Chapter 59.
After a while, Jack also went upstairs to bed and Dean found himself once again alone with Sarah. He took out his phone and made sure his Whatever List included instructions to paint her car.
He showed her on the screen. "There, now it's guaranteed to happen. It's on the Whatever List." He grinned at her expression. "It's not as casual as it sounds. It's a list of things that have to be done, whatever happens. I'll send a copy of the updated list to Sam and Mom in the morning."
A crinkle appeared in her brow. "You mean even if you're not here to do them?"
"Yes, It's not morbid or anything, just a precaution. It means the important things will be done, even if I bite the dust."
She nodded. "I understand. You've had to do this all your life, haven't you? You've always had to have contingencies in place in case what you do catches up with you and you end up dead."
"Yeah, I can't leave Sam with chaos."
"Of course, Sam takes the same risks you do. Sam is as likely to die."
Dean felt his lips try to smile in a reassuring way, but he knew the rest of his face turned the look into a grimace of panic. "Don't say that, please." he said, "I will do anything to keep Sammy alive."
"I know you will." she said, "You already gave your soul for him." She moved to a closer chair. It's just us, here now and I think you haven't gone to bed because you want to talk."
"As I said, I would love to leave you thinking I'm a good person."
"Good. I think I'm going to keep thinking that anyway."
"In Hell, I was given a choice, to keep suffering the torture, or to torture others. I made the wrong choice."
"Under torture. It's a very effective way to crush a man's spirit, to make him do something that is alien to his nature, that makes him think he is cruel and base and wrong."
"I enjoyed it."
"Do you still enjoy remembering it?" said Sarah.
"No, I hate it."
"Then you didn't enjoy it then. Not really. What you enjoyed was not being helpless anymore, not feeling like a victim. You were more of a victim than ever, but you didn't feel like one. You felt you had some choice, some freedom, some power over something. You were clinging onto the shreds of self-worth even as you piled up a heap of reasons to hate yourself."
"I cut men, women, everyone. I didn't care."
"You care now." she said.
"Then is all that matters."
"Then, you were being tortured." she said. She smiled at him. "In a way, you and Castiel have the same problem."
"What problem?" he said.
"Your fathers taught you absolute personal responsibility, no excuses. If you caused something bad to happen, there was no way to shift the blame, it was your fault entirely. Both did it for the same reason, to inspire unquestioning obedience. In both cases, you eventually defied your fathers in various ways, but the basic conditioning is still there."
"What I did in Hell, I did by choice." he said, wishing he didn't need to convince her and could let one person go on believing he was good.
"Did you believe you had any other option?" she said.
"No."
"Then there was no choice."
"Something happened there, that made me realise that there was nothing that would stop me, no level I wouldn't sink to. I would have tortured my own brother." said Dean. He didn't want to say that he had thought he was about to and hadn't hesitated. He felt a shudder of revulsion at the memory. He could not look at Sarah.
She took his right hand in hers. "Oh, my love, they could not have found a nastier torture for you. No wonder it still hurts you so much."
"You don't understand," he said, "I'm a monster. Whether the torture made me one or just made me see it, I'm evil all the way through. No matter what I do, I can never come back from that. I can never be who I was ... who I thought I was." He bowed his head and let the tears fall. He was tired of trying to hold them back. He was tired of everything.
A voice in his head that was not his own said, "No!"
"Cas?" he said aloud.
He could feel Cas trying not to allow his thoughts and feelings to feed into his own.
"What about Castiel?" said Sarah.
"He's fighting against seeing this." said Dean, "Cas, it's okay. Don't fight it. I know you don't want to pry." He could still feel Cas struggling not to share his thoughts. He brushed away his tears and tried to focus enough to pray. "Cas, relax. We'll find a way to block it. Until then, I can live with it. Don't do anything that could harm you."
"Do you need me?" said Cas's voice in his head.
Before he could say no, he heard something in his mind say, "Yes!"
"No." he said, "I'm okay."
"Yes or no?" said Cas.
Dean stilled his mind with an effort and said, "No. I'm fine. Sarah's here. I'm fine." He felt Sarah stroke the back of his hand. Cas's voice fell silent. "It's fine." he said to Sarah.
"You have a two-way prayer thing going on?" said Sarah.
"So it seems." he said, "And it's involuntary and hard to control."
"A communion of minds. Quite beautiful in a way, though unsettling for you and for Castiel."
"Yes." said Dean, "I think he's okay now. The Hell stuff just got too much and I think my mind sent up a flare."
"So you want to stop talking about it?" said Sarah.
"For Cas's sake, we probably should." he said.
"If I ask you to talk a little more, will you try?" she said.
"There's really nothing more to say." he said.
"Then let me say something. I see no monster in you, not even the memory of one. What I see is a good man who was put through torture neither I nor anyone else in this world can imagine and who never stopped caring about others, who never stopped holding himself to the highest standards."
"Cas has the same delusion." said Dean.
"All this guilt and shame, not one word of self-pity, not one single excuse. It's not me that is deluded, my dear. It's not Castiel, either.
"There is no possible excuse for what I did." said Dean.
"Have you ever thought that all this energy you waste on hating yourself might be better employed elsewhere? For one thing, you are at risk from all manner of demonic and angelic threats if you believe you deserve to be sacrificed for some greater good."
"I've never believed that." said Dean.
"How many times now have you risked or given your life?"
"I never felt I deserved to die." said Dean. Something in his chest seemed to lurch away. It felt like falling down stairs. He was afraid to speak, afraid to sound weak and scared.
"Do you need me?" said Cas's voice, just a whisper in his mind.
"I never wanted to die." he said aloud. His voice sounded an octave too high and thirty years too young.
"But you didn't care if you did." said Sarah. They both looked up at the ceiling as they heard footsteps above.
"It's Cas." said Dean.
"Either that or I have very overweight mice." said Sarah.