This is a sequel to Star-crossed, part two of a series called On the Knife's Edge of Fate.
I've been working on this due to hitting a roadblock with my other fic. But don't worry. The next chapter of Death and the Healing is almost complete and will be posted soon. For those who need them, there are content warnings at the end of the chapter.
Time passes strangely in Hell. When Dean realizes that nobody is coming to save him from this horror, he stops calling his brother's name. Sam can't hear him anyway.
The days feel like they never end. The pain is stretched on and on, in small increments at first, slowly building up higher. Even though it's only the tip of the iceberg, it is nigh unbearable already. And, after every day is blessedly over, they put him back together, heal all the damage and start again. Every single day.
The demon torturing him introduces himself during the first session as Alastair, the Grand Torturer of Hell. He's the one to do it most days, only occasionally bringing a student along. The pain, on those odd days, is more easy to take if the latter is a complete novice. The more knowledgeable they are, the worse it gets.
At the end of every day—or what passes for one—Alastair offers Dean a deal. He can get off the rack, if he wants. The condition is that he then picks up the blade and becomes one of those doing the torture. Because he knows where that leads, he refuses every time.
Alastair's students, it turns out, aren't demons. Not yet. They are what Dean would become, if he'd accept getting off the rack. It's only the first step in becoming the thing he hates most. He still remembers what Ruby had told him, although it seems that she hadn't revealed the entire truth.
In order to not lose his sense of identity, Dean desperately tries a number of tactics. He first tries recounting all the hunts he'd taken part in, starting with the very first one. But he can't keep that up for long. Alastair manages to break through his concentration, so he focuses on something less complicated. Like all the schools he'd gone to over the years. That works for a while. After a particularly gruesome session, though, he has to come up with something else.
So he finds a new strategy to keep his wits about him. He thinks of all the people he knows—or has known—throughout his life. He starts from the beginning, with his parents and Sam, then continues with the other most important ones, like Bobby, Jim and Caleb. Goes on from there, not always in chronological order. But Mom, Dad and Sam are always the first. As he recites their names and pictures their faces in his mind, he manages to keep himself distracted. At least for a while.
Sometimes, depending on how bad the torture is, he doesn't make it far along his list. Most times, he doesn't even reach the people he'd known as a teenager. Only on the rare occasions Alastair isn't the one cutting into him does he make it to the very end. Goes along the list at least once during the session, if not twice. Yet, with each very bad instance, his list becomes shorter and shorter. He begins forgetting people.
When that starts happening, Dean tweaks his strategy a bit. He focuses not only on their names and faces, but also on some fond memories he has of those people. It works better in preserving the ones he hasn't forgotten yet.
A few times, he makes it as far as Jo Harvelle and, instead of going on after replaying his memories of her, he lingers. He feels guilty about the way their friendship had ended. Because it had, in a way. He'd let her walk away, because it'd been what she'd wanted. And, the last time they'd interacted, he'd been adamant on not letting her come along when Sam had been possessed. The last thing he'd said to her had been that he'd call her. Which he hadn't done. And not because he'd forgotten. Jo is one of the few women he could never—at least not willingly—forget. For a different reason than the other handful of them, true.
The circumstances of their first meeting having been different is probably the main factor. Even though the temptation to try his luck with her had been present, he'd refrained. Dean had been in a bad place, mentally, after losing his father. That had forced him to think through his actions and had given him a chance to get to know Jo a little better. He'd begun thinking that, maybe in time, he'd be in the right headspace to give it a shot. He'd just needed to get there. It hadn't only been his fear of Ellen that'd kept him at a distance.
But then, the truth had come to bite him, a truth Dean had never known. Bill Harvelle had died because of John Winchester. Judging by Jo's reaction to that fact, it'd seemed that—in her mind—the sins of the father had been transferred to the son. Jo'd told him to get lost. It had hurt, but he'd respected her wishes. In the end, his father's transgression had led to him losing both a friend and a chance at something more. He'll never know what the alternative would have been like.
Sooner than he'd hoped, even though it'd felt like several years of nonstop agony, Dean's distraction tactic loses some of its effectiveness. The list of people shrinks further. Now, there are days when thinking about his brother is all he can muster. Thoughts of Jo also become more frequent, interspersed with those of Sam. What ifs and maybes.
He starts imagining scenarios of what events might have been like, had he done things differently. How would things have turned out, if he'd had the courage to call Jo, after Meg had been dealt with? Would she have forgiven him?
As the years turn into close to a decade, Dean finds himself wondering what exactly it'd been that Meg had said to Jo while the demon had been wearing Sam's face. Had it been the truth? Or just some lie meant to hurt Jo deeply, perhaps? He feels another wave of guilt for not—at the very least—checking up on her after the fact. Maybe, if he'd called, she would have told him what Meg had said. Some friend he'd been.
The first time Alastair brings another demon to have a go at him, Dean can see the difference. The others had only been fledglings, the transformation in different stages and not yet complete. This one is a full demon with red eyes.
To his surprize—and utter horror—Dean recognizes the person beneath the ugly exterior. Bela Talbot grins at him as she drags a knife across his stomach. Her eyes are alight with both malice and glee, and Dean finds himself wondering if this is what he'll end up looking like, should he break. Becoming a regular demon would be horrible enough. A crossroads demon would be even worse.
Bela doesn't talk as she continues to carve into his flesh. Alastair, for once, simply observes. He doesn't give any instructions, like he'd done with the others. Dean suspects it's because Bela already knows what she's supposed to do, having by now mastered the tricks of the trade. She's good at it, but not an expert like Alastair.
But then, the older demon is called away on some other errand and he disappears. Once he seems out of earshot, Bela stops and studies her handiwork for a minute, looking very pleased with herself.
"Do you know what makes us crossroads demons so special, Dean?" she asks after a while. "There's something that sets us apart from the regular variety. Do you know what that is?"
Dean doesn't give a rat's ass about it, truly. But when he realizes that she actually expects an answer, he decides that he may as well play along. Rile her up, if he can, too. After all, she can't possibly hurt him worse than Alastair already has.
"Is it the extra stench? 'Cause I know you guys are slimier than all the others."
"I see you haven't lost your proclivity for bad attempts at humor." She picks up the knife she'd earlier discarded and plunges it into his thigh. "You won't be able to keep that up for long."
Dean grits his teeth so as not to show any pain.
"Bet you broke as soon as that knife touched your skin. I'm sure you were begging them to let you off the rack, the moment you figured out what you were in for." Dean grins at her obviously enraged expression. "People like you can dish it, but can't take it when the tables are turned."
Bela twists the knife, then makes a visible effort to regain her composure. Good, Dean thinks. The more he throws her off track, the less time she has to play with him before Alastair comes back. She must have kissed a lot of asses to get this opportunity.
"Black eyed demons can read human thoughts and emotions well enough," she says, having apparently decided to volunteer the information. "But we are a lot better at it than them. We're built to be able to see your deepest, darkest desires."
Dean thinks that kind of makes sense. They need to know what their target wants most and how desperate they are to get that particular thing. Like he himself had been when Sam had died. That's why he'd accepted that shit deal in the first place. He'd wanted his brother back so badly, that he'd been willing to die there, on the spot, if it meant that Sam would get to live.
"A little while ago," Bela continues, "while running an errand very far down in the bowels of Hell, I ran into a recently exorcized demon. She was very... let's say cross… with the hunter who'd sent her there. Ancient and modified exorcism rite, apparently. What really got my attention was her muttering about getting revenge on that hunter by having a go at torturing you."
Dean's first thought is that the hunter in question is Sam. But then he realizes that Sam would have, more than likely, ganked the demon. It's probably someone else. Maybe Bobby. He gestures—as much as the chains he's hanging from allow it—for Bela to get on with it.
"According to my new friend," she says, a diabolical smile blooming on her distorted features, "you and this hunter have some complicated history."
A complicated history makes it clear it's not Bobby. Maybe it is Sam after all.
"So I went topside to sneak a peek at this person, then came to see how it is on your end. Gauge if it's mutual. Imagine my delight when I discovered it was."
Okay, it's not Sam. Bela's cat-that-got-the-canary grin makes Dean very uneasy. No way does this end well for anyone involved. Except for Bela. It seems that she's gotten her cake and gotten to eat it too.
"Does any of that give you an inkling of who it is?"
"Can't really tell." Dean is starting to become fed up with her game. Actually, he's well past that point. "How about you spell it out for me?"
"Well," Bela says, seeming disappointed that he hadn't figured it out, "once I had all the details, I bumped into her at a crossroads and made her an offer. You, in exchange for her soul."
So, it's a woman. Dean doesn't know all that many female hunters. Even less who'd liked him enough to miss him, now that he's dead. The number of women who'd even contemplate selling their soul for him, much less try to do it, is exactly zero. This whole thing doesn't make any sense. It has to be some kind of trick.
"Does this mystery chick have a name?" he asks, not bothering to mask the irritation in his voice. "Or is she a figment of your imagination? 'Cause I've gotta say, if you've made this story up, it's kinda lame so far."
"Oh, she has a name," is Bela's delighted response. "And she's very much real. As a matter of fact, you've been thinking a lot about her lately."
That narrows it down significantly. Dean barely manages to hide the flash of terror he feels at the implication, trying to school his features into something more angry looking. This is so not good.
"Joanna Harvelle's deepest, darkest desire is to have you back among the living, so she can have a chance to talk to you one more time. Her grief at your passing, and her not getting that chance, was positively overwhelming."
Dread fills Dean to the core, at the thought of Jo falling for this demonic bitch's tricks. He'd never want her to put her neck on the line for him. Not anyone else either, but especially not her. His tarnished soul isn't worth her sacrifice.
"You're lying," he says. "Jo wouldn't do that. I'm pretty sure she hates my guts."
"Well, she does. But not for the reason you think."
"What do you mean?"
The look on Bela's face, at his question, turns to one that can only be described as cruel. She's apparently enjoying his confusion, though not as much as she seems pleased by the thought of Jo's suffering.
"In certain cases, there's only a fine line between hate and love, Dean. She hates you, because you didn't tell her you were going to die, even though she understands why you kept it from her. And she hates that she was unable to help you. And she also hates that she feels this way, that she cares about you so... shall I say… strongly."
Dean is stunned at this revelation. Never would he have thought that Jo might return his affection, and certainly not to this extent. He'd thought she'd merely had a crush on him. One that had been extinguished upon finding out the truth about her father's death. He'd obviously been wrong.
"Did she—did she take the deal?"
Even though he's terrified of the answer, he has to ask. He has to know.
"Unfortunately for me, no." Bela sighs, a hint of disappointment creeping into her expression. "I wouldn't have been able to keep my end of the bargain, anyway."
"She didn't summon you, did she?" Dean asks. It's starting to make sense now. "You sought her out yourself."
"Aren't you a clever one?" The bitch has the audacity to grin again. "Yes, I went to her just so I could rile her up. Rub salt in the wound, so to speak. Doesn't mean she wasn't tempted."
"She was?"
"Oh, very much. She wanted to make that deal so badly, the poor thing. She wanted you back. But she fought her desire, because she knew you wouldn't want her to do it."
"Good." Dean is immensely relieved. "She deserves better."
He's so proud of Jo for not giving in. She'd been strong enough to say no, whereas he hadn't been able to resist. He doesn't regret his choice. Never will. But he would have been devastated if she'd taken Bela's offer.
"If nothing else," Bela says, interrupting his thought process, "I now know that it's mutual between the two of you. You're on the same wavelength. I now have some useful information."
"What for?"
"Oh, that's for me to know and for you to find out."
"If I hear that you're responsible for anything happening to Jo," Dean says, as confusion and relief give way to fury, "I'll find a way off this rack and hunt you down. I won't hesitate this time."
"There's only one way to get off that rack, Dean. Only one choice. Are you willing to make that choice?"
"Fuck you!"
Bela's distorted visage changes from simply satisfied to extremely smug. Dean wants to beat her to a pulp so badly. If only he could get free.
"Don't worry, Dean," she says, "I don't have any plans yet." She grasps the knife she'd used to carve into him and pulls it from where it's stuck in his thigh. "There's nothing I can do with that information at the moment. Maybe, in a few years, I'll find a use for it. I have plenty of time."
Before Dean has time to respond, Alastair returns. The demon dismisses Bela, who hands him the knife and leaves with a reverent bow of her head as a goodbye gesture. Alastair turns his attention back to him, and Dean almost wishes Bela would have another go at him. The agony starts anew. Dean's thoughts spiral into despair. He can't focus on anything besides the pain for a while.
Eventually, he forces his mind to cooperate by going over all the information he'd been given by Bela. He's still reeling from the revelation that Jo had had deeper feelings for him than he'd thought.
She still has, he corrects himself. It makes him wonder when those had developed. He knows he'd been hooked the moment she'd punched him in the face. He's always been impressed by a woman who could kick ass. What had she seen in him that'd been so compelling?
As more time passes following Bela's visit, Alastair becomes increasingly more brutal. Each new day, the pain intensifies. Dean starts struggling to keep his sense of personhood. He finds it difficult to concentrate, even on the days the demon doesn't manage to break through his daydreams. He makes it through another decade—by the skin of his teeth—with the offer to get off the rack being brought to the table every day. Dean continues to refuse.
"This could all be over," Alastair keeps saying, as he cuts off one of Dean's fingers. "All you have to do is take up this knife."
"Go fuck yourself!" Dean spits out, teeth gritted.
That costs him another finger. He doesn't know which one. Doesn't know how many he has left. He's lost count by now. And, frankly, he's beyond caring.
"That pretty girl you keep thinking about will not keep you distracted forever," Alastair points out. He grabs the next finger with a pair of pliers and, instead of cutting, he rips it off. Dean screams as the demon goes on talking. "Although, I have to say that I would love to be able to cut into her lithe body." He tilts his head, thoughtful. "Maybe soon, I will."
The very prospect of that frightens Dean beyond belief. He doesn't want Jo—or anyone else he cares about—to be put through this kind of torture. It takes him a monumental effort not to let it show how scared the thought makes him. For the first time in a long time, he musters some bravado.
"You do that, and I'll find a way to kill you. Even if I have to spend forever figuring it out, I will do it. I don't care what it takes."
Alastair smiles. Like he thinks it's funny that Dean would dare talk back. He picks up a hot poker from the fire pit to his right and, without a word, stabs Dean in the chest with it. All the time, he seems cool as a cucumber. If Dean had still been in possession of a living body, that action would have killed him.
All it does is cause even more anguish, prolonged by the deliberately slow slide of the metal through flesh. The scream Dean lets loose this time echoes in the surrounding space for hours, long after his voice gives out. Over the rest of that particular day, he can only whimper and gasp as Alastair keeps stabbing him with red-hot objects. The smell of burnt flesh, despite the lack of a physical body, permeates the air. It completely covers the stench of blood and sulfur.
This becomes Alastair's new favorite method of torture. The demon procures long, iron—or whatever they're made of—rods, that he heats up over a fire and then shoves into Dean's body. Runs him through over and over. When one's cooled down, he pulls it out and replaces it with a hot one. He talks, while doing it, but doesn't bring up Jo again.
Alastair keeps this up for another decade. Day after day, without reprieve. Dean can no longer distract himself with memories. Some of the faces of his past have become blurry in his recollections. He keeps reciting their names, so as not to forget them too, but his torturer speaking continuously makes it hard to focus.
By the time thirty years have passed, Dean is stretched so thin and his mind is so jumbled by the pain, that all he can do is sob and whine. His screams have long ago ceased. He can't take it anymore.
"Do you want me to stop, Dean?" Alastair asks, at the end of yet another day.
"Yes."
That one word seems to instantly wipe the smile off Alastair's face. A different kind of satisfied expression replaces it. It almost borders on happiness.
"Will you pick up the knife?" The words are spoken in not much more than a whisper.
"Yes."
Dean's answer comes on the tail end of a sob. The demon seems almost proud now. Of what, Dean can't tell, nor does he care. He's utterly and completely broken.
It doesn't matter what he has to do at this point to make the agony stop. Whatever it takes. And what it takes is doing to others what Alastair had been doing to him. He hates it. Not enough to return to being on the receiving end, but he still hates it.
The first time he cuts into another soul, Dean feels a deep shame the likes of which he'd never before felt. If his friends and family could see him now, they'd be disappointed in him. No, they'd be disgusted. He's sure that Jo, especially, would hate him for it even more than she already does.
But there's no way he's turning back now. He's certain that—were he to choose to stop—he'd be returned to the rack and never let off again. That thought terrifies him. He never wants to go back to that. Ever. So, for once, he's selfish.
Despite being a complete monster, Alastair is also a very good teacher. He's scarily patient every time Dean fumbles, explaining in excruciating detail how to use the various instruments, and even steadying Dean's hand when it shakes too badly a few times. There's a sort of passion in the way he gives instructions, voice a low murmur. It's not much different in tone to when he'd been torturing Dean. But the words are. Where they'd been taunting before, now they are encouraging. The more Dean is successful in doing what he's told, the more Alastair praises him.
Dean makes it a point to carefully follow the demon's guidance and not disappoint. Because he fears that, were he to fail, he'd be considered inept. And if he's incapable of performing his tasks, then he's useless to the torturer. And, if that's the case, he'll end up on the rack again. He doesn't want to be on the rack again.
In a year's time, Dean gets used to it. He still hates it, but knows he can't stop. When Alastair brings him the next soul to cut into, and tells him what the man had done to end up in Hell, Dean doesn't even blink when he chooses the nastiest looking dagger of them all. The guy squeals like a pig. For the first time, the sound of screams and sight of blood bring Dean satisfaction. He can finally hurt a soul that truly deserves this agony. It's liberating.
When Alastair continues bringing him souls of people who'd done terrible things, Dean begins reveling in his task. The act of torturing these bastards no longer causes him shame. He becomes better at it. Each day, it becomes easier to pick up the blade with no remorse. He still feels shame at the reason he'd started doing this, on occasion. But, the fact that he's hurting some of the most vile people to have ever existed makes it easier to bear. It's almost like he's delivering justice.
There is the occasional less guilty soul, though. In those instances, Dean's hand trembles somewhat, and he struggles hard to get through the session without Alastair noticing. He fights the involuntary rush of pleasure at the sight of blood when he has those souls on the rack. The worst scenario is when the person is someone who'd sold their soul for a good cause. He's acutely reminded of his own reason for being in the Pit, when faced with those cases.
In the end, Alastair brings him one soul that he absolutely refuses to touch. At the risk of ending up in her spot, he doesn't even take the knife. Because the girl hanging from hooks in front of him—she looks to have been barely in her mid twenties at the time of her death—had sold her soul to save her then four-year-old sister from dying of cancer. She'd been only a kid when she'd made the deal. In Dean's eyes, she doesn't deserve to be in Hell.
"I'm not touching her," he repeats, when Alastair becomes insistent.
"Would you rather take her place?" the demon asks.
"I'd rather cut into someone who's done some nasty shit," Dean says, straightening his back and staring Alastair down with as much determination as he can muster. "This kid's only crime is loving someone else more than herself."
For the first time since getting off the rack, Dean is not afraid to defy his former torturer. Years ago he wouldn't have had the courage to stand up to the demon and say no. He's managed to keep a hold of some semblance of himself over the past few decades, in spite of everything. If he tortures this girl—her blonde hair and slim build remind him so much of Jo that it makes his skin crawl—he'll lose even the small shred of humanity he has left.
"If you don't do it," Alastair says, voice calm, "then I will have to punish you severely."
"Go ahead."
Without another word, Alastair grabs him by the left shoulder. Dean doesn't fight him, even as agony spreads from the point of contact. The pain seems to last forever. Flashes of sensations from his torture sessions are blended into one enormous surge of debilitating torment. Dean grits his teeth and bears it, determined not to succumb. He closes his eyes. His breathing becomes ragged, but he won't let himself scream this time. It feels like he's burning from the inside.
He doesn't know how long it lasts but, eventually, he hears a sound like the flapping of wings. A shrill whine starts up somewhere in the distance, steadily coming closer, followed by a flash of light so bright that it pierces through his closed eyelids. The pressure on his shoulder disappears, but the pain still lingers for a while.
All around him, there seems to be a battle raging. A whirlwind so strong surrounds him, that it feels like he's being pulled in all directions at once. The noise intensifies, and so does the light, and Dean doesn't dare open his eyes, for fear of being blinded.
As the storm reaches a crescendo, something else grips his shoulder—the same one Alastair had grabbed—but this time, there's no pain. Warmth spreads through him. Then, everything is plunged into an abrupt silence so thick, that it feels solid. A moment later, there's a sense of being lifted up, followed by the sensation of falling. And, just as suddenly as it'd all started, it stops. Only when it's clear that he's not moving anymore does he chance opening his eyes. Complete darkness and a ragged inhale accompanies that action, throat feeling like sandpaper. Fumbling around in the confined space, he realizes that he's in a wooden box.
CW: Graphic depictions and descriptions of violence and torture, as well as mentions of blood.