Three Deaths Chapter 16: The Monster, a supernatural fanfic

Hole in my heart, I couldn't change

I didn't know I was supposed to.

Stuck in the fire, turn in the grave,

Watching the shadows stretching, taking my face.

I didn't know I was supposed to.

Now I want to. Yeah, I want to now...

Cage the Elephant, Baby Blue

Alice knew she was in trouble when she looked into Greta's eyes for the last time. The old woman looked anything but defeated. Behind the fire reflected in her burning green eyes, something else blazed hotter than hatred or spite. Triumph.

Alice didn't have time to be afraid before Greta made her final move. She briefly glimpsed of the vial before she felt herself losing form. This time it was completely out of her control. She fought, she resisted. This felt exactly like dying, something she'd done more times than most. She didn't know what the vial did, didn't know where it would send her. She had only one desperate instant left and her last thought was that she didn't want to go. Not again.

Once was inevitable. Twice was excessive. Would she really be forced to suffer through three deaths?

The power of the vial was like a tornado. At least, that was Alice's first impression. She raged against it, realizing in the process that the tumult was all her. The vial was still, resolute, unrelenting against the storm she unleashed against it. She didn't have the strength to fight for long. She was already exhausted from her invasion of the Smith's compound, bone-tired from overcoming her own demons. She slumped, both psychically and physically. To her surprise, she found her form in the act of surrender and when she sat, she did so shaped like herself. Darkness surrounded her, but it was far from absolute. As her eyes adjusted, she got a sense of where she was. Its location was a mystery to her, but she could tell that she was in perfectly circular room, maybe fifteen feet in diameter. She sat in its center on a freezing metal floor. Experimentally, she rapped it with her knuckles, calling on her instruction as a smith as she tried to identify it.

Tin? Yes and no. Alice stood, stomping her foot on the floor. The action sent vibrations coursing out from the point of impact, surging along the floor, up the walls and away into the distant darkness above her. Her eyes followed the sound, searching for the ceiling. If there was one, it was too high up for her to see. After twenty or thirty feet the darkness swallowed all definition, making it impossible for her to discern what might lay beyond it. Alice stomped one more time, feeling the vibration, trying to read its depth.

She was standing on a thin surface constructed of tin, but if she wasn't mistaken, beyond it lay a thick wall of iron. She spun around rapidly, breath coming more quickly as she recalled the shape of the vial she'd seen Greta wielding. Panic built within her and she stumbled, dizzy from spinning. She quickly regained her balance and darted over to the wall, crashing against it with a desperate shout. She bounced off it with a loud, dull clang that sent vibrations ripping through the confines of her prison. She stood while the air around her still trembled, raising her fists and hitting the wall with all the force she could muster. Again, she was thrown back by the thundering vibrations that ravaged the air around her. This time, however, light flared up around her as well. She struggled back to her feet and turned to take in the glowing runes that appeared all around the wall. They were as tall as she was and spiraled up, illuminating the full height of her cell. Her gaze followed them, stopping where they did at a metal ceiling that matched the floor.

"Shit!" Alice cursed. She didn't recognize the spellwork, but it wasn't hard to guess its purpose.

This was a trap designed to hold ghosts.

Sheriff Ricks was pouring a cup of coffee, struggling to get going for the morning, when the FBI agent arrived. He watched the man stride into the station and was immediately able to tell the difference between this man and the one who had come in asking about that Jane Doe the day before. He bit into his bagel while the man flashed his credentials to the receptionist. He took a moment to consider what he was going to say to this man, shoring himself up mentally. He felt a surge of pride, realizing that if the feds had taken the time and resources to fly this guy out overnight from DC, he must have stumbled onto something big.

"Special Agent Victor Henricksen," the man told the receptionist. "I'm here to see Sheriff Gerard Ricks."

The receptionist eyed Ricks, waiting for him to step forward. He took one more bite of his bagel, then approached the agent.

"That'd be me."

"You're the one who called the home office yesterday about a..."

Henricksen pulled a small notepad from his pocket and briefly consulted it.

"'Suspicious seeming fellow' trying to take custody of un-id'd remains?"

"Yep, yep, yep."

"Uh-huh."

"He said his name was Axel Bonham," Ricks explained, handing Henricksen the card with 'Agent Bonham's' information. He inspected it with a chuckle. "In hindsight, I probably should have picked up on the fake name sooner."

"Fake name?"

"Well, I mean..."

"Sheriff Ricks, Agent Axel Bonham is a bona fide member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Henricksen informed him. "Now, whether he was the man who came in here yesterday is another question entirely. To confirm his identity, I'm gonna need to see what went on in this lobby twenty-four hours ago."

Henricksen pointed to the security camera sitting in the corner of the station.

"And I gotta say Sheriff, if I flew my butt all the way out here on a bogus tip, I'm not gonna be happy about it," he warned.

Sheriff Ricks couldn't help his face falling into an instant frown. He tried to sip his coffee, but it was still too hot and he ended up burning his tongue.

"Right. Of course. Well, just, uh... yeesh. Just follow me, agent," he said nervously, leading Henricksen to his office. He was too nervous to sit at his desk, instead turning his computer around and accessing the security feed from the previous day while standing. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that his position was by election, not appointment, but the reassurance fell flat. Stuff like this was the reason special elections existed. He could be out of a job, possibly even worse.

"Here we go."

Ricks drew back, watching as Henricksen watched the feed. He started to chew his nails, then stopped himself and instead crossed his arms over his chest while Henricksen bent to get a better look at the grainy video.

"We, uh... we've been meaning to upgrade the cameras for the past few months," Ricks said nervously, intimidated by the silence. "You know how it is, it just always seems like there's something more important popping up. Not that security isn't important, it just takes a back seat sometimes to... what am I saying, yeesh? You know, I really ought to-"

"Sheriff."

Henricksen silence him with a word and a stern look.

"Right."

They stood in silence for a few seconds that stretched on into an excruciating eternity. Finally, Henricksen got a good look at agent Bonham's face. He smiled slightly, then chuckled.

"Well?" Ricks blurted. "Is it him? I mean, is that agent Bonham? The real agent Bonham? I mean-"

"It's him," Henricksen said, cutting off Ricks' stuttering. Ricks heart fell out through the soles of his feet as he realized he was going to lose his job.

"Oh jeez. Yeesh. Oh boy. Oh man."

He took a heavy seat while Henricksen got on his computer.

"Tell me Sheriff Ricks, you got kids?"

"Two, sir," Ricks said glumly, finding it difficult to think about anything other than how much trouble he was about to be in. He remembered one of his friends as a kid who'd prank called the police. At the time, he'd gotten into so much trouble... Ricks suddenly realized that he'd done the equivalent of prank-calling the FBI. Worse, they'd flown someone overnight across the country to respond to his prank call. Those were hard-earned taxpayer dollars, wasted on his bad hunch.

"They probably don't want to see their daddy lose his job and spend time in a federal prison for wasting the wrong guy's time," Henricksen observed. He was exaggerating the consequences of Ricks' actions, but Ricks didn't know that.

"Oh Jesus. Yeesh."

"Tell you what, son."

Ricks perked up, holding his breath as he dared to hope.

"Put your password in here for me."

Ricks realized with great confusion that Henricksen was trying to delete the security footage from the time Agent Bonham entered the station until he left.

"I... what?"

"You seem upstanding," Henricksen explained. "I believe you called me out here because you genuinely thought something was wrong, and as much as the FBI discourages people questioning our authority on such a flimsy basis as a mismatched phone number on a business card, I don't want to see a well-meaning officer like yourself have his life ruined over such a stupid little mistake. I'm willing to sweep this under the rug if you are."

He pushed the keyboard toward Ricks, who stared at it for a moment, mind blank with overwhelming relief. Was he really going to get off scot free after such a huge blunder?

"Yeesh, I, uh... I don't know what to say, sir," he said. He typed his password in quickly, figuring he'd better do so before Henricksen changed his mind.

Henricksen smiled indulgently.

"If you're smart, you won't say anything, ever," he instructed him.

"Understood."

"Have a good day, Sheriff."

"You too, agent."

"Oh, I intend to," Henricksen informed him on his way out. "After all, this trip basically amounts to a taxpayer paid weekend for me in the sunshine state. It's my patriotic duty to enjoy myself to keep that expense from going to waste."

Henricksen left the station, taking another look at 'Agent Bonham's' business card.

"Dean, Dean, Dean," he tsked, chortling. "Sloppy of you."

Still, it put Henricksen's mind at ease to know that the Winchesters were still out working in the world.

It wasn't so much that Allison was taking her time to get to Alice. Their reunion was long, long overdue. Allison stopped everywhere she wanted along the way as she followed the needle's guidance. Half of her motivation was reveling in her new found agency and free will like a kid in a candy shop. The other half was giving herself time to think about what she would do when she finally did find Alice. Give her back her bones, that much went without saying. Alice would be able to keep them safe, and after all, they belonged to her. But after that, Allison kept drawing a blank slate. She had fifteen years worth of things she needed to say to her sister and she found herself filled with anxiety as she tried to figure out which of those things was the most important, the most profound, the most fitting.

Truth be told, Allison was deathly afraid of what might happen when she finally reached Alice. For most of their lives, their relationship had been simple. Good. That had started to change in the months before Ruby tore their family apart, and Allison feared the repercussions of the fight she and Alice ultimately had right before everything went to hell. The situation was complicated; basically, Allison did the wrong thing by letting her little sister help her pull off a spell she stole from Ruby in 1880. They were in Boston working a case and Allison had purposefully picked a fight with her grandmother so she could storm away without raising suspicions. They fought often enough that it was believable. Alone, she set everything up. She made all the preparations. Then she came to the crucial moment and she couldn't do what needed to be done.

With a grimace, Allison revisited that night one more time. She'd spent fifteen years agonizing over her mistakes, lamenting the things she could have done differently. What was one more trip down the rabbit hole?

Allison had never killed outside the fray of life or death battle before. In the past, it had always been them or her. Standing over her sacrifice, helpless before her, she couldn't bring herself to do it. She froze, realizing how much different, how far removed this was from a fair fight. The man in front of her couldn't be any older than she was. He stared at her, gaze blank with terror as he lay bound on the table she'd prepared. He was just as frozen as she was, mortal terror rendering him immobile more effectively than any restraint Allison could have shackled him with.

"You don't understand," she reasoned aloud with herself and her victim. Her voice shook audibly and she swallowed hard in a futile attempt to dislodge the lump in her throat. Her heart was racing, pounding in her chest, adrenaline setting every nerve in her body on edge as she struggled to steady her breathing. She had the training to stay still as a stone with a knife at her throat or a gun at her temple, but in that moment, none of her training seemed to matter. Her hands were shaking around the knife she had crafted specially for the occasion.

"I need to do this. Your life is going to save so many others. Don't you get it? Demons never spare their hosts anyway. It's part of the fun for them. If I can do this, I can save... I can save..."

Allison's voice broke as her victim's eyes started to fill with helpless, uncomprehending tears. With a nasty jolt, she realized how insane she must look from an outside perspective. This guy had no idea who she was or what war she had been raised to fight. All he knew was that he'd woken up with some whackjob dressed all in black standing over him, holding a fancy dagger while candles burned around them in the abandoned warehouse and the glyphs and fixing of witchcraft decorated the corner they occupied.

"This is... this is for..."

It was for the greater good, but Allison, suddenly faced with the cost of that greater good for the first time, couldn't help questioning her logic.

"Allison?"

A voice, small, soft, but fearless, far from timid, ripped Allison from her reverie. She whipped around to see Alice approaching through the darkness, one shadow stepping from the others.

"Alice! You shouldn't be here!"

Allison glanced around desperately, struggling to come up with an excuse for what she was doing. If it weren't for the man tied up on the table behind her, she might have been able to lie, play it off, tell her sister she was experimenting with a tracking spell or harmless charm.

"This isn't- I'm not-"

"Hey, it's ok," Alice assured her, stopping her in her tracks. "It's ok. I know what you're doing. I saw Ruby's notes in your backpack. You're going to make the knife, aren't you? The one she was working on."

Allison's mouth hung agape as she struggled for words.

"I... I was going to, but... I can't do this, Alice," she finally managed. "This isn't right. I have to stop this, I have to-"

"Allison, I've been watching you stand there for like, ten minutes," Alice said, a hint of amusement tainting her tone despite the gravity of the situation. Allison wondered if, at the tender age of twelve, her sister fully understood the gravity of the situation. "You should have done it while he was still out. Do you have any more chloroform?"

Lost for words, silenced by the horror she felt, Allison just shook her head. She felt numb. The situation was getting too weird to fast and her brain couldn't keep up. She was still frozen with conflict and indecision and she couldn't snap out of it fast enough to stop Alice from taking the sacrificial knife from her hands. Not yet the demon killing knife, but in a moment, it would become the selfsame dread relic.

"I'll help you."

"Wait, Alice-"

"Allison, it's ok," Alice assured her. "I know what I'm doing. Let me take care of this part."

Allison, plagued by indecision, confusion, terror, didn't stop her sister from stepping up to the man. He must have seen something in Alice's eyes that was absent from Allison's, because he found the will to struggle for the first time. Alice raised the knife.

Suddenly, Allison became completely, uncompromisingly aware that what they were doing was wrong. At the last minute, she finally made up her mind, finally broke free of the uncertainty that paralyzed her. There was no moral dilemma here. Just two kids out of their depth, doing something evil because they didn't know any better.

Well... Alice didn't know any better.

Allison opened her mouth to yell, to tell Alice that they couldn't do this, but it was too late. Alice plunged the knife into the man's heart, swift and decisive where Allison had been sluggish and torn. The sound twisted in Allison's throat, emerging as strangled yelp, too late to do the man or her little sister's soul any good.

Alice pulled the knife from the man's chest. It dripped blood, but the runes carved along the blade glowed bright, brief gold before fading.

"Did I do it right?" Alice asked, looking to her big sister for approval. Her shifting eyes were huge in the darkness, wide with excitement and misplaced pride.

"Lady! Hey, lady! Move it!"

Allison jerked back to reality suddenly, realizing she was holding up the line in the restaurant where she'd stopped.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, giving up her place in line and taking a heavy seat at one of the booths. Guilt crushed her like the weight of the world.

"Did I do it right?"

Alice's words would haunt her until the day she died. They repeated in Allison's head and she was helpless to stop them. She closed her eyes and forced herself to leave the memory. She dragged herself back to the present, grounding herself with the smells and the sounds and the cool laminate of the table where she now rested her elbows.

Alice was just a kid looking to her big sister for guidance. Allison led her down the wrong path while knowing better all along. Her little sister had a shaky grasp of morality, a world view shaped by a short lifetime filled with death and violence. All she had to guide her were Allison and Grace, and Grace would have kept her on the straight and narrow. Without realizing it, Allison had always been a corrupting force in her sister's life. All her rebellion against their grandmother, all her personal issues with the woman, she allowed them to lead her down a dark path and even worse, she let her little sister follow her down it.

Allison took a deep breath, forcing herself to keep it together. She swallowed her grief and shouldered her guilt, blinked back tears and fixed her posture as she stood to get back in line. She knew what she would say to Alice when she finally found her.

The first thing she was going to do was apologize to her baby sister.

Alice shouted herself hoarse as she flung herself over and over against the walls of her prison. The runes glowed stronger every time she impacted them, their power tossing her back like a sack of potatoes as she fruitlessly fought to escape. After a timeless eternity, she wore herself out completely and collapsed in the center of the cell. Her breath came hard as the light from the runes slowly faded, leaving her in near complete darkness that blurred the walls that seemed to make the space around her stretch out into infinity. She stared hard into it as despair settled over her, slow as it was poisonous.

"Is this it?" she asked aloud, her voice echoing in the tin can that threatened to be her final resting place. "Is this really where I get to spend eternity?"

She let the question hang in the air for a long moment while she pondered its implications. Eternity in a box might seem bad at first, but when she considered her alternatives...

"Well, it could be worse," she sighed, letting her eyes slide shut. She had thoroughly tested the confines in which she now resided. She wasn't going anywhere without outside help, she so figured she may as well take a load off for the time being. "At least it's not hell."

"You sure about that?"

The familiar voice filled Alice with alarm. Her eyes snapped open and she leaped to her feet, spinning and squinting, trying to find Ruby in the darkness.

"Alone with yourself for eternity. That might not be so bad, if you weren't... well, you."

Alice didn't see anyone in the can with her.

"Ruby? Where are you?" she demanded, hands balled into fists as she prepared to fight. She realized, though, that it would be completely futile. What was Ruby going to do, tickle her? She had no body in here. This form was nothing more than a manifestation. A familiar shape to help Alice keep her bearings.

"Who knows, I get around."

Slowly, Alice realized what was happening.

"You're not here," she said, relaxing her fighting stance.

"Bingo."

"So how am I hearing you?"

"Well..."

Ruby's voice, previously disembodied, seeming to come from all around, now settled. It distilled and, alarmingly, originated at Alice's back. She closed her eyes, refusing to turn. She balled her fists again, this time to distract herself from the way the hairs stood up on the back of her neck, the way every muscle in her body screamed at her to turn, begged her to face the voice behind her. Alice fought the urge, refusing to continue a conversation that she now realized was with herself.

"Either this tin can we're trapped in has some power that physically manifests your own personal demons while you're stuck inside, or you're finally losing what's left of your mind," Ruby mused.

"You're my personal demon?" Alice scoffed. Then she realized it was actually incredibly fitting.

"Well sure, why not?" Ruby asked at her back. "After all, I'm where you went wrong. All those years ago... centuries if you want to get technical. Damn, it's been a long path, am I right?"

"I didn't do anything wrong when I killed you," Alice growled. "You were a witch. You can tell that story as one-sided as you want. We both know the truth."

"Whatever you say," Ruby said. Alice was itching to turn, dying to lay eyes on what was behind her. What if it was nothing? She half-expected to turn and see nothing but more empty metallic darkness. "You can justify it as much as you want, sweetheart. At the end of the day, you still regret it, so it must have been wrong."

"I regret that you came back to be such a pain in my ass," Alice retorted, her anger growing. She hated it when people assumed to know how she felt, tried to tell her what was going on in her own head. She was honest enough with herself to know her own mind.

"Pain in your ass? I set you free, kid," Ruby laughed. "Come on, admit it. You always wanted an excuse to go off on your own. You always felt like your grandma was holding you back, with all her rules, her code... that strict black and white morality of hers. I did you a favor. Hell, if I wouldn't have killed her first, you probably would have ended up doing it yourself sooner or later, you ugly little monster."

"Shut up."

"Why, does the truth hurt?"

"None of that's true!"

"Right, because you loved your grandma, like a good little girl," Ruby crooned mockingly. "Riddle me this, smartass. If you loved her so much, how come you never followed in her footsteps? You knew what she wanted you to do. Why didn't you ever do it? Huh? Why did you always ignore what she taught you?"

"I didn't-"

"You didn't what?! You didn't have a choice?! Your life was so hard when you were all on your own? Poor baby couldn't take care of herself without breaking all the rules she grew up with? You were really too weak to do anything the right way?! The good way?!"

"Shut up!"

"Admit it, you could have made that old coot proud if you cared enough to try! You could have-"

Alice roared, infuriated past words by the demon at her back. She whipped around, raising her fist to strike. Despite the fact that she half-expected to punch thin air, she found a figure standing behind her.

"I said, SHUT-"

The figure behind her caught her fist before her blow could land. In an instant, Alice identified her quarry. What she saw shocked her so much that she stumbled back, tripping over her own feet and falling hard on her ass.

"What's wrong, Alice?"

Ruby's voice taunted her, but the figure standing over her was her own. Alice stared agape into her own face, meeting eyes that first swirled and shifted with all the colors of the trickster's touch she no longer possessed. Then they flooded, filling with pitch black as the clothes she wore.

"What were you expecting?" the demon asked. "Are you surprised?"

Alice scrambled back, lost for words as the demon pursued her slowly.

"This is what you wanted, wasn't it?" the demon went on, mocking. "To turn, right? Wasn't that your big idea, your ticket off the rack? After all, it can't be worse than all that pain, right? Right, Alice?"

"No!" Alice choked, backing herself against the wall as fear overtook her.

"No? Oh, come on, it's too late to change your mind now!" the demon crowed "Have a little conviction. Or are you too chicken to go through with it?"

"Going demon is the easy way out," Alice managed. "I'm not taking-"

"Not taking the easy way out? What, you think you have a choice?"

The demon laughed, dragging Alice to her feet by her collar. She went along, unable to bring herself to hit herself. With Ruby's voice, the vision was a stark, illuminating representation of the fate she had just decided to resist. She hadn't realized until now just how horrifying that fate would have been.

"I'm you, honey!" Demon Alice hissed, close enough that Alice could smell the sulfur on her breath. "You chose this path a long time ago. It's too late to go back now!"

"It's never too late to go back! It can't be!" Alice argued. She brought her foot up high, putting it on the demon's chest and pushing her away with all her might. She straightened, emboldened by the fact that she was able to force the thing away.

"I get to choose what I am," Alice insisted.

"You can't change your nature!" the demon growled.

"I don't have to. I just have to start making better decisions. I've made the wrong choices my whole life, but it's not too late to start making the right ones."

"It this Alice Smith going straight?" the demon hissed. "Is this you redeeming yourself? Are you really stupid enough to believe that's possible? After all the damage you've done?"

"Dean believed it," Alice pointed out.

"Yeah, and look where that got him!" the demon crowed triumphantly. "The first person to have any faith in you since your grandmother died, and you used that faith against him! Face it, Alice, you are what you are and that's all you ever will be! You're already a monster and it's too late for you to change!"

"Maybe. But I have to try anyway."

"What you have to do is stop kidding yourself."

"Don't tell me," Alice shouted, "What to do!"

"Ooh, 'you're not the boss of meeee!" the demon mocked her, making faces at her from the other side of the cell. It sneered, reverting to seriousness. "If you're so sure you're gonna improve yourself, why am I still here? If you're really determined to stop being such a piece of crap, why haven't I just disappeared?"

"I just haven't killed you yet," Alice replied simply. "You're just another monster. This is just another hunt. I've exorcised a thousand demons in my time. You're no different."

The demon threw it's arms out defiantly.

"Come at me," it hissed. "Give it your best shot! Let's see who we really are, why don't we?"

Alice hesitated and her dark reflection laughed again.

"You're scared to try," she observed. "As you should be. You couldn't beat me if you had a hundred years to do it in. You want to know why? Because you are nothing- nothing, without me! I'm what makes you strong. I'm what's protected you all these years. What are you without me? Without the darkness? Just a scared little girl still trying to do what grandma wants her to."

Alice couldn't deny that the demon was right. She was afraid of change. She wore disregard and callousness as armor for most of her life. She did things that she knew were bad, evil even, hiding behind thin justifications that she couldn't support if someone really put pressure on her to do so.

Alice was terrified of being weak, terrified that without the burden of the darkness she carried, that might be all that she really was.

"So, what are you going to do, Alice?" the demon prompted. "Time to choose."