********
Chapter 4. Heaven and Earth shall Flee Away
********
A trail of clothing led from door to bed. Dean's battered leather jacket embraced Betty's v-necked top; his check button-down snuggled up to her worn blue jeans, all discarded in haste on the deep pile carpet.
Dean happily flung himself backwards onto the rather bouncy mattress. Betty smiled at Dean as she knelt astride him looking very cute in bra and panties, and laughingly helped him shrug off his t shirt.
"Do you like this body, Dean Winchester? I made it especially for you."
"Like it?" he panted, "I love it…I…" His mouth juddered to a stop as his brain finally kicked in.
He stared, felt his jaw drop, then a flush rise in his cheeks.
"Yuki."
She nodded, the warm smile never wavering on Betty's perfectly constructed, perfectly ordinary, perfectly lovely face.
"I can see what you desire, Dean. I can be whoever you want, whatever you want."
She stroked a finger tenderly down his smooth naked chest and he shivered – fear mingling with a burning desire he couldn't suppress, even knowing it was the Yõkai wearing that wonderfully attractive curvaceous form. Even knowing that he should be fighting this, or perhaps, if he were more sensible, running away. Instead he lay there, trembling, as she leaned down and brushed his lips with hers, and in spite of himself, he responded. This time was so different from Chicago. This time the Yuki-onna's breath was Betty's too, and it was warm and moist, not freezing cold. His lips parted and he let her tongue slide between his teeth, tasting him, testing him. Then he couldn't have moved even if he had wanted to, and he knew she was in his head, rummaging around in all the deepest, darkest places in his mind, extracting what she needed to keep him there. The most frightening thing was - he didn't care.
Because wherever Yuki went, although at first he felt the most exquisite agony, it was immediately followed by a blessed numbness. Slowly but surely, wherever she touched his mind she was freezing all his pain. She found his memories of Dad; the ever-present fear of failing him, the silent rage at the days and nights of neglect; the sadness at the loss of his childhood; and she stole away all the heat from them. She found the memory of seeing his mother in the house in Lawrence, burning, pinned to the ceiling, and stole away the flames.
Dean's hazel eyes were wide open, staring blindly, tears running unchecked down his cheeks. They glowed green, then gold in the lamplight as his back arched, sweat trickled down his chest and soaked into the crisp white cotton sheets and he whimpered from the terrible pain. Moaned from the glorious relief as she seared then cauterised with ice, seared then cauterised. He was conscious but unaware, lost in Yuki-onna's kiss.
And all the while, inside his head, she talked to him, gently, lovingly.
I know you, Dean Winchester.
Yes.
I love your fire.
Love.
You want this. You want the pain to stop.
Yes. Yes. Please.
Aaaaaah….stop. Don't. Stop.
If I let you do this – the killing will stop? The people here will be safe?
Yes. I don't need any more deaths. I have you, Dean Winchester.
And Sam will be safe?
Yes. You need to send your brother away. He has too much fire in him – I might be tempted to stray.
No. Sam. Sammy!
Send him away.
Yes.
One by one she found them. The crippling, painful emotions. The lovings, the affections, the bitter-sweet passions of Dean Winchester's tapestry. Tessa. Anna. Lisa and Ben. Jo and Ellen. Castiel. Bobby. Yuki-onna sucked out all the heat and all the fervour. With each frozen thread of love and pain, Dean was unravelling.
Then she reached the big one. Sam. She paused.
Stop. Don't. Stop.
Dean's eyes had closed, squeezed tight shut. He opened them. Betty/Yuki was staring down at him, her borrowed features solemn, eyes dark wells in which he could lose – he was losing -himself.
"This will hurt." She said.
Like it hadn't hurt up to now? He thought, dazed, incredulous.
"Do you want this?"
I want the pain to stop.
"Yes." He said.
He didn't move, couldn't move, even though his wide-open eyes saw that in each hand Yuki held a slim, deadly, crystalline spike of clear ice that sparkled in the lamplight. Slowly she brought the tip of one of these icicles and touched its sharp point to his right eye. He didn't blink.
The other she placed carefully between the fifth and sixth ribs, poised ready over his erratically beating heart.
Stop. Don't. Stop.
He gasped as she plunged both icy weapons home simultaneously. She was right. It hurt like fuck.
The pain of the last few moments (hoursminutesdays – he had no idea) paled into insignificance as agony worse than anything he'd ever felt raced along every fibre of his being. His brother was woven so tightly into the fabric of Dean, this was tearing him apart. Blood ran hot from his eye, mingling with the tears; ran hot from his still pumping heart, drenching the bed beneath him.
This was worse than Hell.
He thought his screaming would never stop. Don't. Stop.
******
It was late morning when he was awoken by the touch of bright sunlight caressing his eyelids. His lashes were dark against his pale skin, they fluttered nervously as if afraid to open, then bravely, a new Dean faced the day.
He wiped his hand over his face, found it still wet with – what was it? Blood? He had a vague memory of bleeding, and his eye….but his hand when he looked at the palm was merely smeared with water. He looked at it, uncomprehending, puzzled. Felt the bed beneath him as he sat up. It was dry. Again, he had a memory of blood soaking the sheets, but there was nothing.
Must have been a dream.
He remembered other things from the night before that made him smile. Man, that Betty was hot. He wandered out of Betty's boudoir in search of the bathroom. Time for a shower and some of that fantastic pie for breakfast. In Betty's bathroom, he examined himself in the mirror as he shaved with one of her lady-razors. Yesterday, Dean would have been making a mental note of the ribbing Sam would have given him for that. But he wasn't Yesterday's Dean. Not any more.
Yesterday's Dean would have recognised today's Dean. He would have found a chilling familiarity in the flinty hardness in the darkened hazel eyes, the subtle rigidity of his stance, the tighter line of those full lips. Because this Dean bore an uncanny and disturbing resemblance to the Dean of 2014 shown him by Zachariah all those months ago, there in that worst of possible futures where Future Dean had been five long years fighting all alone and Sam had said Yes to Lucifer in Detroit. A Dean with nearly all his humanity seared out of him; compassionless, stony and – ultimately – lost.
A Dean without Sam.
A Dean without fire.
This could only end in tears; and they wouldn't be his. This Dean had forgotten how to cry.
******
