A/N Let me tell you guys a story. Yesterday I sat down at my laptop and started writing. I don't know what the heck happened but I got deep in the zone. For almost four and a half hours straight, I wrote this monster. I feel like Calliope herself came down from wherever she's at (Olympus perhaps?) and poked me right in the noggin so that I could wrap up the first part of this story. After I was done writing my heartbeat jumped to 194 bpm and my whole body was shaking like a leaf. I felt like I was on meth or something. It was a really bizarre experience, to say the least. But because the gods decided to bless me with this chapter, I, in turn, feel it is only right to give this to all of you now instead of waiting a week to let you guys digest the last chapter. Now, this is the end of the first part of the story but I won't be creating a new fic. It will all stay in the same place. Here. If you guys would prefer a fresh fic instead of having it all in one place, please let me know and I'll adjust accordingly. Please let me know what you think of this chapter! Follow, review, favorite, etc.

CONTENT WARNING: REALLY GRAPHIC TORTURE

Ch. 24

Abaddon

The first thought to enter my mind when I woke up was, I am afraid. I'd been afraid before, of course. I had been afraid when my mother fell from a step ladder and broke her ribs. I was nine years old and the only one home with her. I'd been afraid when I got trapped in the treehouse near my childhood home. There were spiders everywhere and my brother had been unable to undo the latch on the door. I was only there for ten minutes, but it had been the longest and one of the most frightening ten minutes of my life. I had been afraid when I woke up in the back of the Impala. I didn't know who Sam and Dean were, and I was convinced they were going to try and kill me or worse.

I was terrified when they told me that the life I remembered, my parents, my brother, where all constructions, fictions, fairytales planted in my head by the man I'd spent the past three months of my life with. I was afraid that they were telling the truth.

But now, lying on the broken concrete floor of an abandoned warehouse waiting for a she-demon to return and punish me and the man I could love for reasons I couldn't remember was the most frightening of all. Aside from the fear, I felt perfectly fine. Perhaps a little dirty, a bit tired from the grueling drive, a little thirsty, there was nothing wrong with me… yet. I couldn't find a reason for why the torture hadn't already started. Why wasn't I strung up by my thumbs with screws driven through the soles of my feet or bamboo shoots underneath my nails? There wasn't a cut or a bruise on my body that hadn't already been there before I arrived.

I sat up and looked around at my surroundings. This would have been a perfectly normal thing for me to do… had I actually done it.

Without my wanting or trying to, my body continued and stood up before brushing the dust off of my pants. I tried to sit back down to see if I could, but my body wouldn't listen to my brain. I watched helplessly as I glanced down to look at the dirt under my fingernails. My hands ran themselves up and down the length of my torso in a languid almost triumphant way.

"Avery," My voice said coyly, and I realized what had happened too late, "You awake up there?"

I screamed obscenities at her and struggled to regain control over my body. I wanted to run, and scream, and cough up the vile creature inside of me but I couldn't even blink unless she was doing it for me.

"Hush," Abaddon admonished me, "You'll give me a headache carrying on like that."

MOVE! I screamed at my obstinate limbs. I shook myself like a wet dog trying to get even the slightest twitch from my fingers, but nothing moved.

"Aw, such a fighter, aren't you? Don't worry. I'll give you plenty to scream about soon enough." Abaddon wandered around the room as if she were trying to get a feel for my body. She ambled over to a dirty, cracked mirror near a deep plastic sink and examined her new face, my face, with pitch-black eyes.

"You always were a pretty girl," My pale pink lips curled in disgust, "Won't it be a shame when I make your outsides as ugly as your insides?"

I imagined myself spitting in her face since I couldn't do it in practice and she flashed her teeth at our reflection. Without answering, she turned away from the mirror and walked into the anteroom of the warehouse.

In the middle of the room, Thomas was strapped to a metal chair, his head hanging down. He had thin rods pressed into his skull at regular intervals with rivulets of blood staining the bare skin of his chest and dipping into each fold of his flayed skin. Fat and pus oozed from the gashes along his arms and torso, and I could see the jagged white shards of bones peek through from the particularly deep ones.

I felt sick with anger, fear, and grief, just looking at him.

Abaddon strolled forewords and kneeled by his side before coughing slightly under her breath.

"Thomas— no, Tom ahem Tom. There it is. Tom!" Her voice was filled with panic, relief, and desperation as she shook him awake.

He groaned and looked up, his eyes opening. They were all wrong. His brilliant, almost startlingly so, blue eyes were a deep dark grey like the color had been pulled out of them. They almost looked like…mine.

The pain-filled haze across his face cleared for a moment when he saw me—her.

"Avery! What are you doing here? You have to leave now before she comes back!"

My hands cupped his cheeks and I felt a tear roll down my face, "God, what's she done to you?"

"Please," Tom gasped, "You can't stay here. I can't let you get hurt. Not for me."

TOM! I wanted to scream. Don't listen to her! That's not me!

"I can't just leave you here!" Abaddon protested.

Tom's face pinched with shame, "You should. What I did was wrong. So wrong. I should never have taken you. I should never have stolen your memories. I betrayed you and tried to convince myself I was helping. I was selfish and wrong, and I deserve to be here. I did it because— because—"

"You love me," Abaddon said grimly, and I felt my heart fall through the floor. I had known. I had always known, but he'd never said it, and as long as he'd never said it, I could pretend it wasn't true.

"Yes," Thomas admitted. The look on his face made my lungs ache with longing. I knew it was the truth. He loved me like no one had ever loved me before, and like no one might ever love me again.

"That's why you have to leave me. I couldn't live with myself if I got out of here and you didn't. Please," He begged, his eyes wild and desperate, "You have to leave. You have no idea what Abaddon has planned for you!"

I felt my lips twitch up into a grin. Tom's face fell with confusion.

"I think I might have some idea."

Horror flooded his features and tears instantly filled his eyes, "No!" His voiced cracked.

"Oh yes," Abaddon giggled, "I had you going, didn't I?"

The utter despair mingled with defeat in his face made my heart clench. He slowly let his head fall, not having the will or strength to play Abaddon's game. Despite being pleased with his lack of fight Abaddon growled and cuffed the side of his head, the rods shifted, and Tom shook as if electrocuted. Whatever Abaddon had knocked the rods into triggered the connection between Tom and me, so I felt every inch of his pain roll over me. It was all so sudden that my consciousness blinked out for a moment. When I resurfaced, I cringed at the stinging, aching, mind-numbing pain that seemed to bleed from my every pore.

It seemed like I hadn't been the only one to feel it because Abaddon hissed and retreated. She had felt the pain as well. I could hear a disjointed collage of Abaddon's thoughts pass through my mind, and relief flooded through me. She wouldn't touch Tom again, not while she was still in my body.

I realized not quickly enough that that meant Abaddon would turn to me to fulfill her desire to cause someone pain.

I fell to my knees as Tom and the warehouse around me disappeared. Abaddon, in her true form, appeared in front of me. The demon was genderless with the body of a massive locust, a scorpion tail, women's hair, and a bronze chest plate. Two enormous red leathery wings stretched out behind her and beat against the air around us to keep her in flight. The foul stench of burning meat and rot swirled around me and made me gag. Abaddon's tongue unfurled from her mouth like a serpent's tongue, long, forked and pocked with sores that dripped blood and pus. Its fangs dripped with toxic green poison that dripped down and created more sizzling craters in her tongue.

When it spoke, it was in the language of hell, a guttural, harsh combination of glottal stops, clicking, and hissing.

"I've waited a very long time for this moment, old one. I was robbed of my place as queen beside Cain, the first killer, because of you're meddling. That simpering slut Collette died by my hand, and now you shall pay the price for taking what was mine."

A swarm of flies spilled from her open mouth and surrounded me in a cloud of buzzing. They flew into my eyes, ears, and nose, biting and crawling around my whole body. I shrieked in disgust and horror trying to blow and spit them away from my face, but each fly I expelled was replaced by two more. Sores erupted on my flesh and my face started to swell. The buzzing grew louder and I began to weep.

Abaddon flew down towards my writhing body and fisted a handful of my hair to yank me close to her face. Drops of poison fell on my skin and began to melt it away to the bone. My skin immediately started to boil and turn black as the flesh died. Blood, pus, and water bubbled up and soaked my skin, creating more sores as it washed over the bites from the flies.

"Bamboo shoots and screws, hmm?" The demon purred. "Sounds perfect."

I remembered the thought I had earlier when I expected to be already strung up and tortured. The damned thing was using my thoughts and memories to devise tortures for me.

My arms were yanked up and away from me, chains hooked around my thumbs keeping my feet from touching the ground. The muscles in my shoulders and arms screamed in protest. The chains pulled harder and there was a hideous pop as my shoulders pulled out of their sockets. The flies turned to spiders, which scuttled and pricked around my body. Itchy irritating hairs brushed off their cephalothoraxes and stung my already red and watering eyes. One spider's leg landed directly in my eye, and I blinked furiously and threw my head to try and get it away. Its leg ripped apart from its body and stuck to my eyelashes blinding and poking my eye till it bled.

I tried to shake them off my body in horror, but every twitch brought new agony to my ripping muscles.

I wanted so terribly to scream, but I was too terrified to open my mouth in case a spider crawled in. The best I could manage was a shriek behind gritted teeth as tears of pain and panic streamed down my cheeks. Spider silk stuck to my hair and lips, arms, legs, everywhere yanking and tugging, making me feel trapped in a web.

I naively thought that it could be no worse than this until the promised bamboo shoots materialized and started lowly prying up my fingernail. Electric shocks of agony radiated up my fingers, through my hands and arms, all the way to my spine. Had this all been real and not a projection in my mind, I would have fainted from the pain, but that would've been too easy. One by one, the nails tore away, and once they were all gone, the bamboo shoots burrowed themselves into the soft exposed skin of my nail beds lighting up every pain sensor. My brain was lost in a haze of adrenaline as the overloaded nerves sent screaming alarms of danger through my nervous system.

My whole body jumped, pulling my arms even further out of their place when I felt the screws start to turn in the sole of my feet. Flesh stuck to the grooves and pulled away from muscle slowly, excruciatingly. When the screws touched nerves deep in the middle of my feet, my legs jerked and spasmed before cramping uncontrollably. The muscles in my legs twisted and bunched up until I could feel tearing and ripping burn through them.

The spiders turned into maggots that bit and licked at the wounds and pus and dead flesh on my body, burrowing under my skin and crawling just under the surface. I could fell them pop when they became too engorged from their gluttony, and the ooze from their gore splattered over my ruined body.

I didn't know how long this went on. It could have been minutes or years, but when it finally did stop, it was such a hideous relief that I just wept and wept until even that started to hurt.

Abaddon took her vesseled form in my mind, a redhead with smeared makeup and a 'Devil may me do it' tee-shirt, and smirked at me.

"Sorry to cut this short,"

I sobbed at the idea that this was just a short period of torture.

"But it seems we have a guest."

Windows in my mind opened, and I saw the double image of Dean rushing into the warehouse and kneeling beside my prone body.

"Let's see how long I can string ol' Dean along, hmmm?"

My protests were heard only by myself in the echoing dungeon of my mind.

Dean fell to his knees at Avery's side. She was lying on her back entirely still as if she were made of stone. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her breath was coming hard and fast as if she had been running.

"Avery! Avery, wake up!" He hissed, shaking her shoulders.

Her eyes fluttered open then widened in terror before she leapt up like she'd been stung. A silent scream ripped from her throat in the form of a high pitched breathy whine. Dean caught her when she tried to recoil away.

"Shhh! Sh! It's me." Dean shook her again.

Avery blinked and then began weeping into his chest. Dean pressed her close and ran his fingers through her hair to try and calm her shaking body. There wasn't a mark on her, and he'd only been twenty minutes behind the cloud of demons, but whatever Abaddon had done to her had already unraveled Avery— no Ally completely. Had Avery been the one tortured he was sure she would have held up longer. But Ally wasn't Avery. She was a civilian whose worst experience with pain had probably been a broken bone if that.

"C' mon, we got to find Tom and get out of here," Dean said, cutting the comfort short. There was time to pick up the pieces, but it wasn't then. He didn't like that Abaddon was nowhere to be seen, and he liked it even less that Avery hadn't been guarded or at the very least tied up. It hinted at confidence in Abaddon of not needing to bother with security, and that made him uneasy.

"I should have listened to you, Dean." She shook. "We should have never come here, oh God, why did we ever come here?"

"Avery, we have to leave now. Do you know where Tom is? Have you seen him?"

"Fuck Tom!" She hiccuped, looking horrified. "I'm not going after him. What if she comes back? I can't stay here. Not with her! Please, Dean, please get me out of here! You don't know what she's like," Her voice broke and tears soaked through her shirt, "awful, so awful."

Dean balked internally. She really wanted to leave him for dead? What had Abaddon possibly done to her?

"You were willing to sacrifice your life for this guy, but now you want to leave him behind?" Dean growled.

Avery looked away ashamed, "I know what you're thinking. I was confused, Dean. I- I thought I loved him, but the truth is," She looked at him her eyes shining with tears and desperation.

"I love you, Dean. You've always protected me. I know how wrong I was now. Please, I know you'll save me from her. Dean, I love you." Avery bent in and caught his lips with hers, a broken sob erupting from her throat. Dean's hand tightened on the back of her head and wove into her hair. Avery kissed him more hungrily and her hands ran down his chest.

Dean yanked Avery's head back away from him with an ugly sneer and poured holy water on her face. Her eyes turned black and she screeched with rage and pain. Her body twisted away unnaturally and Dean got thrown away by some invisible force. He landed on his back hard and gasped when the air exploded from his lungs on impact.

Abaddon stood up with a cold look on her face, steam still rising from her wet skin.

"Was it the kiss or the proclamation of love that gave me away, Deano?" She smiled cruelly. "Probably the proclamation, right? Who could ever love you?"

Dean rolled onto his knees, still heaving and trying to catch his breath, "Get out of her, you demonic bitch."

Abaddon tsked, "Now now, don't be like that, Dean. We can still have fun. I've only been riding in this meat suit for a while, but I can tell you myself," Abaddon's hand slid to her crotch and pressed, "She's absolutely delicious."

Dean snarled and launched himself at her with the angel blade he'd pulled out of his jacket pocket. Abaddon flicked him aside carelessly with a wave of her hand and Dean flew into the wall opposite him. The plaster cracked beneath him and a shock of pain radiated from the side of his body that first made contact. It was going to leave one hell of a bruise.

Abaddon twitched her fingers again, and Dean rolled to his back and slid up the broken wall until his toes barely touched the concrete floor. The blade glowed red with heat and he dropped it on instinct when the skin on his palms started to burn.

"Would you really stab me, Dean? You wouldn't want to damage this pretty young thing, would you?" Abaddon asked sweetly with the same cruel grin twisting Avery's lips. He'd never seen such an expression from Avery, and it felt perverse to see it now. Abaddon sauntered forward and stroked Dean's neck with her long nails biting into his skin and drawing blood. Abaddon lowered her lips to the opposite side of his throat and bit hard leaving a bruised purple hickey in her wake.

"You're sure you don't want to play?" Abaddon asked wantonly. Dean strained away from her touch and glared venomously.

Abaddon looked mildly disappointed but stepped back, "Winchesters," She huffed, "always raining on my parade."

"No matter, I'll just deal with you myself and—" Abaddon's breath caught, and Dean followed her disturbed and slightly afraid gaze to the unbuttoned sleeve of his right arm. The bottom tip of the Mark was just showing beneath the fabric.

Rage exploded across her features. She ripped his sleeve open as if it was made of paper and hissed at him, "Where did you get that!"

Dean sneered, "Where do you think, bitch."

Genuine fear ripped across her expression and she retreated half a foot before stopping. Her face took on a look of clear concentration before it melted back into calm confidence.

"You've never held the blade, have you?"

Dean didn't answer, but Abaddon smiled. That has been answer enough for her.

"Cain threw that old bone away so he could never find it again. And if he can't find it," Abaddon wiggled a finger at him and sang, "You can't find it either." She cackled with delight, and Dean strained against whatever power held him pinned to the wall.

"What a waste for you," She laughed, "saddled with the curse of the mark without getting to reap any of the rewards."

"What are you talking about," Dean spat.

Abaddon looked more pleased if that was even possible, "You don't know, do you? Oh, that's just perfect."

"Why don't I tell you a little story?"

Sam's muscles shook with fatigue and his face was stained with a fine spray of Magnus' blood. Castiel stood over the burnt husk of the man's body looking as drawn and weak as Sam felt. Magnus had tried to imprison both him and Cas almost as soon as he'd heard what they were after and what Cas was.

He wanted Sam for leverage, to draw the owner of the Mark so he could complete his collection, and he wanted Cas as a thrall. He'd never managed to capture and enslave an angel before. When it was clear that neither of them would be subdued quickly, he'd set his horde of monsters on the two and tried casting a mind-control spell on Cas. Sam and Cas had finally been able to kill him with a one-two punch. Sam slit his throat and Cas smote the man with his grace.

What that had revealed was how weak Cas had truly become, and the ugly truth of how he'd regained his power came out. Cas, unable to find his true grace under the assumption that it had been used up during Metatron's spell, had been stealing grace from any hostile angel that had crossed his path. But the stolen grace was toxic and depleting faster and faster the more he took, his vessel wearing and deteriorating under the strain.

At the same time that all this had happened Avery had been pulled out of Dean's grasp and taken to Abaddon's layer with Dean in hot pursuit.

Sam examined the blade with contempt and resentment. This thing had better be worth it.

They left back out the way they'd come and found Crowley still lying in the dirt where they'd left him.

The demon was fast asleep and snoring loudly. Every once in a while, he snorted and mumbled something unintelligible under his breath.

"Just three inches… shouldn't be a problem…"

Sam kicked his leg tiredly and Crowley jumped and cried out, "Don't call me Fergus!"

Castiel and Sam stared at him in disbelief as Crowley shook his head and gathered his senses.

"You found it then?" He asked, blinking away sleep and pointing at the blade in Sam's hand. Crowley stood up and brushed the dirt from his clothes looking much less worse than he had before they left him out there.

"Fergus?" Sam asked and Crowley bared his teeth.

"Don't."

Sam held up his hands in surrender and Crowley cleared his throat.

"Well then, field trip? Got to get donkey teeth to squirrel."

"You're not coming, Crowley." Castiel glared.

Crowley looked outraged, "I found the blade I should get to be there when Abaddon snuffs it!"

"No way in hell," Sam said. "You've been practically useless this whole time. You've been off the radar for months and we needed this ages ago."

"Excuse me if it took me time to find the most POWERFUL BLOODY WEAPON IN THE WORLD!" Crowley shouted.

Castiel put a hand on Sam's shoulder, "We don't have time to bicker," He told him.

"Avery and I had a deal," Crowley hissed.

Sam paused for a moment. He hadn't known that. "Maybe, but you and I didn't. Goodbye, Crowley."

Crowley shook his fist in the air as Cas went to teleport himself and Sam to Dean's location, "Don't make an enemy of me, Winchester!" By the time he'd finished, they were both gone.

Gadreel paced impatiently around the perimeter of the warehouse. He'd been dispatched by Metatron to cull Abaddon's forces so that the Winchesters had an easier time of subduing her, but the warding had been too strong. Abaddon had probably expected the Winchesters to bring Castiel as backup and hadn't taken any chances. She inadvertently prevented him from completing his assignment.

How would he lure the hordes away from their mistress and away from the protections the warding had granted them?

Even from outside he could feel the swirling evil rising up like a stench around the place and beneath that something… more. The raw power of the vessels ebbing and flowing like waves crashing on the beach. It was at that moment that it struck him. There was no way for Abaddon to have housed either of the vessels in that warehouse unless there was a gap in her defenses. She could repel angels as if there had been a wall surrounding the property, but once inside the angels wouldn't be cast out.

There had to be a gate — a place where the warding could be let down to allow the vessels entrance. Gadreel took flight and began poking and prodding, seeing where the walls were thinnest. He would get in with time. It was inevitable.

It was at the eastern edge that he finally found the place. Thirty demons were milling around a loading dock looking bored and restless. None of them ventured too far from the open door, and Gadreel knew why. They were guards. Somewhere in the middle of the throng was the 'lever' per se, the mechanism that opened the defenses.

Gadreel pulled the angel blade from the air and aimed it carefully at the object he suspected was the anchor. With practiced and impeccable accuracy, it flew true and cut deep into the metal as it were gold and not steel. The warding broke with a crack of lightning and the demons snarled with fear and anger. Gadreel flew to the center of the swarm and picked off demons two, three, four at a time. His angelic grace no match for the low-level thralls of the usurper Queen. When they were all dead, he flew into the warehouse careful to avoid the main chamber where he could feel Abaddon's malevolence the strongest.

Her screeches of rage could be heard from within, but she was too caught up with her prisoners, the eldest Winchester and the two vessels, to have noticed the wards failing. Gadreel also suspected that the vessel Abaddon was inhabiting blinded her to the fluctuating power around her as much as it enhanced her abilities. Demons were never meant to occupy the divine vessel, and its mechanisms were too complex to learn how to control in a day, let alone the hour she had spent within it.

Gadreel continued on safe with the knowledge that his presence had gone unnoticed by all except the demons he'd slain. One by one, he slaughtered all the rest except a few. He couldn't let the Winchesters off too easy. He also left the body Abaddon had abandoned in favor of the vessel alone. She needed to go somewhere once she was cast out. He was under strict orders to make sure the vessels survived Abaddon.

There was a burst of celestial energy, and Gadreel knew it was his time to leave. He couldn't be caught there by Castiel. With one last look at his work, he flew away back to Metatron to report back what he had seen.

I watched in horror as Abaddon clenched her fist expelling power— my power to torture Dean. He writhed and screamed with blood pouring from his nose and eyes his muscles contorting unnaturally.

I strained and fought, trying to push the heavy lead blanket of Abaddon's grip on my mind to try and regain control. All the while, I could feel something slipping in her. She was losing it. A deranged psychotic insanity was starting to grip her, and I knew instantly what was going wrong. She wasn't meant to be here. She'd taken over uninvited in a vessel that demanded at least implied consent if not direct. Whatever divinity was left over in my damaged perverted body was turning her mind.

I fought harder and started to feel something. My finger twitched, and it had done it by my command. I quickly lost control again from the shock of my accomplishment and I threw myself harder against the bonds.

Dean screamed.

For some reason, Abaddon stopped. She exhaled noisily, breathlessly, high on my supply. I could feel the heat of my power coursing through my veins, and she must have felt it too. My thoughts leapt to Thomas still strapped to the chair in the other room, and Abaddon followed my train of thought.

"You've distracted me," She said to Dean. "I forgot that there's someone more important here to torture."

Abaddon snapped and Tom's chair came skittering from the other room and stopped at her feet. Tom had fallen unconscious again, and Abaddon turned her thoughts inward to me.

No!

She was going to kill him, and she was going to make me do it.

Abaddon pulled a blade towards her from a table across the room with telekinesis and caught it easily.

"Do you know what this is, sweetie," She giggled excitedly. "Malahaph, the butcher's knife, the sacrificial knife. You wouldn't remember, but you used this pretty little thing to draw all of yourselves into one place."

I felt my heart stutter.

"You can kill one vessel in one place, but the rest go on. They go on unless you use this." She flipped the blade in her hand and buried it into Tom's shoulder. He screamed and the ground shook beneath him. His now dark grey eyes lightened until they matched the exact shade of grey I had and I understood. Tom's eyes had always had an unnatural brilliance to them. The brilliance of a divine vessel strong enough to house God. Memories started flooding in from a forgotten place in my mind, the place Tom had stashed my life before Leiper's. I realized what he'd done — a simple mental wall not unlike the one that Sam had had to block the memories of hell.

The maya, the veil that blinds humanity from the real world, from nirvana, fell away and I saw again. Ally had never been anything more than that veil. And she had persisted so long as I kept wanting to believe she was real.

My eyes had never had the same brilliance Tom's had, and I knew what I'd done to myself and what he was doing now. She was killing his omnipresence just as I had murdered mine. No longer did I exist in every dimension, and now he was the same.

I felt a hand slip into mine and I turned to look. It was Ally. She smiled at me sadly before fading away — just a memory.

I was back.

Sam and Castiel burst into the room just in time to watch Avery stop mid-thrust a knife held high in the air. Dean was pinned to the wall with blood-red tears staining his cheeks.

Tears poured down Avery's face as she struggled to hold Abaddon back inside of her by the arm kept descending. A wave of power billowed out from her and Sam and Castiel were flattened by it unable to move.

"No! Please—" Avery begged, "Stop!"

Thomas gazed up at her as he wept, "It's okay. I understand now. The veil Avery, pull back the veil."

Avery screamed and shut her eyes unwilling to watch as the blade found Tom's heart. There was no flash of lighting or earthquake to signify his death. All they felt was like a breath of a candle being blown out.

Avery fell to her knees shaking, and the power that pinned the men with her disappeared.

"Find her body," Avery begged before she screamed and a cloud of black smoke poured from her lips. Sam threw Dean the first blade, and they sprinted after her as she was forced back into the body they'd first ever seen her in. Josie.

Dean grabbed her by the neck as she tried to claw her way past him snarling like a wild animal.

"No!" She screeched, angry and disbelieving, "You can't kill me!" Abaddon had planned her moment of revenge for years, and all she'd managed to accomplish was kill Avery's lover and torture her for less than an hour. It wasn't fair!

Dean gritted his teeth behind a triumphant smile, "Watch me."

Dean plunged the blade into her chest and electricity coursed through her burning away every last bit of her.

Abaddon was dead.

Avery pulled Slater's limp body to her chest and rocked unsteadily. His body was still warm. Avery felt like she should cry, or scream, anything, but there was a whole lot of nothing settling in her heart. A numb, indifferent sort of feeling. The only reason she could tell it was there was because she knew she should feel something. Just like when looking at a black hole, it was the way it bent light with its infinite nothingness that made it visible.

Avery felt nothing when she should have felt everything, and it felt wrong.

His irises were completely white now. The beautiful blue was gone, drained away, just like his life. How she longed to see that color again. She would have given anything at that moment to see them one last time.

Someone put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched. The hand rested for a moment before disappearing again.

"We should go," Dean said, but Avery didn't answer.

Avery shifted his body again and Slater's head fell on her shoulder, his nose buried in the hollow of her throat.

Sam cleared his throat and Avery's fingers curled into a tight fist around Slater's shirt.

"Give me a minute." She whispered.

A minute passed and Sam spoke, "We need to leave."

Avery said nothing. Slater's body started to cool.

"Avery," Dean tried again. He was the one to finally stand before her and try to pry her hands from Slater's body.

"NO."

The room shook and Dean's hand jerked away at the shock of heat and electricity that had leapt from her body to his fingertips.

Castiel put a warning hand on Dean's shoulder, "Leave her be. She needs to mourn."

Avery flashed the angel a desperately grateful look before nuzzling Slater's body again. Castiel stood next to her, looking out into the distance, not saying a word. Sam and Dean stepped away to give her privacy.

The death of Abaddon felt horribly anticlimactic for Dean. There was none of the satisfaction or relief he expected to feel at her demise. Instead, he felt angry. No, no just angry, enraged, bloodthirsty. He was itching for a fight that no longer existed. It had all been too easy.

That's what it was. It was too easy. There had been two hundred people missing form that town and Dean hadn't crossed paths with a single demon on his way to the warehouse. Where had they all gone? Why hadn't they leapt to defend their queen? He pulled Sam further aside and told him what had happened.

"Where are they, Sam?"

Sam and Castiel hadn't come across any demons either. In the heat of the moment, it had completely escaped their notice, but Dean was right. They should have been swarmed the second they'd arrived, but no one had come to stop them. While Avery continued to rock Slater's body, they slipped away to do a sweep of the warehouse. There were corpses everywhere with their eyes burnt out — death by smiting. Cas hadn't done it, which meant another angel had, but who?

"So what," Sam asked. "We've got another halo on our side?"

"Who?" Dean asked, "And why would they stop at these demons and not stop Abaddon as well?"

"Maybe they weren't strong enough?"

Dean wished he could accept that theory, but it didn't feel right. Something else had gone down in this place, and not knowing made the itchy angry feeling in his chest burn a little warmer.

"Are you okay," Sam asked hesitantly while looking down at the white-knuckled grip Dean had around the first blade. The Mark was glowing orange, and red veins were stretching out from it pounding along with the frantic beating of his heart. Dean had to work too hard to loosen his grip and let the blade fall from his hand. The second he stopped touching it the bloodlust faded, and his lungs opened up like he had just broken through the surface of a lake finally able to breathe.

Sam blinked at him with concern before slowly picking up the blade and stepping away from Dean who looked like he might rip it out of his brother's grasp given the opportunity. Dean remembered the story Abaddon had told him and knew that the further he could get away from that thing, the better.

"I'm fine," Dean grunted and found himself looking back towards Avery. She was still holding Slater close to her heart but was now speaking lowly to Cas who was nodding. Castiel looked up and caught his gaze. She was ready.

They built Slater's pyre in a field not far from the warehouse. They had already spent too much time next to a town full of its slaughtered inhabitants, and it was only a matter of time before someone drove through and saw the massacre. Sam and Dean had raided the nearby utility store for lumber and gasoline. Avery insisted on being the one to wrap Slater's body in the white sheet that doubled as his shroud. It was hard work, Slater was much heavier than she was strong, but she did it anyway and not once asked for help. She was the one that salted his corpse despite knowing that nothing would ever bring him back. Vessels like the ones they were didn't have souls. Once they were gone, they were gone for good. But she felt compelled to give him a hunter's funeral, a hero's funeral because he had been a hero to her.

The fire burned hot and bright but didn't give off the smell of burning meat that Sam and Dean were accustomed to at that kind of a funeral.

Sam tried at one point to put a comforting arm around Avery's shoulder, but she refused to be touched. Avery didn't cry once during the whole process.

Dean did not mourn for Slater's passing. For him it was good riddance, he had been planning to kill the guy anyway, but Abaddon had saved him the trouble. The only thing he was grateful for was that he hadn't been the one to have to do it. Despite Avery not weeping for Tom while he burned, Dean knew that if he had been the one to kill him, Avery might not have ever forgiven him.

When the flames finally burned down and nothing but smoke was left, they finally went home.

P/N Soooo, this got super dark. Not that it hasn't been dark before but you know ~torture~. If I went way to intense with that, sorry. Forgive me? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! Oh, not the torture, of course, umm the chapter *yikes*. Okay, I'll leave now. Please leave a review and tell me what you thought!