CHAPTER 5: THOSE LEFT BEHIND.

Gradually Dean allowed his eyelids to peel back and let the world back in. Splashes of colour drifted across the distorted mess that greeted him. It was like a mirage, the canvass surrounding him a painting smeared with water. Outlines collided with each other and blurred together, misshapen figures moving across the panorama of his sight. It was a heaving mess of colour, alive and unrecognisable.

There was a dull ringing in his ears and warped sounds exploded inside his head, none of them distinguishable from the next. Static pops prickled with rumbling growls and cackled screams. If felt like he was suspended underwater, trapped in an audio nightmare.

With his surroundings a warbled mess that blended into an almighty headache, Dean brought his hands up to his temples and began to knead at the skin. His eyes snapped shut and he tried to bring his senses back to normal.

Wherever he was, Dean knew it was a long way from Bobby's salvage yard. The last thing he could remember was Zachariah's distasteful face and then a bright and consuming light. It had swallowed him whole, flooded him until he wasn't sure where it began and he ended. It had burned at his eyes, caused them to sting worse than a thousand paper cuts no matter how hard he tightened them shut. His skin had felt like it was bubbling and melting from his bones and his mind had been left devastated by the explosive ringing that ploughed through his ears and into his every thought.

Now he was left with the after effects of whatever Zachariah had done to him.

Concentrating harder than he ever had before, pushing the ache to the back of his head, Dean tried to make sense of everything. It was slow going but eventually the jumbled sounds began to waver and oscillate back into sense. He could make out human voices, lots of them melding together into a harmony of idle chatter and polite laughter.

Dean opened his eyes again, timidly this time, like someone expecting a gruesome surprise. Looking around he was able to make out discernable shapes. The room had little light but he could see people surrounding him on all sides. He couldn't make out any faces through the gloom but could see their shapes grouped together around circular dining tables, they were conversing and eating. They seemed happy, oblivious to his presence.

Sitting up, a confused look found its way onto Dean's face. He himself was seated at a table, a half eaten burger on a plate in front of him. Opposite where he sat there was an empty chair with another half eaten meal and a glass of red wine. There was a lit candle in the centre of the table with a diminutive flame offering up a romantic glow that caught in the pristine glass and silverware that surrounded it. There was one on every table, Dean noticed, and they were the only source of light to be found.

Dean pulled his hands up to his chest and felt the velvet silk of a dinner jacket. He looked down and saw he was wearing a crisp white shirt and bow-tie. In a panic he pushed his seat out to find a pair of smart black trousers on his legs and polished black shoes on his feet. He looked ridiculous; he knew it and he suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

Swivelling in his seat, he looked from table to table. Everybody else was also dressed in similar formal garb, men in tuxedoes and the women in resplendent gowns. But still their faces were hidden, were nothing more than oval shapes masked by the golden gleam of the candles.

"Goddamn you Zach, what is this crap..." Dean muttered to himself as he turned back in time to see a woman return to the empty seat across from him. She was dressed in a strapless black gown that clung to the entirety of her shapely figure. Her brown hair was tussled into a ball on top of her head, curled strands cascading out and down the side of her face. A diamond necklace plunged to the beginnings of her cleavage and the light from the candle twinkled in every meticulous stone, drew Dean's eyes to its exquisite beauty.

Seated, the woman looked across at him with rounded eyes and her rouge lips spread into a welcoming smile that lit up her entire face. "Dean," she said, "did you miss me?"

The accent, the eyes, that over confident smile, a beauty he could only grudgingly admit to; Dean felt his heart lurch as he recognised her. The name almost stuck in his throat as he said it aloud. "Bela..."

Her smile widened and she reached for her wine, poised the glass an inch from her lips. "But of course it's me honey, it just had to be me."

Dean smiled nervously and his hands rubbed against his thighs for comfort. He looked to the sides of his sockets and tried to avoid looking her in the eye. "This must be a dream," he said, his mouth dry as bone.

Bela arched an eyebrow and took a heavy gulp from her glass. She moaned with quiet pleasure and nodded at the bottle, never taking her eyes off of Dean. "You should try some, it's really quite excellent. It's been a long time since I've had the pleasure of such things."

Summoning his courage, Dean pulled his gaze to meet Bela's. There was a pained sadness in her eyes as they regarded him; it was something Dean had never seen in her while she had been alive. But it was there now, a look Dean recognised from every time he had looked in a mirror this past year. It was the look of someone who had seen terrible, hideous things and was never allowed to forget. It was the weight of a horror not known among the living and righteous.

Bela poured herself another glass of wine and took a long sip. Finishing, her tongue glided along the curve of her lip as she placed the glass back on the table. She leaned forward and her head tilted to the side, her hands clasped together in front of her. "I have to say it is good to see you again Dean, it really is."

Her voice was warm in Dean's ears and he shook his head as tortured memories spewed forth from the darkest corners of his mind. "You can't be here," he said with the beginnings of tears forming in his eyes.

She bit her lip and her hand reached for his. Her skin was cool, her fingers like icicles as they breezed over his. "Why's that, because I'm dead right, because I'm supposed to be in hell? Well, so were you Dean and yet here you are back in the world doing what you always do."

"I was given a second chance..."

Bela giggled, her head lulling back and her body trembling with the sound."That's right, the angels pulled you from the flames and left me and all the rest to burn. Let's see, you spent what, forty years down there? For me it's been one-hundred and twenty...and counting."

The surrounding chatter faded away; there was no longer any sound of laughter or the scraping of silverware against china. There was only silence. As Dean looked around, the other people in the room ambled over to their table. They surrounded it on all sides and he could feel their eyes on him, their lifeless eyes black as oil. Their faces became clear to him now and he recognised every single one, remembered them even without their familiar expressions of anguish.

The cold hand of guilt wrapped around Dean's heart, every breath he took was plagued by the sickness that swelled within. Screams echoed in his ears, desperate voices pleading for him to stop resounded inside his head. He felt the pressure of judgement as it bore down on him with the gaze of countless sets of unfeeling black eyes. They stared and they didn't speak; their hatred thick in the air around them.

"Do you remember what you did to me Dean?" Bela said as she fell back into her seat. Her smile was gone and a crimson tear began to form in the corner of her eye. It fell and left a bloody trail down her face. Another began to form in the other eye.

Dean nodded very slowly, his head feeling like a weighted ball on his neck. "I remember," he said, his voice low and forced.

"I screamed for you to stop, I begged you to forgive me but you didn't care did you? You just cut and tore at me until there was nothing left but bone and bloodied scraps. I knew I wasn't your favourite person Dean but that was a little extreme."

Dean swallowed hard and Bela stretched across the table so that her face was barely away from his own. He felt the warmth of her breath as she spoke. "I can still feel it, the cool of the knife as you slashed it across my body again and again. I can still feel every prod and every lash you gave me you sadistic son of a bitch." Her arms swept across the watching faces. "We can all still feel it and we continue to feel it now while you walk around free from the torment. Tell me Dean, where is the justice in that? Tell me how anything I ever did is worse than what you did to us?"

"Bela I'm..."

Bela interrupted suddenly. "If you tell me you're sorry then so help me god I will rip your face right off your skull."

"But I am sorry!" Dean cried and he rose to his feet. His eyes were marred by tears and his tone wavered with the undiluted emotions that reverberated at his core. He looked at all the faces around him; he remembered all the unspeakable things he had done to every one of them. He looked at Bela and remembered Alastair handing him the knife, leading him to where she was nailed to a slab of stone and he remembered every last horror he committed on her body.

"There is nothing I can do now," Dean continued. "There are no words that can make what I did go away or heal your pain. I never asked to be saved and I know that I sure as hell don't deserve to be! But if there is a chance that I can do something good, do something that can atone for even a small part of what I did then that is what I have to do. I get that that won't exactly mean shit to you right now but it's all I can offer..."

Bela stood, her face now streaked in blood. She came to Dean and took his hands, her lips came to his and he clenched his eyes shut. If they had come for their revenge then he would let them have it. He had long since accepted that he had done evil things and now he was free from hell he was tired of living with the memories of his weakness. He was ready for whatever penance was coming his way, he would accept it with arms open. He would welcome it and embrace it as a lost friend.

Bela's lips came to his ear and her body pressed against his. He smelled her perfume and it reminded him of when she was alive. "I know I deserve everything I'm getting right now," she whispered, "I and every last one of those souls you tortured earned the right to be there. I also know that if it had been me in your place or any one of them, they would have broken a lot quicker and done the exact same thing."

"I'm so sorry Bela..."

She hushed him and her hand came to his cheek, wiped at the tears he shed. "You just do what you were brought here to do okay. Promise me; swear that you will not stop until you defeat every last one of them."

Dean pulled back and looked at her face, her despondent face that wore so tragically the pain of all she had experienced. He cupped it in his hands and rested his forehead against hers. Inside, his resolve strengthened. "I promise you that, I swear I will stop them so long as there is breath in my lungs."

Bela smiled and she kissed him tenderly. "Goodbye Dean..."

And the world went white.