**This is the backstory chapter, guys. Enjoy! Sorry about the paragraph format. I'm too lazy to fix it!**

"I want this exact design on their chests, right here," Dean said, pointing to the area directly under his collarbone. "The finished products should be roughly the size of the drawing, and every detail needs to be correct. Do you understand me? Every. Detail."

He eyed the woman sitting in front of him, his face stern and cold.

"If you make a mistake, one of them dies," he continued, nodding his head toward the four people tied up in the far corner. "And then you start again on the other side. You make another mistake, I kill them all."

He paused, letting that statement take effect before continuing.

"And, Miranda, if you mess up a third time...I have a man stationed outside your house. Yes, 14 Lockwood Ave., and he tells me that little Emily is playing happily in the living room with her father. They've already gotten your note telling them not to wait up. You have such a nice family. What a shame it would be if they had an unfortunate accident..."

The woman choked out a broken wail at Dean's words, covering her eyes with shaking hands.

"Yes, okay," she cried out, pulling herself to her feet. "I'll do it. I'll do whatever you want. J-just don't hurt them. Please."

Dean smiled, giving her a little nod.

"You have my word," he said, using his finger to lazily draw an "X" over his heart. "And I'm always a man of my word. Cross my heart and hope to...die."

He chuckled a little, and the woman shivered, gripping the table by her side to steady herself.

"And us...w-what happens to us?" she asked, gesturing toward the others in the corner who were gagged and under the watchful eye of Lance, another one of Dean's men who was truthfully quite stupid but who looked intimidating as all hell.

"If all goes as planned, you'll be free to leave," Dean said with another jovial smile, leaning back in his chair. "We'll all be long-gone by the time any of you get to the police. I'm not a complete monster, you know."

She looked doubtful and relieved at the same, and Dean glanced over his shoulder, signaling for the man by the door to come over.

"Bring Sam in first," he said quietly, watching Miranda in his peripheral vision. "Give him another shot before you do. I don't want to take any chances. I've seen my brother get hit with a horse tranquilizer and not go down. The man's a fucking moose, as dear old Crowley used to say."

The man nodded briskly, turning on his heels, and Dean switched his focus back to Miranda again.

"You'd better get your equipment ready," he snapped a little impatiently. "I don't want to be here for any longer than I have to, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you probably share my sentiments."

She stood frozen for a couple of long seconds before rushing across the room to gather what she would need, and Dean sighed, hoping that the night would go relatively smoothly. It had been an exhausting couple of days, and he was feeling on edge.

After one or two minutes had passed, he heard the grunts of the three men who were carrying Sam, and he watched as they dropped him ungracefully into the customer's chair.

"Careful, you fucking morons," Dean growled, jumping up to rearrange his brother so that his head lay straight on the blue leather. "How's Haley? Is she still out?"

One of the men nodded apologetically.

"Yes, Sir. A bomb could go off, and she still wouldn't wake up until the morning. I can guarantee you that."

Dean narrowed his eyes.

"You'd better hope you're right," he warned, turning away to face Miranda, who was gazing down at Sam in trepidation.

"You're up, Miranda," he said, taking a seat again. "You've got two of these to do, and six lives hang in the balance. No pressure. Well, actually, yes...a fucking lot of pressure. I'd get started if I were you."

As he heard the tattoo gun wine to life, he settled in more comfortably, his thoughts drifting a little to the events of the evening.

Five months ago, he had been hunting Sam for almost a year, moving around from place to place wherever he heard even the faintest whisper of his brother's whereabouts.

Crowley had been growing weary of the mission, saying that Dean was being childish and that even if he was somehow able to find Sam, the whole thing would cause more trouble than it was worth.

"You don't really think you can convince him that you're still his brother, do you?" he had scoffed one night after Dean had exhausted (and then disposed of) a failed lead in the form of a young motel manager in Eustis, Nebraska. "I mean, maybe in the beginning, but after everything you've done?"

Dean had glared angrily at Crowley over his shoulder.

"I AM still his brother," he had growled, giving the dead manager a frustrated kick in the stomach. "Why do you keep popping up everywhere I go, anyway? No one asked you to be a part of this."

Crowley had sighed dramatically, pressing a palm into his forehead.

"Dean, Dean, Dean," he had groaned, eyeing the pile of guts on the floor distastefully. "I amstill the King, you know, and you're still my creation, of sorts. When I woke you up with the blade, it wasn't just for a giggle. Now, I've given you a year to frolic around the country leaving a trail of bodies in your wake, but my patience is wearing thin."

Dean had laughed out loud at that.

"First of all, I'm not your anything, old man," he had said with a withering smirk. "Second of all, you haven't given me a thing. You can't order me around, because I'm better than you. Stronger. And that just kills you, doesn't it? So, you follow me around like a stray puppy hoping that I'll find it in my heart to do your damn dirty work, or, at the very least, so that you can keep an eye on me in case I get a little too power-hungry. Isn't that right? Let's not kid ourselves, here."

But Crowley had just smiled that irritating smile, patting him on the back like a parent would a child.

"You may have the strength, Dean, but that's about all you've got," he had replied in a frustratingly calm voice. "I've got the experience, and I've got the numbers, and I follow you to make sure that you don't end up the Frankenstein monster being torched by the frightened villagers. You're not exactly subtle, you know."

"They're all scared of me," Dean had retorted, his eyes going dark. "Your demons, they're scared of me...more than they are of you. They do whatever I tell them to. Did you know that? They come when I call. They quack when I say quack. They don't question me. And they certainly don't ask you for permission."

It was the first of many times that Dean would throw that in Crowley's face, and, frankly, he had always been surprised to reach the end of each day without being cornered by a mob of the king's hit-men out for his head.

It might have even been insulting if he had actually cared.

"You're acting like a child on a power trip," Crowley had said, shaking his head at Dean. "All you think about is finding Sam, but what next? What if you do? Are you going to cut off his hands and feet, nail his mouth shut, keep him in a cage, and feed him through a tube? Are you ever going to stop and think this through, or are you just going to keep intimidating my subjects into helping you on this hair-brained, idiotic quest? You're a demon now, Dean, just like the best of us. You've got power. No one's disputing that. Why waste it on this? He's not your family anymore. You don't love him, because if you were capable of love, you would leave him alone. You just want him, but you can't. You can't have him."

Dean had wanted to rip Crowley apart for saying it, because it wasn't true. Not completely. But he had simply stormed out the door, jumping into his car and leaving Nebraska in his rear-view with no clear destination and a lot on his mind.

There was something that Crowley didn't know...something that Dean hadn't told him...something big...something that he had come across in a very old, very rare book of demonic rituals that he had acquired several months back.

And it was a game changer.

There was only one copy of the book in existence, and once Dean had caught wind of it (and what it contained), he had tracked it down in two weeks flat.

Powers of persuasion really did come in handy...

Just as he had hoped, in the very back of the book there had been a chapter devoted to binding spells and rituals...dark, terrifying, messy stuff that could go horribly wrong for everyone involved, but he had figured that if he was ever going to be able to keep Sam where he wanted him (once he had found him, of course), he was going to need to do something risky.

Crowley had assumed that he hadn't thought things through.

Well, he had.

He wasn't deluded enough to think that Sam would jump on the demon-brother bandwagon willingly. Of course he wouldn't, not without a little extra "persuasion."

The tattoo he had come across in the book (given to a human by a demon) was relatively simple in theory...some complex (but doable) symbols, an incantation, some blood and herbs, and poof! Instant, powerful, irreversible control from any distance.

It was the fine print that caused the snag.

Dean hadn't been surprised to read that the Master's lifeline would be tied to the fate of the subject (if the pet dies, so does the owner), but he had been surprised to find out that there was another price...a rather larger price than he had anticipated.

The wearer of the tattoo would be infected.

It would be subtle for a while, but the infection would start to grow.

There was no exact timeline given for the process (it was different for everyone), but, eventually, the subject's soul would be completely transformed.

Sam would become a demon, just like him.

A demon under his control, but still...a demon.

It had been the only thing to make Dean actually falter.

He had faltered.

And then, he had holed himself up in a crummy motel room for a week, scared to even look in a mirror.

Sam still meant something to him. It wasn't just a need to possess. Well, it was, but there was something else, too. He wanted his brother. He wanted Sammy, so fuck Crowley for assuming that he couldn't still love. Maybe not like before, but...there was still something.

When he had finally decided to pull himself together and pick up the hunt again (Crowley's lurking presence had been a motivating factor), he had filed the ritual away in the back of his mind to let it simmer.

He would look for another way. He would. And if he couldn't find one, well...he might not have a choice.

But, he had faltered.

A few short days later, he had picked up an interesting snippet of information on the demon-radio that had spurred him the rest of the way into action.

Sam Winchester (or so the demon had sworn it was), was in Colorado, doing who-knows-what in a small town called Durango. The demon had recognized him a few towns away and had followed him west, watching him from a distance as he had pulled into a woman's driveway just off the main drag and entered her house, not yet to re-emerge.

Feeling a rush of excitement, Dean had driven all day and all night, only to arrive exhausted in Durange to some disheartening news.

The demon, Hal, he was called, had let Sam disappear right from under his nose.

"I was watching! I swear I was watching," he had howled as Dean had advanced on him. "I don't know how he could have...how they both...the damn house is empty! I don't know how...I would have seen..."

His last words had been cut short as Dean had plunged the blade into his heart.

For two days, he had prowled the little town, calling in the cavalries (much to Crowley's displeasure) to search 100 miles in every direction and killing four residents in the process of trying to find someone, anyone, who might have seen his brother, but Sam was good. He was damn good.

And, like a fucking ghost, he had managed to once again slip right through Dean's fingers.

On night three, when he had resigned himself to starting from scratch, Dean had decided to walk into town for a few drinks and a good fuck.

He had wanted to kill, too. His blood had been boiling with it, but he had wanted to seduce, first. To charm, to own, to desecrate, and then to destroy.

It was a game he liked to play when he was feeling...helpless. A game to reclaim control. It was the only thing that was going to bring him some kind of relief.

He had planned to take the long hike from the cabin he was squatting in to a pub on Main Street, always one of the few places to find people in a sparsely-populated town like this after eight, but something unexpected had happened as he had emerged from the woods onto the usually-deserted parking lot behind the Durange local history museum.

The place closed at six, not that it mattered, since Dean hadn't seen a single visitor during his three days in town, but, there she had been...a young girl (maybe in her mid-twenties) with long golden hair, tapping her foot in frustration and checking her watch.

She had been wearing a yellow sundress that almost seemed to glow in the dim light, and Dean had been struck with the idea that she looked like the sun...like life...like a river of something clean and shining that he wanted to drink, to consume...more than he had wanted anything in quite some time.

As he had settled into the shadows to watch her, he had thought to himself that if he could have this girl, if he could...own...whatever was inside of her that made her bright, he might be okay for a little while.

He might not need his brother so damn badly.

He had known that he would, of course, have to kill her, but if he could have her, just for a night, just for a few hours even, then maybe...maybe...he would feel strong again.

He hadn't killed Crowley that night (after he had tried to slit Haley's throat), but a few nights later, when Crowley had shown up outside his hotel room with a small army of demons to assist in the "intervention," Dean hadn't even hesitated before slaughtering all but one (Crowley's name included on the list of the deceased).

He had someone, now, someone who made him feel powerful, and not in the way that the demons did when they cowered in front of him. No, Haley was...pure, and he had her. She belonged to him.

He wasn't alone.

Nothing, not even Crowley, was going to threaten to take her away from him and live to tell the tale.

Except for one, because...well...he had needed someone to tell the tale.

"You go," he had growled at the frightened girl whose life he had spared. "You go, and you tell the others that it would be unwise for any of them to cross me. You tell them what you saw here tonight."

She had skittered away with her tail between her legs, and Dean had spent about fifteen seconds panicking about the fact that he had murdered the king of hell before realizing that, if he had won against Crowley and fifteen of his top dogs (without so much as breaking a sweat), there wasn't much that the rest of them could do in retribution.

Haley, however, who had witnessed the entire thing, was so traumatized that she had tried to bolt immediately after the demon had left while Dean was hurriedly packing their things. As she had kicked and flailed with adrenaline-powered strength, Dean had had to tackle her violently to the ground, breaking her wrist in the process.

For the next thirty or forty days, she had been in a nearly-constant state of panic, trying to escape at every opportunity, and Dean had had to keep her restrained almost 24/7, determined to train the rebellion out of her at any cost.

She was there to be his distraction, and she would need to learn to behave like the good little slut he needed her to be.

Sex with Haley had become his obsession, his new addiction, his weapon, and, hell...there was nothing he loved more than wielding it. The sense of control was like nothing he had ever experienced, and she was the sweetest nectar, poisoning and sating him all at once.

With her, he finally had a purpose that he could see and touch, something tangible that he could own. Something light and good that he could drain...that he could feed off of.

He didn't even feel like he needed to kill.

Breaking her down had been challenging but immensely satisfying, and Dean had taken great pleasure in brutally fucking her throat when she talked back, her ass when she didn't follow an order, and her cunt whenever the hell he felt like it (and then some).

Holding a vibrator against her while he used her, he had forced her to physically respond again and again, dragging orgasms from her twisting body while she sobbed in shame and humiliation.

Sometimes, he had even spread her wide with clothespins and tied the toy to her so tightly that it dug right into her exposed clit for hours just so that he could watch her unravel to the point where she would scream and beg him for mercy.

And when she had really misbehaved, he had suspended her upsidown from the ceiling of their cabin in Wyoming and had shoved three lit candles into her cunt where he had watched them melt down to nearly nothing, the burning wax coating her and drizzling down her stomach and chest while she had cried herself unconscious.

These were only a few examples of what he had put her through, so...yes. The process had been challenging. But satisfying.

So very, very satisfying.

After two and a half months of this kind of daily abuse, she had become pliant (for the most part), and then one evening, as Dean had been cuffing her for the night, he had been struck with a rather alarming thought.

Nearly four months had gone by since their first fateful meeting in Durango.

Four months.

Four months in seclusion in fucking Wyoming with his dick in Haley.

Four. Fucking. Months.

He had forgotten about his brother.

That had been the goal, but the thought of SamSammySam had taken root in Dean's brain again, digging deep and burrowing into its very center, and he knew what he had to do.

The next morning, he had gagged Haley and thrown her into the trunk of his car (as he always did when they needed to stock up on food or supplies) and headed into town.

But, this time, he had only needed one thing, something he had succeeded in getting almost immediately (as was the way it usually went).

The girl had barely even made a sound as he had lowered his knife to her throat about a mile up the road, and as the blood had pooled in the clay bowl he had grabbed from the cabin, he had realized that he was about to broadcast over demon-radio for the first time since he had killed Crowley and his gang of puppets.

"I won't mention it if they won't," he had thought as the blood began to churn, but as soon as the words "Dean Winchester" had left his lips, there had been a great eruption of chatter and excitement from the other end, four or five voices speaking too quickly all at once, and Dean had been stunned into silence for a moment before continuing.

"If this is about Crowley, we can gossip about it later while we braid each other's hair," he had hissed in annoyance, his patience already wearing thin. "I need to know if there's been any news...anything...about my brother. If you don't feel like telling me, fine. I'll get the information anyway, even if it means dragging it painfully from someone's insides. This way is probably easier for everyone. So put me through to someone coherent and in charge. I don't have long."

After another few moments of chaos, a voice had finally came in clear.

"Dean? Is it really you? Are you really back?"

Dean had wrinkled his nose in confusion.

"Do I know you?"

"Well, not technically, but I know you, or...I know of you. We all do. We've been waiting for you to come back to us. We've been searching, but you've been off the grid. We all-"

"You've been...why?" Dean had interrupted, his confusion growing exponentially. "If this is about holding me accountable for...everything, I really don't have time for that, nor will I ever. I did what I had to do, and if anyone wants to take it up with me in person, I'd be happy to kill them."

"No...you...my king...you've misunderstood me."

"I'm on a damn public road at noon, so if we could just-"

Wait...what?

Dean's jaw had suddenly dropped.

King?

KING?

He had sputtered wordlessly for a moment, trying to wrap his head around this unforeseen turn of events.

King? What, because he had killed Crowley? That wasn't the way things worked. He hadn't even been around. He'd...

"I don't understand. I-"

But at that moment, he'd had to cut the call short as he had eyed a family of bikers in his mirror heading up the hill toward his car.

"I have to go," he had said hastily, chucking the bowl unceremoniously out the window and stepping on the gas.

The last thing he had needed was for Mr. and Mrs. All-American to spot the bloody, dead corpse in his passenger seat.

He had enough problems to deal with at the moment.

A few days later, he would find out the truth about the series of events that had transpired since Crowley's death, the events that had placed him unknowingly on Hell's throne, a position he wouldn't have cared for in the slightest if it hadn't meant finally having the upper hand.

Finally having the resources he needed at his disposal. Finally being able to set up a constant, 24-hour watch around the country, a web of incoming information in which he was the spider and the center of it all.

He could finally find Sam.

The irony of it all was that, in the end, Sam had come to him.

When Dean thought back on it, he realized that he shouldn't have even been surprised.

Sam had never been able to stay away...not forever.

Dean could have saved himself a lot of grief if he had been able to have faith in his brother's predictability, if he had been able to sit back and wait it out...for as long as it took.

But, then again, waiting had never been in Dean's repertoire.

His brother had materialized outside Dean's motel room door in Chicago about a month after he and Haley had left Wyoming, and Dean hadn't even needed to ask how he had managed to locate them and then wade through the hord of guards stationed out front.

This was Sam, after all.

His brother had been armed to the teeth and ranting about some kind of a "cure" that he had been chasing down for a year, but when Dean had moved in to shoot him down with a burst of power, Sam had barely even resisted.

When Dean had questioned him about it weeks later, Sam had shaken his head wearily and simply said, "I was tired, Dean. I was just...so tired."

That night, as he had held Sam's limp body in his arms while Haley slept behind the door, Dean had come to an immediate decision, and it wasn't even the struggle that he had imagined it would be.

He wasn't going to lose Sam again.

He couldn't.

He wouldn't have been able to bear it.

And there was no other way.

With Sam under his charge, he wouldn't be able to be Haley's constant warden, and, while she had gotten better, she was nowhere near the point where Dean would have been able to trust her alone or even under the watch of other demons.

He had always assumed that he would kill her when he had Sam.

He could find girls to fuck whenever he wanted it.

He didn't need her. Not anymore.

He certainly wasn't ever going to house the two of them together, and she was disposable...a project to keep him buoyant...wasn't she?

But the truth was that she had become more than that to him, and he hadn't fully realized it until he had dragged Sam into the room, layed him down on the floor, and gazed back and forth between the two of them.

He hadn't been able to choose.

And...damn it...he was the fucking king.

Why should he have to?

Picking up the phone, he had dialed the cell of one of his guards.

"Marcus?" he had whispered, not wanting to wake Haley. "Yeah, it's Dean. Listen, I need you to find me the best tattoo artist in the city. And then I need you to scrounge up some tranquilizers...the kind you don't mess around with...and bring them to me here in the room. Understood?"

Despite the strangeness of the requests, Marcus had agreed without hesitation.

When the order came from Dean Winchester, you did it, and you did it fast. Every demon with a lick of self-preservation knew that.

As he waited, Dean watched his two captives, his stomach fluttering nervously.

He was going to do it. He was really going to do it.

Everything was about to change.

It was nearly dawn, now, and Miranda had just finished the last dark loop on Haley's chest.

She was good.

She was better than good, and Dean made a little promise to himself that he would reward Marcus for finding him someone who really had been up to the job.

Every complex symbol had been done with exquisite perfection, not a single mistake made even after seven straight hours of work.

He was very pleased.

"Take her out to the van," he said to one of the men standing next to him. "And call Eric. I want to make sure that he and the others are ready for Sam."

The man nodded, slinging Haley's limp body over his shoulder and heading for the back door.

Miranda had backed up against the wall silently and was staring at Dean with wide eyes.

He winked at her in what he hoped was an encouraging kind of way, and she seemed to relax a bit.

Standing up, he stretched luxuriously, checking his watch. Nearly five in the morning. Fuck.

"And your promise?" Miranda suddenly blurted out, her hands gripped tightly into fists at her sides. "We go free?"

"Oh, right," Dean replied casually, giving her a charming smile. "You did an excellent job, Miranda. You really did. I couldn't be happier with the finished products."

Her eyes softened, and she took a small step away from the wall, giving the other hostages a reassuring glance.

"Lance, Eamon," Dean said, gesturing them over, "kill them all."

Miranda stood frozen for a fraction of a moment as if unable to comprehend what she had just heard.

"NO!" she finally screamed, her face contorting in terror. "NO! NO! I did EVERYTHING you asked me to do! NO! You said you were a man of your word. You said-"

"Sweetheart," Dean interrupted, chuckling darkly. "There's something I may have forgotten to mention."

His eyes blackened, and he crossed the distance between them in three quick strides, grabbing her by the throat and tossing her across the room like a rag doll.

She slammed into one of the tables with a sickening crunch, and Dean laughed, flexing his fingers.

"I'm not a man," he growled, reaching for his coat as Lance and Eamon descended on her. "I'm a demon. And demons lie."