"I swear to god I'm going to go Jack Torrence on all of you."
Nobody looked up at Dean's frustration vent. Sam's eyes continued scanning his computer screen. Cas kept on drinking in his book on reincarnation. And I carried on splitting wood. Freya was the only one who paid my eldest son any mind, and then he only received a brief look of curiosity he couldn't even see.
"You really need to stop saying that, Dean," Sam said in a flat voice.
"I'm serious," Dean spat. He restlessly paced the ground between the camper and Sam with a vivid frustration painted on his face. "I need some goddamn civilization."
"Uh-huh," Sam hummed in a disenchanted disbelief as keys clicked under his fingertips. Dean ran a hand down over his face.
"We've been out here for almost a fucking month," he said. "We're no closer to figuring any of this shit out than we were when we got here." He paused to shoot Cas a scowl. "And Cas is still on the same fucking book," he added, waving a hand at the angel.
"I've read many of the other books," Cas shared without lifting his eyes from the words he held in his palm. "I think this one may hold a clue that will set us on the right path."
"And what clue would that be?" Dean snapped.
"I haven't found it yet," Cas said, turning a page. Dean pursed his lips, put his hands on his hips and bowed his head.
On the outside, it looked like Dean was the only one in a foul mood. Sam's determination masked any frustration he might have felt as he tirelessly plugged on, skimming books and surfing webpages and making regular calls to hunters across the country to see if any of them had seen a woman fitting Mystery's description. Cas was patient. Not just patient; the angel had found utter contentment among the wilderness. ("I think, someday, when Sam and Dean are gone, and I've reopened the gates of Heaven, I might take residence in the wilderness," he told me once after a rough torture session, his eyes on the canopy and a small smile on his face.)
On the outside, even I seemed calm. I forced myself to submit to the ways my sons had learned to live. The search for another way, another end, no matter how long it took. Their determination in that aspect was inspired, and I was proud they had stuck to their convictions.
Except, on the inside, I was growing angry. Restless. Not from frustration, or old habits that wanted me to get a job done right, but fast. It was the torture.
We'll make a proper demon of you yet.
It's not really Hell that makes a demon, but the torment a soul undergoes. The second time I fell, I wasn't tortured. Not the way "proper" demons were tortured, with sharp instruments and fire and brimstone and all the other ways a body could be physically brutalized to the point of hopelessness. To the point of giving up.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
For the record, accepting your fate isn't giving up hope. It just alters what your hopes are. I never abandoned all hope, but, after five centuries, I had psychologically tormented myself into accepting damnation. Between the sliver of hope for freedom I still held onto and the obscure, self-torture I underwent, I turned… wrong.
And Crowley was trying to fix it.
It took me a couple of weeks to really understand that's what he was doing. He wasn't just trying to hurt me, and he wasn't just trying to force me out of hiding. The King of Hell was attempting to make me like the rest of them.
"I still think we should close the gates of Hell," Dean voiced his opinion, one he had voiced several times in the passing weeks. "Maybe if Hell is closed off, contracts disappear for anyone still alive?"
"That's a nice theory," I said as I set a log upright on a tree stump. "But neither of you are sacrificing yourself for me." I brought my axe down. The log split down the middle and each half flew to either side of the stump.
"That's not hypocritical." Dean paired his sarcastic remark with an eye roll. I paused in my chore to give him my full attention.
"You do not owe me for what I did for you," I told him with a heat I hadn't intended. "You want Hell sealed off, find someone else to do it."
"Not to sound boastful or anything," Sam said, combative. He closed his laptop halfway to participate in the debate. "But, outside of Dean and me, I don't think there are any hunters who have what it takes to pull something like that off. I mean, there are a lot of good hunters out there, but the trials, they're not easy. It's not like closing a literal door."
The word door struck a chord, and danced in my mind with trials.
"Cas," I said, resting the axe against the sizable pile of logs I had already split. The angel looked up at me, his eyes slightly unfocused from prolonged staring. "You said you closed Heaven's gates with a series of trials, right?"
"Yes," Cas confirmed with a mild discomfort.
"How do you open a closed door?" I prompted. Cas turned thoughtful.
"It would depend on what type of door you're talking about," he answered. "Some doors open out, while others open in, and some some slide. Then there are revolving doors, which you could debate whether or not they're ever really open or closed—"
"You open it in the opposite direction you closed it," I cut him off when his over-literal philosophies bordered into off topic ramblings.
"And?" Dean said shortly, impatient but curious to see where I was going.
"What if Heaven's gate is like a door?" I theorized. "What if all you have to do to open it back up is to do the trials backwards?"
A thoughtful silence fell around the camp. Expressions turned contemplative and gears turned. And finally;
"That's not a bad idea."
All eyes turned to Sam, who looked genuinely impressed. Not overly impressed, but enough to give credit where credit was due.
"I never thought of that," Cas admitted. He shrugged. "It's worth a shot," he agreed before adding doubtfully; "I may need some help from my brothers and sisters."
"We'll help you, Cas," I told him. "Won't we, boys?"
Sam and Dean exchanged a soulful look.
"Of course, Cas," Sam said. "Whatever you need."
"Thanks," the angel said. "But one thing at a time. Heaven can wait. Let's worry about Crowley first."
He gave me a discrete, knowing smile I returned with a tip of my head.
"Great," said Dean, nothing short of sarcastic, and threw his hands up. "I'm glad we cleared that one up, because now we're still at square one."
I parted my lips to follow his surly comment with one of my own, but the words snagged in my throat when the heat of the angel blade appeared along my forearm. I snatched up my axe and swung it over my shoulder.
"I'm going to get more firewood," I quietly announced and marched for the trees.
"I think we have enough of it," Dean commented as I passed him by, but, in lieu of a response, I whistled for Freya. She bounded after me, alert and solemn.
"I'll go with him," I heard Cas say.
"You, too?" an exasperated Dean called.
"Just let them go," Sam said with a quiet tone.
"No wonder we're not getting anywhere," I could hear Dean grumble as I all but ran for shelter from my son's eyes. "Those two keep wandering off." Pause. "What do you think they do out there?"
"I don't know," Sam lied. "Stop bitching for a minute and give me a hand with this research, huh?"
I could picture him standing in front of a three way mirror, watching with a smug smile as he mutilated his own flesh to get to mine. Staring at his reflection, but addressing me. "Having fun?" I swear I could hear him asking. "I know I am." Watching with delight as blood spilled down his arms. "I'll break you long before I can break a sweat."
I didn't cave to Alastair after a hundred years, I told the vision of Crowley, who watched himself bury a salt coated carving knife in his stomach. It's going to take a fuck of a lot longer than one month for you to even scratch the surface.
The hallucination of Crowley and his three reflections didn't reply; it was not a two-way mirror, after all, and God only knew if what I was glimpsing at was real. Instead, they laughed through the pain, relishing in their own agony, knowing I could feel every grain of salt burning blood and muscle and skin. They flashed a toothy grin, twisted the blade, and laughed again.
"Where are you, John?"
The voice was close, only a few feet away, yet it was worlds away. It was distorted, like an echo in a cave so deep you can't be sure where the sound originated, but it was familiar. Kind. And it was trying to pull me out of the darkness.
My eyes slivered open and squinted up at the luminous being that sat on the felled maple. Just where the haloed creature always was when I was writhing on the forest floor. The calmness in his expression was interrupted by minor wrinkles of concern that gently creased the corners of his eyes.
"I'm sitting in the middle of the woods telling an angel to shut the fuck up." I winced at my own words as I clutched my stomach. My head spun as it leapt between the imaginary room where Crowley gleefully performed his torture and the forest I knew to be real. It swam around the torrid pain that chewed at my insides and blurred the sides of my vision.
"Sorry," I apologized to the angel, who appeared unaffected by my scornful remarks. I sucked in a sharp breath. "Misery loves company."
Castiel nodded in understanding and turned his head forward.
"It may help if you focused on something other than the pain," he casually suggested.
My jaw clenched in an effort to withhold a groan as I could feel the blade turning in slow circles inside of me.
"It'd… be easier if… he wasn't using… erg… fucking salt," I panted between my teeth.
The sharp pain of the knife subsided as it gradually exited my body, and I was left with the heat of the salt that lingered in my stomach. My fingers — slick with blood — curled into hardened fists and I waited for more. Another stab, another shot of holy water. But it never came, and once the fever of the salt ebbed, I tentatively relaxed my muscles.
Like clockwork, Freya nudged her head under my arm to give me a dog's equivalent of a hug. Cas handed me a bottle of whiskey, waited for me to pour a generous amount down my throat, then handed me a cigarette. Just like always.
Except this time my blood stained hands shook as I lit my cigarette. It wasn't a tremor rooted in the waning pain, but the result of an unholy anger I couldn't shake. A fire I fueled with bitter thoughts on my current reality.
Castiel took notice of this. He parted his lips to speak, hesitated, then recalculated what he wanted to say.
"You're upset." It wasn't a question, but it had a questioning quality that wasn't quite directed at me. He was asking himself, in so many words, if this was a wise conversation to be having.
My chest tightened and my fingers clenched into fists. I felt like caged animal who had been prodded one too many times. I felt useless, and I felt like killing something. No, not something. Someone.
Crowley.
"I'm gonna fucking kill him!" I growled. I stood abruptly, and Freya whined and backed away. I could feel my eyes go black as I picked up my axe and, in a single swoop, cut down a young maple that tumbled down with a sigh of rustling leaves.
"John." Castiel attempted a calm tone, but the way his muscles tensed, the way he checked the sleeve for his angel blade, I knew he found my outburst troubling. "I know what you're going through right now is arduous…"
"You don't know shit," I snapped. I kicked the tree he sat upon and he leapt up in time to avoid rolling away with the long log, which shifted a good four feet from where it once lay. The angel watched as I heaved the axe at an ancient oak, the blade losing itself in its mighty trunk.
"You know," the angel spoke softly, attempting to calm my rage with his voice. "Going after Crowley is exactly what he wants."
"And that sonuvabitch is going to regret it!" I shouted. I picked up the small tree I had cut and swung it like a baseball bat at another oak. The maple snapped in half, the leaves and branches crashing to the forest floor leaving me with a the long trunk, which I hurled blindly into the forest.
"You need to calm down." Castiel kept trying to pull me back, relentlessly trying to bring me to the light that was quickly fading away from me.
I jabbed my right index finger at the celestial being.
"You don't get to tell me what I need to do," I spat, this time with complete disregard to the harshness of my words. "Mystery is probably dead. We've been stuck in the goddamn wilderness for the better part of a month and the King of Hell keeps stuffing my veins with holy water. So don't you tell me to calm the fuck down."
"You have every right to be upset," Castiel agreed that my rage was, to a certain degree, called for. "But this isn't about anger."
"You don't think I'm angry?" I challenged. I marched to where my axe had landed and ripped it from the tree. "How's this for not angry?" I started hacking at the oak with everything I had, so blinded by anger that I didn't even see the splinters that flew at my face. When I lost my patience on the oak that resisted my strength and refused to fall, I turned my sights on the downed tree I had used as a prop and Cas had used as a seat. I hacked at it until it split in two, then kicked at them until they were several yards from each other. "How about this?" I lobbed the axe at another tree where it took off a chunk of bark and sank to the ground with a dull thud. I grabbed my coat and withdrew my gun, which I aimed at a red squirrel. I discharged round after round until the creature was nothing more than a splatter of fur and blood on a bed of dry leaves. I marched up to the angel and didn't stop until only a few meager, uncomfortable inches separated us. My chest heaved as I glared at him, the cigarette between my lips now a short, smoldering stub. "You don't think this looks like anger!?"
Castiel's brow creased into something somewhere between a frown and concern. He looked past the smoke, stared me straight in my cold, black eyes and said; "It looks like fear."
I sucked in a deep lungful of smoke and exhaled it through my nose as I stared the angel down. The crease in my brow deepened and I leaned in so close to him our noses nearly touched. But Castiel remained unphased by my intimidation tactics. He didn't even blink.
"You wanna run that by me again?" I growled.
"You're afraid," he stated simply. "You're afraid of losing control, and you're afraid that whatever Crowley is doing to you is going to push you over the edge. This doesn't look like anger, John. This looks like fear. This." He waved his hand, motioning to the destruction I had caused. "Looks like losing control."
I glared at the unflinching angel who refused to be intimidated as my mind grappled with this accusation. I was John fucking Winchester. I was a demon. I wasn't supposed to be afraid of anything. But I knew, deep down, Castiel was right. I wasn't angry. I was terrified.
From the corner of my eye I noted Freya, crouching low to the ground under the needles of an evergreen. I turned my head to look at her, and she cowered. Just like she had done with Crowley.
I suddenly became aware of the sound of footsteps thrashing through underbrush and dry leaves. A baritone tentatively calling "dad? Cas?" as they drew nearer. I backed away from Cas, pinched the remainder of my cigarette out and chucked it aside. I blinked the blackness from my eyes and bent to pick up my jacket, making sure my back was turned away from the place Sam and Dean would come through.
"Hey," Sam said as I was pulling my jacket on, his voice no further than ten feet behind me. "Are you two alright?"
"Yes," Cas said haltingly. "We're fine."
"We heard gunshots," Dean said as I was zipping up my jacket. Satisfied I had concealed the blood on my shirt, I spun around to face Sam and Dean. They both held their own guns, down and out, ready to aim and shoot at the drop of a hat.
"That was me," I said unapologetically, slipping my gun – and my bloodied hands – into my pockets.
"What were you shooting at?" Sam questioned, cautiously relaxing his hold on his weapon.
"He shot a squirrel," Cas said. I rolled my eyes at him.
"Why?" Dean wanted to know, scrunching his nose up.
"Target practice," I said before Cas had a chance to respond. Sam and Dean gave me an inquisitive stare and I shrugged. "Didn't want to get rusty."
"You?" Sam said with disbelief. "Get rusty?"
Sam's phone went off as Dean's stance relaxed and he pocketed his gun.
"Next time you wanna shoot rodents, let me know," Dean said. "I'll join you. I need a break from books. I'm starting to see words every time I close my eyes."
Cas and I exchanged a knowing look while Sam swiped to answer his phone.
"Hello?" he said.
"You owe me big time, Winchester," I overheard a female voice spit from the other end. Sam's face twisted into a look of confusion.
"What? I'm sorry, who-?" He paused and a light switched on behind his eyes. He looked up at us and said with disbelief; "Mystery?"