Disclaimer All recognizable characters/settings belong to their creators. The stories listed here are transformative works, from which I've made/am making no financial profit.

Warnings Language; references/allusions to torture and non-con.

5. His Own Hell

Dean's memory is soupy and unclear when he wakes, but he remembers enough to know it was pretty bad, and then pretty vicious, and that after that it got unexpectedly profound, like a ten acts of contrition and ten novenas confession.

His knuckles are hurting, and his shoulder is throbbing, and he's in his tee and shorts again, not safe. He casts a furtive glance over at his brother, tap tapping away at the laptop as usual, and Sam's nose and lip are pinkly puffy and grazed, because when Dean socked his brother he made damn sure to use his ring hand.

"You should get some ice on that," he says hoarsely, and Sam wordlessly picks up a baggie, shakes it, and ice chips rustle up and down.

Dean lies there for a few minutes, can feel Sam shooting his own furtive glances over and something else, something like agitation, tumult, pent-up excitement.

"Dean," Sam says finally.

Dean shakes his head. "No. No more. Too much. Not now."

"But we need to talk," his brother persists.

"Do I have to be there?" Dean can hear his voice speeding up, anxious. "And you fuckin' undressed me."

"But Dean, what you said, we really need to—"

"I don't remember half of what I said, Sam," Dean grates out, and he hopes it sounds convincing. "Can we just… move past it?"

"Like we did the siren?" his brother challenges.

Dog with a fuckin' bone, Dean thinks. Just like he has been with Lilith.

"Dean," Sam tries again. "Please. What you said, it just… it doesn't make sense to me, and I—"

Palming his face, Dean cuts his brother off with groaned-out frustration. "What? What did I say that doesn't make sense, Sam? I can't remember a damn thing about last night except for throwing down on you, and I don't remember why the fuck I even did that. Christ. I need a shower."

"Do you remember what I said?"

Sam's voice is soft, uncertain, and Dean hasn't heard his brother sound like that since… since before, he thinks. He swallows thickly. "I remember."

"And are we… okay?"

Sam's eyes are bright, hopeful, and still there's that underlying buzz of something Dean can't put his finger on, like his brother knows something.

"We're okay," Dean mutters anyway, and he hopes he isn't lying. He he rolls over on to his side and pushes himself up to sit, breathes in and regrets it. "I stink." Of sweat, and shots, and sex, he thinks. And self-hatred.

"Yeah… you've seen some action."

Sam is cautious, like he's picking his way across thin ice or shifting sands, because that's what bridges the chasm between them these days, Deam muses. There's no striding across solid ground to meet each other in the middle anymore, it's all sideways moves, two steps forward and one yard back, maybe even like that cave in Raiders where one wrong step trips booby traps that shoot poisoned darts or roll rocks the size of houses straight at them.

"You said it was my fault," Sam barks out abruptly then. "My fault you made the deal, went to Hell. Because I didn't kill Jake Talley when I had the chance. And you said Yellow Eyes wanted you down there."

Well, that wasn't cautious. No sideways moves there, in fact it feels like Sam just grabbed a long branch and pole-vaulted across the chasm, knocked Dean flat on his back, and is straddling him and beating it out of him. Or maybe even doing that whole evil hand thing, like he did with Samhain, and squeezing it out of him that way. "It's bullshit, Sam," Dean covers wearily. "What I said was refried bullshit. I was on the prod for a fight and that's all. I know why you didn't kill Jake. And I made the choice to deal. It wasn't your fault."

"But what you said, Dean, about Yellow Eyes wanting you, what did you—"

"I was drunk," Dean cuts in fast. "I was being a mean drunk. And that is all I have to say about it, because my throat feels like a fuckin' blowtorch had at it." He knows how that feels, and he reaches for his Jack, downs a few fingers in one, muses that the really good thing about soul-baring confessions to his brother is that Sam keeps his trap shut when he drinks himself senseless right afterwards.

And sure enough Sam sighs, turns back to the laptop, just keeps on tapping, doesn't aim the bitchface at him, doesn't even tense up. Which is peachy, because Dean doesn't ever want to tell his brother he damned the world when he got off Alastair's rack.

Dean knows it's a fuckin' cliché, but since Hell he scrubs himself raw in the shower, till his skin is firetruck red and sore in patches, even though never feels clean afterwards. Sometimes he fancies the dash of the water against the tile sounds like sizzling fat, and that he can still smell sulfur, and his own burning flesh and hair, so he keeps his eyes open in there. It means he can see, even if the sting of cheap motel shampoo sends painful tears streaming down his cheeks along with the water, means he can see that where he is it's ceramic, white, blue, green, patterned, whatever, but ceramic. It's the world, not the underworld, not the lake of fire, not the molten heart of the earth, and he isn't listening to the screams of the damned.

He comes back to himself huddled in the corner of the shower cubicle, shivering, the water long cold, and he opens his mouth to it, welcomes its chill because it quenches the fire and he remembers the thirst.

Sam is quiet, still tapping away at the keyboard, and he doesn't look up as Dean exits the bathroom. Dean takes advantage and knocks back another mouthful of his falling-down water, spares a minute to ponder the fact that he needs a tank of Dutch courage to fuel even the simplest conversations with his brother these days. "Last night," he ventures finally, because the quiet stretches between them like an invisible wall with invisible footholds he can't climb up without some help. "Uh, you said Bobby called."

Sam perks up, looks relieved. "Yeah, he did. He's here actually – just gone to get us breakfast. He got a call from Kathleen… Kathleen Hudak, remember her?"

Hell yes, and it gives Dean a sudden toastie-warm, content feeling low down in his gut that has nothing to do with the whiskey he's suckling on. He smiles, and it might be the first genuine smile he's smiled since Oktoberfest, because he's remembering that she can put her right leg behind her ear, and she has these boots that go all the way up to her—

"Dude! Too much information."

Dean jolts back to the now to see his brother grimacing. "Huh?" he prompts.

"You're thinking out loud, Dean," Sam tells him. "Word to the wise – don't. There are some things I just don't need to know."

His voice is mixture of amused and fake shock, not exactly effortless because they don't exactly have their groove back. And the words plummet Dean back down to earth despite the intended humor, and he thinks bleakly that fuck, Sam is right. There are some things he just doesn't need to know.

"So what's the deal with Kathleen then?" he fishes once he has his brain back under control.

Sam is fairly humming with satisfaction and achievement. "She called Bobby about a case, guys going missing and turning up dead—"

"Wait a minute," Dean jumps in, because he has this nasty, cold, squirming feeling in his guts now. "This isn't happening in the woods is it? Because if it is, she's on her own. I don't care how many hikers she finds, I'm not—"

"Bobby doesn't think so," Sam says quickly. She left a message, but the answerphone was full up and cut her off. Bobby says it was a Duluth number."

"Duluth?" Dean spits out, on the memory of plunging into cold, oily water while his shoulder sparked agony. "Fuck that. Duluth is just as bad. That bitch, Meg. Christ. You plugged me, and then you… my shoulder hurt for months after that."

Bitchface number twelve. "Whatever Dean," Sam concedes, "but get this, these guys all look like—"

A light tap on wood pulls Sam up and he stands, peers through the curtain before opening the door to the old man.

"I come bearing gifts," Bobby announces, holds up a paper bag.

"Donut Diner," Dean grins. "Oh thank God. Tell me there's coffee too."

Bobby sets down the bag, lifts out a cup and sets it on the nightstand next to Dean, tips his head up, hand under his chin. "When Sam told me that demon broke your nose, boy, I was real worried," Bobby says dryly. "Glad to see you're still beautiful. And that you're clean. You smelled like a dead pig sunbathing when I got here."

Rotting, Dean thinks suddenly. Rotting on the back seat, after my brother saw me ripped to shreds. He's thrown for a second, gazes up dumbly. The old man's voice might be steady but his eyes don't lie, and the care and worry Dean can see there do strange fluttering things to his heart, so he forces himself to think past hellhounds and puddles of his own blood.

He pops the lid off the coffee, rolls his eyes theatrically. "It's milky. And frothy. Is this a fuckin' crappacino?"

"Don't look at me," Bobby defends mildly, jerks his head over at the table. "Your brother said the usual was off the menu for a week or so till your throat heals inside."

Scowling, Dean retorts, "Let me guess. It's fuckin' skinny too. And decaf." When the old man's back is turned, he sloshes some of his Jack in, and he sees Sam's eyebrows come down, sees his jaw tighten. Screw it, he thinks. It's happy hour somewhere. "So," he goes on. "Dead guys in Duluth. And this is interesting why?"

Bobby sniffs. "Six of them, according to what your brother found out. Kathleen didn't say much – just the bare facts. But apparently they've been cut up real bad, and the hearts are missing. She reckons it might be a werewolf."

Dean sinks a draught of notfuckin'realcoffeewithakick, wipes froth off his lips. "Well. Werewolves do take the heart," he concludes.

Sam clears his throat. "There's more, Dean. Kathleen's message… before she got cut off, she said the victims all resembled someone, so I hacked into police records. They all look like you. See?"

He twists the laptop around so Dean is looking at two faces, alike, two more, and again, alike. All alike, he supposes. "They don't look anything like me," he declares.

"They look like you, boy," Bobby growls. "Fatter, some of 'em. Older. More hair maybe. But they look like you."

Dean shrugs. "Picky werewolf? With extremely good taste?"

"Dean, for Christ's sake. Surely you can see what this is?"

Sam snaps it out, impatient, excited, smarter, and the words have a serrated edge that grazes Dean's nerves with the confirmation that they aren't okay. "Why don't you enlighten me, Sam?" he ices out, but if his brother hears the tension in his voice he ignores it.

"It has to be connected to Lilith," Sam races on. "It has to be. Demons killing guys who look like you. They take the face, Dean, they—"

"The face," Dean interrupts, and he's lost now. "They take the face? What the hell does that mean?"

"All these guys had their faces sliced off," Bobby says. "Your brother thinks it might be some kind of bounty hunting deal."

Dean goggles. "You're saying you think this is demon bounty hunters chasing me because Lilith has some kind of contract out on me?" He manages to inject a note of amused disbelief in there even though he's doing the math, even though he can hear Castiel's voice in his head, the righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it, even though it isn't a big jump to assume Lilith might know that too. It suddenly occurs to him that it might be why Alastair was chasing him, and he concludes that it damn well might just make sense even as he protests the opposite.

"It's a reach."

"Why is it a reach?" Sam challenges, and he's damned aggressive with it. "It makes sense, Dean. You're the one that got away, and she can't find you because of the hexbags Ruby gave us after Alastair tracked us down again in Greybull. So maybe she has her demon army out there killing guys who look like you, like the slaughter of the innocents, or something. Take out all the possible Deans, and maybe get the real one while they do it. They're taking the face as proof."

"That's fuckin' ridiculous," Dean shoots back dismissively, maybe even desperately. "Anyway, Bobby said whatever this is takes the heart too. Demons don't do that, Sam. I'm telling you, this is nothing more than coincidence and there's no way—"

"Maybe they're taking the hearts because of what you did in Hell," Sam says, and his eyes are shining even brighter now because it's a lightbulb moment after all. "Think about it, Dean. You said you gave in and climbed off the rack after thirty years, and that you tortured souls yourself for another ten. There must have been some slicing and dicing involved… were hearts your signature or something? Maybe they're trying to draw you out by doing the same to the victims, maybe they're… Dean? Dean?"

The room is spinning, fading in and out, and Dean is dizzy, can't suck in the oxygen he needs. His vision is tunneling, going black, and he feels weak, ill. He looks up to see dawning horror on Bobby's face as he slips off the bed to his knees, and he reaches up to the old man, you're like a father to me, and stutters out apologies. He can hear his own voice from miles away, faint and breathless, "Bobby, I'm so sorry… I couldn't help it, I tried, to hold out, I tried, please forgive me, please…"

He's vaguely aware of Sam babbling out a string of apologies in the background as Bobby catches him, was there ever really any doubt? and the old man holds him tight and close.

"Nothing to forgive," Bobby mutters. "I got you, son. And there is nothing to forgive. You hear me? Nothing to forgive."

Bobby is all tangled up with Dean on the floor between the beds, and the old man's expression is bleak as he reaches for the liquor bottle on the nightstand. There's barely a half-inch of amber fluid in it, and he glances over at Sam. "My duffel, Sam," he prompts quietly. "There's another bottle in it."

Sam gapes. "He's been tippling since he woke. I think he's had enough."

One of Bobby's eyebrows shoots up. "He needs a drink. Fetch the bottle. Now."

It's an order, and Sam does as he's told, passing the bottle over to Bobby as he leans Dean back against the bed. "Glass," Bobby says. "Or a cup. Something."

There's a half-empty glass of water beside his bed and Sam tips the dregs out onto the carpet, hands it over.

Bobby pours a couple of fingers out, holds the glass up to Dean's lips. "Dean. Drink. Do as you're told, boy."

Dean isn't looking at either of them, and his face is blank, distant and disconnected. He seems barely aware of what he's doing for a few seconds until he realizes what's in the glass, and then he chokes the liquid down in a single gulp.

"You remember the Pit," Bobby says abruptly, and Dean flicks his eyes up for just a second before he looks down again. Sam can see he's shivering, and Bobby pulls the blanket off the bed, drapes it around his shoulders.

"Dean," Bobby pushes. He grips Dean's jaw, forces him to look up, but Dean doesn't meet his eyes.

"He does remember it," Sam says quietly. "He remembers all of it. He told me."

Bobby's head swivels around. "Yeah, I could tell," he snaps. "And I'm guessing he told you in confidence. Jesus, Sam. What the hell were you thinking, boy?"

"I wasn't thinking," Sam blurts out. "It just came out, I just—forgot you were here. It's been… pretty intense. This last day or so."

Bobby pulls his cap off, scratches his head. "I thought he blanked it all out?" he says. It's almost indignant, and pain radiates from his eyes. "I thought he was doing okay. That he was clear of this."

"He was," Sam says. "Well. Sort of. He was having bad dreams from pretty much day one but… not anything really bad, not Jacob's Ladder dreams. It was the ghost sickness that really kicked it off, and since then it's been worse. And he's drinking again, like after Bender."

The old man nods slowly, turns back to Dean. "Dean. Son. Can you… can you just. Tell me. Talk to me. I'm right here, boy, right here. We can—"

"He won't tell you, Bobby," Sam interjects. "He won't even talk to me about it any more." He swallows hard on that, because he knows why it's all still festering inside his brother, sees it in his eyes every day, I don't want to be holding you back or nothing. "You know how he bottles things up," he continues, past the dust-dry feeling in his throat that sets in with the acknowledgment of his own culpability in his brother's reticence to share any more than he has. "He's too… he's… it just. It bothers him."

Bobby narrows his eyes. "I can imagine. But what you said… thirty years. And torturing souls. What did you mean by that, Sam? What the hell is he doing down on his knees pleading forgiveness? What is this?"

Sam sighs, rubs hard at his head as he rounds the end of the bed and sits down on it, his leg leaning up against Bobby's shoulder, and he looks down at his brother. "Dean," he says softly.

His brother hears him, looks up, holds Sam's gaze for a long moment, and then he shrugs sort of, looks down and away again.

"Okay, this is what he told me," Sam starts. "Time… it moves differently in Hell. It's like dog years or something. It was four months for us, but it was more like forty years for him."

Sam can already see Bobby's shoulders tensing up as he speaks and he stops, has to inhale deeply. It occurs to him that this is the first time he's really thought or spoken about Hell, except for the time he threw it back in his brother's face, and he's suddenly appalled at the fact he's been able to put it behind him and move on; that he only thinks of what his brother endured in relation to getting angry, getting even, in relation to his own personal Winchester revenge quest, and fuck the collateral damage to what's left of his family.

He considers it: that since his brother was resurrected, the only times he has really thought about what was actually done to Dean were the three times Dean spoke about it, and that for all his exhortations to Dean to share and don't spare the details, his brother's obstinate silence has been a relief. Because despite Dean's denial, Sam knows he's the reason it happened, and he can damn well do without being reminded of it any more than he already is, in his brother's haunted expression, drunken slurring, dull-eyed hangovers and night terrors. "You know what goes on in the Pit," he mutters. "Every day it happened, and then they made him whole and started over. And what they did to him, they—"

Bobby clears his throat harshly, and when Sam looks down he sees the old man's fists are clenched, his knuckles white. Twenty-five years, he thinks, and he can hear Bobby's voice loud and clear in his head like the man is saying the words to him here and now, your brother was my second chance, Sam. And even though he knows the look Dean gave him, and his lack of protest, are tacit permission to continue, Sam can't do it and he fast-forwards. "Thing is, the demon who ran the show, he's been trying to get to Dean," he says. "Ruby gave us hexbags that kept us hidden, but the angels trapped him. They needed his intel and they thought he might… respond to Dean. They had him in a devil's trap but he got out and Dean couldn't—he wasn't able to…" He throws up a hand. "The demon was stronger. It turned nasty."

Bobby looks up, narrows his eyes. "It was the demon you were just hunting? Who beat up on him? Jesus, Sam, why didn't you boys tell me this, tell me he remembered, I could have—"

"It's like a code of fucking silence," Sam blurts out. "That's what it is, Bobby. I don't know how we got here, but he can't, he won't – tell me. Because he's… because I – I can't bear to hear it. He knows it. So he keeps it in there. And it's killing him."

Bobby growls out some undefined noise of frustration, sinks his face into his hands for a second. "Jesus, you messed-in-the-head Winchesters. Haven't you learned anything, both of you?" His voice starts to rise, brittle with anger. "I never met any family as close as you two boys, but can you not just sit down and have an honest fuckin' conversation instead of letting it eat you from the inside until you both screw it up so monumentally it ends with—"

"Sammy isn't exactly being truthful, Bobby."

Dean still isn't looking at either of them, but his hand snakes out, grabs the bottle, and he takes a few gulps.

"Dean, you don't have to…" Sam trails off as Bobby shoots him a look of such ferocity that he feels chills. He hasn't hunted with Bobby, but he somehow knows that look is the look he'd see gleaming in the man's eyes if he were hunting Sam, and he braces for the right hook he knows will be flying his way once his brother spills what he said in Bedford.

"I did a lot of reading before I went away," Dean continues, softly. "You never knew that did you, Sammy?" He looks up, but his eyes are shuttered. "I couldn't sleep sometimes. I was. I was scared. I guess. And forewarned is forearmed. Something like that, anyway."

Sam stares at Dean, feels his tension easing so swiftly he wonders if it's audible, because it's like every single pore breathes out a sigh of relief at the free pass he knows he doesn't deserve, the reprieve. He has to steel himself so he doesn't sag as every muscle abruptly relaxes.

Dean worries his lower lip for a second, looks down again. "I read that Hell was nothing more than a spiritual condition, a state of loss that happens to you when your soul turns away from God." He huffs out at that, and Sam thinks that one small derisive puff of air speaks volumes.

"And then I read that it was a dungeon of filth, and punishment, and torment, and su-suffering." Dean must notice that he stutters because he stops, and Sam can see him blink hard, breathe deep, steel himself. He wonders if this is where his brother is going to close down and brick it up, because there aren't words; and maybe Bobby concludes as much too, because he puts his hand on Dean's.

"Son…" Bobby says, and Sam can see his brother's fingers start plucking convulsively at the carpet, see the old man's fingers close around them.

"I read that it was cold and gloomy in Hell, that it was ice, and blizzards, a frozen lake of guilt, and shame, and everlasting contempt." Dean's voice doesn't falter now, it's steady, low. "And then I read that it was boiling hot and fiery, deserts of scalding-hot sand, sheer drops, sharp rock, and jagged thorns, winds that scraped the flesh off your bones, trees made of razor blades that you had to climb while vultures tore at you, and rivers of blood that you drowned in." He stops, seems to consider what he just said and Sam sees him swallow hard, sees a muscle twitch in his cheek, sees him just barely nod, and it tells him something he doesn't want to know.

"I read that it was a garbage dump for souls that didn't accept Jesus Christ as their savior. But then… then I read that Hell purified your soul and sent you to Heaven if you repented." At that, Dean's voice rises slightly, sounds hopeful, and Sam knows in that moment, without a shadow of a doubt, that his brother's last conscious thought before he bled out, before his heart arrested and his brain switched off, was focused on that one vision of redemption.

Dean takes another pull at the bottle, and then another. And another, and he keeps looking down. "And then I went to Hell, and I found out that Hell isn't a single one of those things," he says dully. "Hell is all of those things. And I. I…" Dean does choke then, puts the heel of his hand up to his brow. "I repented. I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior, and I repented like you wouldn't fuckin' believe." He laughs, and it's agonized, desperate. "But my soul wasn't purified. And I never got to leave and go to Heaven." His lower lip is trembling and he sucks it in again, bites down on it so hard a bead of blood appears, and Sam winces, sees Bobby flinch in his peripheral vision.

"See, there's this other thing I read about Hell," Dean whispers then. "It's endless. It's forever. It stretches into eternity, in perpetuity. It's damnation without relief. And that's what makes it Hell. What makes it unbearable. What breaks you, and corrupts you, and depraves you." He looks at Bobby, smiles weakly. "I can never tell you, Bobby. What they did. Never. I could never do that to you."

Sam wants to go, wants to get up, get his jacket and walk away from this, walk away from it all, because Bobby's shoulders are heaving now, and his brother is shuffling forward on his butt, wrapping his arms around the old man.

"But I need something from you," Dean is saying. "Every day he made me an offer, see? The demon. Alastair. And every day I said no. For thirty years, Bobby. But Hell is forever. And I couldn't help myself, I couldn't do it forever. I was weak. And Hell broke me. It corrupted me. It depraved me. Alastair made Hell into all of those things for me, for thirty years. And then I spent ten years making Hell into all of those things for—"

"No, dammit."

Bobby's outcry is wretched, fractured. He pulls loose, shoots bolt upright, and Sam sees his brother's face crumple in dismay as the old man lurches into the bathroom and retches violently.

Sam knows he can be no comfort, that this rejection is something Dean may never recover from, and suddenly all he can hear in his head is his own scorn and contempt, boo-hoo. "Dean, I'm sorry," he chokes out. "I'm so fucking sorry."

Dean doesn't respond, picks up the bottle again, drinks long and steady before slumping, and Sam sees for the first time how faded his brother is, how worn out, because Dean is pushing seventy and it has been a hard-knock life, and maybe he's starting to think that throwing the towel in might be easier than putting up a fight.

Bobby staggers back through the bathroom door and his face is pasty, his eyes stark. He stares at Dean, horror etched so clearly on his features that Sam reckons he could make out the letters if he looked close enough.

"Bobby," Dean slurs. "Please. I need something from you. You're the only one who can. So please."

He drops the bottle, holds up his hands as what's left of the liquor spills listlessly out onto the carpet, and it hits Sam like a lightning bolt, Dean's naked expression even though he's smashed out of his brain, his hands reaching, his confused logic. Their dad is long gone, but Bobby is like a father to him, and he sees it dawn on the old man's face that his brother needs absolution almost the instant he realizes it himself.

Bobby's face is even more appalled if that's possible. "Does he think I…? I said there's nothing to forgive, does he think I blame him?"

He strides across the room, flings himself down and gathers Dean into his arms, and sounds of distress start up.

And Sam picks up his jacket and his cellphone, and leaves.