We will always end up here.
(Part 2)
Dean swallowed, his eyes welling up with tears at the unbearable burn below his Adam's apple. Fear plagued his heart when he felt a drop of blood slither down his searing wrist.
Abaddon stroked his chin. "Oh, poor baby. Is it the ropes, or wondering what I've done with Sam?"
His breath hitched and he looked up at her in rage, fighting his bonds despite the burn.
She smiled, and with a snap of her long fingers, Sam appeared before them.
He was kneeling, feet and hands tied tightly behind his quivering torso. The youngest Winchester screamed bloody murder into his gag, his muscled neck collared with a chain that led directly to Abaddon's hand.
Dean's heart raced as he searched desperately for the source of Sam's pain, until his eyes settled upon the raw and bloody patch at his brother's chest where the anti-possession tattoo had once been.
"Sammy," his voice was leaden and half-broken. "You're gonna be alright. We've seen worse. We've seen a whole lot worse, man, you hear me? Sammy!"
Sam's eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed face first, the ground digging into his wound.
"Sam!" The name barely escaped his lips before he felt the cloth bar his tongue. Gagged, he screeched like an animal, fully aware of the bindings drawing blood from his flesh.
Abaddon bent to kiss the convulsions at his throat as he writhed, stealing even anguish from him to mark as her own. "Hush, sweet baby. Let me make it all better."
With another snap of her fingers, Dean found himself kneeling, hands caught behind his back in steel gloves chained to the wall. However, he was free of the torture rope. Rivulets if blood spilled from his nasty burns, making movement of any kind painful, but at least now his wounds wouldn't be aggravated further.
Abaddon pulled the rag from his teeth and kissed just below his raw and cracking lips. "Look at you, tied and tressed. Those ringlets won't soon heal. Dean, what have you gotten yourself into, hmm?"
"What's wrong with Sam?" he asked immediately. "You ripped off his tattoo but that's not all, is it? IS IT?!"
She smiled as he rattled his chains lurching toward her like a mad dog. "That anxiety of yours is maddeningly hot.
"TELL ME!"
"Well, sweetheart, you didn't think I'd wait until now to let Lucifer out of his cage, did you?"
"What does that have to do with Sam?!"
Her smirk made him shiver. "Treacherous things, voices. Especially from past nightmares. Lucifer missed Sammy, Dean. He's had decades down there to imagine every possible mental torture for your brother, but the simplest…the return of a voice in his tender head…is the best."
The months Sam spent battling the Devil in his own mind hit Dean like an eighteen wheeler. The torture of a sleepless week. The idea; the simple idea that reality was a construct built to conceal his personal Hell. The fear of that torment had never left Sam. Lucifer could be reading the phone book or reciting the alphabet, but the voice itself would bring back a unique and unbearable terror.
He watched the labored breathing of his unconscious brother and wondered if dreams had even offered an escape.
"Bitch!" Dean screamed through his teeth.
Abaddon gripped his chin. "The mark burns, doesn't it? A deeper burn than the ropes left. But it isn't due to my presence, sadly.
Dean could feel it like a hot coal in his veins as he glared up at the last Knight.
"Then who? When I get my hands on—"
"Hello, Dean. It's been a long time."
The voice.
Dean looked up slowly into the tattered and peeling face of the temporary vessel, its eyes bright with sadistic flame.
