AN: Graphic references to torture in this chapter.
Dean bit through his lower lip to try and stop the screams that threatened to tear from his throat.
Don't scream, they'll find you if you scream. Keep quiet, keep safe…but it hurts!
How can he be in this much pain and not be dead? Oh yeah…he is dead. That's funny, is that funny? No, it's not funny, it hurts and he can't stop it hurting and how can anything hurt so much?
The scream tore out of Dean's throat before he could stop it and he bolted upright, his chest heaving. It was only then that he noticed he wasn't chained up or strapped to the rack but he couldn't bring himself to dredge up even a glimmer of hope at the thought. Dean Winchester didn't have any 'hope' left in him, he was hollow, empty; his hope bled and torn and gouged out of him. Not a hope in hell...that's funny.
Dean laughed then- a hysterical, sobbing hiccup of laughter before flinching away from his own noise and pressing himself against the wall. Wait, there was a wall? Dean flinched away from that then hunching over on himself and hugging his knees. The young man squeezed his eyes shut, chanting in useless Latin under his breath and rocking minutely to try and drown out the feeling of the empty darkness all around him, pressing on him, suffocating him – oh god, what was out there in the darkness this time?!
"Dean?"
No! Please no...
Dean kept his eyes squeezed shut, increasing the pace of his chanting as he rocked faster. If he couldn't see, couldn't hear couldn't...couldn't feel, then no one could hurt him. Just...just for a day or so, a day or so without pain....please?
But if he didn't hurt and he didn't feel then was he alive? Well of course he wasn't but if he was dead then how could he be in so much pain? It didn't make sense but he was scared, scared, scared and he didn't want to open his eyes ever again.
Dean heard footsteps approaching and tensed himself for the inevitable crackle of power and the chains that would hook into his skin, yanking him into a spread-eagled position in the middle of nowhere so he couldn't hide his body from...Them. Maybe he'd be lucky and only one of his limbs would dislocate this time? Maybe just his arms? If it was just his shoulders he could stagger away afterwards, stagger off to some new nightmare....
"Dean?"
Dean cringed away from the hand gingerly touching his shoulder but if he wanted to actually move then that would mean uncurling from his tight little ball of fear and he wasn't doing that. No Sir, no way. Let them rip him open as usual, he was going to enjoy the blissful feeling of having control of his limbs, of having circulation in his limbs for these precious few seconds – it was a rare treat after all.
"Dean son, what are you doing in the corner?"
Why, I'm rotting in hell, of course.
Dean didn't even know where these thoughts were coming from. He couldn't remember a time when his every thought had been about pain and torture – of how much everything hurt, of how he could avoid it, of when the next session was coming, of how it could be gone in an instant and back twice as quick, of what had he done to deserve it, of why, why, why?
"Can you look at me?"
Dean lip twitches, a twisted, broken version of a smirk. Look? No, he's covered that already - not looking, not looking, not looking, don't want to look, not gonna look, not gonna see, not gonna make it real.
"It's Bobby, Bobby Singer."
Bobby Singer? What kind of name was that for a demon? It was Dean that did the 'singing', Lillith loved to make him 'sing' as she sliced and crushed him. Probably some low level demon come to get his piece of meat, pound of flesh, ounce of Dean... Dean doesn't know what he's done to all these demons to make them love to hurt him so badly but he's sorry...he's sorry, he's sorry!
"Ignosce mihi, quaeso..."
"Nothing to be sorry about," the demon tells him and Dean's surprised the thing is even listening to him. Should he beg? They like it when he begs. Sometimes when he begs they kill him quick and don't bring him back so soon. Or they say they do and they must do because sometimes when he comes back all healed he's right where he was before and sometimes he's somewhere else, sometimes he's not even healed at all because some demons just can't wait until he wakes up to get started on him.
"Let's get you off the floor, huh?" The demon mocks, it's voice deceptively gentle. Off the floor onto the rack? Of the floor, hanging suspended by his own flesh, tiptoes on the floor because if he lets those chains take his weight they'll rip his arms from his body? Off the floor, burning on the ceiling?
Dean jolts at that, clutching his head as an actually coherent thought makes its way into his shattered mind.
"Fire..." he gasps as he's assaulted by...memory? Illusion? What the fuck is happening to him?
"Fire?" The demon echoes and Dean's memory is drowned under a tide of fear. He hates being burned, hates the way the pain builds and escalates past the point of pain into blistering white hot agony as skin bubbles and sears and tears and why did he have to give the fucking thing that idea?
"No fire here, Dean," it continues and Dean just shudders, too exhausted to understand what the demon is saying, it's hard to follow any kind of conversation now, he's too used to just getting slashed apart halfway through a sentence to be able to pay attention to the actual words. Like it even matters, whatever anyone says to him it won't change the fact that tomorrow will just be another day of hellish brutality, just like it has been for as long as he can remember...