Chapter 29.
Sarah went to the window. "In another couple of hours, the sun will start to rise. If you wanted to go back to bed, now would be the time. You must be tired."
"I'm okay." he said, "Hunters don't sleep much. I should call the bunker, but it's a bit early. They'd think something was wrong."
"Something is." she said.
"Yeah, that's precisely why I don't wanna give them that impression." he said. He smiled. "You wanted honesty."
"I did." she said, "And you're being very honest. Thankyou." She went back to her chair and sat down.
"Lying to you is hard work."
"Lying to yourself can't be easy, because you're too clever to be fooled for long."
"I don't know. I've told myself a lot of things I've believed for years."
"Such as?"
"That I do more good than bad."
"That's true."
"Tell Benny. Tell Dad. Tell Lisa."
"It's you that needs to hear it." she said.
"I was an actual demon for a while."
"Yes, I know. You were corrupted by the Mark of Cain. You left your brother and Castiel."
"Abandoned them both, after all my promises to Sam."
"The mark wanted you to kill Sam. You left to protect him."
All the things he hadn't told her suddenly clustered together in his chest, their pressure almost physical. "You say you can take it all, but there's stuff worse than anything you can have heard before. Laying that on you would be unfair."
"As unfair as it all being laid on you?" she said.
"Hey, trust me, everything that ever happened to me, I deserved. You know what happened in Hell. You know what I did." He wanted to tell her how he had been broken, but the words were burning his throat and once spoken, could not be unspoken.
"Nothing you say can hurt me as much as withholding it hurts you." she said, "I know a lot already. I also know that nothing you tell me will make me despise you. Remember, I have helped people who chose very dark paths with far more choice in the matter than you ever had. I know your soul is burdened, my dear and I know you think you have to bear the burden alone, but we're alone here and there is nothing you can't tell me."
"I was in Hell for forty years, Hell time." he said, "I was tortured every day, destroyed every day." He stared at his coffee mug on the table. Anything to avoid looking into her eyes. "I was tortured by a demon called Alistair. Hell's most effective torturer. That's not an excuse, just a fact. Dad never broke under the same torture. They wanted him to be the righteous man who shed blood in Hell and kick-started the apocalypse, but he was too strong. No matter what they did to him, he never gave in. He never gave in."
She moved over to sit beside him.
He closed his eyes. "Every day, Alistair made the same offer. He'd end my torture if I became a torturer. I was weak, I know it. I never should have broken. Sam wouldn't. Sam didn't. He was longer in the pit than I was and he was with Lucifer and he still came out of it as Sam. When we talk about Hell, which we don't do, most of the time, but when we do, I can't look him in the eyes. He and Cas know and they forgive me. They think it matters that I held out for thirty years. What matters is that, for ten, I was as bad as Alistair. Hell, I was worse."
She said nothing. He didn't dare to meet her eyes.
He took a deep breath and went on. "I was good at it. I enjoyed it. Cas and Sam make excuses for me, but there can be no excuse for that. Nothing can make that right. Do you think my father knows what I did? Sooner or later, Mom will know, because she's reading the damn books." He put his head in his hands. "I didn't mean to tell you any more of this. I'm sorry."
She put her arms around him and hugged him. He let his head fall onto her shoulder and she stroked his hair and whispered, "It's alright, my dear. None of it is your fault."
"I chose it all." he said, tears gathering in his eyes.
"No, my dear! No, you didn't."
"Whatever I do, whoever I save, I can never put right what I did in Hell." he said, almost sobbing.
"What you did in Hell was never your choice and it can never undo all the good you have done, before and since."
"There's a hole in my soul that can never be filled." he said, "Dean Winchester is dead and this hellspawned mess is all that's left of who he used to be."
"Dean Winchester is alive and in pain and fighting to get back to the light." said Sarah, "And you know what? He's going to make it. Hell can break anyone, but Dean has the strength and courage to fix himself."
"I've done things I can hardly bear to think about." he said.
"If you were as bad as you think you are, you wouldn't flinch from thinking about those things." she said.
"You've counselled the victims of torture. You know the harm I've done."
"You are a victim of torture." she said.
"That's what Cas says. He says what I did was part of my torture, but I say I had a choice."
"The point of torture is to destroy the victim and take away their choices." said Sarah.
He wanted to back away and take back all he had said. He was as afraid of her pity as her contempt and he was beginning to discover that he was even more afraid of the love they all kept giving him, their understanding, their forgiveness, their voices raised in a defence he would not attempt for himself.
They could see the Dean Winchester he had been telling himself was dead. They looked at the child he had been, not with grief for the loss of innocence and goodness, but with hope for the future. His father had told him to carry Sam out of the fire and not look back. Now Sarah, Sam and Cas wanted him to go back in and save himself and it would be easier to just accept that he had died, that whatever was worth saving had been lost.
"I can't change the past." he said, "I want to, but I can't."
"I know you can't." she said, "None of us can. But you can choose to put it behind you. You can let the wounds heal. You can learn to forgive yourself."
"For all the unforgivable things I have done?" he said.
"Nothing is unforgivable." she said, "And it was done to you. Also, you held out for thirty years. How can that not mean something to you?"
"All that matters is that I failed. I broke."
For a while, she just hugged him and he let her, longing to believe that she was right to think there was something left of the person he had been or had believed himself to be, but also afraid that she was right and that he would have to fight on to save himself when he was so tired of fighting. Then, she sat back a little and looked into his eyes and said, "I love you like you were my own son, Dean. I love you and I am proud of you and I believe in you. When the sun rises this morning, it's a new start. It's time to take away the power the past has over you. I want you to have faith in yourself, to believe that you are a good person who has sometimes been in very bad places."
"I don't feel like a good person." he said.
"I know, my dear. I know."
