scowling, Dean says, "Well, you fucked up. And I can handle it, thanks." He slams his door on the way out of the car, cursing to himself about presumptive angelic shitheads who think he can't deal with a little mental trauma. Dean's whole life is mental trauma.

But Castiel just does his little teleporting thing and stops Dean in his tracks, so close Dean can feel the displacement of air.

"Cas, personal space, come on, dude," Dean protests, trying to move Cas away by his shoulders. He ends up stepping back himself when Cas refuses to move. "Seriously, you should be at least this far away from anyone you're talking to. Unless it's a chick and you want to take her home."

Cas tilts his head and creases his brow in the way that means 'why are you still talking?'

"You should not be experiencing those memories," he repeats as if that will change anything. "How much do you remember of Hell?"

Dean shuffles his weight around anxiously. "Not much, man. It's fine, though, nothing I can't handle."

Castiel doesn't look like he's listening to Dean at all. "Maybe I should—" And his hand comes up to Dean's forehead before he can dodge it, pressing against his temple lightly.

It feels like a shockwave, actually, an almost perfect timeline of events that explode from the place where Castiel touched him and out of Castiel's eyes in front of him. Everything in startling clarity tears its way through Dean's mind. That first day in Hell, being chained up and sprawled out and screaming for Sam because he still believed his brother might love him enough to save him. Then Alastair, just after that, his cruel laugh and the feeling of him forcing his way between Dean's thighs.

The way he says, "Dean, baby, don't cry; we're starting this off real nice for you. Only the special ones get this kind of treatment," and then winks at him, his hands scraping along Dean's stomach like he's a piece of meat.

The way Alastair eats him the next day like he's a piece of meat.

And then on and on and on, through the way Alastair will sometimes pet Dean's hair at the end of the day like he's something special and ask, "Will you join me tomorrow, Dean? It'd be an honor, let me tell you."

Dean says no. He says no every day for thirty years as the shockwave spreads across his brain, stunning him and sending him to his knees on the asphalt.

That final day, Dean is still crying as Alastair strokes his hand down Dean's cheek like a lover. Dean has never been in this much pain before, not through all the meals he's been or the number of times his bones have been messily torn from his skin, because Alastair has never done that beforelet the minotaur have their way with him.

"Join me?" Alastair whispers in Dean's ear.

Dean, he says, "Yes, just make it stop."

It stopped for good, it really did, but the next day Dean gently cleaned a body of all of its flesh and lit the bones on fire. More knives. More blood. More guts spilling out of bodies, sometimes into Dean's mouth, and whenever Alastair got too excited, he fucked Dean on top of the body while it bled out.

Every single horrible thing Dean ever did in that place plays out before him again for his personal enjoyment, right up until he stabs Castiel for interrupting Alastair just when Dean was getting to the point where he enjoyed getting fucked.

The final bit is a rush of bright lights and the sensation of rising and rising without end until a jarring stop into darkness wakes Dean up. Their eyes, memory Dean and real Dean, their eyes fly open together.

And the handprint on his arm burns.


You know you're weird when cannibalism is something you actually need to warn for in your writing. Oh well. Let me know what you think! :D